Journey Therapy
I vividly remember the day when I first read a review of the book The Journey for Kids – Liberating your child’s shining potential in the Cygnus review (please see resources for details). It was in October 2003. After happily attending Kindergarten for the previous 2 years, my then 6 year old son had just moved on to class 1 of the local Steiner School. And despite a wonderful, deeply devoted and loving class teacher, over a short period of time he had become irritable, angry, sad, withdrawn and verbally, occasionally even physically, aggressive towards his younger sister and myself. After being in denial for some weeks, I helplessly watched as his behaviour rapidly deteriorated. The initial denial turned into worry, the worry – faced with an infinite number of therapies and methods for help on offer – into confusion, the confusion into utter despair. Getting Elia ready for school in the morning became a nightmare as he either dawdled endlessly until I burst out in uncontrollable anger, desperately shouting to hurry him up; or he would just completely ignore me, resulting in the same automatic pilot emotional response from my side. Every attempt to resolve the situation by lovingly speaking to my son, trying to find out what was “wrong” with him, and/or communicating with his teachers, though helpful on a moment-to-moment basis, proved futile on the longer term. He simply hated school, expressing his resentment in every imaginable and unimaginable way possible – at school as well as at home - and just would not contain his powerful feelings. Unless I used bribery to get him to do what I wanted or gave in to any of his unreasonable demands, mere daily routine had become a continuous painful power struggle. Increasingly unable to establish heart-to-heart communication, to reach him at a soul level, I felt I was loosing my dearly beloved little boy, who I just knew had so much love and genius… More than once in every given day I found myself in torrents of tears, calling my husband for help, only to witness him being equally helpless at the sight of his son displaying such array of destructive behaviours and a rage that knew no bounds. As the tension grew in our marriage as to how to parent or “discipline” this child, I felt like a complete failure as a mother and a wife, an emotional wreck … And then there was our daughter Zoe, just under 5 at the time, who, despite her outwardly sunny disposition, grew equally terrified, “hiding” her fear of both an emotionally unpredictable brother and mother behind a façade of physical ills like rashes, head- and tummy aches as well as an intense clinginess that was not her usual self. And if all this wasn’t enough, since about a year I myself had started to suffer from the most excruciating migraines imaginable, bearing me down every couple of weeks with a ferocity that more than once honestly made me want to die. Surely, family life had reached rock bottom, point zero … Life could just not go on this way, but I did not know what to do or where to turn.
That was when I first saw The Journey for Kids book, read it from cover to cover in a day and a night and decided … not to subject my son to this therapy but myself first! While reading the book, a sharp clarity had arisen that after all, though he obviously had a lot on his plate to deal with, he didn’t need “fixing”. It was rather me who had to come to terms with my inappropriate behavioural patterns, childhood experiences of a violently raging father and powerless, shut down mother and the automatic emotional responses developed as a result of a dysfunctional childhood that now affected my own family dynamics in a most devastating way. How could I expect my child to deal with his pain, hurt and rage when I myself wasn’t willing to openly, honestly and willingly look at mine!? So in another day and a night the original Journey book was read and the decision made to attend one of Brandon Bay’s seminars. Little did I know that I had landed the coup of my life.
Now, what is The Journey I hear you ask. A Journey process for adults – and in a much simplified version for children – is a guided introspection designed to address whatever specific issue you or your child might be faced with, uncover the root cause of what put this issue in place, and help you to a complete resolution. It will take you deep within, to a place where you will be guided by your own body’s wisdom. When you have recovered the memory that is the key to your issue, you are then able to empty out all the associated emotion contained within it and open into a deep, true forgiveness. Once completely free from the old emotional pain, healing at a cellular, emotional and spiritual level can take place. The kids draw before- and after-pictures, showing the amazing changes taking place inside their bodies as a result of the process. Adults get a chance to write a letter to themselves from the perspective of their free, wise and whole future self.
As Brandon Bays herself put it so eloquently in an interview: “Ordinary people are getting extraordinary results. It seems that no matter what your background is, how old you are, what your culture or upbringing has been, everyone knows there is a huge untapped presence inside, and we all secretly long to experience it.” The Journey is now internationally recognized as one of the most powerful healing processes available, accessing your own healing wisdom at the deepest level of “Source” or the soul, and Brandon Bays is one of the most dynamic and profoundly innovative teachers in the field of mind-body healing worldwide, known for her warmth, caring and spontaneous humour. Her work is truly inspirational, as I certainly experienced when consequently training with her as a Journey Practitioner over the past 3 years.
