Traveling Back in Time To Attain Embodied Freedom

I spent seven days in an intense retreat in the jungle to attain embodied freedom. I met my darkest shadows, released stuck emotions, and fully tasted all parts of me. I screamed, grieved, laughed, and cried in ways I’ve never seen before. I felt deeply the full range of my emotions, my divine expression, and essence, unencumbered by any limitations.

A big part of my release came from reliving my childhood trauma that has a lot to do with my dysfunctional family. I’ve done a lot of inner work and thought that I’ve made my peace with my past. I’ve addressed my withholds with my parents. My relationship with them has gone deeper than ever. I’ve accepted that the absence of my dad in my childhood was due to his own trauma. I knew that he did the best he could and loved me in his own way. I love him and I have zero negative feelings toward him today.

Yet, I found out that the little wounded boy in me is still encaged in my body. One who spent most of his time in the house terrified. Terrified of the door slamming, the sharp noise of objects smashing the ground, not knowing when the next bout of shouting would be. One who had to console himself and felt helpless when his mom confided to him. One who didn’t get to express the pain, anger, confusion of why he had to be put through all this. Having no one to seek protection and safety from. I don’t remember much of my childhood in the house but there’s knowing, remnants of how the wounded boy felt that is still present in the body.

This became evidently so as I fully allowed everything to come out throughout the week. Boy, it’s incredible to witness how much that is still suppressed in my body. Looking back, it makes complete sense, almost two decades of bottling up these emotions, without a healthy outlet for expression, it all had to go somewhere. I was swallowing my emotions away. They didn’t get digested but buried deep in the body. Even years of working through the mind, I realized, is not sufficient to heal our emotional scars. Beyond just the intellectual, we need a somatic release.

Our body, I learned, is a true time machine. All the unresolved trauma from each age is tightly stored in our bodies. When we get triggered, we go back down to the age when the trauma developed. We access the memory and bodily response of the age which doesn’t get to mature. That’s why many adults sound like 8 years old when they argue. To fully heal trauma, we need to go back to the age where the contraction was building, bring it back to the surface, and release it. As importantly, do it in the face of a benevolent witness, someone who can hold you and meet your younger self in the way they long most.

Slowly, I’ve learned to lean in more to the mystery of my bodily intelligence. To let go of my over-analysis and fear that’s limiting my expression. It’s incredible how much potential healing that our body is capable of if we just truly let it be without any limitations. In one of my most powerful processes, I requested to sit with our facilitator to explore my relationship with my dad. I stared into his eyes for a solid amount of time and before I knew it, I felt my body boiling, my legs started shaking, my breath deepening and picking pace. In an instant, I lunged toward him and screamed at him. And I went again, and again. I was in full rage. I was shocked by what I saw, but I quiet the mind and let the body continue expressing what it needed. Soon, the rage transmuted into deep sadness and pain. I curled up in his embrace, buried my face in his chest, and cried. Like real, ugly cry. I was screaming, howling, wailing. I’ve never seen myself in such extreme except the one time I did 5-MeO-DMT. The gate cracked open and the waves of emotion flooded fiercely through me. I grieved for my little self who felt unseen in his pain and the absence of a father figure. It hit me how much I longed for his presence. All the time I fooled myself to think I was fine, underneath the numbness, I desperately craved the love, care, and protection of a father. I screamed and screamed. Screamed to be heard, to be seen. After so much release from the place of collapse, I felt a shift in my energy. I looked at my facilitator in his eyes and this time, I roared, with authority and full life force, reclaiming my power. “I’m here”. “I’m fucking here”. That’s what my roar sounds like in my head.

As I completed my rebirth process, I was touched by how much love the group was showering me. For the first time, I felt a profound depth of what it’s like to believe I was loved in my body. I realized all this time, no matter how much I was blessed with incredible souls and support in my life, there’s a rooted belief in me that still thinks I’m not lovable, that people will leave me and I’m not deserving of love. In the vulnerable infant stage, seeing how much purity people see in me, the eyes that met me with unconditional love and compassion, I felt a foreign emotion I can’t really put my finger on. I laughed and cried uncontrollably. Tears of joy kept streaming down my eyes. It felt like the first moment of birth and the final moment of death at the same time. It felt like I traveled back in time, met my younger self, freed him from all the pain, rewrote and reclaimed the story, pouring him the unconditional love he sought. THIS I thought, is what fully receiving unconditional love is like. It was one of the most if not the most beautiful moments of my life.

It makes me realize how many of us are walking on this planet blinded and limited. Blinded by how much we are shackled by our trauma, limiting what we can fully experience, feel and receive. Without healing and feeling our pain, we are simply going around the world empowering our limited identity. It’s dangerous to be amplifying our limitations because we are gradually drifting further from what makes us feel most alive and instead, sprinting closer toward escapism, depression, violence, addiction, and exploitation. The brutal truth is, to feel deep joy, fulfillment, and meaning, we need to deeply feel and alchemize our pain and shadows. Underneath it all is growth and blossoming. There’s no way around it. Only when we taste all parts of us can we walk solidly in this world. Only then can we feel deeply touched by others. Only then can we be in touch with our fullest essence.

So much of our human potential is limited by societal constructs and collective trauma. “Too loud” “Too much” “Too crazy”. How many times have we heard this reflected to us? How many times have we played this broken record in our own minds? It has led me many times to have to play it small to fit in, bite my tongue and say yes when my body actually contracted. Each time I betray myself to express my truth, it builds pressure in my body and further disassociates me from my most powerful essence. It’s caused me to feel in conflict every time my multiple identities don’t line up. I’m a soft man but also a strong leader, a playful kid but also a deep thinker, a spiritual person but also a hedonist. I’ve now learned and embodied that they’re all parts of me. I can be kind, powerful, sexual, fun, serious, smart, foolish, brave, and weak all at the same time. I’ve learned to hold polarities and not let myself be boxed. This is what it means to attain true freedom. To not limit ourselves to any fixed perspectives. To lean in more to the unknown. To be able to meet anyone without losing ourselves. Boxing ourselves is only limiting many beautiful possibilities that can emerge within us.

I came out of this retreat feeling deeply alive. I was already in a pretty solid place in life, but I didn’t know there’s an even deeper layer I can live from. I can now feel so much and be moved deeply by life, so at peace and in power to express my truth, so present and soft in connection with others. This is the magic of alchemizing and finding the gold underneath our pain. When we heal ourselves, we’re healing the whole planet and humanity. In freeing myself from limiting narratives, I can create and be in service from the place of wholeness. I can meet people where they’re at without trying to change or dismiss them and be fiercely authentic in expressing my truth. In doing so, I’m giving others the permission to be free in their expression and feel fully seen simply through my unwavering presence.

Any parts of us that are suppressed, realized or unrealized, create a form of numbness, a blockage, that prevents us to feel deeper and attain a certain depth with others. So my invitation to you is to explore what parts of you that are unrealized and unwitnessed. Our soul is a big mystery and we’ve only gotten a grasp of so little of it. I’m learning to surrender more and more to the possibilities that can emerge from within, nature and pure connection. To not force or try to grip onto things and let life flow through me. The beauty, the ugly, the light, the dark, the joy, the sorrow — I’m here to deeply taste all of it. I’m here to be larger with you, life.

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P.S. The retreat I did was Embodied Freedom, led by Tom Slatery and James Sol Radina in Bali. It’s one of the most profound transformative experiences I had. It’s such important work and I would highly, highly recommend it to anyone. Contact James at you’re intrigued to learn more!