Journey to Shed Your Past
We begin this series of soul healing journeys by releasing the past at a waterfall. This is an important first step because holding onto old stories and beliefs can limit your healing and keep you from opening fully to new experiences.
Identify Your Old Stories
Before beginning this journey, take some time to reflect on the stories that you most often tell about yourself. Think about how you describe who you are, how you tend to feel and what types of expectations you hold about how things unfold in your life.
For example, do you wish your relationships would change but find yourself repeating the same narrative about why your partner is the way they are and why you relate to them in a specific way? Or have you resigned yourself to dynamics always being a certain way in your career or within your family?
Whether your stories are self-defeating or positive, they can keep you from experiencing new things and interacting in new ways, or calling forth unexplored and energizing parts of yourself. If you feel the call to heal yourself or change your life, it is time to release old patterns and the original wounds that caused them.
Find Your Core Themes
Before doing this journey, please take out some paper and answer the following questions:
- What stories do I most often tell about who I am and how my life has gone?
- What narrative do I repeat regarding romantic relationships?
- What narrative do I repeat regarding my close family members?
- What causes me the most pain?
- What do I fear the most?
- What experience has wounded me the most?
- What holds me back in life?
- What are my greatest weaknesses?
- What makes me feel most frustrated?
- What do I most wish I could change about myself?
Take some time to read through your answers. What patterns do you see? Where do your responses intersect? Is there some deep need or old wound that affected several of your answers?
After reflecting on your answers, identify three wounds, patterns, themes or limiting beliefs that seem to most profoundly impact your life. Those three will be the stories or patterns that you release during this journey to the waterfall. Consciously deciding that you are ready to shed these stories will open the way for healing and transformation as you continue through the journeying series.
The Journey
During this journey your guide will be Serpent, the powerful archetype of the South direction who helps us to shed our past the way that he sheds his skin. He simply releases his old skin all at once and slithers away, moving on with his life. The Serpent will guide you to a powerful waterfall into which you will step to release your old stories, letting them wash away with the force of the water.
Post-Journey Salt Bath
After you have finished with this journey, we recommend taking a salt bath with at least a cup of salt. You may use sea salt or epsom salts. You can also add a half cup of baking soda to the bath to help cleanse your energy field, and your favorite essential oils. Soak for at least 20 minutes and as you do, visualize the imprints of the old stories and themes softening and releasing from your body into the bath water.
If you don’t have a bathtub, take a shower and rub the salt over your skin. Let the water wash away the imprints and visualize them flowing down the drain, away from you. Say goodbye and release them from your physical body.
Free Your Mind
Now that you have consciously released these old stories or themes, please make a focused effort to not speak or even repeat them in your mind. This isn’t always easy if you’ve ruminated on the stories or themes for a long time, but returning to them in your head can draw them back into your energy field and reverse the impact of the release you set in motion during the journey.
So make an effort to just let it all go. Do not mention the stories again to your friends. Do not think about them. You are done. Simply steer your mind from the old beliefs and if you find it automatically returning to them, redirect your thoughts to your vision of the new and healed you. Shifting the old thought patterns and consciously bringing in more positive ones will help call new and transformative energy into your life.
You are welcome to share your experience with other journeyers in the comments below.