Lesson 7: Spiritual Bypassing and Healing Together

In this lesson, we're going to talk about why Resonant Attention is the opposite of spiritual bypassing. 

When we're paying attention to a place in the body and either getting still with it or allowing it to be as it is, we are giving our bodies a chance to remember exactly what's there in the tissues. A big emotion could well up. We might feel discomfort or dull pain. Memories often flood back in. And through it all, our task is to be with that experience. To repair the bypassing you did previously. 

Because, remember, trauma becomes somatized because you didn't have the capacity to deal with it the first time around. Now we're going back to all those places where you disassociated and we're bringing presence back to those experience. We do this in order to become coherent. One way of looking at health is as coherence between all of your bodies. Repairing disassociation is the opposite of spiritual bypassing.

This is very different practice from other forms of energetic healing. When you’re allowing you’re absolutely not doing anything. You’re not putting in energy, you’re not imagining your cells doing what you want, you’re not intervening. You’re absolutely not choose-your-own-ending and fixating on it until it comes about. I think there's a place for that, but I also think that physical healing is often slower that way. And kind of blind. I like to build intimacy with myself and my story. I think that reclaiming all the bits of history and integrating them is embodying. 

And there's an another reason to not rely on spiritual bypassing methods and that's because they don't seem to take full advantage of the healing dynamics that occur with the intimacy of a one on one session, though perhaps they do access group dynamics. I think that working with healers you trust is special. Humans are tribal. Our fullest capacity is achieved in groups and healing can’t, ultimately, be a solitary endeavor. We’re not just stronger together, we also heal better together. Every relationship and encounter with another person can hold keys for your healing. We all have different gifts that we can bring to the massage table or therapy appointment or surgery. Try it all and find out what works for you! But don't get stuck feeling like you're alone and have to do it all by yourself.