The essence of inner work

Intro

This article is intended to share my understanding of the essence of how to actually do inner work for yourself in a way that is lasting, that gets to the root cause, that doesn’t require willpower or daily practice, that doesn’t get you to “just think more positively” or override your wounded or ‘negative’ parts, but instead brings about more humanity and helps you work through the real problems we all face, often in a gentle and nourishing way.

In studying and exploring numerous methods of transformation and healing, I have found that we can do everything that specific methods achieve and more simply by using our intention, consciousness and curiosity. Whilst specific modalities can give you structure and something tangible to hold onto, that very structure can become its own prison. By letting go of specific methods and procedures, we find greater freedom, we are better able to honour our humanity in the process of transformation and find a more nourishing path.

I am thankful for those that have gone before me who have allowed me to bring this synthesis together. However, there are too many people to mention, so just know that this is not mine. It belongs to all of us, as ultimately it guides us inwards.

Whilst I’ll keep the philosophy to a minimum here, this work rests on the idea that the power lies within us, that our inner and outer worlds are interwoven. When we transform our inner world, our outer world often reflects that transformation. Therefore, rather than trying to find a solution in our external world, we go within, we resolve what can be resolved there, we transform the energy there, one step at a time, and allow the gem at the core of the problem to come forth, we allow external transformation to take place and the wisdom to infuse our being. We cultivate the energy that then transforms into tangible reality. As we do this we uncover possibilities we couldn't see before, and the path forward becomes more clear.

This makes more sense when we understand that this world is made of energy. When we work with energy, we’re working with the foundational structure of the universe. Our power is unlimited.

Part 1 - The fundamentals

Experience the energy

Given that everything is energy, the simplest way of working with this is to feel the energy or the emotion of whatever it is that is bothering you, and in feeling it, you allow it to move and transform. Sometimes feeling the pain is the medicine. Sometimes you need to let yourself ‘break’ in a heart-centred way. You let go of the resistance and of trying to keep it together. You completely accept it how it is. No judgement. This is not a mental activity, but rather an experiential way of being.

Go into the emotion, into the thing you don’t want to feel or look at. This can be done in little steps eg: experience the most present unpleasant energy, let it move, once you are back in a nourished state, address the next layer. Or you can go straight for the deepest wound, the most unpleasant energy in its entirety. Listen to your intuition on how to work with each situation, and if you’re unsure, start small. If it gets too intense, resource yourself, move your body, look around the room, ground yourself in the here and now to help you come out of it and not be overwhelmed.  

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek”

Commonly attributed to Joseph Campbell

One way of understanding this is that the sensations in your body are moments of impact in energetic form. They have not been processed. Another way of saying this is that they are the remaining emotional charges from unpleasant experiences that have not yet been healed. You don’t necessarily have to remember what happened or why you have that particular problem. When something that is wounded is seen, the seeing is a significant part (if not all) of the healing. However, it doesn’t have to be seen in terms of consciously remembering what happened. It can be ‘seen’ in terms of experiencing the energy / feeling.

Sometimes the best thing to do is just feel stuff plain and simple. Other times, it can be very beneficial to be as conscious, present, loving, compassionate, resourced, grounded, connected to light / source etc as you can be in this process so that you can hold space for the discomfort, allowing it to transform rather than potentially overwhelming you. You do not bring love (or any other resourced state) in order to bypass the emotion, you bring love to give yourself the capacity to face the emotion and work with it in a healing manner. Let love be the transformative agent that sees and hears the wound and creates possibilities, ways through and healing you hadn’t conceived of.

Another way is to bring love / white light  (or whatever you want to imagine it as) to the part of your body or energy where you experience the unpleasantness, and let that love, white light etc transform that unpleasantness.

This is relational. How do you relate to the unpleasantness? Trying to get rid of the discomfort and judging it as bad can cause more friction and blocks within yourself. Bringing love to try to get rid of the unpleasantness (that being an agenda) can also cause friction. Bringing presence, acceptance and an absence of judgement are often the conditions that create the truest transformation. That paradox is one to explore, and you get better at it with time. The key is to stay curious.

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change”

Carl Rogers

Can you make the process resonant with your end desire? That is, rather than trying to beat yourself up to get to a place of accepting yourself, can you make the process one of self-acceptance? The journey matters.

So the people who say in an airy fairy manner “just love everything” are right to some extent. However, genuinely loving everything can be really hard and I believe it takes a much truer and genuine intent and practice than simply saying “love it and let it go..what’s for lunch?”. It’s about coming face to face with everything that is not love.

“I did not come to teach you. I came to love you. Love will teach you.”

