When is it time to let go of our trauma and move on?

Trauma has become a bit of a buzz word these days in holistic and healing circles - we’re all meant to be looking at our trauma and talking about it and - one imagines — healing it.

I don’t have an issue with this as such, certainly it has been helpful to acknowledge traumatic events in my own life and the impact they have had on my body and indeed my mind and it’s way of perceiving the world and all its very experiences - and the behaviour patterns that follow.

But it is also my experience that if we are not careful we can get caught up in our trauma to the extent that we never quite manage to move on from it and it just become set another opportunity to either drop into our victimhood, or distract us from living more presently.

Shit happens. I have a sense that incarnation in itself is traumatic, certainly for new and/or sensitive souls, and our societal structure certainly doesn’t help. School traumatises many for example but is normalised - break the spirit to fit in is an accepted approach to living. The workplace sometimes doesn’t help, modern day slavery plugged into terminals for hours on end, devoid of fresh air and nature, many have no idea what the weather is doing, let alone the phase of the moon or the state of the tide. We are increasingly disconnected from nature - to me this sounds like a major human trauma, but it is rarely considered as much.

So we’re up against it these days. I stumbled across this article which kind of says it all - we’re living in a mad world! https://uk.news.yahoo.com/unemployed-given-weight-loss-jabs-200000593.html

Somehow we have to find the courage to maintain our sanity when all around us there is distraction and denial of responsibility, of corporations profiteering by making us obese and pharmaceutical companies profiteering from trying to rectify it. Something is amiss.

In holistic circles too, we need to be vigilant. Our only true protection is discernment and never have we had to be more discerning about what we let into our lives, of the people we mix with and the environments we spend time in, let alone the messages we buy into from media, which are always trying to distract us and keep us caught in our fear and negativity and advertising companies trying to externalise our worth so they can sell to us the latest thing to make us feel better about ourselves.

We have to be discerning about our trauma too, of clearing it, not getting caught in it, of recognising that whatever happened happened and noticing the many ways it may have shaped us and still causes us our suffering and then have the courage to do what we can to clear it. Reiki, yoga and Ayurveda all offer us tools, which help to get to the root cause rather than skimping around with the symptoms and numbing outlives with anti-depressants, anti-anxiety meds and the plethora of other pharma sold to keep us numbing to the deeper wounding underneath.

We have to recognise when it is time to move on, when we have healed our traumatic past and can finally live more presently in this moment. Otherwise we run the risk of getting stuck, of continually identifying with ourselves as we were and never truly beginning again. This is one of the many reasons I love the Yoga Sutras, and the ancient wisdom, often the Sanskrit word ’Atha’ appears, meaning now. Because right now we have a choice. Now we can begin again or keep repeating more of what we done previously. Now we have a choice. Now we can start over. Now we can be les burdened by our past.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I love that each new day offers us the possibility to begin again. That each now and now again means that we can do things differently if we are conscious of it.

So as we approach this moon, it might be time to reflect on what we are still burdening ourselves with from the past, of all the weight we are carrying which can now be let go of. We are in that time of the year. You only have to walk the lanes to see how many leaves are falling from the trees. This is a fabulous time to let go and begin again, and we are headed to Samhain at the end of the month which marks the end of the Pagan year, for good reason, as it is supported and led by nature.

And for those who still need to work through your trauma then book in, maybe it’s time to do that deep dive and truly clear it from the mind, body, psyche and spirit. So then you too can begin again.

Love Emma x