Alisa Reikher 14/03/24 Alisa Reikher 14/03/24

A Healing Journey in the depths of our Inner Forest

A life update that I want to share with my community. I am moving and expanding my offerings.

“the adventure is always in the dark forest.

You enter the forest at the darkest point,

Where there is no path.

Where there is a way or path,

It is someone else’s path.”

Joseph Campbell

I like to think of the therapeutic process as a journey.

A journey, because as every journey, we start it with a certain destination, in this case it is the intention for the therapeutic process; we think that upon arriving there, we will find something we are looking for… happiness, meaning, a relief from something that bothers us.

Nevertheless, soon enough we realize that the value of the journey lays is in the path itself, in the exploration of who we are as we proceed on the path and the various landscapes and people we encounter on our way.

In therapy, we discover who we are in the sense that we discover our needs and heart deepest wishes, which we sometimes do not dear to admit even to ourself, we look with compassion at our vulnerabilities and blockages we’ve probably constructed for a good reason, that protect us from what we suspect might hurt.

The various landscapes we encounter are the various ways we depict life situations, what happens inside of us in a more abstract level and the various people we meet can be people from our past or present who’s voices living strongly in us, our different personalities, and our inner monsters.

In addition, the beauty of a journey, that when we are travelling, away from our familiar environment, even the more challenging situations are met with more curiosity and ease; it is a state of being often free from judgment, guilt and blame, because in the new place we are in, no one knows us any way… in therapy, the therapist knows us , of course, but often she is like a little bird whispering from inside, or a mirror reflecting your inner world. Being in therapy is like being with someone else and being with yourself at the same time.

A journey allows to charge our inner system of new energies, of new points of view. I do believe a therapy should be as interesting and nourishing as a journey.

As I wrote above, a therapy is a journey in the various landscapes of our psyche. We can meet sun washed heal sides covered with beautiful flowers for example as we go through a state of inner freedom and lightness; near rivers that can depict a state of flow or lakes that can wash our hearts from all hardship or want to hide in a cave to protect ourself from the outer world. All these various landscapes nourish us in various ways.

An important landscape we pass a lot of time in, is our inner forest. The forest is also nourishing… by it’s mystery, by the magic that lives within it. Magical creatures live in the depths of the forest of our subconsciousness: hope and the unshakable knowing that there are things possible that are beyond what we can imagine and plan with our rational mind, but more often than not a path can disappear in the forest, we find ourself lost in the middle of nowhere, not knowing how to get out; we might even meet some monsters hiding amid the trees. This is why the forest can be so scary.

The monsters of the forest are things that scare us or that hurt us. Memories of things that has happened, things we afraid will happen in the future, things that limit us from achieving what we wish, an un compassionate way of talking to ourself, restricting beliefs, things that we do not like about ourself, guilt, shame, destructive anger, anxiety- inner realities we prefer not to meet because it is unpleasant- they can all manifest in the shape of scary monsters.

Knowing all that, we might tell ourself, why to enter the forest from the first place? Why not leave these monsters dormant? Well the truth is that, this forest has legs. I grew up in the soviet union and in the Slavic folktales there is the Baba Yaga, an old witch living in a house that stays on chicken lags. It moves, and it finds you. Once she does, she can grant you some gifts or eat you. The forest is the same. You live your life quietly and all of a sudden you find yourself in the middle of the forest, if you don’t know how to face it, it might hurt in so many ways.

A better scenario of how it can look like when the forest finds you, is telling yourself: I am not good enough, I will never be able to do what I want and things like that. A worst scenario is when you just feel not at ease and you can’t quite say why, you just don’t feel good.

And this is where therapy can help, therapy is like a gym for the moments your subconscious mind takes a grip of you. In itself it is not bad, because as we said before, there is a lot of magic, infinite possibilities lay in depths of our parts that are unknown to us. We rarely go there out of chose because we are afraid, so actually it is a good thing the forest has lags, so it find us even if don’t want to go there.

So… first step, being able to say to yourself, this is not the truth, I am in my inner forest right now. Being able to be inside but also keeping the point of view of an outer observer can help you not to gel lost.

Getting to know the forest’s monsters allows you the reveal their true nature. For example if I feel my anger is a terrible monster outside of my control, knowing that a pain of being abandoned or misunderstood is living inside of me, can help to address that pain, to grant it compassion and softens and then the monster of anger becomes ally, an efficient protector in situations in which our binderies are not being respected.

And other times a monster is really just a monster, a painful memory that has created a wound. Affronting the monster allows us to nourish the wound, to take care of it.

The thing is that if we do not face the monsters, they control us from the shadows of our subconscious forest; limiting us from living the life we want, not allowing us to reach certain magnificent landscapes in our inner and in the outer world, continuing to cause unexplainable pain.

So to live a better life, it is important to learn to navigate in the depths of our subconscious forest and to get to know the monsters that live inside, to make some of the allies and send others to the oblivion.

Often, people come to a therapy, wanting to face their inner forest. They can’t wait to enter. The truth is there is a reason why for the most part we keep distance from the forest, entering there without a proper training and without proper protection – an armor, a sword- can be dangerous for our psychological system. There is a reason why defense mechanisms exist and put some life events, feelings and thoughts in the shadow of the subconscious forest. To exist with some degree of satisfaction and to avoid constant pain it is better that curtain contents will not be at the conscious level. There is a limit of how much we can be in contact with frightening and painful content, our inner monsters.

As fur as I can see, from my experience, to enter safely into the forest we need two things:

First of all to train ourself to be able to be present in the here and now, to ground ourself in the present moment. To go beyond ideas, assumptions and judgment, to listen and trust what we feel: our physical sensations, our needs and desires, our intuition.

Secondly, we need an armor. An armor is learning which are our resources and anchor ourself in them. Resources can be places, objects, memories, people, body sensations and spiritual resources that contribute to our expansion, that help us feeling better, take deeper breaths. Facing the monster without the ability to look the other way can result in being hurt by it. For example, if my boyfriend cheating on me has made me feel unworthy of love, facing the monster that has been created inside of me due to this event can be healing, because putting light where the pain is, is often healing; the degree of healing or of increase of the pain, depends often from how much lack of self love is already in the system, not only from what happened with the boyfriend, but also from my life story.

This is where resources come handy. Maybe we know that listening to a certain song or to dance improves our emotional feeling; maybe we know that to get a hug from a loved one or to light a candle makes everything look clearer. Sometimes looking at the monster makes it look less of a monster, but sometimes looking the other way, focusing on the light helps us feel mastery over our emotions and that helps us to face the monster without being eaten by it.

Resources gift us the possibilities to come back to them and never feel too lost in the depths of our subconscious forest. Being anchored in the light, walking towards a brighter future is a choice we make every moment of our being, with every breath we take. Not being eaten by our inner monsters is a choice and resources give us the freedom to make this choice.

The forest in itself and all the magical creatures that are living inside, they are not good or bad, they are just what they are, they are just there. It is the journey that we make inside the forest that allows us to get to know ourself better, to learn to navigate inside of it, to connect to it’s magical potential and to make the creatures in it our allays.

One of my loved tarot decks the “Forest of Enchantment TAROT” is depicting the journey of the hero, a dear inside such magical forest, with the monsters and magical creatures the it hosts. I feel that to enter into dialog with the mystery through this deck allows to feel the advantages of a journey toward the magic our depth unlock.

Here he is in the beginning of the journey, he will get out all different, as we all do when we enter into the depth of our inner forest.

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Alisa Reikher 28/05/19 Alisa Reikher 28/05/19

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