HOW TO HEAL YOURSELF FROM PAIN – THE EFFECTS OF AEQ PRACTICE

What is AEQ method?

AEQ method is an innovative approach that my wonderful teacher Aleš Ernst whom I’ve been seeing and learning from for the last 3 years invented. It looks like a crossover between yin yoga and tai chi but the way how it feels it is much more advanced and revolutionary than that. It includes AEQ breathing, a specific type of breathwork, specific muscle movements, breakthroughs of releasing heavy emotional trauma, releasing of chronic physical pain, and it gives you more body awareness and self-control. Obviously, he is not available all over the world because he is located in my home country Slovenia but finding someone locally that can help you heal yourself, understand yourself, take responsibility for your life and take back control of your body, and help you understand where your emotions are coming from (whether you are still reacting from unhealed childhood wounds and are emotionally stuck on a level of a child no matter your age, or are you reflecting the expression and the actions of a healthy adult) is something I would highly recommend and is what made all the difference on my journey of self-healing and spiritual growth. Or, if you live in the area you can contact Aleš, an incredibly talented man that reads you like an open book and gently guides you through this liberating process.

AEQ movements have been developed and pioneered out of Hanna Somatic movements and they create deep change in muscle function and the nervous system, they eliminate sensory-motor amnesia and change the patterns that cause chronic pain and low quality of life. They give you deep relaxation and help you really feel and come back into your body for the first time, while they help you understand how to take better care of your body, listen to it and align with it, not work against it. With its movements, deep emotional trauma arises so you can heal it and understand it which causes the pain to magically disappear. It helps you slow down your body, slow down your mind and your breathing, and it helps you learn how to move your body effortlessly. It is really mind-blowing how high it raises your frequency and vibration and into what states does it takes you. This is a long process to which you need to stay devoted to and become aware of the changes that you need to make to maintain the new healthy balance inside you. You become in charge of your muscles instead of being a victim of your unprocessed emotions which radically influences everything else in your life, from your relationships to your attitude, and most important body health and emotional health which are the fundamentals for everything else you want to build in life.

I had a very difficult emotional life growing up and I’ve been carrying tons of emotional burden my whole life because of it, being too afraid to express it, therefore I suppressed it, and to express who I really am because I was not respected, appreciated, loved unconditionally, listened to (like the majority of the people alive today), while I also wasn’t provided with a stable, peaceful and healthy home environment because, as I understand it now, of the state of consciousness that we are all in. Among others, I’ve been carrying an excruciatingly painful fear of overwhelming emotions because nobody was ever there for me to acknowledge them, even worse, they mocked me for everything I said. Eventually, the fear of speaking my truth grew into a paralyzing fear of losing my authentic voice completely. I started mimicking their behaviour and the build-up of a facade that was appropriate began.

No one was strong enough and emotionally healthy enough to hold my intense emotions so all I could do is push them inside and with that energetically keep reliving these nightmares over and over again for the past 30 years. The heavy grief of not being loved and cared for manifested as a pile of bricks on my chest which caused me to barely breathe all this time. Other emotions also manifested as pain and numbness all over my right side of the body, especially the leg, etc. I also suffered from severe back pain in 2013 which caused me not being able to walk for several weeks. It was brutal, I had very big fears hiding inside me of feeling completely powerless and helpless which came up to be confronted through this situation. Even though I tried several different methods, nothing else helped me prevent the pain to come back again except AEQ.

When you are a parent and have a deeply and intensely emotional child like me you are not able to handle his aliveness because you are numb from your own unprocessed pain. Luckily, my mum and I are going through the AEQ process together and have changed our relationship drastically while helping each other becoming much more aware of the truth beneath the surface through our conversations and sharing our experiences as we would on our own. And so, when you try to suppress the child with control and egoic superiority you start creating another unhealthy person, teaching him destructive mental games and pulling him into what you know best, away from either of your authenticity. And because I’ve always felt a deep inner abandonment and loneliness inside me which escalated into more trauma when my father abandoned me as well, feeling deeply that I couldn’t really connect with any of them and rely on them, all I learned from my environment is to not be myself and create a thick wall around my heart if I wanted to survive. I’ve always felt a deep mistrust in Life and in people (I don’t actually carry a cellular memory of trust), I was never really comfortable anywhere I went, all I carried was a dense unease wrapped in fear and unworthiness which was covered by a loud Ego who made up layers and layers of stories, lies and coverups to escape that deep pain inside.

