Serena Yogina's Blog

One BIG Reason for Yoga--Healing the Inner Child

For anyone that wants peace of mind, an ability to respond and "play well with others" rather than react, exploring our "inner child"--through Yoga and meditation--is a great approach." I consider the inner child as the innocent, creative, spontaneous, often wild youngster, along with its shadow or negative ego, if you will, that all too often gets ignored, abandoned, mistreated or otherwise destroyed.

On my own journey towards peace and wholeness, I came to recognize how fearful I was and the issues I felt around self-esteem. I asked my spiritual teacher from where that originated. His answer came in the form of an assignment. He suggested I practice some Yoga and then go into meditation. He advised me to imagine my fear as the biggest, darkest, ugliest, slimiest, and scariest being I could and ask it to come around in front of me where I could see it. I went to the basement Yoga room to practice.

Once I finished my asanas (poses) and Savasana (relaxation), I settled into meditation. I began to engage my imagination, visualizing a huge, slimy, dark and grotesque blob. I could actually feel it behind me to my right. I invited this creature to come around in front of me where I could see it. The dark being seemed shy and lumbered around my side to stand within view. I was surprised it seemed so vulnerable. As I was instructed by my teacher, I looked at the creature and imagined giving it a loving hug. It was difficult to generate a feeling of love for such ugliness. Then, once I had conjured a spark of compassion, immediately, it morphed into a child--a little girl, crouched, hugging her knees to her chest as she sat on the floor in the corner of the basement. She was trembling in fear.

My heart went out to her. Illumination came abruptly. I remembered painful incidences from my childhood (as in, oh yeah, that) and understood her fear and hence mine as an adult. From that day forward I began imagining loving her, my "little" Michelle, held in my arms to nurture her.

This reintegration of the inner child and allowing one's self to experience buried emotions can be part of a path to wholeness, almost like a Shamanic journey. John Bradshaw, known by some as a "pop psychologist" back in the mid-80's and early 90's, wrote several books on becoming whole and created workshops that were subsequently presented on PBS. My teacher and I both watched these episodes with a similar level of focus as kids playing video games in these modern days! I felt Bradshaw made sense and in one of his books entitled "Homecoming - Reclaiming and Championing Our Inner Child," he recommended similar techniques to foster a relationship with the little tyke within. One technique he recommended was to write letters to the child using the right hand and allowing the child to respond using the left hand. I came to love his work.

Another one of Mr. Bradshaw's suggested exercises was to explore each of the developmental age ranges of the child and connect with and reclaim them for integration into wholeness. I remember sitting in my dining room in a white wicker rocking chair, facing the north windows when I started my meditation. I conjured an image of my 3-year-old self and advised her that she would be coming home with me now. (I will interject here that when we start with a visualization, WE are creating the images, we start out "doing" it, but then the Creative Force takes over and IT is creating the images--we "allow" it to unfold.) I am fairly visual and could see her clearly but using the imagination works well too. Then I instructed her to go get anything she wanted to bring back with her and she momentarily left. When she returned, she brought our miniature Doxie puppy and my twin brother! (Mr. Bradshaw did not cover this kind of scenario! My inner child's creativity was immediately put to the test!) I had to think fast and I told Little Michelle that Little Brother could come with us for now, but eventually he would need to go with Grown-up Brother. The meditation ended there and I held her in my arms and rocked her in the white wicker chair. These experiences helped to build confidence in the process, my visuals and my intuition.

Later on, in the mid 90's when I was 50 years old, I recognized that I had no romantic partner and had trouble manifesting money. I knew without a doubt that it was my creation, my blockage, not what "God" had intended. In meditation, I asked Spirit to help me heal these issues. After that, I started having dreams, messages as I came back from sleep and memories of being mistreated as a baby, a one-year-old wee one. I had lost so much memory of my childhood, a frequently recognized sign of trauma and unrecognized pain. Later on, several times my dream guides used to whisper to me as I was coming back from sleep that my father had sexually abused me as a baby. It was interesting to me that I never reacted with disbelief. I just said, "I don't remember it, but I'm open to healing." It was incredulous to me someone would do that, but there was no mistake about the repeated messages.

