Many of you may well know by now that I have lived a large portion of my life being bullied, living under the influence of one oppressor or another, in a criticised or controlled environment. 

Little did I realise that in subjecting myself to this sustained conditioning, that it could in fact be detrimental to my physical health in the long term, as much as it had contributed to my poor mental health from the outset. This was despite the amount of personal development that I had done over my lifetime to try to counteract it. 

Over the past couple of years I have become more aware of a stiffness appearing in my lower limbs, in my forearms and in my shins. I also had a similar feeling appearing in my back which was accompanied, on occasion, by a more nagging pain. 

I intuitively diagnosed for myself that what I was feeling was something spiritual in nature. This was most likely induced by a fear based trauma, connected to my bullying story. I felt that if I could only, in one way shape or form, find my way to infusing myself with love, or being able to love myself more, I might be able to shift this deadness within to feel far more lively again. Then I could free myself of this residual cobweb, these sticky silken strands about me, that were still remaining from the chrysalis shell I was trying to get out of, and my former caterpillar life. 

There are techniques to shift this type of pain within shamanic practice, trauma and addiction type work, which I can administer to my clients but it can be a far more difficult task to treat oneself, beyond ingesting flower essences, unless you can find another shamanic practitioner or complimentary therapist to help you. 

Fortunately for myself spirit seemingly wished to guide me towards experiencing three different therapists in the course of two years who all seem, in combination, to have initiated the shift needed within me, for me to begin to liberate myself. 

First of all I visited a lady called Kate Maryon, who synchronistically lives in a house called Walnut Barn. When engaging in her therapy sessions it soon became obvious to me that the symptoms that I was experiencing, all aligned together when I folded myself into the shape of a Walnut! When I cowered myself up into a fetal position the pain in my forearms sat right alongside the pain in my shins. Once more immediately opposite lay a hinge in the small of my back that carried pain also, these were my stress points.

Small is the operative word here I feel. For when we play small and go into our shell throughout our life, subconsciously at some point our soul realises that this doesn't really suit us anymore, even if the ego has depicted this should be a survival technique for us to adopt up to now. We naturally want to be bigger, to unfold, to move from the caterpillar we have always been, to becoming the butterfly we were meant to be. Our Walnut therefore wishes to be cracked open. 

Also through Kate's work I came up with a fairly comic, but affectionate name for my inner critic, the aspect of ourselves that wants to keep us small. I nicknamed him 'The Nutcracker'. 

This rather poignantly relates to a sketch from the Blackadder series in the 1980's where Lord Edmund Blackadder asks Baldrick, his faithful servant, 'Where is the Nutcracker?' and Baldrick replies to him 'Oh it's his day off!'. 

Although we may smirk and laugh at this statement, this program was aired in my early teens, whilst attending secondary school. This was one of the heights of the bullying periods experienced within my life. I lived in a house with my parents across the street from my first obvious foe who existed outside of my own immediate household. Seemingly envious of a loving family and a privately owned house it was put forward that I lived in a stately home, compared to him, with servants, a butler and therefore a 'Nutcracker' that existed in human form that was at my service. I became the butt of all of his and my traitorous friend's jokes. 

'The Nutcracker' however when manifesting as the inner critic doesn't aim to crack the hardshell that protects the tasty kernel of goodness that lies within, it just aims to hold it in its grip with a pincer like movement, a vice, that restricts movement of the Walnut to zero.

Over time this creates heavy energy that is absorbed into the body and deep energy work is needed in order to be able to shift this fear based phenomenon into a more dispersive loving feeling. 

Some months after Kate's awareness raising sessions and workshops I serendipitously came into contact with another woman called Sarah Jennings and her Visibility Gateway course. I felt I needed to engage in this training because something was holding me back from being the person I really wanted to be. There was a mask, or veil, hiding my true light. Again this was most likely caused by the bullying scenario I had encountered in the past and the critical, controlling behaviour that I was still experiencing in my life. 

Sarah uses LEAP Kinesiology in an absolutely amazing fashion that connects us to our meridians, amongst other things, throughout our body. By massaging these sacred spots within our make up, we begin to free up this stuck, fear based energy and start to feel an element of freedom within. The rigid deadness that accompanies our everyday existence begins to loosen, and a tingle of energy connected to our life force starts to shift and shake about us. 

This type of therapy began to give me relief, with a feeling that the key was beginning to turn and I was starting to unlock myself. 

However on completing her course I still felt that even though the energy was now shifting I hadn't really cracked the Walnut. So, I was eventually steered by spirit into the path of Michaela Williams.

