The body keeps the score

The body keeps the score

September 2023

The body keeps the score

Sigrid Lindemann gives us an  insight into a healing therapy which can alleviate deeply buried trauma  by throwing light on our past, be it  

from this life or from previous ones  It is simply not possible to go  through life, particularly childhood,  without incurring deep wounds and  

trauma that throttle our happiness and  effectiveness. And when we factor in past  lives and the emotional damage embedded  in them, our emotional baggage seems 

considerable indeed. Fortunately, past life regression therapy has been helping  millions to work on the issues that still hobble their lives. Variations of this  

therapy have been emerging and offering  newer and deeper healing tools. ITR is a case in point. It is an integration of  trauma therapy, energy work, inner child  

work, and past life therapy, a deeply  healing modality based on Integral Yoga,  as described by The Mother and Sri  Aurobindo.  

A deep pain in the chest 

Many of us are familiar with the pangs of  teenage heartbreak. For Nandini, these pangs  were devastating. When she experienced her  first break-up at the age of 16 years, a stinging  pain shot through the left part of her chest.  Much to her dismay, this became a recurring  pattern: whenever a relationship would end,  this same stinging pain would return. Nandini  got many ECGs done, but the results always  showed no physical issue at all. In 2021, when  she broke up with her partner of many years,  the pain was so strong that she felt like she  was experiencing a heart attack, and again, the  cardiologist couldn’t detect any abnormality.  Perplexed, she decided to have an Integral  Regression Therapy session to understand  where this pain originated from.  

Past Life Regression 

Through a naturally induced trance, Nandini  recalled a past life in which she was a temple  child in a South Indian village. At the age of  16, while she was serving at a temple festival,  she saw a young man looking at her. Almost  immediately, they fell in love. This was a very  brief love affair, however, because the boy had  to leave for the city soon. It was only after seven  years that he returned to the village, seeking  a bride. His first thought, of course, was of  Nandini. He came to the temple to ask the  pujari for his daughter’s hand. But the pujari  refused. He said that Nandini is not meant for  the outside world. While the boy understood  and left, it was Nandini who rebelled. She  stopped eating and drinking. After three  months, she ran away. When she finally found  her lover, they both decided to leave the village.  But the pujari sent goons after them, angered by  the thought that the boy had put his daughter  in danger. Though Nandini and her lover  escaped into a thicket of trees, the goons found  them and stabbed the young man two times.  

Our past holds the key to our problems 

When they tried to stab him for the third time,  Nandini stepped in to protect her lover. The  knife got stuck in her back, on the left side. She  looked down at her lover and saw that he had  died on the spot. In that moment, she uttered  a vow, “I will always wait for you; I will always  love you,” and dived into the river.  

The two most important aspects of past lives are  vows and curses, we are told. If we make a vow  in a previous life, then it keeps occurring in our  future lives. To date, Nandini was still fulfilling  her vow. Her most recent break-up was with a  partner who clearly resembled the lover in her  past life. After healing the emotional connects  in the past life, she was able to release the vow,  and the pain in her chest has never come back.  Today, Nandini finds that a lot of issues have  healed for her in the realm of relationships.  This one session healed a pain that had been  recurring for over a decade. 

Releasing an Accident Trauma 

Just as our bodies can store memories from past  lives, it is also commonly known that our bodies  can ‘keep the score’ from accidents experienced  in our current life. However, there is another  aspect that is often overlooked: the victim can  also lose part of their consciousness during  accidents. We see this in the story of 29-year-old  Lisa from the US:  

When Lisa was six years old, she suffered from  insomnia. One day, she had not slept for two  days and was exhausted. She was at preschool in  the US at the time, standing on a swing during  playtime. Her young caretaker was only 18 years  old, and she was pushing the swing for Lisa. The  swinging movement began to put Lisa into a  state of trance, and she dozed off. As the swing  ascended upwards, she fell and landed head  first on the ground. Lisa lost consciousness and  was bleeding very profusely from the head. She  had to be rushed to the hospital. It could have  been a fatal accident, but somehow, Lisa was  miraculously saved. She had ten stitches in the  back of her head. Surprisingly, she recalls being  back in school very soon after the accident.  

