Most of us view trauma as something that breaks us—a jagged piece of our past that we have to hide away or “get over.” But what if trauma wasn’t just a breakdown, but a profound initiation?
In our conversation with Dr. Joan Borysenko for AVAIYA’s free Believe & Receive Free Series, she shared a story from her own life that changed everything for her. At age ten, she began experiencing a terrifying psychosis where she saw headhunters around her family. She lived in abject terror for six months, unable to distinguish dreams from reality.
But here’s the kicker: Dr. Borysenko eventually viewed this not just as a tragedy, but as a “shamanic initiatory experience” that she needed to have. In the Somatic ReThink system, we look at the inner child not as a broken part of you, but as a gateway to your deeper, divine intelligence.
The Philosophy: Accessing the Intelligence That Heals
When Joan was at her lowest point, she didn’t have therapy, Prozac, or spiritual teachers to help her. She did the only thing she could: she sought out an experience of peace she’d had as a young girl. By recalling the felt sense of that peace, she was able to drop her “small mind” and connect with a “divine intelligence”.
That intelligence didn’t just tell her she could recover—it told her exactly how to go about doing it. She followed that guidance, and in just a few days, the dreams vanished.
The bigger truth here is that even in our darkest moments, there is an intelligence within us that knows the way home. We don’t have to “fix” the inner child; we have to learn how to listen to the bigger, divine mind that knows how to knit our lives back together.
The Nervous System Gap: Why “Talking” Isn’t Healing
It’s logical to think that if you talk about your childhood trauma enough, you’ll eventually get over it. But the Nervous System Gap is the reality that your inner child doesn’t live in your logical brain—it lives in your nervous system.
If you’ve been “recounting” your trauma for years but still feel just as stuck, it’s because you aren’t accessing the intelligence that guided Joan; you’re just rerunning the movie of your fear. To heal, you have to bypass the story and find the felt sense of peace that exists underneath the fear. That’s exactly what we do in the Somatic ReThink—we use somatic anchors to bring you back to a state where the nervous system feels safe enough to let the divine intelligence take over.
The Somatic ReThink: A Guided Walkthrough
This exercise helps you access your own “interior guidance” to heal old wounds.
Part 1: The Somatic Exercise (The Resource of Peace)
- Find Your “Camp Grove”: Think of a time, place, or sensation where you felt absolute, simple peace as a child. It doesn’t have to be a big, spiritual event. Just a moment where you felt safe.
- Saturate the Senses: Close your eyes. Remember what it looked like, what it sounded like, and most importantly, how it felt in your body. Notice your breathing when you think of that moment.
- Anchor the Feeling: As you sit in that feeling of peace, place your hand over your heart. Say to your nervous system, “This is who I am. This peace is my home.”
Part 2: The ReThink Exercise (Updating Your “Contract”)
Once you’ve anchored that peace, use the ReThink process to rewrite your childhood narrative.
- The Old Thought: Identify the trauma-based belief. (Example: “I have to live in terror/fear because the world is dangerous and I’m not safe.”) This is the “Old Thought”—the story your inner child created to survive.
- The New Reality: Use this ReThink: (“I release the story that I am unsafe. I recognize that the divine intelligence that guided me through my past is still here, guiding me now. I don’t have to live in fear; I am held, I am whole, and I am healing.”)
Ready to Go Deeper?
You’ve got the capacity to recover from anything. You just need to reconnect with the divine intelligence that’s already inside you.
If you’re ready to clear the blocks and pursue the next level of your dreams, join us for our free Believe and Receive Online Summit.
Click here to join our free Believe and Receive Summit.
Come on in, the water’s warm,
iKE ALLEN
Founder of AVAIYA and the Somatic ReThink System