Michaela practices a Superconscious Trance Healing technique by way of her QRISTA Method that when combined with a certain energy frequency meditation track compiled by shamanic practitioner Richard Down really cuts to the chase. In listening to Michaela's recording of the session, not once, or twice, but three times I had the feeling of stiffness within me disappear. I am now 100% better, I am not noticing the stiffness anymore, which I am absolutely thrilled about, as now I feel free to do the work I am meant to be doing on the planet. 

When we begin to work with spirit in this way and connect more so with our internal, intuitive guide system we can be led to the practices and practitioners that we need to encounter in order to be able to heal ourselves of the conditioning, bullying and trauma that we have experienced up to present day. 

I cannot tell you how liberated I feel now, but I have an incredibly strong spiritual resonance emitting from me as I write this post to you today that would explain to me that actually I am writing about a sacred truth that is coming from deep within me. A special gift that I have to give to the world where I can assist you in finding this spiritual truth for yourself, when you connect with it internally too. 

It is only though experiencing these type of practices and wider shamanic healing, flower essences and life coaching or similar complimentary modalities that we can move beyond fear and return to love, transforming our 'Nutcrackers' and 'Walnuts' into nutritious kernels of food for our souls. 

If I can't help you myself with my shamanic practice I will refer you to any complimentary therapist I care to recommend for your own healing benefit of which any of these three ladies above come very firmly into that reckoning. 

​If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you then please feel free to do so below.

For a couple of weeks up to the end of August and the start of September my mind was not my own, it had been taken over by what I call the Caterpillar Mind.

The Caterpillar Mind is made up of eight different personality types, what I have learnt in my shamanic training to be known as the 'Robes Of Distortion'. They come to distort the mind from what really lies at the very heart of us all, our true nature.

These personality types have been employed over the years to safeguard ourselves from the conditions that we regularly encounter in our lives as we grow up, to make us appear small, to get us to disappear or to fit in, none of these behaviours however serve us very well in the long term in fulfilling our true potential.

I know these different personality types to be the judge, the superior mind, the indulgent mind, the drama queen, the brain mind, the victim, the ramrod and the workhorse.

Respectively, they seek to criticise us, make us believe we are above all of the circumstances that we encounter, distract us into doing things as addictive pleasures (indulgences), make everything we do into a drama, be constantly over analysing things, bring us sadness as we adopt a poor me attitude, become impatient and frustrated with the way things are turning out and also make us appear to be busy, whilst engaging with all the wrong things in order to do so.

These personality types work to distract us, to side track us away form our purpose, sometimes they work alone and other times they all gang up to join the same shenanigans. Recently I have encountered both the judge and the indulgent mind in my own life. The judge is one of the most powerful of the personality types sometimes called the inner critic.

I have been guilty most recently of going on to social media sites both Facebook and LinkedIn and doing what I call 'compare and despair', comparing my progress through life and my business to that of others and basically doing myself down as a result in my progression. This is the judge at work being critical of my endeavours, this can lead to both depression and sadness.

With the indulgent mind too, we are led into temptation, often as a result of the above. We are distracted away from our purpose by sometimes some very attractive propositions but that which take us away from what perhaps we need to be concentrating or focusing on.

Our job when we experience these personality types is to start to question what is happening and indeed sit down with that personality type and get to know it better, what it is called, when it appeared in our life, what function it is here to perform, what is its belief, when does it get triggered, and what would make it feel more whole etc. That way we can start to ascertain what it is about and how we can perhaps redeploy it if we wish to, to perform another task for us and make it work for us as a friend or ally rather than a foe.

That is basically what I did two weeks ago I sat down with both the judge and the indulgent mind and got to to know them better, their reason for appearing and their purpose and since that time I have started to rediscover what has been going on at the very core of me and, through meditation, discover where it has wanted to take me. I can't describe it really but I feel a lot more peace about me now and have a realisation about just what has been going on with me internally and now have a real idea as to what is going to work for me going forward, where I can get both the judge and the superior mind to start to perform new tasks for me.
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When we truly get in touch with our 'Diamond Of Consciousness', what is going on at our very centre, our Butterfly Mind, we are able to replace all the fear generated by the robes and the Caterpillar Mind and are able to transform ourselves into pure love, thus our individual essence begins to shine through.

If you wish to start to investigate your own Caterpillar Mind and Robes Of Distortion why not contact me and we can set up an introduction into my work, by witnessing 'The Call To Adventure' and begin to discover for yourself where you are at on The Butterfly Journey metamorphosing towards a far brighter future, from caterpillar, to wandering, to chrysalis, to emergence and eventually finding yourself as the imago you were always meant to be. I look forward to hearing from you today.

If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below.