by Cate McNider

In my early 30s, like so many otherwise reasonable people, I kept making the same mistakes. I encountered a different face, but the same treatment. A healer I worked with, told me it was because early wounds of betrayal and abandonment were reflecting themselves in painful situations and people who represented those concepts. I would keep recreating those dynamics until I healed the pain I was holding in my body. The solution was within me, and it was up to me to heal and allow the changes. It twisted me into an S-curve, I simply couldn’t imagine living in that deep level of pain for the rest of my life. This didn’t just happen one day, and it wouldn’t get better overnight — the karma ran deep, and had to just play itself out through my 30’s, 40’s and finally in my 50’s many recognitions found their acceptances and understanding of the underlying contracts. Freedom is worth the work.

The hardest thing about healing from trauma, is understanding that it’s not happening now. If you’re 20 or 30 years from the inciting incident(s), you may still be attracting situations that reflect the result of the trauma, but those subsequent events are further reflections of the original wound. They are beacons, with different faces, however unpleasant, letting you know that you shut down an essential part of yourself and it needs to be accepted again. Your body however, would not say that it’s over, because that is where all the information you couldn’t process at the time is stored; it all went out another pathway and found space in your tissues all over your body. Until it’s healed, you’re still walking around as if time has stopped and the events are happening now, but the truth is, you are carrying it around unaware that you can release it, from the storage unit that is your body. The resistance to the movement of energy within creates more pain.

I was drawn to look into past lives in my late 40’s to understand the underlying connections to people, who I knew where not good for me, and why it was so difficult to extricate myself from them. I had to clear the root causes. As I began to understand the back story and started to release the body memories in me, I started to let go of the whole thing -- most of all I had to release was the wish that none of it had happened at all. Again, that took time, months and years — you know how some beliefs, desires and relationships can be tenacious! The issue is in the tissue.

But it wasn’t all slow going. Some old habits are easier to break: A basic realization helped disconnect the magnetic tissue in me. These obstacles exist on a continuum, from painful memory to mild annoyance. If you pay attention, you can see them coming, stay quiet and let them pass by not getting into your head about it, but relaxing and letting the energy flow.

Be aware of bad habits you might have, such as not letting things go, even when they’re potentially toxic. The problems may bring you attention and support; you’re afraid you’ll lose friends who are there to help you. I’ve lost people on my journey; they’ve let me go, and visa versa, and that’s ok. I accepted that we all need to grow in our own ways and in our own time. Everyone is on their own journey — their timing on coming to some realizations may not be the timing in yours, we have to respect their timeline. Eventually we attract new people, that reflect our current vibrational frequency.

When we take responsibility and own up to wound-informed patterns and actions, the move away from ‘victim’ status happens. You're no longer blaming another or looking to another person to solve the problem for you, you accept the responsibility and that in itself is empowering. You're reclaiming a piece of yourself. It’s in you, and within you it is solvable from there, not outside you. Understand that, and you allow yourself to move on, as well as the other person. We come to understand the roots of our fears, and the energy releases like a chimera, as if it never existed.

Becoming aware of one’s reactions will reveal what’s in you, that’s what you need to look for and ask yourself, ‘why am I reacting to this?’ ‘What is it in me that this bothers me?’ Allow the answer to come, and accept it when you hear the truth. When the root (cause) has been released, you know it’s over, because you feel nothing left in your body about it. If the catch isn’t in you, no one else can hook you that is representing that concept. If another occasion shows up and you feel nothing, and have no reaction, congratulations, you’ve done the work, that concept is healed. Lesson learned.

Working with one’s self is a non-stop project (if you’re really wanting to find out how peace feels), becoming aware is the first step to the process of healing. We all have taken meaning out of context from a child’s perspective and built beliefs out of those misunderstandings. It is how we learn: we learn the wrong thing then realize the pain the wrong thing taught us, and in healing the pain, realize the right thing was underneath it the whole time, we had covered up the Truth with pain, denial or shame. So this process of healing is an uncovering, and undoing, a letting go, and an allowing process, to see what is true, underneath all the pain. The issue is in the tissue.

Don’t despair if this takes a while, and even if you do, it’s ok, you’ll pick yourself up again. In my case, because I was in so much pain, I persisted in many healing actions over the years — I got lots of bodywork, practiced yoga, meditated, went on hikes, snuggled with my beloved dog Mimi (1997-2013), cried a lot, danced, painted, wrote a book of poetry documenting the process, and read a lot. I was the healer, healing herself. I also took to the arts to express myself in multimedia performances, for example, in 2003 entitled ‘Out of the Dark!’ and ‘Risk- It’s Really All One Dance’ in 2005.

The energy moves when you let it. You are the hub of all wheels. When you heal the source which is you, old situations and stimuli, are no longer present within you to be reflected by the outside world, and you see that new change reflected in your life! Then you ask yourself, what do I want to create in my life?

Cate McNider has been working with the bodymind and spirit for 29 years. Through every stage of her healing and working with others through different modalities, she now finds the Alexander Technique, most actively helps others address pain and stress. She is giving online classes during this time of 'social distancing'. President of The Listening Body® has spent three decades in the Healing Arts — spanning Massage Therapy, Reiki, Embodied Anatomy, Yoga, Body-Mind Centering®, Contact Improvisation, Deep Memory Process® and more — and has further sensitized her instrument through the process of Alexander Technique. Her AT training represents the culmination of a lifetime of work and study and a springboard for future creations. Cate is also a painter and published. www.catemcnider.com and www.bodymind.training.