by Rick Fischer C.H.H.C., h.T.M.A.P.
When we talk about healing, we must understand that our biology is affected by our physical body, our energetic body, our mental body, and our spiritual body. Much of the healing work offered through Integrative Health Coaching is based on balancing mineral levels which play a primary role in all aspects of physical and mental health. However, there are cases when, no matter how diligently one supplements with nutrients, the body's mineral pattern doesn't correct itself. Occasionally, emotional issues from childhood may block the correction of copper toxicity, or a high calcium shell, or a high Na/K stress ratio, and over-ride the effect of supplementation because the issues are imprinted in the brain and nervous system at a subcortical cell and tissue level. I discuss this in my article here. The self-preservation coping mechanisms learned in childhood, imprinted in mineral patterns, are not conducive to true self-care or self-love. Full healing in such cases can ultimately only occur with a shift in consciousness. So, where does one begin this journey? Aside from the obvious (reading books and booking counselling sessions), here are some tools you can use to expand awareness and uncover issues that may be holding you back at some deeper level.
Far more than just a nutritional profile, properly interpreted it can also lend insight into possible past trauma, along with tendencies for depression, anxiety, moodiness, and other psychological reactions. It also provides a stress profile which shows how much stress the body may be under. As eluded to above, patterns such as copper toxicity, the calcium shell, and a high Na/K stress ratio are easily seen through HTMA data, and coming into awareness of the existence of these patterns can be a key first step in resolving them. Click here to order a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis if you haven't already.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is one of the largest investigations of childhood abuse and neglect and its effect on later-life health and well-being. The original study showed a very strong correlation between the number of childhood exposures to abuse or household dysfunction and the increasing risk factor for several leading causes of adult disease and death. Many stressful events in childhood can resurface in adulthood as chronic disease, as well as social, emotional, or behavioural problems. In 2007, a simplified version of the original questionnaire was developed, allowing one to quickly discover their own ACE score. To find your ACE score, go through each of the 10 questions in the link that follows, answering yes or no to each one. Then, add up your YES responses. The number of YES responses is your ACE score. Generally, the higher the ACE Score, the greater the risk of experiencing poor physical and mental health, and negative social consequences later in life. For any issues that show up in your ACE score, these may be areas that further exploration through counselling (or the techniques that follow) can help you work through. Click here to do the simplified ACE Questionnaire and discover your ACE Score. (Note: it is completely free and anonymous, no email or opt-in is required, and after you're done simply close the window). You can also read more information about the ACE Study at the CDC website here.
4. Riso–Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI)
The RHETI is an enneagram-based personality test that has been developed and refined over hundreds of years. It can help you understand who you are in terms of how you think, feel, intuit, interact with others, and react to life events. It can help one better understand their emotional patterns, behaviors, and relationships with others. We all fit into one of 9 personality types, these types defined in early childhood in response to our experiences (and occasionally, traumas). Though the full test is not free, many sites offer a free ‘sampler’ test which can still give pretty good results. This is one site that offers the free RHETI sampler test. After you take the test (about 10 minutes), then definitely review the description of your Type. Next, I would then jump over to this page and click on your Type again to get an even more in-depth explanation that applies to your Type.
5. Inner Child Work
The inner child refers to all the subconsciously stored emotional memories from birth through childhood, and is a key concept in psychology. Once, as children, the world was filled with innocence, wonder, awe, playfulness, possibility. But with each passing year we experienced varying forms of abandonment, rejection, hurts, fears, angers, traumas, and soon, as we neared adulthood, we were told to ‘grow up’, stifling our sense of childhood wonder and possibility even further. As adults, far from running the show, we are unwittingly being influenced or controlled by this unconscious inner child. Our hurt, angry, fearful, disbelieving, wounded inner child is trying to live in an adult world, trying to have a career, a healthy relationship, a successful independent life, and yet carrying with it all the hurts,
emotional baggage, and also the patterns it picked up from watching our parents. Without becoming conscious of, and acknowledging our wounded inner child, we sabotage ourselves in various areas of life, and that can include, or lead to, our health. In whatever ways our inner child was let down or its needs unmet, it is up to us now to be the parent to our own inner child, directly facing (painful though it may be) and nurturing those unmet needs. There are many books out there on this topic, and counselling sessions can also be helpful in doing inner child work. This book, written by Dr. Malter, Ph.D, takes the Inner Child concept a step further, connecting it to our mineral patterns that we see in HTMA profiles.
SOME ADDITIONAL TOOLS & TECHNIQUES
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