HeartMind Integration:
Healing the Emotional, Physical & Energy Bodies

By Ruth Schwartz

How can HeartMind Integration shift a seemingly "physical" issue like infertility or miscarriage? When we access our own inner wisdom and heal our emotional and energetic bodies, healing of the physical body almost always follows. Here is one example:

Marie was an artist in her late thirties who wanted very much to have a child. After her third miscarriage, she came to me for help.

In our intake session, Marie explained that her mother, a single parent, had been a troubled, narcissistic woman who leaned on Marie emotionally, but also criticized her harshly. When we explored further, we found that Marie's energy body had responded in two quite different ways. A wise and insightful part of her had recognized very young that she was more emotionally mature than her mother. This part of Marie felt deeply alone and unsupported. Meanwhile, another part of Marie blamed herself for "disappointing" her mother, and remained caught in a hopeless cycle of trying endlessly to please her.

When we used a visualization process to examine Marie's reproductive organs, Marie reported that the grief of the first part felt "like a heavy lead apron all along the lining of my womb," and the self-blame "feels like knives and shards of broken glass, stabbing me."

One of the first things I do with new clients is help them form a relationship with a "guide," a compassionate and trustworthy inner presence that becomes a powerful resource in the healing process. This process works regardless of whether clients think of this presence as a spirit guide, their higher self, an archetype, an aspect of the Divine – or even as a product of their imagination.

Marie's guide took the form of a wild rabbit. It was sleek and fast, emotionally contained and independent, but also very gentle. Marie spent several sessions alternately riding joyfully on its back, feeling the freedom its leaps brought her, and then clinging to its soft fur and crying. It was a huge relief for her that the rabbit didn't need her, and didn't criticize her. As she began to trust the rabbit, her sense of grief and aloneness grew less acute.

Next, we worked on her pattern of self-attack. We discovered that Marie's child-self had believed that if she attacked herself viciously enough, she would somehow earn her mother's love. With the help of the rabbit, Marie's adult self was able to nurture her child self. As the child self felt more loved, the self-attack became unnecessary. After several months of this kind of work, Marie reported that her womb now felt "happy... lined with a bright-yellow light." Shortly after this, she moved to another state. About a year later, she contacted me to tell me she had just given birth to a beautiful, healthy baby girl.

I feel deeply privileged to witness and facilitate this type of healing. I offer a free initial session for new clients, so you can see if HeartMind Integration feels right for you.

HeartMind Integration is also highly effective at healing long-standing anxieties and phobias. Jack was a successful businessman in his fifties who was embarassed to admit that he was terrified of flying. His job required a lot of travel, so he came to me hoping for some simple hypnotic suggestions to help him relax during flights "and stop being such a baby," as he put it.

Although hypnotic suggestions are a small part of my work, the essence of HeartMind Integration involves identifying and resolving issues at their root. It took only one session to discover the origin of Jack's fear of flying. Jack's father had been a difficult, controlling man who hated fear and weakness of any kind, both in himself and in his children. He was also a hypochondriac who was continuously disabled by one mysterious illness after another. When Jack was ten, his father went to another country for an extended period of medical treatment. After several months, Jack flew to meet his father and return with him to the United States.

Because the child Jack had felt much freer and happier in his father's absence, he was intensely ambivalent about seeing his father. During the long flight back, when his father ridiculed him, Jack grew so angry that he fantasized about killing his father. He felt deeply horrified by, and ashamed of these feelings. Therefore, when the flight became turbulent, it was a great relief to become a frightened child who could cling to his father (because it felt emotionally safer to feel afraid, than to feel rage.) He soon repressed the memory of having wanted to kill his father, but the fear of flying remained.

It took only a few sessions for us to completely shift Jack's experience of flying. Jack had explained that he was more comfortable with women than men, so he was surprised when his guide took the form of a powerful stag — a male deer with huge antlers who looked intimidating, but was actually very tender and wise. The stag helped Jack's adult self develop more understanding and compassion for his child self, and helped the child self learn that it could be possible to feel and express both fear and anger, while still being respected and loved. The stag also helped Jack look more deeply at his father, so he could recognize the frightened little boy hiding beneath his father's bluster. His hypochondria had been the only way he could allow himself to express weakness, and he had paid a heavy price for this, becoming an invalid in his forties. With the stag's help, Jack's child and adult selves were able to grieve the loving father they had never had, and feel compassion for Jack's father's suffering.

"It was absolutely amazing," Jack reported to me after his next flight a few weeks later. "When it got bumpy, I felt nervous for a minute, but nothing like before. Then I was able to go inside, turn to the stag for strength, and then let my adult self offer strength and comfort to my child self. Within a few minutes, I felt totally relaxed. I actually fell asleep during the flight!"

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