I had a strange dream too, one that I did not fully understand. I was standing face to face with a large Black man. He embraced me in a hefty hug and I felt some kind of energy start to leave my body towards his. I knew then that this man represented my father and he was taking back whatever pain he caused me. I remember trying to stop that energy from going into him once I figured out what he was doing, but I was too late. Then he cried. I felt sad for him , he took it back before I could stop him, it happened very quickly. But what pain had he instilled in me? That information would unfold later.

To have these memories and experiences that began to reveal to me what happened brought me to a pinnacle in my inner child healing. I had a dream the night before I was scheduled to have lunch with a friend that was a Yoga therapist. She actually was in the dream, along with another healer-friend. In this dream, I had been to see my father to confront him with his behavior. He denied any accountability and charged me for his time! In the next scene, I was with my two healer friends. I wailed 3 times, each time feeling a release from my solar plexus (location of the 3rd chakra ruling will, emotions and personal power).

The next day at lunch with my Yoga friend, I told her about the dream. We both smelled a "cosmic setup." To have the dream on the eve of our lunch date was synchronous. She suggested we walk over to the Yoga Center and go into meditation to see if we could retrieve more information. The Center was just a few buildings up the street making it easy for us to continue in the vein of this healing. Once we arrived, we sat in Easy Pose and began the descent into meditation. In a short while, I felt the left side of my face become very hot and inflamed, so much so that when I mentioned it, my Yoga friend walked over to me and said she could see it too. My physical body had remembered the experience! Next I saw my father coming toward me through the doorway of a darkened room that I did not recognize, like a shed with tools around. Something told me to look down and I saw my naked body. I felt a sense of shock at the sight of myself and knew at that moment I was only a year old. My body looked very bright in the dim light--such is the energy of babies--innocent and Light. I could see my father was young and I also could see his energy field or aura. It was thick with small bugs all around him, a sign I learned later that was a common indicator for alcoholics (for those that are able to see auras). He came over to me and held me in a way that I was near his lap and I could not push him away. He was hurting my head and yet I felt love for him--he was my father. I told him to stop and tried to push him away but I was too little. As I described the scene to my Yoga friend, she mentioned my face was soft to him. I felt wetness in my ear around the inflamed area. Now we knew what happened and we came out of the meditation. As I continued my inner child healing work, I had further memories of my father using my child body. My friend was convinced he was drunk during these occasions.

My mother used to talk about my father's alcoholism with disdain but for a long time I did not believe her--I could not accept it. I learned that he stopped drinking when I was 6 years old (that magical age when we started attending a fear-based church--see this story in my book for the personality split this caused). I was now 50 and had constructed a strong enough container to hold the memories and my sanity as I processed the information, shock and emotional wreckage. I felt a strong spiritual bond with my father so I did not feel a big need to forgive him. The Black man in my dream representing my father took back the pain he gave me and apparently felt the pain himself--he was an emotionally conservative man, I never saw him cry--except in that dream. The rest of the work now was my responsibility to heal.

At least now I could release the issue, acknowledge the feelings around it and move forward in my life. In the mid 80's my astrologer (Buz Myers, if anyone reading this knew him, a wonderful astrologer) told me in reading my natal chart that my father "killed" my self-esteem. Now I know how that happened, what my father had done to take back some of the energy he instilled, and have had some 21 years to heal. It might be helpful to know just how his behavior impacted me, as it can impact anyone with a similar history.

Here are some of the ways I perceive the impact of this behavior from my father. Please note, I still loved my father who had many redeeming qualities--there is no judgment. I believe he was drunk when these things happened, not an excuse, simply not his best self. I also believe the alcoholism was introduced into his life early on by his father compounded by having to endure World War II traumas triggering a deep need to escape his anguish. As an emotionally conservative Capricorn, it was difficult for him to express his feelings. He would never talk about the war, not even with a counselor. Impact showed up in my life as follows:

*A loss of innocence at an early age (premature introduction to aberrant sexual activity)
*A loss of control over my own body (pushing him away unsuccessfully)
*Feeling I deserved to be used by men (and others)
*A loss of my sense of self-worth, or, worthiness dependent on accepting abuse (loving my abuser--separate from loving my father in his best self--he overcame drinking cold turkey-no small feat)
*An incorrect perspective developed of what love is (I became my father's emotional wife which later caused me to attract romantic partners and create this same co-dependence)
*All of these losses combined with the related parental behaviors in an alcoholic family dynamic (over-control, inconsistency in rules causing "walking on eggshells," etc.) and having to repress my own sovereignty eventually brought me to a suicide attempt at age 23, and subsequently pray for healing. It was then I found Yoga (or rather, Yoga found me).

