So welcome everyone and thank you.
So let's take a gentle breath first and settle in.
So I want to talk to you today about something that doesn't get said very often.
Something that lives underneath all the healing content,
All the wellness advice,
All the meditations,
The affirmations and the promise of transformation.
I want to talk to you or rather share about what happens when you've done the work and you're still hurt.
When you've tried everything,
The therapy,
The breath work,
The journaling,
The holistic work,
The plant medicine and the pain is still there.
When you followed all the steps and you haven't arrived at your destination that you were promised.
And if that's you,
I see you and I want to say something that might feel radical.
You are not failing at healing,
The model is failing you.
And I'll say this again,
You are not failing at healing,
The model is failing you.
Now we live in a culture that has turned healing into a product.
Do this program,
Do these steps,
Heal your trauma in 8 weeks,
Transform your life in 12 weeks.
And underneath all of it is an implicit promise that if you do the work,
The pain will go away.
You are not healing because you are not doing the work.
Only if you do the work,
The pain will go away.
But what if that's not always true?
What if some wounds don't heal?
What if some losses don't resolve?
And what if some pain is not a problem to be solved?
But just to wait that you might have to learn to carry differently with you.
I am not saying this to discourage you.
I am saying this because the lie that everything can be fixed,
If you just try hard enough,
Believe hard enough,
Do enough inner work,
Do enough manifestation,
Is causing its own kind of suffering.
Because when you can't fix it,
You feel like you've failed.
And there's often shame and disappointment that gets layered on top of the pain that's already there.
Now,
You've probably heard all of these phrases.
Everything happens for a reason.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Focus on the positive and raise your vibration.
And I want to be honest with you.
Sometimes these phrases are offered with genuine love.
But when you're in real pain,
The kind that doesn't lift,
These words can have the opposite effect.
Because the implication is,
If you're still suffering,
You are doing something wrong.
You are not positive enough,
You are not spiritual enough,
You are not healed enough,
Or you have not found the right therapy yet.
And this is also what psychologists call spiritual bypassing.
Using spiritual beliefs to avoid facing human pain.
And it's rampant in our wellness culture.
The insistence on positivity can become a way of abandoning people who are suffering.
And it can make you feel more alone than you were before.
Now here is something important from the world of neuroscience and somatic therapy.
That trauma isn't just stored in the mind,
It lives in the body.
Your nervous system keeps a record of everything that happened to you.
This is why you can understand something intellectually,
But still feel it in your body.
The pain hasn't gone away.
You can know you're safe now,
And your body can still feel like it's in danger.
You can forgive someone,
And your stomach can still clench when you hear their name.
You could have done years of therapy,
And your chest still tightens when a memory surfaces.
What I want you to know is,
This isn't failure.
This is simply how your nervous system works.
Now,
The polyvagal theory talks about something called neuroception.
Which is the way your body unconsciously scans for threat and safety.
And this happens below the level of thought,
Before you can even choose.
So when someone says,
Just let it go,
They don't understand that the body has its own timeline.
And sometimes that timeline is longer than we want it to be.
Sometimes it's a lifetime.
Sometimes it may not go away.
Now there's a model in psychology called prolonged grief,
Or complicated grief.
And it describes people who are still deeply affected by loss,
Years,
And sometimes decades after it has happened.
Now society often tells these people they should have moved on by now.
Now this is me speaking from my own experience,
That sometimes grief isn't meant to end.
Some grief is the shape your love takes now,
That the person or the life or the version of yourself is gone.
The goal isn't to stop grieving.
The goal is to find a way to carry it,
That doesn't break you.
And I'll say this again,
The goal isn't to stop grieving.
The goal is to find a way to carry it,
So it doesn't break you.
To make room for grief and for life at the same time.
Not moving on,
But moving with.
Now let this settle in,
Not moving on,
But moving with.
So if healing doesn't mean that the pain goes away,
So what does it mean?
Now in acceptance and commitment theory,
Which is one of the most evidence-based approaches to chronic pain and trauma,
There's a very powerful idea that the goal isn't to eliminate pain.
