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Week 11: Healing the Inner Child

Week 11 Class Recording

Week 11 Homework

Daily Practices:

For HW there’s a couple of ways you can work with the inner child:

  1. You can use access to explicit declarative memories - those memories that recall the specifics of an event - to activate implicit procedural memories or emotions stuck in the body. To do this, you can pick a specific feeling or emotion that you notice gets triggered in you often and is having a negative/limiting impact on your life.  For example, if you often feel misunderstood or rejected by others,bring to mind a recent event where this was triggered within you and connect to what you felt in your body when that instance of rejection occurred. Once you settle on the specific feeling or emotion, connect to it in your body as it exists in this moment. Then think back to the first time you can remember feeling this way. Try to remember as many specifics about this event as possible. How old were you? Where were you? What were you wearing? Who else was there? What was the sequence of events that triggered this feeling in you? What happened after this feeling was triggered? Did you react externally and if so how did those around you respond to your reaction? As you are recalling this memory, notice what feelings are being activated within you. Is it the same set of feelings that you started by connecting with, or are there differences? As feelings arise, allow them to come up and be fully felt. Use the awareness we’ve been cultivating to create loving and compassionate space for them to exist in. Observe everything that’s coming up and send it love and compassion. As you begin connecting more deeply to the feelings, you can begin letting go of the story - the declarative memory - associated with it, and just focus on directing the loving compassion you would give to yourself as a child to these feelings arising inside of you. I’ll upload a recording to guide you through this process on the portal

  2. Actually working with triggers in the moment. This is working with feelings and emotions as they arise/get triggered by an external (or internal) event rather than using declarative memories to help connect to them. Rather connecting these triggers to events in childhood, go directly into the feelings, sensations, and emotions that are being triggered within you.  Use the awareness we’ve been cultivating to create loving and compassionate space for them to exist in. Observe everything that’s coming up and send it love and compassion. Imagine these feelings inside of yourself as a child who is feeling that way. Imagine the space of love and support you would want to hold for that child as they moved through that experience and hold that same quality of space for yourself.

 

For both of these, make sure you are in a safe and quite space where you can drop in and be undisturbed during your practice. Allow yourself to express whatever ways feel right as you engage in this practice. 

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Guided Inner Child Somatic Practice:

00:00 / 28:40
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