The Body Doesn't Lie (26 page)

I do not fear the past and I do not allow anyone to put fear in me. I am present. I am grounded in this special moment. I am not taken from the past. I live in the positive. I do not go back to the past. I forgive. . . . I let go of living in pain.

I release any misunderstanding I still have. I release my fear, my anger. I am capable of great change. I am grateful for my journey and my childhood and my life. I am grateful for my children, my husband, all of our blessings, our health, our safety, and love for each other.

Take a moment to write your own forgiveness meditation in your notebook. What words would be most healing to you? Which relationships do you want to heal, at least in your own mind? Write down your meditation in the style you see above: “I am capable,” “I am grateful,” “I am safe.”

You’ve come to the end of the Release week, and you’ve done a lot of hard work. Congratulate yourself and mark the occasion with a cleansing ritual that will help you forgive yourself and others and release your past.

Think of every major religion—they all have a moment where you atone for your sins and forgive yourself and others for sins against you. Greeks, for example, have a fast for Easter week: We avoid dairy, meat, even olive oil for Lent. In Muslim cultures, for Ramadan, people fast, eating only during the evening hours. This week, you’re doing something similar: cleansing your mind and body as if that process were a prayer for yourself, a cleanse for forgiveness.

Whenever you’re ready for a big change in life, a transformation, you need to ready the ground, clear the space, and prepare yourself for what comes next. You need to be ready to make strong decisions for yourself. “I am doing this for myself. I am giving forgiveness to _________ Mom/Dad/ex-boyfriend/teacher/friend]. I am allowing myself to take charge.”

Finding an appropriate ritual is a bit challenging for some people, especially if they’ve only just realized the source of their pain. One fairly universally helpful ritual is to select from your Body Timeline one of the most traumatic events of your young life and write a letter to your younger self explaining why that bad thing was not your fault. This exercise is about forgiving yourself. A forgiveness letter is also a potent tool when its forgiveness targets someone else (even if the letter is never sent).

I’ve known Alexandra, one of my clients, for almost ten years, but only recently did she confess a horrible story about her childhood to me. I knew that Alex was estranged from her entire family, but I never knew why. Then she wrote a forgiveness letter and shared that letter with me.

Turns out that when Alex thinks about her life as a young girl in Switzerland, she mostly remembers being very scared, spending a lot of time with her older sister alone in their big house. Their parents were always off doing something, so the girls had only each other. Neither one of them felt safe, because their father, when he was around, was very abusive. He wouldn’t tolerate any dissent or backtalk. This prohibition worked out fine, until the girls hit puberty and did the standard talking back—and were met with brutal force in return. They learned to share their teenage angst with their mother; their dad was too much of a wildcard.

When Alex’s older sister went away to boarding school, Alex felt abandoned. Now she had no one to help her feel safe. One weekend her mother went away, and her father brought home his girlfriend—apparently not caring one whit what his teenage daughter would think of his infidelity. He handed her the equivalent of a hundred dollar bill and said, “Our secret, right?”

Alex struggled mightily with whether to tell her mother. Finally, she did—and she wasn’t prepared for what came next.

“Who says?” her mother demanded. Alex was dumbfounded. “No, really—who says? Am I supposed to take
your
word for it?” Alex stuttered, trying to find the words to tell her mother how sad she was for her, and how sorry she was that she had to go through this. But her mother didn’t want to hear it.

“You’re a lying little bitch, Alex,” her mother shouted uncharacteristically. “Go to your room.”

Alex retreated. She curled up on her bed, listening to her mother and father talking conspiratorially downstairs, and cried.

“Can you
believe
what she said to me?” her mother said to her father. “She’s just jealous—now that Natalie is gone, she doesn’t have anyone to spend time with. She’s trying to turn me against you.” Alex could visualize her father faking his shock and giving her mother a convincing hug, while he scowled over her shoulder.

Sure enough, as soon as her mother left the house, Alex’s dad bounded up the stairs and gave her a beating. He’d hit her before, but never with the fury and force of that day. Then he pulled her down to the basement and put her into the dog crate. “Well, so much for us being friends,” he said, and left her there for an hour, releasing her just before her mother came home.

Alex was devastated. She had no idea what to do—so she called her sister. Natalie was in London, a world away from the nightmare unfolding at home. She listened and murmured with sympathy, but when they hung up the phone, Alex felt even more alone than before. Natalie wasn’t coming back for her; her mother didn’t believe her; and her father was a monster. She started to question whether there was any point to staying alive. That’s when she started cutting.

Twenty years after this devastating trauma, Alex was still nursing her wounds. Her parents had long since divorced. Her sister had finished university and stayed in England. Alex was struggling with panic attacks, lower back pain, and blinding headaches. Stuck in the in-between, Alex wanted to let go of her past but felt that she couldn’t. Surprisingly, the biggest source of anger for her was not her dad or her mom—but her sister. Deep in her heart, Alex felt that Natalie had abandoned her at the very moment she needed her most. And yet Alex also
rationally
knew that Natalie hadn’t meant to abandon her—that it was simply her time to leave the house.

When Alex brought me the letter to read, I was moved both by her hurt and by her willingness to forgive. As we discussed the entire trauma, Alex realized that her letter should have been addressed not to her father or her mother (as she’d written it), but to her sister, to forgive her. This letter of forgiveness would never be mailed—but it would be healing to simply write these added words: “Dear sister, I once blamed you for leaving me here in hell—but I now see that you were a young girl too, and you had no power to stop what was happening at home. You didn’t abandon me; you saved yourself. And now I want to follow in your footsteps.” Alex poured out the entire experience in full detail, leaving nothing out, putting it all on the page. After twenty years of unconsciously harboring resentment, anger, and hurt at her sister, she finally expressed the feelings that had been trapping her in mourning and loneliness.

