Healing Deep Trauma Through Heart-Centered Awakening

Trauma can live within the body and carry across multiple generations. Intergenerational trauma stems from intense or extended exposure to traumatic events that an individual and/or family can not cope with, process, and heal in one lifetime. This deep-rooted trauma may stem from oppression, addiction, abuse, abandonment, loss, neglect, heartbreak, etc., and closes our heart energy off to protect us. Our practice focuses on revealing, opening, and clearing a way for the heart to heal and build a new way.

Transcript

Welcome.

Today our meditation is on uprooting the intergenerational trauma that lives within us.

We begin by connecting and trying to understand what trauma means,

What intergenerational trauma means.

It has been said that this is a traumatic event that began years or perhaps decades,

Centuries prior to the current generation.

You.

And this traumatic event or events has seemingly impacted the ways in which we can understand,

Cope with,

And heal from trauma.

Both as an individual,

As a family,

And what this can look like is unresolved emotions and thoughts that live within the body surrounding this traumatic event.

It can be negative repeated patterns of our behavior,

Which include our beliefs.

But let's define this so we can truly understand what trauma means.

Trauma can result from any circumstance that weighs your ability to cope.

Namely,

This is a creation of a loss of safety,

Emotional,

Physical,

Psychological,

And even financial.

This trauma can have a long standing impact when you think to the trauma that you can truly understand from your eyes and your physical body.

When you are in a traumatic accident or injury.

You notice that your body can hold on to that trauma.

The way that you use your body may change because of ability or perceived ability.

And your body may even flinch or react or sense or have fear around the event that caused the trauma.

Say it was a dog bit you,

You know,

It's that fear that trauma lives within our bodies.

And that's just touching on the physical because it's an easier one.

We all have experienced some sort of physical trauma to our body.

But imagine the compounding amounts of trauma that it would take to lead to this deep seated intergenerational trauma.

This trauma served its purpose in the past.

Our ancestors,

Those that are within our family lineage,

Known or unknown,

May have experienced trials sustaining that were around perhaps oppression,

Which is a topic we are delving into as a society.

It could be abuse,

Neglect,

Addiction,

Trauma around loss and relationships and grief.

There's so many components it's hard for us to understand and pinpoint.

What we are really here to do today is not to pick apart every single trauma and try to understand it and relive it,

But more begin to understand how it may have shaped us into the being that we are today and how we can move forward in our lives.

We'll begin with this guided practice that brings us close up to exploring this within our bodies and giving us a visualization to help us connect with it,

To honor it,

And to allow yourself to begin the release and the uprooting so that you may replant new ways of coping and managing with trauma.

May it arise in your life once again.

The reconnecting in your physical space right now,

Finding a comfortable position where you can either be upright with a tall spine or a supported position that allows your body to get comfortable,

Maybe with pillows or if you're laying down.

Understanding each body,

Each person has different needs and so you address them.

And as you settle in beginning to connect with the breath and the body just bringing you to a state of a little more calm,

A little more inward.

I invite you to really notice the breath moving,

Finding the space within your body where you can sense it the most.

Maybe that is within the abdomen or the upper chest,

Feeling the expansion.

Or perhaps you notice the breath coming in and out of the nostrils.

I invite you if you may,

If you are able bodied to place a hand or hands on the heart center.

Feeling the warmth,

The weight of the hands on the chest as the breath moves through the body.

May this serve as a reminder today to you in your practice to do this with loving kindness,

Gentleness,

A caring and concern for your well-being.

At any point in time,

Just place a hand on your heart center or placing your awareness here as you breathe and feel your heart beating.

We'll begin with a short breath practice,

Taking a deep breath in together through the nose and an exhale through the nose.

We then slowly count five in on our inhale.

We hold for just a moment,

Allowing that breath to fill up the lungs before we exhale through the nose for a count of five.

Inhale through the nose for five.

Hold for a brief pause with these filled lungs,

This beautiful air.

Then a slow and steady exhale through the nose.

Again,

Breathing in for five.

A little pause and a long,

Slow,

Steady exhale through the nose.

Continue with this cycle as we set our intentions today to examine our heart,

Our energy center,

To dive within the body.

And like a gardener,

We don't plant a seed and see the flower bloom the next day.

And while we may pull the weeds,

They may return.

It requires this caring and this attentiveness and this slight understanding of what that soil needs for growth,

For removal.

