Freedom - the inner child chat

Freedom — The Inner Child Chat

Freedom, is a very different thing when it moves from an idea into the skin.

This is one of the reasons I have such respect for inner child integration. I have taken many people through these practices over the years and there is something quite profound in watching what happens when a person meets an earlier aspect of themselves from the awareness they have available now. What can look almost ridiculously simple from the outside; closing the eyes, bringing an image or felt sense of the younger self into awareness, listening, speaking, allowing, perhaps offering love or reassurance, can create a very obvious movement in the person experiencing it.

You see it. Sometimes in the face, sometimes in the breath or the way the body suddenly occupies space differently. The voice can change. There can be tears, laughter, anger, softness, silence, or an unexpected piece of information that seems to arrive from somewhere beyond the conversation we thought we were having. I have watched and experienced people access an understanding through these processes that they have been trying to intellectually resolve for years, yet when it is perceived through the body, imagery, feeling and the wider field of their awareness, it has an entirely different quality. It becomes theirs.

This is where the process gets really interesting for me because I am not simply interested in revisiting what went wrong in childhood. I am interested in what becomes available now in processing.

We were extraordinarily receptive little beings. Before we had language sophisticated enough to explain the world, the apparatus was already receiving it. Genetics, biology, family, environment, culture, relationship, tone, touch, absence, approval, fear, love, expectation and projection were all part of the soup. We were reading the room long before we knew that was what we were doing, and the body-mind was making adjustments according to what it perceived was needed.

A child who discovers that being quiet creates harmony may become exquisitely good at quiet. Another learns that achievement creates attention. Another becomes funny. Helpful. Invisible. Fiercely independent. The one who needs nothing. The one who keeps everybody together. There is an intelligence in this that I don't want to make wrong. The mask that formed may have been a brilliant little piece of engineering for the environment in which it was created.

It is when we continue wearing it long after the environment has changed that things can get a little tight and this is where I experience the inner child not simply as wounded material from the past, but as a doorway into aspects of our nature that may have been constrained along with it. The freedom to play, to imagine, to receive, to be curious, sensual, expressive, ridiculous, tender, creative, noisy, quiet, wildly interested in a beetle for twenty minutes, whatever belonged naturally to that particular being before the editing became so efficient.

When an integration process touches this territory, there can be a fluidity that returns which is quite beautiful to witness. It isn't necessarily dramatic. A person may simply begin expressing themselves with less effort. They might speak more directly, receive affection differently, become more playful, find themselves creating again, or realise they no longer need to perform the familiar role that has organised their relationships for years. This is the development that interests me: not simply having an insight in the process itself, but seeing the fruits of it appear later in the way someone actually lives.

There is an intelligence revealed through this that I find difficult to reduce to one mechanism, and I don't feel the need to. The psyche participates, the body participates, memory and imagination participate, our neurological and physical reflexes participate, and so do the energetic and spiritual dimensions of experience. Sometimes the perceiver knows exactly what has shifted and can articulate it beautifully; other times something has simply moved and the meaning arrives later.

The experience itself has intelligence.

Perhaps this is also why I experience our innate nature as coherent. Not perfect, polished or permanently peaceful, but coherent in the sense that when more of the instrument is available to itself, its expression becomes less distorted by all the energy required to maintain old protection. There is more room for the finer images of our nature to find form; love, beauty, creativity, freedom, connection, curiosity, generosity, play. They begin to appear not because we have pasted them over the uncomfortable parts of ourselves, but because the organism has more freedom to express them and what we hold within inevitably colours what we project into life.

If I am organised around an old expectation of rejection, that expectation will participate in the images I perceive and the way I meet people. If I have learned that being seen is dangerous, I can consciously desire visibility while another part of the apparatus quietly keeps pulling the curtains closed. When that younger organisation is finally met, listened to and included rather than overridden, the projection can begin to change because the perceiver has changed.

The world may be exactly where it was yesterday, but suddenly there is another image available.

That is a form of freedom experiential understanding opens through the experience of practice.

It is also why the practices around inner child integration don't have to be terribly serious. Play is potent. Creativity is potent. Nature, movement, laughter, imagination, meditation, giving ourselves permission to be beginners again, all of these can nourish parts of the instrument that adulthood has sometimes squeezed into very sensible little boxes.

I love observer meditation for this reason. It allows us to notice that we can witness what is moving without immediately needing to become it or change it. Inner child meditation brings another quality again because we deliberately enter relationship. I might invite someone to see themselves at a particular age, notice what arises without scripting it too quickly, and begin a conversation. How would you speak to this child? What tone would you use? What happens when you offer encouragement, protection, permission or simply your presence? What does the child show you?

Often the most profound part is not what we tell the child but what we receive back. That is where the chat becomes a two-way street. It becomes a physical shift and the anatomy changes because of what releases or is exposed.

The adult has perspective and resources that weren't available then, while the younger self can carry qualities and information the adult has lost contact with. Integration allows those worlds to meet, and I have watched that meeting create an extraordinary shift in how a person perceives themselves and subsequently participates in life.

Maybe that is why I don't see inner child work as continually returning to the past. Done well, it seems to do almost the opposite. It releases energy for the present and the nurturing quality that opens up for the iindividual supports maturation of previous story/experience.

There is less effort required to keep the old architecture standing and more life available for what wants to move now.

More of the innate nature gets through and when love, freedom, beauty, creativity and the peculiar genius of an individual human being are given a clearer passage through the instrument, they don't stay inside the skin. They become choices, relationships, creations, conversations, environments and the images we offer back into the collective field.

We aren't only tending the child we were. We are giving greater freedom to the human being we are here to express.

Have fun exploring.

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If you want to take the inner-child inquiry beyond an idea and into your own human instrument, Discover Worlds Within explores the body, mind, emotions, nervous system, energy, spirit and consciousness through which we experience and express life.

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Continue the exploration

Discover Worlds Within

Discover Worlds Within explores the human sleeve — body, mind, emotions, nervous system, energy, spirit and consciousness — and the conditioning, intelligence and possibility that participate in the way we experience and express life.

An invitation to understand what has shaped you while becoming increasingly available to what wants to move through you.

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