How the Past affects our Presence
I have a passionate interest in intergenerational patterns and how our family history informs how we navigate the world. I had a sense of this curiosity as a young girl, but it wasn’t until I had children of my own that I started to desire a greater understanding of why we do what we do, say what we say, or respond the way we respond.
In addition to my embodiment training, I have done trainings on Internal Family Systems (IFS) and another course called Healing Across Generations: Tools for Transforming Transgenerational Trauma. It has benefitted me tremendously, and even more, has helped me have greater compassion for others. I could suddenly see why we repeat the patterns we repeat, often unconsciously, because that is what we saw modeled for us. But it runs so much deeper than this…..
The people who surrounded us growing up have their own stories. Their parents did too, and so on. Some of this history may be known to us, some of it unknown. As we continue to learn more about epigenetics, we understand that we inherit not only the DNA, but the nervous systems of the ancestors who went before us. What they had to face back then affects our lives in fundamental ways today.
Asking questions like: What was the situation like between the parents and other family dynamics when a mother is pregnant with a child? How does that child feel that energy before birth? What implicit memory is stamped on that child pre-verbally? To take it a bit further, what generational wounding has been handed down energetically that we unconsciously carry the burden of today? Examples are families who have been touched by the Holocaust, slavery, imprisonment or war, children who have been estranged from parents or orphaned, families who have abuse histories (physical, emotional, sexual), or alcohol and drug misuse. Other examples that usually fly under the radar are things like financial insecurity and scarcity, miscarriage, hypervigilance, grief and rage, or a sense that something key is missing. Any big event that our ancestors endured was passed down to us, to our psyche, to our bodies. Sometimes what didn’t happen to us is still very much felt by us in ways we aren’t even aware of.
I experienced a beautiful and unexpected moment of clarity and healing while learning a unique method to travel back in time and connect with the past. I learned a tool from Nir Esterman which was inspired by the Family Constellation Method. I had an open mind and no agenda.
We were asked to gather about 4-5 objects, a few stones or crystals, coins, whatever you had lying around to be used as a representation. We were asked to consider anything that feels bottomless, endless, or too big, a sensation, or something that felt like a weight we’ve been carrying around for a long time. Whatever came to mind, heart, or was felt as a body sensation was a thread to follow. Whatever we were able to name was given to the object. We continued to follow our minds and body sensations as we were asked questions allowing memory, images, and colors to pass through. I was staying with the felt sense that something is missing and following that with no real idea what this meant. After a series of questions and attunement to my body, I found myself weeping for the experiences of both my mother and maternal grandmother for having lost children. My grandmother had lost her 6-month-old baby to SIDS and my mother miscarried at 5 months when I was just 5 years old. She was very ill at that time and had a lot of blood loss. I know her condition affected me as a little one, but I didn’t have any memory of it, but here in this moment I connected with the implicit memory in my body. Although it did not happen to me, I honored their experience and gently handed back the weight I carried in my body for their loss so that I could let that energy transform. We closed with a beautiful prayer as we did this, releasing ourselves from carrying this burden for our ancestors and handing it back with compassion.
This experience, this emotion, this energy was not mine to carry and it never was, yet there was a sense of loss within me that needed to be named, honored and released so that I could be free.
Do you have a sense that you’re carrying something that isn’t yours? Is there a mindset, an emotion, or a sensation that nags at you, sabotaging your efforts to be free of it? Somatic or body-based work is not about reliving the past but allowing space for you to just feel. To slow down long enough to notice what’s present inside you that wants your attention. Not to overindulge it but to move through it. You can follow the thread of jaw tightness, back pain, or the heaviness that lays upon your chest and simply listen with an open heart. These messengers have the best intentions for us, but we call them inconvenient. We aren’t taught to feel, and we have too much to do every day to even be bothered. But when we learn to be present with ourselves, we get to experience what it’s like to feel true freedom. Not freedom from, but freedom to really live. To be light in our hearts and our bodies. To have a knowing that you are everything you’ve been looking for.
My love and compassion is with you as you carry all you carry.