To make her forgiveness more concrete, I asked Alex to read the letter out loud to me. As she spoke, I could see the weight of her childhood literally lifting from hers shoulders; her entire posture changed. I brought out a bowl lined with mother-of-pearl and took it and a lighted candle over to the end table beside her chair. She reread the letter out loud, then held it to the candle. Through our tears, we watched the ashes drift down into the bowl.

Alex’s note was very dramatic. Yours might be simpler. But regardless of the content, once you’ve written your forgiveness note, it’s time to release the pain. Choose one of the Release rituals suggested below to help you feel and see the release with multiple senses. Choose a symbol of poor health to Release ceremonially. For example:

• Label a chipped plate or vase with a personal limitation you want to release, and then take it out to the street or back alley and smash it!
  
• Build a backyard sacrificial bonfire and toss in unwanted memorabilia.
  
• Write a forgiveness letter to your younger self on a piece of rice paper and float it down a stream.
  
• Box up the unwanted memorabilia and take it to Goodwill or your local homeless shelter.
  

Yes, of course it feels satisfying to smash a piece of crockery to vent your frustrations. But remember: Rituals have a magical power in and of themselves to help us feel in control, in touch with our feelings, and able to endure even in our darkest hour. There’s a reason every culture on earth has a very specific method of burying their dead. A “proper burial” ritual signifies closure. Consider this exercise your trauma’s “proper burial”—allow yourself to sink into the process of it and imbue each bit of pottery or each burning letter with as much significance as possible. Help the ritual help you.
²⁶

To end this chapter, I want to share a very specific visualization that my mother used to do with me, to help me rid myself of negative energy. Before you do this (or any) visualization, focus on your breath going in and out of your nostrils. You can do this visualization in the morning after your workout, when you get home from work, or on a break at the office, sitting on a chair in a quiet area or room. Make sure your back is supported so that the flow of energy can open up your chakras, meridians, and energy paths.

Close your eyes and take three deep, slow breaths, in and out of your nose.

Start visualizing a point between your eyebrows (the “third eye point”). Feel the energy and the higher senses of your soul. Count back numbers from three to one, slowly counting each number three times (“three-three-three, two-two-two”). Then count back from ten to one.

Visualize a white light or a window in that third eye point. In that white space, imagine a place you have happy memories of from your childhood, or make up a place in your mind that’s peaceful and calm. See yourself walking on the beach or at the top of a mountain.

Now bring yourself to visualize a mirror surrounded by a blue light to your right side. This light represents your dark side and negative feelings. Visualize all the things you hate and fear about yourself pouring into the mirror. Being sick. Being angry. Being drunk. Being tired. Living in fear. Living in pain. Figure out what you want to focus on, and then take a good look at yourself in that mirror. Say to yourself,

I am in pain. I fear death. I am lonely. I hate myself. I am ____________.

Now visualize a big stone in your right hand and smash that glowing blue mirror until there’s nothing left. The mirror doesn’t exist—you can’t see yourself anymore.

On your left side visualize a mirror shining with a golden-white light. Look at your reflection. Say to yourself,

I am beautiful. My dreams have come true. I am achieving all my goals. I have a strong and supple body. I am healthy. I am glowing. I am with my special man. My kids love me. I am alive. I am happy. I signed the deal / got the job / finished the project.

The trick is to see yourself in that new role so clearly that you never see the old image of yourself again. Think of this as “positive mind control”—you have the power to change your entire perception of yourself with this visualization.

Count one, two, three, four, five—and open your eyes.

You are in your body. You are in your space.

Now that you’re getting to the end of the Release week, you’re probably feeling much lighter. Many of my patients are amazed at the change in their skin in just a few days on the Release program. Is it the Liver Flush? The Release Meal Plan in general? Is it the Self-Healing Trigger Points? The extra salt-and-pepper baths, or the dry brushing? I believe that
all
the Release elements are important, of course, but the function work and the emotion work are where you’ll see the most long-lasting results. If you’ve not yet done the Release the Time-Wasters on Your Time Audit, Release Your Past via Ritual, and Visualize Forgiveness and Release exercises, please do them before you leave the Release stage. The insights you’ll gain through those exercises can carry you for many years into your radiant future.

Now let’s move into the third stage of the Positive Feedback program—the Radiate stage—and see what life has in store for you!

6

Week 3: Radiate

Tension is who you think you should be.

Relaxation is who you are.

—Chinese proverb

M
elissa had had a number of tough years. She’d delivered four kids in the span of eight years, and nursed every one until they were two years old. Her husband had a big job, so they made an agreement early on in their marriage that he’d focus on his work and she’d focus on the children. She joyfully made the choice to forgo law school and dove headfirst into being a mom—while also doing all the entertaining, along with research and packing for relocations every few years, to help her husband scale to new heights in his corporation.

Finally, the youngest was in third grade and the oldest was starting to look at colleges. All the kids were incredibly self-sufficient—her earlier labors had paid off. Aside from the typical teenage bumps, it looked as though all the kids were heading for smooth transitions. More often than not, Melissa found herself alone at home in the afternoon, all the kids at school for activities, her friends working, her husband flying off somewhere to give another presentation to another CEO. She was still doing a full load of volunteering at school, but it was getting less and less fun—fewer days of reading to the kids in the classroom or chaperoning field trips, more time spent raising money or making bake-sale items or sewing costumes for school plays (all solitary, largely unrewarding, tasks).