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Curiosity

Being genuinely curious is one of the most important elements. Asking questions and being explorative not only opens up new worlds of possibilities, it allows the process to be nourishing and can help you get to what is important for you, now, more quickly.

You can ask yourself questions such as:

• Where does the distress / pattern / problem etc come from?

• What’s it really about?

• What does this unpleasant feeling / part of me need or want?

• Where do I feel this in my body? (the sensations in your body may change and move)

• What does this energy or problem have to teach me? If it had a divine purpose or was meant to be here, what would it be about?

• What assumptions am I making about this?

• What do I not want to look at?

• If there was a benefit to me having this problem, what might it be?

• If there was a downside to me experiencing the outcome I desire, what might that be?

• What would it take to experience love, freedom, wellbeing or whatever it is you desire?

• What is in the way of the outcome I desire?

• What is the best next step for me?

When you ask a question, tune into your intuition, the intelligence within you, the intelligence of the universe, the intelligence of your heart to hear the answer. This is not purely a mental activity. You can tune into your intuition simply by using your intention with an open heart and mind. You can also use the following process:

Place your attention and hand(s) on your heart. Breathe into your heart. Many say that the heart is the seat of intuition. Cultivate feelings such as love, gratitude, appreciation, warmth etc. Thinking of positive experiences in your past or things you are looking forward to in the future can facilitate feeling these emotions. From this resourced, loving, grateful state, think about your challenge and ask a question.

You can also ask broader questions from here such as “what does my soul want me to know about this?” or say “all I need to remember / focus on / do in this situation is…” and let your heart or some other intelligence give you the answer. You may get a knowing, a sense, hear an inner voice, receive a visual etc. Trust what comes through. And because you’re almost certainly going to doubt yourself, let me say that again: trust what comes through. Again, trust.

Sometimes an answer comes right away, sometimes you need to practise this multiple times before you receive an answer. You can also meditate on questions, or ask the universe to show you the answer in your life. 

Intention

I believe that if you are masterful enough, you can do just about anything with intention. One of the simplest ways of working with intention is to intend or say: “I Intend for the unpleasant experience / pattern / belief etc to be healed”, and to repeat that intention or stay with it for an extended period of time, allowing it to go deep. 

One of the benefits with intention is that you can begin to process the energy around an unpleasant situation that may be too intense for you to feel right now. You can do this by simply intending for it to begin to process without you feeling it just yet. It is also useful when there is some situation that you want to change but may not experience much energy or emotion around it. Given that intention has more of a mental stance, it is useful for such situations.

With intention, you can also get more specific. For example, you can intend / say: “It is my intention / I am willing to address the root cause or core of xyz”. This can work even if you don’t consciously know what it is. Or you can say “I intend to:

• Heal xyz

• Transmute

• Process

• Integrate

• Resolve

• Transform

• Rewrite etc

I believe in working with the unpleasant experience which results in its transformation rather than simply trying to get rid of it. However, your cosmology comes into play here. For example, you may feel that you are a being of love and that any negativity is something that is put on top of that. Therefore you may wish to simply get rid of that “negativity”. If that is the case, your intention could be to:

• Release xyz

• Remove

• Dissolve

• Unplug from

• Cut ties to

• Destroy

• Eliminate

• Delete etc

Creating your desires

You can also bring something into your being that would be healing, supportive, beneficial etc. This could be a subconscious belief that you are enough, instead of believing that you are not enough. And simply with your intention you can write that into your subconscious where it becomes part of who you are rather than a passing thought. For example:

• I intend to create a subconscious belief that I am enough.

• I intend to create a pervasive, lasting energy of joy within me.

• I intend to create a subconscious belief that I am a skilled communicator.

You could also feel the feeling of your desire and intend to heal anything that arises that is incongruent to that. You could intend to release something, and bring love to all the parts of you that won’t let it go.

Working with the intelligence of the universe, god, source, guides etc opens up awesome possibilities. On a simple level, could you ask Source for help or guidance? This could be prayer or intention eg “dear spirit, heal me from this and show me the way through”. Can you surround yourself with loving beings that support and guide you every step of the way? Can you give the problem you’re dealing with to God and surrender to positive expectations that all things will turn out well?

A process that can be very effective is to first bring the problem you’re dealing with to mind. Then, intend for a belief / solution / message etc from the all knowing source / love / your soul / the intelligence within you that beats your heart etc, to be written into your subconscious or deep within your being. You don’t have to know what the belief is, Source / super conscious knows what’s going on with you and what is needed. You can simply open to that intelligence working through you. Once that belief is in (which often takes 10-30 seconds of being with that intention), place your attention on how you see / experience the problem now and go through the process again, and again, and again, each time addressing the next layer (and it doesn’t always feel like the next layer, but in my experience, there are subtle changes occurring that accumulate in beautiful ways). You may also find that you can simply open up to receiving a stream of beliefs / messages rather than one at a time. Explore!