In an Accident Trauma Release session, it  was discovered that a major aspect of Lisa’s  consciousness had also been lost during the  accident, along with the blood. In the healing,  the consciousness lost was restored. Right after  the session, Lisa immediately reported feeling  more complete.  

But what really happened on the swing that day?  What saved Lisa’s life? Through a method called  Aura Exploration, Lisa could sense whether any  energy had gone in or out during the incident.  Lisa discovered in the session that a protective  orange energy had appeared at the time of the  accident and saved her life. It turned out to be  the energy of her father protecting her. A second  green energy had also appeared, and Lisa  understood that to be the energy of an acorn  tree. It is this presence from nature that saved  her as well. To further aid healing at the mental  level and shine clarity upon the situation, Lisa  was asked, “What was the reason? Why did this  accident happen?” Connecting to her inner  knowing, Lisa said, “I don’t feel Earth is my  home. The accident was a moment of choice:  do I want to live or not?” It emerged that Lisa’s  soul decided to come back to life. A deep  healing emerged for the existential question  that had been consciously accompanying Lisa  since the time she was a teenager.  

Inner Child Healing 

Mostly, the blockages that we experience in  our bodies originate in childhood experiences.  Reshma, 28, went through much of her adult  life carrying a sense of shame. She could not  express herself sexually in relationships and  felt a deep sense of shame when it came to  receiving pleasure. Through an Inner Child  Healing session, she uncovered the trauma  that she was carrying from the age of 16: she  had inadvertently entered into an abusive  relationship with a 40-year-old uncle.  

A child and teenager can experience pleasure  and simultaneously feel that something is  wrong when a sexual encounter happens. In  her confusion, the teenager, thereafter, often  develops a lot of guilt and shame. Inner Child  Healing entails giving back the guilt and shame  to the other person and retrieving the positive  qualities that were lost during the event. Within  the safe space of the session itself—not in actual  conversation with the people involved—the  person is allowed to express the pain and rage  of the inner child towards the person involved,  as well as the parents.  

Reshma connected through her inner vision  with the abusive uncle and expressed to him  clearly: “I did not ask for this; you initiated it.  You made me believe it was okay to do this. You  were 40, and you could have stopped it.” By  expressing herself first and then sending back  all the energies that she had picked up from  the other person, she could see and sense the  energies as colours leaving her body. Reshma  then expressed, through internal dialogue  with her father, her hurt about the fact that  he had often not been present at home to  protect her from this man. Expressing oneself  and restoring the energies, even years later,  contributes considerably towards healing at the  level of body memory and emotions, and clarity  of thought is also regained in the process.  

As a further final step, Reshma called back all  the positive energies that she had lost in this  scenario: her self-confidence, self-love, and  self-worth. Those energies are associated with  emotional qualities and beliefs, and are often  felt settling back into the part of the body from  where they were lost, re-energising them. This  further heals and transforms, allowing one to  take new steps in life. 

These three stories speak of the same truth— that the body keeps the score, as Bessel van  der Kolk famously wrote. The body keeps the  score either from past lives, from accidents  experienced in this life, or from childhood  experiences. It keeps this score across the  different planes of our being—the physical,  vital (emotional), mental, and subtle bodies— as described in Integral Yoga. Through Integral  Regression Therapy, the light of one’s awareness  can be shone on these stored memories, such  that they no longer wield an unconscious  influence on our lives. It reconnects people to  their inner wisdom and purpose, for a fulfilling  and spiritual life.  

Integral Regression Therapy is an integration  of trauma therapy, energy work, inner child  work, and past life therapy, a deeply healing  modality based on Integral Yoga, as described  by The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. ITR has  been developed by Sigrid Lindemann, an  internationally recognised homeopathy teacher  and regression therapist living in Auroville  for over 20 years. www.auroville-jiva.com is a  platform for Auroville therapists’ workshops,  professional training sessions, retreats, classes,  and sessions. Find JIVA Auroville via Facebook,  Insta, YouTube, and LinkedIn. 

Sigrid Lindemann, an internationally recognised homeopathy teacher and regression  therapist living in Auroville for over 20 years. www.auroville-jiva.com is a platform for  Auroville therapists’ workshops, professional training sessions, retreats, classes, and  sessions. Find JIVA Auroville via Facebook, Insta, YouTube, and LinkedIn.