At any rate, now I knew what the pain was that my father represented by the Black man in my dream retrieved in our embrace.

I did have somewhat of a clue at age 15 as to what was happening and where one of my perceptual gifts resides. At that time, I did not relate it to the treatment from my father, I had not remembered that yet, but it was a clue, nonetheless--a seed planted to VINDICATE my inner child later.

My mother and father were at the kitchen table on a chilly Saturday morning while I was reading a magazine article in the next room that described the mental health conditions of psychoses, neuroses and schizophrenia. I was enthralled by the article and as I read the behavior of someone demonstrating neuroses, I was quite pleased with myself that I recognized my father in the article. I enthusiastically went to the kitchen and announced to my father, "Dad, you're a neurotic!" He was sitting there looking downtrodden and depressed, but as a fiery teenager, that observation was overshadowed by my discovery. He said, "Huh? What?" And I repeated my newfound discovery, satisfied with my ability to connect the dots between his behavior and the neuroses description. (There were so few things that I achieved, any little success was savored and here, I was guilty of overriding my father's feelings.) My mother shushed me and sent me back to the living room. Later on she revealed to me that my father had just returned from an appointment with a psychiatrist that echoed the same observation that I had.

These are examples of ways one might heal one's inner child and balance trauma--through an interwoven fabric of meditation and dream work. Considering all the #MeToo disclosures now, and the information revealed about human/child sex trafficking, I believe the Divine Feminine has been undergoing a massive healing (my experience shows since 1986 with the Harmonic Convergence). My story may provide others with some compassion for what those women endured and were not able to openly address the issue at the time. Now is the perfect time to do this work.

Recognize though that the decades of Yoga practice starting in 1970 and my spiritual leanings, meditation and eventual trust in the Divine are what allowed these deep and difficult wounds to surface. And several others came from remembering other lifestream events (also known as past life recall). And not everyone needs to go so deep into the underworld or "womb of the Earth" to heal. We all reach a point in our evolution for a need for a "clean-up life" and this one is mine--it's a bit unusual, intense and deep, but it provides me with the powers to offer emotional healing. I suspect if I had not engaged in this healing, I may have turned to destructiveness in these current ascension vibrations and could have gone "dark." Look at the many mass shootings--I believe these are people that were unaware of or not interested in the call to heal.

This is what nearly 5 decades of Yoga practice and meditation have developed in me and actually why learning Yoga from someone who has excavated their depths to reach authenticity may help others on their journey. It is why Yoga is not just an exercise program. It is one way to reconnect at the deepest level, if it feels right to embark on this journey at whatever level.

The full story of how I healed with assistance in the form of an "Angelic walk-in" is shared in my book, "I Forgive You, Daddy! The Angels Healed Me! - Along with Astrology, Channeling, Dreams, Past-Life Recall, Psychicism, Telepathy, Walk-Ins and The Whales" published through CreateSpace (www.createspace.com/4991332).

May a global expression of Loving Kindness come to heal all wounds everywhere. It is my hope that sharing my experiences will shed Light for others. May Peace prevail!
Posted on: 2018-05-23 16:11:56. Comments

This Blew Me Away!

First, here is a little background in order for you to understand the significance of this experience. A long time ago, several years, I was sitting next to the river in the Metro park when I became aware of all the noise out in Nature--I actually went there for peace and quiet. I started to think about the humor of river "banks" and "coins of shale." Silliness, but I was in a writing mood, so I wrote a silly poem. Here it is, bear with me and picture it in your mind:

(Untitled)
Sometimes when I'm uptight, I go to the valley
to sit on a hill;
And watch the scenery sway in the wind
as imbicilic clouds pass overhead,
And the falling sun fade the light of day;
I listen to the river grinding its banks
into coins of shale;
And smell the odious fragrance of fish
as they get caught;
Sometimes when I'm uptight, I go to the valley
to sit on a hill;
and leave to find a place to relax!

I know it is silly, but I am a Sagittarius after all (most of us love our own stories and jokes) and I was looking to relax and find quiet--but found noisy humor instead.

Even more years had passed when I walked with a friend in the exact same area next to the river. I laughed as I told her how I happen to write this goofy poem. I explained about hills and valleys, "banks" and "coins of shale" as the river wound around and continued to carve out its own shape for all these years.