This is a common thing that is lived in the state of consciousness that we are currently in and if we do not change it the only thing we will see the same old story repeating itself indefinitely. But the only way to change it is to go within and heal your wounds. Even though I’ve been doing a lot of spiritual work on myself since 2008, lots of energy healing, mental and emotional education, I am discovering, especially this year, that I haven’t even scratched the surface of everything that is hiding in the abyss inside me and so many more things are rising up to the surface that I was not aware of. I’ve only started to really slowly open up my heart since I’ve started doing AEQ and becoming aware of my body, my senses, my needs, breaking through the illusion of the mind into the reality of the present moment. And facing this reality is cruel and painful, facing the reality our ancestors were not able to. It’s probably going to take decades of positive experiences to really release the grip of the heavy fear I feel inside, the fear that we are drowning in collectively.

The fear of not feeling safe. The fear so heavily ingrained in us that it drives us to abuse our bodies and make them work a lot more than they are capable of. The fear that makes us rush through Life. The fear of not being loved. The fear that disconnects us from ourselves, from the wounded feminine parts of ourselves which are longing to be heard, held and cared for with authentic presence. The fear that makes the masculine parts of ourselves want to suppress, deny and ignore her needs and her voice, to dominate her and replace true love, true harmony and union with material things, being conditioned to purposefully ignore her bleeding in front of him. All of this is inside us, as much as it is outside us which we can see in the destruction of our planet, our home, our resources, in the childish behaviour of our leaders, ourselves and the people around us. We are responsible for it.

When we stop trying to escape the fears and filling the inner void with material things and relationships and turn inward instead, toward the truth of the discomfort that we feel, the deep bottomless well of inadequacies and strong fears, only then we can transform them and make peace with them. We create all sorts of things on the outside to create a false sense of security which covers up these fears and inadequacies, from addiction to knowledge, addiction to emotional warmth from another, addiction to businesses or any kind of projects. When we go inside, do our exercises, meditation and breathwork, confront our deepest parts of ourselves, we release the painful memories. We wipe the slate clean and move forward. Eventually, our reality starts to change on the outside as well. You do not need to relive your painful past over and over again but only after you are able to understand yourself, face your pain and allow more space to be created inside you. Then you can live peacefully from the present moment, with less and less pain in your body and consequently your psyche.

All of this that we are experiencing is just a state of consciousness that can be changed at any time, with perseverance and effort. Doing AEQ has made me calmer, more present, it has reduced my pain, helped me grow up and deal with the difficult reality I have been avoiding for so long. It helps me feel safer in my body, makes me feel truly alive for the first time and actually feel the goodness of being a human, of fully taking in all the senses which were not accessible to me before. I feel the energy flowing through me like magic and I feel relaxed enough to be able to enjoy it. My muscles have started existing in aligned cooperation and loving teamwork, which makes me softer, it develops my intuition and the connection to my Soul and the collective Soul. It helps me be more emotionally present and put the Ego on the back seat, only as a tool, not as the leader, where it belongs. It helps me be a better listener and not allowing the Ego to pull me to heights I am actually not ready for. We all need to learn to become better listeners. I’ve always been deeply unhappy and have only now started to explore what does it actually mean to be happy and fulfilled without filling the void with external things, projects or people.

To respect the pain which is trying to tell me something. Most of my life I suffered severely physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, from being constantly exhausted, not being able to take a deep breath, constant uncontrollable negative self-talk, constantly reliving negative emotional states and heavy unshakeable feelings of being so deeply broken and abandoned from everyone including me. It’s been a very dark journey for me. All of this gradually begins to dissolve and becomes a thing of the past when you do the inner work. AEQ muscle movements together with AEQ breathwork create a perfect natural harmony inside the body which is nothing short of magical after living in a state of deep pain for decades. The difference in how I live and feel things now compared to before is unrecognizable. Anyone can achieve this! Do some research and find yourself a mentor! The body is where it all starts and ends.

The revolution starts from within. Embrace the pain and love yourself. Projecting your pain on another is an illusion. The more you heal the more space and presence you create inside yourself and with it, a space to create something new, someone, new. An authentic expression of your Soul. Heal yourself so you can then be authentically there for others to do the same. Making this world a better place is in our hands and our hands only.

Yanya Gabriyel, London

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