The MFR III Gang atop Airport Mesa, Sedona, Arizona (photo courtesy of my friend Karen)

This is long, but it’s my journey from cocoon to butterfly and it took 3 years 🙂 Never give up. . .

When I came home from MFR III in 2011, it was a bit of a rough entry. The turbulence was what I needed. It broke open an understanding of where my sensitive intuitive nature had been shutting down. I became aware of an old belief: if I stop feeling and anticipating what my kidnapper is feeling and going to do, something really bad will happen. I think I felt some level of control if I could sense what was going to happen next and brace myself for it. Then he did something I couldn’t imagine and I went to a place I didn’t know. I cocooned with this until I was ready for another intensive – my first as a therapist – in December 2013.

My left side bracing had been steadily increasing since 2011. In December 2013, I went to Malvern in hopes of resolving a chronic left foot problem which had pretty much stopped my ability to run. It was an opening, not a resolution. In June 2014, during Advanced Unwinding, John facilitated another opening and I got out of the trunk of the car. I also was pulled out of the back seat and watched it drive away. I felt a sense of completion. The experience of being kidnapped seemed a memory and not a current event anymore. I continue to feel the tethers disentangling from me.

At MFR III this year, my goal came from a sense of “now what?” I felt the urge to continue to integrate a newer feeling of lightness of being and becoming the foam on the wave – but I had left a huge void where the terror and shame had been. I knew I needed to fill it. I didn’t want it to back-fill with old beliefs again. This was too important.

The “now what” became clear, while assisting at Subtle Energy, prior to MFR III. Peggy, our speaker, asked us to ask ourselves what we wanted out of this time here. An answer comes to me – clarity. Then a message, a very clear voice says to me: the healing you are doing in this lifetime is clearing your karmic debt from every lifetime – all of it. This is what you are here for. I feel the enormity of this mission. It is a lot of responsibility. It is important to my essence. I also feel the result of this message. This feeling of actual joy I have been trickling into feels entirely foreign and new and right.

At MFR III, the night of our inner journey unwindings, I stay on my feet the entire hour and a half. I am flying expansively, driving up into the galaxy and diving back down to earth. Then I notice I have no voice. I have been completely silent throughout the unwinding. Sobbing, I go looking for it on the ground. As I crawl around desperately, my inner guide says “look up”. I do and a new sound of sobbing I have not heard before comes out. The sound leads me to standing and I walk through a door. On the other side I meet three spirits. The one says “Welcome home. We’ve been waiting for you.” I feel the middle one downloading information into my head. He says “don’t worry”, sensing my fear, “you will only access this information in your dreams.” I relax. They are still with me strongly now as I write this.

The next day, I am silent as we are out on the rocks. I listen to everyone talking about their insights from last night. I am so glad we don’t have to each say something like we did in 2011.

After class, I went to see my very first therapist at Therapy on the Rocks. She immediately caught on to my automatic anticipation of what was going to happen next. My trust in the process was bigger than my fear and I went into that still point from 2011. I let my kidnapper do what he had done back then and stayed present. Then I escaped to a safe place. I said to my therapist that there were some little bits left but for the most part, that was it. “Yes,” she confirmed, “they’re just breadcrumbs.”

Feeling more spontaneity in my movements, the group unwinding the following day became a demonstration of complete trust in my group, my intuition and the power of the unknown.

I let my energetic body lead and take me off the ground. I am falling, twisting, struggling not to come down. Just before I touch ground, I have the sense of being in my mother’s birth canal. I don’t want to come out. My left shoulder gets stuck coming out, frees itself and I emerge, newborn, lying on my back. I feel betrayed. I didn’t want to come down this time – in this life. Knowledge of what is going to happen in my future – knowing what I am here to do – I just want to crawl back up that birth canal and go back from where I came.

In an instant, I remember a story my mother told me about five years ago. She said that the first week I was home from the hospital, I got myself into snitfits and cried so hard I turned blue. She had no choice but to put my head under a tap of running water to get me breathing again. This happened more than once. She went on to tell me that by the time I was two, we would be out shopping and I’d be set off and she would hold onto my hand until I passed out and then put me back in the cart. As I got older, I no longer cried that hard. My voice had been pretty much silenced by then. But there was only resignation.

Lying on the ground, I grieve for what I have been through. I grieve for the enormity of responsibility for clearing my past karmic debt in this lifetime. Resignation turns into resolve. I say to my group urgently “I need my feet on the ground! I need my feet on the ground!” They let go and I feel them solidly. A new wave of crying. I can’t get up. “Bring your power back into your body,” I hear my inner guide say. I fill my abdomen up and expand out. I try to stand from my supine position. I can’t figure out how to do it. I contemplate going into channel 5 and sitting first. No. I have to stand from my own power. As I fill myself up more, a feeling of acceptance comes in behind the energy and accelerates it. This is what I need and I launch up to my feet from my back. And I fly.

There is some residual resignation and I say to my group, “well if I’m going to be here, I’m glad I’m here with you.” I feel their support and love softly embrace me.

After the group unwinding, we are instructed to go off on John’s property and find a special place for ourselves to be with our power animals. I am ready to go like a horse in a starting gate. We set off and I skip along down to the riverbed. Once there I am no longer skipping – I am flying. I realize there is no one in front of me. A realization hits me. I don’t feel chased – I am leading the way. Instead of fear, I feel exhilaration!

The last day, we do intraoral techniques and I trade with my raven friend. She is on my vomer and I feel the sense of being forced – tissue memory. I get up and I have disappeared somewhere. I don’t know where I’ve gone, but I’m not there in the room. I wander aimlessly, soft and vulnerable. I make eye contact with John and walk slowly towards him. I carefully move into his arms, barely holding on to him. “Can you soften into me a little more?” I let down my guard a bit more and connect. I feel the grounding come into my pelvis and legs. Ami comes over. She is pulling stuff out of the back of me. She says to John she can do some more work with me back at the house. I feel soooo disappointed in myself. I was doing so well! Barbara comes over and I sink into her. She lets me rest my head on her chest and I feel a mother’s love deeper than I have ever felt it before. It is what I need.

In the parking lot, saying good bye, I pull out a heart-shaped rock I found here in June and put it in her hand. I say to her that I need to stay connected to her heart as I go home. It is really, really important. I still feel her now, as the tears roll down my face. . . there are some older breadcrumbs. How do you connect with your heart deeper than you have in this lifetime?

Coming home . . . again is new. In 2011, I cocooned. This time, I am transforming and expanding.

In my hot tub I let myself unwind. I float into a position that feels like I’m in a womb. I feel acceptance of this part of the journey I am about to take – softening into the unknown, now that the terror has been diffused, I softly and without resistance, flow down the birth canal. As I emerge, I feel myself say “this is going to be so cool!” The once seemingly horrible events in my life are filled with an anticipated excitement of what the resulting transformations will be. It’s going to be fantastic!

I am listening to Destiny by Zero 7. As the song plays and I feel the support of my room mates my arms drift together until they’re a foot apart. There is tension between them. I feel the handcuffs. I can’t open or close my arms. Then a voice says “soften”. My torso softens and my hands drift apart – opening. Wow! They stop at a distance and I know they have further to go. I’m looking for another feel. My inner guide says “now move into who you really are”. I have the sense of shifting to the left in my head and mind. My arms open, like wings, and I expand out more.