The goal is to stop pain from controlling your life.
And there is what they call clean pain,
The unavoidable suffering that comes with being human.
And then there is dirty pain,
The suffering we add on top through fighting it,
Resisting it and judging ourselves for hurting.
And a lot of healing work is not about removing the clean pain,
But rather reducing the dirty pain.
It's about learning to be in pain without hating yourself for being in pain.
To grieve without feeling broken for grieving.
To struggle without adding the story that you're failing.
Now in family constellations work,
We see something profound at times.
That some of the pain that you carry may not even be yours.
It may belong to your mother,
Grandfather,
An ancestor you've never met.
Grief that was never grieved.
Trauma that was never witnessed.
Pain that was passed down through generations.
And here you are carrying it,
Often without even knowing.
This is why some pain feels so much bigger than your own story.
Because it is.
And the healing here isn't always about resolving it.
Sometimes it's about acknowledging it.
Bowing to it.
And saying,
I see what happened.
I see what was never seen.
And then letting it rest.
Not because it is fixed,
But rather because it's finally,
Finally witnessed.
Now I want to give you permission for something.
Permission to stop fixing yourself.
Permission to stop chasing the next therapy,
The next retreat,
The next modality,
The next promise of transformation.
And permission to rest.
Not because you've healed,
But because you're exhausted from trying to heal.
Now healing fatigue is real.
The body and mind need rest from the constant work of processing,
Releasing,
Transforming.
And sometimes,
The most healing thing you can do is nothing.
Just be.
Just exist in your imperfect,
Still hurting,
And not yet transformed body.
Not as a project,
But as a person.
Now I want to offer you a different kind of hope.
Not the hope that says one day you'll be pain free.
But the hope that says you can live a meaningful life alongside your pain.
You can live a meaningful life alongside your pain.
You can have moments of joy and still carry grief.
You can build a life and still have days where it feels too heavy.
You can love again and still feel the ache of what was lost.
This is not settling.
This is not giving up.
This is radical acceptance.
This is the kind that says,
This is what is,
And I'm going to keep living anyway.
Now I'd like to invite you into a small practice.
Not to heal anything,
Not to release anything,
And not to transform anything also.
Just to be with what is.
If it feels right,
Let your eyes close,
Soften your gaze,
Or keep them open.
Just notice where you are right now.
The weight of your body.
The contact with whatever is supporting you.
And without trying to change it,
Notice what you're carrying right now.
Not the story of it.
Not the reasons or the history.
Just the felt sense of it.
The weight,
The texture,
And the temperature.
And imagine just for a moment that you didn't have to do anything with it.
That it could just be here.
That you could just be here with it.
Whatever it is that may be arising for you.
That tightness,
That warmth,
That thought,
That worry.
You didn't have to do anything with it.
It could just be here.
You could just be here with it.
You don't have to fix it.
You don't have to understand it.
You don't have to transform it also.
You can just be with it.
You don't have to fix it.
You don't have to understand it.
You don't have to transform it.
You can just be with it.
Maybe this is another part of you that was hurt.
And it just needs you to witness it,
To watch it,
To allow it to be.
And in that being with it,
There's a kind of tenderness.
A gentleness towards yourself.
Not the gentleness of,
You should be kinder to yourself.
But the gentleness that just stays.
That doesn't leave you alone with it.
Just stay with it.
Stay with this gentleness for another few seconds.
And whenever you're ready now,
Just come back to the room,
Come back to the chair,
Come back to yourself.
Nothing has to be different.
You just practice being with yourself.
And that is enough.
Now before I go,
I want to leave you with this.
You are not a project to be completed.
You are not a problem to be solved.
You are a human being,
Carrying what human beings carry.
Sometimes what we carry is heavy.
Sometimes it doesn't get lighter,
No matter how hard we try.
And sometimes the most profound healing is simply learning to carry it with more dignity,
More compassion,
And less shame.
You haven't failed.
You are just human.
And being human is extremely hard at times.
Just take what resonates from this.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for carrying what you carry.
Be gentle with yourself.
Thank you very much for listening.
And Namaste.
