Integration
From Fixing to Feeling
A magical occurrence happens in the quiet stillness of a moment, when we take the time to just exist without thought, analysis or solution. That which hurts us, that which feels heavy, begins to move. Sometimes tiptoeing gently at a pace almost imperceptible to the senses, and sometimes welling up like a fervent spring, ready to burst.
I am talking about healing, but more so about integration. There is a distinction to be made before we carry on. One that may underpin more of human experience than we realise.
In health, spirituality and self-help, we often live inside a simple paradigm: something is wrong, so I must fix it. I feel ill so I need to get better. I am poor so I must get rich. I lack something; therefore I must pursue it.
Ancient and modern teachers have warned us about this trap, urging us to focus not on the problem but on the wish fulfilled, using our imagination to see ourselves whole, healthy, abundant and connected to spirit.
I can put my hand up and say that over the many years I have been exploring health and consciousness, I have habitually placed myself in the former position of want and need. The last six years of health challenges have been particularly harsh, showing me how I have been holding myself and my mind.
I have studied and used yoga, reiki, soul writing, emotional alchemy, plant medicine, detoxes and countless other processes and modalities to try to clean myself, fix myself and become lighter, more worthy, kinder and healthier. Yet the premise beneath it all was that I was ill, unhealthy and spiritually heavy, weighed down by trauma and wounds.
Even now I find myself falling into those habits. Such is the illusion of the 3D world and the sacred vehicle we call ego. We see limitation. We see time as linear. We see ourselves as broken and in need of repair.
Many psychologists, doctors, healers and spiritual adventurers suggest that illness is rooted in trauma of some kind. It could be physical, emotional, spiritual or karmic. It feels heavy, but it cannot simply be cut from us any more than the past can. It is part of the journey.
So what then?
Across traditions and within my own work, I keep returning to one word: integration. Integration begins with the premise that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with us. Heaviness, trauma, injury and even disease may shift when we stop trying to eradicate them and instead allow them to be felt, understood and moved.
In yoga, we stretch and breathe into a posture. We do not fight it. Life is a series of postures. When we can breathe into what arises, we move through challenge with more grace.
Trauma hides. Emotions lodge in the body. We adapt to them until they feel like personality. As we age, bodies stiffen. Symptoms appear. We can either blame life or we can listen.
Integration means sitting and witnessing the body speak. I write. I give hidden emotions a voice through Soul Writing. Once something reveals itself, I either sit and breathe into that part of me, not trying to fix it, simply allowing it, or I use a focused Emotional Alchemy process that I have trained in.
Emotional Alchemy uses guided meditation and visualisation to accept, integrate and transmute emotions, but it comes down to the same process as sitting and breathing somatically into a part of the body that hurts.
David Hawkins wrote, “The technique is to be with the feeling and surrender all efforts to modify it in any way.”
In his book Letting Go, he suggests that many healing methods work not because they are complex, but because they facilitate the release of suppressed emotional energy. That observation resonates with my own experience.
Healing, or if you are feeling brave, integration, can be surprisingly gentle.
Sit quietly. Feel your body. Breathe slowly. Choose one place that feels heavy or painful. Imagine your breath moving through it. Do not try to fix it or change it. Just be with it. Breathe and follow it. You might flow a little love into it if you like. Just breathe. Watch.
All emotion wants to move. The body wants to heal.
Do this for you.
About the Author
My work sits at the meeting point of healing and creativity. I work with integration through Soul Writing and Emotional Alchemy, grounded in lived experience. This writing forms part of the re-emergence of Soul Craft Studio, and I am available for 1:1 Emotional Alchemy sessions for those who feel called to explore this work more deeply.