You may place your hands back down anywhere that feels comfortable,

Perhaps in your lap.

In your mind's eye,

Begin to visualize your heart center.

Visualize diving deep within the body.

You are filled with light,

With energy.

And we unfolded out of the directions from this DNA that lives within us.

And within that packet,

There were many things that became characteristics of how we look,

How we speak,

How we move in this world.

Our health and our wellness.

And within there,

Packed away in this little DNA packet,

Like this little tiny seed,

Were these instructions that were to protect you,

To protect your heart,

To protect your energy.

They were very important at one point in time.

Imagine being able to find this little seed,

This packet of all this information deep within your heart center.

Begin to breathe into this space.

And within this packet lived memories and past traumatic events that shaped the seed and how it would grow within you.

And many of us,

This little packet unfolded and from that grew these vines,

These tall weeds that covered the outside of our heart.

That grew tall to protect us,

To keep us safe.

So that we may break the chain.

We offer gratitude for the purpose that this once served for us,

For the generations before us.

We understand that there was fear and also so much love behind this.

The duality of light and dark.

And we offer our gratitude to all of those in our lineage that came before us.

That allowed for us to be here where we are today,

Whether we are challenged or living what we may feel is our best life.

We still offer up gratitude.

We are here in this moment together.

Not offering gratitude to the trauma,

But the messages that it left behind to protect us.

That those before us were processing and doing all that they could with the tools and resources they could.

And it is not their fault for passing along these messages that live deep within the cells and the heart center.

And if you find this challenging,

Perhaps just backing off and breathing into the heart.

When you might be ready,

We begin to visualize the outside of our heart center.

Where all of this ivy and maybe these weeds and these branches have just kind of grown wild covering our heart where we can easily feel the love flowing,

Our energy moving,

Our creativity and inspiration perhaps being held back.

Our worthiness or confidence all lives behind.

And so we imagine digging up and on rooting and clearing away everything that blocks the heart center.

Imagine digging with your hands up rooting.

And if you'd like to imagine throwing them into a fire.

Each breath that you breathe in for each up rooting for each burning you can breathe easier you can move the energy from the heart center wider and throughout the body.

Releasing it from behind that wall,

So it may flow upward and downward through the energy channels of the body feeding and fueling so that we can live from our heart and not from fear or hiding from our heart and our truth.

Digging with the hands.

Pulling and clearing.

Creating a pathway for this energy to flow through us.

And with each breath we tend to this soil that has been cleared and we nourish it with love from our heart love for everything that came before.

That we honor and that we won't forget the journey.

We will understand its importance.

But we continue along our journey.

Being led by our heart.

Imagine breathing in through the heart center and sending the breath through the body down through the spine through the legs and each toe.

Up through the chest and down the arms through the fingertips.

Up through the throat through the space between the brow and the crown of the head and the back of the head breathing in and imagine sending your energy shooting from every direction that it has burst through its caged heart.

And as you breathe your whole being breathes in every cell is now drinking in.

And is learning.

Is learning and taking in all the messages and the information it needs for now for how to cope how to move forward.

That each moment is a new moment for us to live from our heart.

To heal the past.

And to move forward.

I invite you once again if you can place your hand or hands on your heart center.

Feeling the energy of each breath.

Moving beneath each finger.

All the warmth and the love that lives within you.

And the understanding we must consistently tend to our internal.

That we may like gardeners.

You to tell our soil and to fertilize and water and give sun and nourish and pull those weeds.

And we may have setbacks.

We may experience beautiful bounty.

But we do have this power to uncover to acknowledge.

And to create the new.

To uproot and begin again.

Simple moments.

May you find simple joys and release.

And know I will be there with you on that journey.

Namaste.

Until the next time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Reviews

I appreciate the reminder that the garden doesn't grow overnight and that weeds need repeated removal to allow our flowers to bloom.
Namaste

Thank you. Deeply moving. I'm very grateful for your words.

Thank you for your very smoothing meditation.
Blessings

This was really beautiful. I will revisit. Maybe you could put out another recording that skips that long into and gets right to the breath work process for repeat listening.

Beautiful journey to the garden of our hearts 💕 thank you, this is exactly what I needed today ✨🙏🧡

Lovely meditation Elizabeth
Really enjoyed it but feel the urge to do it again
Kind Regards
Namaste🙏🏻