So what has become of our family life? Well, to cut a long story short, we have grown into a Journey family, meaning that each and everyone of us is using the various Journey Processes to clear out any block or resistance that might still obscure the shining diamonds that we really are. We are not only doing the Journey, we are learning to be the Journey, that is to be able to fully express the boundless potential that shines in each of us and to be true to each other and to our emotions in every moment, be they blissful or be they painful. The tormenting migraines I used to suffer from are merely a distant memory and during a particularly powerful Journey process that I underwent just recently, I realised that I had even used the physical pain to keep myself from feeling the pure, raw emotion that underpinned my issues! Many more physical ailments have vanished too, from stress and chronic fatigue to shoulder and neck pain to chronic knee pain following surgery about 20 years ago, to PMS and an ectopy (which is the medical term for a pre-cancerous spot on the cervix). Emotionally I’ve used the Journey to deal with such varied issues as my constantly boiling up anger and rage, feelings of abandonment, low self esteem, envy, jealousy, a deep fear of loosing my loved ones, self criticism and judgements, fear of destruction/ death a.s.o. The list is endless and so is my gratitude to having discovered this universal and yet so simple self-healing method.
My son, after a year of more or less fruitful home education, is now happily part-time schooling at a nearby Montessori school, having found true courage, self esteem and the determination to give it his best shot after having attended a Junior Journey day and three Kids Journey processes with an accredited practitioner. He still carries the intense anger that seems to be innate in so many of the so called Indigo children today, and our family is learning to allow and even invite this strong energy into our lives, embracing it in a loving and respectful way that doesn’t cause harm or hurt in anyone but rather propels us into a life where we have more fun and play with each other, an infinitely closer and ever deepening bond emerging. My daughter, now 7, grew so fascinated with the fairytale–style Kids Journey process that at age 6 she volunteered as a case study client for a fellow student of mine. She is also asking me for a process whenever she feels that there is strong emotional stuff coming up for her, as happened just recently when she had a hard time at school, learning that her best friend would be leaving for a year after the summer holidays. By the end of the Easter holidays, she had suddenly grown very tear- and fearful, almost not wanting to return to school. So we sat together and over the course of the weekend did not only one but several Journeys, where she was able to completely empty out the pain, fear, uncertainty and hurt that came with the news. Even my rather sceptical husband found it in himself to try the Journey out and since then went through several seminars and processes that gently carry him into learning to feel, accept and embrace his emotions as well as everyone else’s ever more fully and to finally come to terms with his “stuff” – all those shut downs, failures and traumas that life invariably throws at us and that we desperately try to cover up with a veneer of glossy behaviours, attitudes, likes and dislikes that we then label as “me”, “myself” and “my life”.
Luckily, this is not who or what we really are! What we really are – and the Journey gives you a direct, living experience of this – is huge, boundless potential, a flawless diamond that shines in each and everyone of us and that is only waiting to be set free. For me, undergoing those few short moments of feeling pure, raw emotions, be it pain, hurt, fear or whatever it is in any given moment, is certainly worth it, as once you plug up courage and dive right into the very core of any emotion, you will find a presence there that pervades all of existence, a presence of Grace, Peace, Stillness that is everywhere, in everything, that can’t go anywhere because it is in fact your very own nature. And the greatest of these is Love; a love that is so vast, it does not only flow inside, out of and between the members of our lucky four-leaved clover of a family, but cradles us in a totally non-personal, unconditional way in whatever we do, wherever we are, whether together or following our individual paths of healing, learning, realisation and transformation, accepting one another just as we are, ultimately supporting each other to take the lampshades off and let our lights shine ever more brightly. It’s been about time!
About the author:
Christina is an Accredited Journey Practitioner and psycho-spiritual counsellor. She also practises Crystal Therapy and Energy Healing. Born and raised in Germany, she now lives and works in Sussex. As well as offering bespoke 1-2-1 Journeywork for adults, children and teenagers, she works as a volunteer trainer at many Journey events. She can be reached on 01825 714016, mob. 07914 916638 or on christinajourney@onetel.com.
Please feel free to contact her for an informal Introductory Talk and before booking any Journey Intensive Weekend seminar as she has fee reduction vouchers available.
Books by Brandon Bays:
The Journey – An extraordinary guide for healing your life and setting yourself free, £ 10.99, Thorsons
The Journey for Kids – Liberating your child’s shining potential, £ 10.99, Thorsons Element
Freedom Is – Liberating your boundless potential, £ 12.99, Hodder Mobius
Further resources:
www.thejourney.com for seminar schedules around the world, information about The Journey, products, local practitioners and Journey Outreach, an international charity, aiming to make Journeywork available to schools, prisons, addiction and abuse centres, ghettos and tribal communities.
www.cygnus-books.co.uk for the monthly Cygnus Review and a wide range of Mind Body Spirit books (incl. Brandon Bays’) at great bargain prices.