Going down a spiritual rabbit hole

When things are going wrong in my life, I need to know why and I need to know why fast. It gives me some comfort level (and control, dare I say) to know what's happening. So when my body went AWOL post woo woo massage, and I somewhat managed to regain myself from the panic attack, I instantly messaged three people, my partner at the time, the Spanish masseuse lady, and a friend that I knew would know what the actual fuck was going on with me. The three of them replied at different times, but all with the same answer. "You're letting go and preparing yourself for a new level of consciousness" followed by the advice to "go and wash/massage your feet or put your hands in the soil to ground yourself from experience" as well as "don't Google this and get in your head about it." The latter piece of advice was REALLY hard. What happened the next few days after that is all a bit of a blur, but there was one thing I noticed considerably more, my heartfelt a lot more open, and I felt a lot more deeply. 

Then lockdown happened shortly after, and I could feel pulled to explore and play with different spiritual-related practices. This began simply with buying crystals and a crystal book, something I'd always been super curious about. When I was a child, I wouldn't collect barbies. I'd collect stones and smoothed glass (what I thought were crystals). It used to drive my mum nuts as she'd always hear a rattle in the washing machine of stones from my pockets she'd missed. I then moved onto tarot cards. At the time, it had been over a year that I watched tarot readers on YouTube and had always been curious to want to try it out myself. I bought my first deck of traditional Rider Waite cards, but I just couldn't get into it. Not one to give up quite so easily, I then decided to buy a Kim Krans deck, a more modern version, and I was hooked! I didn't take any classes or try and read anyone's cards. It was just a period of exploration. Over time I got more confident and connected with it. I started implementing it into my coaching with certain clients or writing workshops, but what really surprised me was how much people loved it. The collection of decks may have gotten a little out of hand!

Once lockdown started to lift for the first time in June, I began packing my life in boxes as my relationship with my partner was coming to an end. On 10th June, as I moved my last box out and said goodbye, Pilar, the masseuse, texted me and asked if I wanted to go to a sound bath healing. I hesitated as there were so many emotions going on that day, but I thought, if there's any day I could do with some healing, it's today of all days. I headed to this hidden patch of green in this sea of daises and lay on a matt anxiously waiting to start. I'd never done anything like it, but I'd always wanted to try a gong bath. What happened next was not what I was expecting. The sound began, and everything felt fine for a brief moment, and then my body started to have a slight tremor. My right hand began having some sort of recurrent spasm, and before I knew it, my whole body was shaking. After a while, something really interesting started to happen, I could feel these waves of energy create a ripple through me, and my spine curved to every beat I heard. There was also this feeling of energy flowing out of my fingertips. I was also full-blown sobbing at this point, and by the end, I felt like an empty tank.

At this point, I'm pretty sold on all these weird and wonderful experiences. I look up the woman that did the Gong bath and look at the other things she has to offer. I pick out Tuning Fork Therapy, another different modality under sound healing. I head to Sandira's house and talk about what's going on for me right now. I explain that I'm finding it difficult to manage the breakup's emotions and feel a heaviness that I can't quite shift. The next hour she proceeds to knock tuning forks together and place them near my ears and against my chest and different areas around my body. Up until that point, I found the experience interesting, but I didn't feel hugely different. When it came to an end, she said, "you're going to have a dream within the next seven days, don't pay attention or read into it." Off I went feeling a little indifferent to the experience. Seven days later, I woke up from 'that dream.' I'm not going to go into what I dreamt of but suffice to say that I had truly let go of what I was holding onto dearly, and the heaviness I felt had completely lifted.

I went back to see Sandira, at this point more for curiosity than anything that was bothering me. I did some soul retrieval work with her, which does what it says on the tin. What was really interesting about this is that you retrieve part of your soul you lost when you experienced trauma. The trauma that I was exploring was the one that I had in school, and Sandira's house happened to be two streets away from the school I experienced that trauma, and she lived on the same street where I had that voice talk to me that I mentioned in part one of this blog. No such thing as coincidences! After I had both these experiences with Sandira and went back for a few more sessions with Pilar, I decided to go down a bit of a rabbit hole. Not one to do things half-heartedly, I literally threw myself into a self-made intensive course of spiritual practices and modalities. I explored Numerology, Akashic Records, Astrology, Past life Regression, Dreams and so much more. Some things I've done via zoom, and others I've done in person. Some things I've done 1:1 and others I've done in a group, but all experiences have helped me remember a part of myself I'd lost. 

One of my motivations for moving to Berlin was to continue exploring this avenue and learning more about these modalities and practices. This weekend I'm about to train in Reiki, but apart from that, I've decided to take a break from my spiritual adventures. It's not because my opinion of any of it has changed, but because I believe it's very easy to get swept up and lose your footing when exploring that reality. There are a few things I want to share about my experiences. They are 'my experiences', just because my body reacted in such a way or that I came to these conclusions from my experiences that you will have the same experience should you wish to try any of these out. I also wanted to share that I am a highly logical human being who has to know the why and how of everything. But honestly, the more I experienced these things and the more they helped me, I stopped caring about how they worked or why they worked. All that was important was that I got value out of them, and I felt like I didn't need to know or understand.

I initially thought this would be a two-part blog, but I am tempted to do a final Part 3. I would share with you some of the other experiences I've had that I mentioned above, some of the challenges of talking openly about this with friends and family and how this has influenced my work. I'll leave this up to you, so let me know if you want me to write more!

With love and care,

Alex

Resources:

I wanted to share the details of the two ladies I mentioned for all those London-based who are curious to try it out. This is not a sponsored ad. I wholeheartedly believe in their work and want to share it, plus I very often get asked by clients and friends who I work with :)

? Pilar – Pericardium Massage 

? Sandira – Tuning Fork Therapy, Soul Retrieval & Gong Baths

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Hi there, I'm Alex. If we haven't met before, nice to meet you, and thank you for taking the time out to read my newsletter. If you enjoyed it, you could hit subscribe to be notified and if you liked it, feel free to like, share or add a comment. I'm running a workshop on finding you voice at the end of the month, if you're interested you can sign up here. If you want to connect with me in other ways, you can find me on Instagram here, or you can also sign up for my Authentic Alex newsletter that covers topics such as creativity, purpose, presence, leadership, and storytelling.

About Alex: At the age of 24 Alex found herself employed as the Head of Training and Development for a Foreign Exchange Company in The City. After experiencing her very own quarter-life crisis, she decided to leave the corporate world and create her own definition of success. On the day she left that job she wrote a post that went viral on LinkedIn.

Since then she’s been named LinkedIn Top Voice UK twice for her mental health and personal growth content and has become an official LinkedIn Learning Instructor. She's also the co-founder of #LinkedInLocal, a global movement creating communities in over 100 countries and 1,000 cities.

She’s best known for blogging under the hashtag #AuhtenticAlex where she smashes one stigma at a time and writes about her therapy journey with the aim of inspiring others to transform their traumas into triumphs.

She now helps individuals and businesses grow their presence on LinkedIn, find their sense of purpose, awaken their creativity and tell their stories. You can find out more about her and the brand here: www.fromtraumatotriumph.co.