Session 6: Energy knot in the belly

'Susan' is a professional woman in her late fifties. She was interested in exploring colored light therapy. She chose to use an open-ended approach, asking to see the next step in her healing rather than targeting a predefined issue. She began to sense tightness in her solar plexus. I therefore selected yellow which, according to ETT protocols, is the color that activates issues held in this area of the body. I suggested that Susan look at the yellow light while focusing on her sense of tightness. As she did this, she set her intention to explore and release the tightness in her belly.

      "A sense of waiting, of not going toward. No permission to move toward. Aloneness. Resignation. The belief is I can't have anything except what gives itself to me. I can't go after things. Mother had poverty consciousness. She was competitive with me. I learned early not to ask for things and became her caretaker. We were told we might be farmed out to foster homes if we didn't behave."
      Susan integrated this awareness in a range of brainwave states. "I came to believe there is not enough. If I reach out to take something, it hurts somebody. I feel the pushing down, the cringing in my belly to make sure I don't do that. I learned this from my mother. She didn't know there was infinite supply, that I could have something and not take away from her." Susan felt a deep sorrow that it was that way for herself and for her mother. She sobbed gently as she connected with these feelings that had previously been unconscious.
      The insight and experience of remorse released the energy blockage in her belly. "The cringing is releasing now, untangling. My whole belly was caught in the cringe. The energy knot is releasing. Wow, that feels better!"

We ended the session by discussing Susan's difficulty in self-assertion and the sense of lack in her life. She set some assertiveness goals for the following week, which she carried out. There was no shakti involved in this session. The shift took place instead through awareness of the patterns and beliefs connected with her thirdchakra constriction. The experience of remorse, such as she experienced here, can be an important factor in healing. It is part of acknowledging how we have participated in creating our pain and seems to enable 'digestion' of our experience, with release of the associated negative feelings. One of the functions of the solar plexus is to establish selfresponsibility. It facilitates this by helping us to see our part in unconscious reality creation. This is an important element in metabolizing our experience. There is a parallel at the physical level in that the solar plexus is generally seen as governing the digestive system.