This process is fantastic for discovering and experiencing solutions to problems where you can’t see a way out. It gives you a grander perspective. In this process you are expressing divinity from your being! 

Part 2 - Tools to facilitate the process

Sometimes it’s useful to do something that’s more tangible and noticeable than experiencing your energy or practising intention. Here are some tools for that:

Tapping

This is a modality that, at its core, has you bring something distressing to mind while lightly tapping on acupressure points on your body using your fingertips. In doing so, you send a calming signal to your brain and body, which ultimately frees you from the emotional distress you once experienced.

One of the great benefits of this, is that because it’s based on a physical action, you can begin the process even if you can’t think straight in the moment. Tapping can also surface emotions that you may not have thought were there.

You can find out more about Tapping here.

Blessings / prayers

You can also use a blessing. For example:

“I bless (insert the name of whoever is / has suffered)”

“I bless (insert what has caused the suffering)”

“I bless myself for experiencing / seeing this”

It may seem counterintuitive to bless the unpleasantness, the perpetrator, the problem etc. You typically can’t bless something and judge it at the same time. So the blessing allows you to acknowledge the problem exactly as it is, and allows the energy to move through your body. 

Another way of viewing this is that through the words, we create a momentum of energy that hits the issue / the suffering within us again and again, eventually penetrating, releasing and resolving it.

This can be useful to get the energy moving. Once you experience what energy these sentences produce, you can simply work with that energy in that way without needing to say the blessing. The blessing is like an easy, do-able access point, which is especially useful when you’re experiencing high levels of distress.

As with everything, explore for yourself. Explore being general or specific in your blessing. Explore focusing on the external or internal worlds. Explore saying it out loud, repeatedly with intensity or silently, slowly, with gentleness.

Another practice that is similar in some ways is modern Ho’oponopono. In very simple terms, it consists of saying four sentences:

• I love you

• I’m sorry

• Please forgive me

• Thank you

You say these sentences with feeling / intent, as you bring to mind / experience something that is not how you would like it to be. The repetition of this creates release, freedom and transformation. 

There are people that say to use this in specific ways, and there are certainly much deeper teachings on this. However, sometimes simple is more powerful, and again you can explore it for yourself. Try just saying the words. Try saying the words to the problem, to yourself, to god etc

There are many other words, sentences, prayers etc that can be used. Use what works for you.

Using the body

There are countless ways that the body can be used for transformation. Here are a few possibilities:

If you want to write a belief into your subconscious, you could pair the intention with your body by holding your hands some distance apart and then slowly bringing them together, the idea being that once your hands meet, that is the point at which the belief has been written. It gives your mind something to hold onto, some process and time passing, for the intention to be more real. You could also just snap your fingers with the intention that by snapping them, you’ve written the belief into your subconscious.

You could drum your fingers while experiencing something distressing, with the intention that by doing that, you’re processing the distress that’s in your being.

You could imagine holding an experience or a part of you in your hands and sending it love through your hands. This is particularly useful if the emotional intensity is very high, because it allows you to let the energy flow without needing to directly experience it yourself in that moment.

If your inner child feels lonely and unloved, you could hug yourself with the intention that you are simultaneously hugging your inner child.

To help you fully feel an emotion and learn from it, rather than trying to just get rid of it, you could embody the emotion. For example, fear might be expressed in the foetal position. Anger might be felt by tensing your arms and fists in a fighting positing etc. Be in the position, explore it and be guided from within. 

Part 3 - Using it within a structure

There are many different modalities that each have a different explanation for what the root cause of our problems are. You can utilise the above information within different structures. You could simply intend to heal the root cause, without even knowing what the root cause is. However, you could also get more specific, for example:

• Intend to heal the memories that still contain an emotional charge. You don’t necessarily need to know what the memories are, though if you do remember something, you can focus on that. You could do single memories, all at the same time, or some variation such as focusing on a theme or time period.

• Intend to heal the ancestral trauma that is causing or contributing to your problem.

• Intend to heal anything in your parallel, past and / or  future lives.

• Intend to heal the problem in all dimensions, time and space.

• Intend to heal all parts of you. Talk with the parts of you that are suffering rather than trying to make them go away. What do they want and need? What are they suffering from? How can you give them (perhaps energetically) what they need / want? Call back all the parts of you that have been pushed away. Turn towards them and love them.

• Intend to heal the collective / collective consciousness around any particular challenge.

• Intend to heal it in your mind, heart, gut, organs, energy, physical body, in every cell etc.

