Today’s blog, is the next in the Path of Healing Series where I’ve been your guide through the ten key steps for personal growth that bring deep and lasting change. Today is step 7: Integration, an essential step in the personal growth process, yet one that is often overlooked. Today I will guide you to embrace the importance of taking the time to integrate change with practical ways to embrace the integration mindset in celebration, strength and gratitude. You’ll be guided to embrace the integration part of the healing path as an act of self-love and empowerment.
Key Topics Include:
- A review of the previous steps of the Path of Healing.
- How to apply integration as a time to reflect, rest and strengthen change.
- How fear distracts us from taking time to integrate change.
- How to develop deeper safety, trust and empowerment through integration.
- Resources to help you optimise the integration process.
Before we step into Integration, I want to bring perspective into the picture as it is important to acknowledge and celebrate where we have come from before we take the next step forward. This ten-step healing path is one I’ve observed in my 18 years of clinical practice working with thousands of clients. It is also one I have used myself since the scientist in me always tests these things on myself before teaching them to others. While everyone processes and experiences their reality differently, these steps can be successfully applied in a general way, like signposts or milestones that can be adjusted to fit each individual’s personal process.
We began the journey by setting clear intentions for the present and desired state outcomes. Knowing the problem state of what we want to release is important yet having clear characteristics of what we want to create for our future selves is essential in activating the manifestation energies of co-creation. This is outlined in the blog The Power of Intention.
Once the intention is clear, building up our self-care toolbox becomes the focus of the path, to be sure we feel supported to minimize the stress that change can bring. The blog, Self Care Guide, covers this.
Armed with clear intentions, supporting ourselves with self-care practice to connect to the healing life force energies the next step is to detoxify our mind, body and soul to let go of what does not belong to us or the burden we have been carrying for others. This allows our problem states to become smaller and more manageable. The blog Soul Detox guides you through this step.
Once we have gained a clearer picture of what belongs to us and is therefore available for change, we can then step into letting go of the old to make room for the new. The blog Letting Go gives practical exercises to be graceful, gentle yet deep and powerful in your release of old conditioned thoughts, behaviours and beliefs.
When we clear out the old, we make space for the new to be expressed within us. This is the next step, transformation where the magic of change becomes available to us. The blog Transformation Guide shows you how this works with guided meditation to experience it first-hand.
After transformation happens, it is time to take a pause and fill our life force tank with positive, supportive, loving and life-enriching energies. This is the replenishment step of the healing path, which is outlined in the blog Soul Recharge. And now let’s move into today’s step, integration. A lovely respite from the chaotic flow of release and transformation.
Integration is a time for rest, reflection and strengthening the new emerging way of being.
It is a time to celebrate what you have achieved, build new ways of being and strengthen your boundaries in the presence of the old patterns being revised. Integration is where the real revision happens, as it allows us to take the time to create new habits, unlock new resources, access new perspectives and grow strong roots to allow the desired state to take hold and bloom. It also means facing your fears, so that you can create deeper safety and self empowerment when you realise these fears are not as scary as you thought they were.
This is one of the reasons why people tend to delete the integration and distract themselves by focusing on the next issue to be addressed. Because the fear of the fear gets the better of our subconscious ego patterns leading to avoidance. But I want to encourage you with this: there is no greater reward than having accomplished a goal you set for yourself, that will allow you to create a happy and fulfilled life. So have the courage and even excitement to face these fears to allow your root chakra to ground, connect and support you as you embody your truth and purpose in life.
Let me take a moment and talk more about the safety patterns and our relationship to fear that gets shifted during integration.
Personal growth is a personal process, unique to each individual. Everyone goes through things differently based on their beliefs, ancestral past, identity structures, childhood conditioning and perception of reality. This is why it is important to be kind, loving and supportive of yourself in an unconditional way while walking the personal growth path.
Especially during an identity shift, when everything you knew to be true is no longer valid and the future has become an uncharted territory. In these situations, our old safety patterns will come to light, trying to protect us from the risks associated with moving forward into the unknown. The deceptive part of this is that these safety patterns are outdated and during the integration phase they become updated to support deeper safety, trust and embodiment.
When your safety patterns become outdated they end up having the opposite effect on you: instead of creating safety, they create stress, fear and constriction. The main reason for this is because our original safety patterns get locked in at a very young age when we are far less resourceful than we are as the adults we are today. For example, if when you were young it was safe for you to not be seen or heard, you will grow into an adult that begins to fear connection with those you love. This will get in the way of having healthy relationships where you can be vulnerable and be seen for who you are. During the integration phase of the healing path, these old safety systems begin to fall away, which can feel uncomfortable and downright scary.
This is where the idea of self-sabotage can come in, since the fear of the unknown, new way of being stops us in our tracks in flight-flight-freeze energy. In order to save ourselves from the fear our systems will revert to choosing the old way as it is familiar and therefore comfortable. If you read my blog, Overcoming Self-Sabotage, You know that I don’t believe in the idea of self-sabotage, and this is a good example of why. Even though we are choosing an old way of being that doesn’t serve our greatest good, the deeper motivation is safety and comfort by choosing the way we know best, independent of whether it works for you or not. From this mindset, self-sabotage is not a self-punishment, but instead a cry for help from some part of us that feels unsafe with moving into a new way of being.
This is where the Integration step can be utilized to its fullest, to slow down, be present and consciously aware of the ways we have kept ourselves safe and how these ways are outdated and have led to having the opposite effect on our systems. Then we can choose to bring in different ways to feel safe. Some of the best ways I know to increase safety by working across the Body Matrix (physical, energetic, emotional, ancestral and spiritual, with Consciousness Medicine is to put focus on the root chakra of the energy body to clear and open this channel. The root is the base of our energy body and is associated with safety, self-esteem, trust and self-confidence. Listening to music aligned with the frequency of the root, walking in nature, chanting root chakra tones, wearing red, doing breathwork eating root building food are all great ways to activate, nourish and heal the root. We also must look at the first 5 years of childhood development to clear any imprints or trauma so that would have impacted the healthy development of the root. As we do this, having a regular spiritual practice becomes important to bring in higher vibration frequencies to fill our system with positive energy that will support a positive mindset and experience of reality.
Integration is a time to celebrate a job well done, recover from the journey thus far and rebuild the foundation we manifest our experiences in life. It is a time where self-love becomes accessible at deeper and broader levels, which helps us to have greater compassion, gratitude and appreciation for who we are, and where we have come from and to create a bright future. Integration gives us permission to relax and enjoy the harvest of your hard work. To take space to enjoy being still and allow the mind to quiet into a place of Being versus Doing. A very important shift to live a life in ease, flow and abundance. It is a place of sacred calm in between goal setting. Where you are free to enjoy, learn and make choices to habituate a new way of being.
You can enjoy listening to this article on a Healing Codes Podcast episode by clicking on the link below.
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