Energetically speaking, our life history is an integral part of our life force today. And in my work with clients, I see the profound implications of this – and the healing opportunities – demonstrated in every session.
Our past and current experiences influence and impact the subtle substance of our energy field and chakras – and also our physical body. What we have experienced in life that is of benefit to us and what we have healed contributes to the strength, clarity, expression, and vitality of our energy system, body, and consciousness. What is marked by trauma, loss, and/or chronic or extreme stress and is not resolved/not healed diminishes our strength, clarity, expression, and vitality to varying degrees.
I have humbly come to accept, and perhaps you have too, that often, despite our best adaptive strategies and conscientious personal and spiritual growth, what is unhealed remains. Sometimes it is suppressed. Sometimes it is denied, or silenced, as in soul loss. Sometimes we do our best to override the effects of what is not healed and exert substantial effort to project an impeccably strong persona.
What is true, however, is that injuries and insults to our being require direct, compassionate connection and attendance to heal. This depth of care might come through somatic work, shamanic healing, or energy-centered transformational practices. In all cases, the intention must be to recognize and compassionately connect with the injured/insulted part of self. And while this is the intent of all of the work I have developed, Soul Witnessing Practice offers the most accessible, gentle self-healing and self-transformation that I have seen or experienced.
Recognition and Healing
Addressing trauma, loss, and extreme or chronic stress opens us to essential learning. We live in a world that is generally trauma-ignorant and trauma-numb – although this is gradually changing. We can support this change by educating ourselves, healing ourselves, and encouraging others to do the same.
In last year’s Soul Witnessing Facilitator’s Training, our group sat in circle and together named stressful challenges and traumatic experiences that we have seen or have known. When our list was complete, we all felt deeply moved, and we all could feel how the naming of these was in itself subtly healing. While the list is too extensive to write here, these are some significant pieces:
Raising a sick child or one with disabilities, being a sibling of a sick or disabled child, being that child
Losing a parent by death, abandonment, or divorce
Losing any significant person
Having an alcoholic or mentally unstable parent or family member
Being raised within a strict and/or controlling family and/or religion
Experiencing physical, psychological, emotional, or sexual abuse, at any age
Enduring racism and/or any form of discrimination, injustice, or persecution
Living in poverty, trying to survive with food insecurity, being homeless
Losing a job, a home, financial stability
Lacking educational opportunities
Facing relationship challenges
Divorcing
Working in a demanding profession or under prolonged stressful circumstances
Over-exposure to technology
Suffering personal illness
Experiencing any form of emotional isolation or physical debility
Navigating extreme or unexpected upheaval: war, environmental pollution/destruction, forced or chosen migration
There is no hierarchy to this list – only an opportunity for recognition. We all tend to normalize the stress and trauma we have experienced. Individuals do this, families do this – whole countries do this. As we follow through with needed personal resolution and healing, we not only transform ourselves – we facilitate growth in the collective consciousness.
What Soul Witnessing Practice Offers
Unresolved trauma, stress, and loss can manifest as both obvious and subtle expressions over a person’s lifetime. Isolation, avoidance, emotional and physical pain, addiction, illness, fear/anxiety, and self-abandonment are common. To respectfully address these varied expressions, as well as their origins, a healing modality must be free from “fixing.” The healing work – and the way it is facilitated – needs to provide a clear container for authentic recognition, self-honoring, and responsive support. Soul Witnessing Practice does this.
With focus on receptive listening, SWP facilitators invite their clients to share what is of concern and/or challenge in their current life and/or history. This sharing informs the facilitator’s direction and, if needed, guides additional inquiry. Personal healing practices, focused on specific experiences of trauma, stress, and/or loss, become the client’s “at home” work to initiate and nourish deep integration and resolution.
SWP fosters significant self-empowerment, as individuals actively participate in their own healing and resolution journey. Transformational movement happens from the soul outward, naturally opening a person to new responses, choices, actions, and possibilities. The sacredness of Soul Witnessing Practice becomes most evident, however, in one’s healed relationship with oneself. Self-compassion, self-connection, and genuine understanding become the new ground upon which life is founded.
A Colorado client writes: “Through the Soul Witnessing Practice of speaking to my soul, giving my soul the attention, love and nurturing I needed, the patterns of defense dissolved. …Often in counseling and energy work we know why we are stuck, and where it comes from. Soul Witnessing takes it a step further into deeply healing the wounds of the past so we may move forward with a new and clear trajectory.”
From a SWP client in Minnesota: “I am closing the loop in my own healing with SWP. Instead of going outside myself, I go back inside where the healing can occur. The result for me is that when I use Soul Witnessing I feel more grounded, peaceful, and hopeful. ….I am grateful for its power to transform.”
One Washington client shares: “For forty years I’ve been searching for a way to release the weight of childhood trauma, neglect, and sexual abuse. I have been searching for my soul. SWP gives me a practical, achievable, compassionate, healing structure through which I learn how to see and love my true self…. Each day I walk with a lightness of being, with deep appreciation for the alchemical healing found through this work.”
Soul Witnessing Practicesm evolved quite organically from other healing work I offer. Healing tools, like Inner Child Dialogue and the Psychic Cord Release Process, have always revealed the transformational power of self-compassion and of being seen. Soul Witnessing elevates these into a grace-filled, effective healing art.
For the last year and a half I have focused my attention and appreciation on mentoring SWP facilitator trainees. All of us feel resounding gratitude for the difference this work has made for our clients. ~~ Elizabeth
If you are interested in learning more about Soul Witnessing Practice, please contact me.
If you are interested in SWP sessions, let’s schedule a 15-minute free call, so that I/we can determine if this work is the best choice for fulfilling your healing goals and needs.