• Intend to bring balance, wellbeing and harmony to the chakras, the meridians or other energy systems.

Be creative

When you look within yourself, use your intuition, and sit with what is most needed for you. The experience will likely flow more easily, be more joyful and result in quicker resolution. So let your creativity and exploration run free.

You might visualise things, such as a problem being a knotted ball in your stomach. You could then imagine unknotting it with the understanding that whilst it seems like just a visual, by unknotting it in your imagination, you will likely be processing stored survival stress, re-writing limiting beliefs in your subconscious and more. Or you might visualise pulling the unpleasant feeling out of you. You can then talk to it, play with it, get to know it, then integrate it back in its changed form.

You may perceive problems to have a sound, in which case you could explore using your voice or other sounds to create change. What would happen if you harmonised with the sound of the problem? What would happen if you matched it?

I know of many cases where people visualised / intended for a body part to heal, whether broken bone, misaligned spine, or conditions that Western medicine deems incurable, and it worked, they did the ‘impossible’. How miraculous can you be?

These metaphorical perceptions can be very useful for dealing with highly complex or intense problems. For example, if a problem is overwhelmingly big, you might visualise it, and then imagine releasing / melting one drop of it at a time. Again, understanding that inner and outer worlds are interwoven, and it’s all energy. The image is just a way of accessing something that may be beyond your conscious mind. An image can do a lot more than we may intellectually understand. By working with them we may receive the exact solution we need even though it’s not yet within our current understanding.

The specifics of the image, sound etc are not always of great importance. The energetic transformation that occurs as a result of you using the image, sound etc is important. For some people, imagining being in a small space feels safe and provides the resourcefulness to work through something difficult, for another person, it feels claustrophobic and causes more distress. This is why it’s so important to have an individualistic approach.

Play, explore. Don’t get too caught up in doing it right, doing it how others do it, or trying to make it happen right now. The greatest discoveries happen when we’re open and curious instead of locked in to a fixed destination. Perhaps the way for you to heal something is to write about how you worked through it, imagining you’re in the future where you’ve done just that. Perhaps it’s finding resolution in writing a letter that you never send. You might dance to liberate yourself from something or celebrate a success that is yet to happen. The activity comes from your intuition and human intelligence. Ask yourself, ‘what’s the best way for me to heal this?” and see what arises.

Part 4 - Closing thoughts

One of the biggest problems I see in this work is not engaging with it enough. If you look at the remarkable results that can occur, it is often through considerable time placed on the inner world and energy. Similarly, it can be tempting to do what looks easy eg: “I intend to heal everything within me without needing to feel or understand any of it.” This may work, but I encourage you to ask yourself “what is needed for this to transform?” or “what is the best thing for me to do now?” And if the answer feels daunting, draw upon your resources to help you, and just take one step at a time.

Use practices beyond what is shared here if they call to you. Common ones being affirmations, visualising / contemplating being surrounded by the conditions that you desire, envisioning your destiny etc

What do you do if transformation isn’t occurring?

1. Look at how much you are engaging with the inner work. Do you need to do more?

2. Listen to your intuition. What wisdom can it provide? What’s the best next step for you?

3. Try using a scale from 0-10 to measure the intensity of something. That way you can more easily notice any shifts. Sometimes you’ll do phenomenal healing work, but because the issue isn’t 100% transformed, you’ll feel like nothing has happened. What you don’t realise is that you’ve just cultivated the soil and planted a seed, and it’s inevitable for a more beautiful possibility to emerge.

4. Be aware that sometimes you can do some inner work and the results show up months later.

5. Consider that it’s possible that the problem is there to crack you open, to make you more genuine, to bring you to a place of greater compassion, acceptance and love by knowing pain and the frantic attempts of the mind to have control.

What if all the problems we face are there for us to take our power back? To not be dependent on everything around us being perfect to feel OK? To realise that you are more than your external circumstances, that someone breaking up with you doesn’t mean you're unlovable, that failing in your career doesn’t make you worthless?

You already know this. Experiment and explore it in your own way. Don’t let anyone convince you that you need their special method. It may be useful, but too often we give our power away to others, when it is within us. I'm still learning, don't take anything I say to be true just because I say it. How you do inner work will likely evolve the more you do it. And in my experience, different things work at different levels. Medicine given to the wrong person or for a different condition is poison.

At its heart this is a “being” thing, not a “doing” and “achieving” thing. It’s a paradox, but that’s my best understanding so far.

Got questions?

If something in this article doesn’t make sense or you want to understand something better, you are more than welcome to contact me. Either leave a comment or send me an email. If you’re confused by something, it is very likely that others are too.