FREE TO LOVE FREE TO HEAL - CHAPTER 6

Share Your Stories With A Compassionate Listener and Release Your Emotional Pain

How do you let go of the pain from your past? That is the central question for those seeking emotional freedom. Despite your intention to release the pain, it may seem at times as if the pain is unwilling to release you. If you’ve stayed with the process to this point, you are now ready to liberate your heart from the emotional tyranny that has been holding it hostage.

Letting go doesn’t mean that you will lose your memories or forget your lessons. Rather, you will release from your mind and body the festering pain that keeps you from living and loving with freedom and clarity.

Sharing Your Story

The first step in this process is to share your stories with someone who can listen compassionately without attempting to “fix” your problem. This could be a close friend, a family member, a therapist, or a clergy member. As I’ve consistently observed in the pair work participants do at the Chopra Center’s Free to Love workshops, a caring person can be just as effective as a healthcare professional. If there is no one with whom you can share your intimate stories and feelings, I will guide you through a visualization exercise that can serve this purpose. Click here for instructions for the visualization exercise.

Working with a Listening Partner

Although most people are not naturally great listeners, anyone can be taught. Explain to your partner that the best way to support you is by following this simple direction:

 You serve me best by listening attentively as I tell you my story, without attempting to fix my problem.

Sitting with your listening partner in a comfortable position, share your first painful experience, including each of the aspects you wrote about in your journal:

1. Communicate the context of the painful experience.

2. Communicate the full range of feelings generated by this experience.

3. Communicate your unmet needs.

4. Communicate the clues available to you that you denied.

5. Communicate how your denial served you.

When you have shared your story from these five perspectives, ask your partner to respond by saying the following three phrases to you:

Thank you for sharing your story and feelings with me.
I’m sorry for the pain you experienced.
I offer you my love as a balm for your wounded heart.

Using this framework, share each of the painful experiences you’ve identified from your past and, after each five-part sharing, ask your listening partner to respond as above. This ritualized way of expressing your pain may sound contrived, but I encourage you to follow this script. I’ve witnessed the power of this process and want you to experience the benefits for yourself.

Getting to the Essence of Your Pain 

Refer again to the painful stories you evoked in Chapter 5 in response to the question:

What experiences from my past continue to create anguish for me in the present?

As you review what you wrote, find a word or short phrase that encapsulates each painful experience.

To complete the preparation for release, look at the seven (or more) undesirable traits you discovered in your intuitive self-reflection in Chapter 4. Again, ask your listening partner to participate in the following process with you. Click here for instructions.

Physical Release

Accessing your stored pain through intuitive self-reflection and beginning the release process in your work with a partner or guided visualization has prepared you for the next step of physical releasing. If you’ve been doing the work, you now have identified seven experiences that have contained painful memories for you, and seven traits or beliefs about yourself that have limited your sense of value. Lay them out on one page. It might look something like this:

Painful Stories

1. My husband’s recent affair: Violation

2. My husband’s first affair: Betrayal

3. My mother’s death: Emptiness 

4. My broken engagement: Foundation shaking

5. My parents’ divorce: Powerless

6. My high school betrayal: Embarrassment

7. My uprooting at age eleven: Invisible

Painful Traits

1. Slob
2. Useless
3. Ugly
4. Parasite
5. Idiot
6. Self-centered
7. Unlovable

Rituals of Release

The next step is to take a clean sheet of paper and write the seven sutras that encapsulate your painful experiences and messages you’ve internalized. Then write the seven negative traits you’ve identified. This is the distillation of the suffering in your life – all of your struggles condensed into fourteen words or short phrases on one page.

You are now ready to perform a ritual to declare to your heart, mind, body, and soul your willingness and readiness to relinquish the painful charge this information has been holding for you. This ritual declares both to the world and to yourself, This old chapter is ending. A new chapter is beginning.

Click here for complete instructions for the emotional release ritual. 

Get Ready for The Next Chapter

After completing the releasing rituals, be gentle with yourself and take it easy for the rest of the day, allowing your mind and body to digest what you’ve experienced. From the perspective of ayurvedic medicine, this is the point at which you are the most receptive to the healing benefits of rejuvenation and rest. Get some rest, listen to soothing music, take a warm bath, and applaud yourself for the great work you’ve accomplished in pursuit of becoming free to love.

You’ve now crossed the threshold of healing and cannot return to your previous heart-constricted state. Having freed yourself from the imprisoning effects of limiting stories and beliefs, you have cleared space in your heart for more love, fulfillment, and grace.

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Dr. David Simon is the co-founder and medical director of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, California. He is the driving force behind the Chopra Center’s flagship programs and workshops and is the author of Free to Love, Free to Heal: Heal Your Body by Healing Your Emotions; www.freetolove.com