As we walked through the trees toward the river's edge, something shiny on the ground caught my attention. I looked down. There were two shiny quarters lying side by side!

Isn't it funny how our thoughts and stories manifest into reality so immediately and in a magical way? It certainly blew me away!

Blessings,
Serena Yogina,
the Mystical [in]side of Michelle Star
Posted on: 2018-05-17 14:08:48. Comments

Communing with Nature

These blogs are coming from the more mystical side of Michelle Star, named Serena Yogina, representing "serenity" and Yogini, a female Yoga practitioner. Here's another story for you!

A few years ago, I decided to go for a meditation walk (some Native Americans call it a "medicine walk" as I learned from my studies in The Sacred Path, book and cards by author Jamie Sams). I headed out to the nearby Metro Parks. There is an awesome part of the woods across from Maple Grove picnic area that has a bridle trail, long and winding up and around a hill (yes, pant, pant). I love the area because of the many tall pines and the magical qualities up there.

Walking towards the west, I came to the edge of the park where I looked down on the river below. Remember, I set the intention of communing with Nature so here is where it happened. Far below was the river across from which is where you can see the Bridlewood Apartment complex, another beautiful place. I met the love of my life there, but that's another story (which IS in my book).

As I looked up into the mostly clear sky, I noticed clouds forming a spherical shape which took on the appearance of the moon, pock marks and all. There was an eye on my left that looked to be closed, as though winking at me. The other eye was open and round. As I observed this seeming moonscape in broad daylight, the sun began to shine through the open "eye", directly on me! It didn't shine anywhere else in that moment, only on me. I was amazed by the experience and felt a connection, having read about the "Cloud People" in Jamie's stories of the Native American traditions. I believe there are spirit beings within the clouds as well as everywhere else. (My spiritual teachers have told me that tornadoes are guided by Angels and only those people agreeing to be "hit" or affected by the tornado are the ones choosing that experience. We choose it all.) This was an amazing experience, having a laser of sunlight shining, putting me in the spotlight. It was a real acknowledgement and connection to me--with the moon AND the sun, and the clouds too!

So keep watching those cloud shapes, take time to daydream (or go on medicine walks, and see what comes for you!

Blessings,
Serena Yogina

Posted on: 2018-05-09 13:38:28. Comments

Skunk--in the office!

5/2/18

It's been great fun for me to discover my power animals according to the Native American traditions. In the August heat of 1995, after I returned from my Kripalu Yoga teacher training, I bought a book with cards entitled, "Medicine Cards" by Jamie Sams and David Carson. When I had arranged to give Tarot card readings at a bar for an acquaintance, she loaned me her Medicine Cards book with cards.

In the book, the author gave a layout for the cards which could be spread while in a meditative state to determine one's power or totem animals. Some believe that the qualities of these animals reside within our Chakras or consciousness, at any rate, they are chosen at a spiritual level early on and stay with us to act as guides on our Life path.

Believe it or not, one of my totems is Skunk! Who would want such an odiferous animal for a totem! But, when I studied the qualities of Skunk medicine, it seemed to make sense. Skunk doesn't need to defend itself, to fight, or be aggressive - it's mere REPUTATION keeps everyone at bay for fear of being sprayed with a repugnant fragrance that is difficult to eradicate if they are disrespected or riled. Skunks are lunar creatures and can remain relaxed, relying on their reputation to keep others from trying to intimidate them. How does this apply in the mundane, work-a-day, practical world? I'll share a story that should help you understand. I think it is hilarious, see what you think!

Starting a new job as a legal assistant in a downtown Cleveland law firm, I was required to go through orientation. I already had a lot of experience in that type of job, but it was still necessary to learn the computer programs and office procedures specific to that law firm.

I was taken through the first segment of orientation by human resources and then was handed off to another legal assistant that had been with the firm for 20 years. She was rewarded with her longevity and loyalty by being given the duty of continuing with teaching the ways of the office. The two of us sat together in an otherwise empty conference room where she, rather harshly in my estimation, went over a few procedures. She said something like, "You know the drill." To me, she seemed to consider herself superior in her position of authority, talking in a condescending manner, but I did not judge her or feel intimidated. I had enough experience in life and in law firms that I simply listened objectively knowing those that act superior are not truly coming from a place of high self-esteem. I understood.

As she talked and I listened, I noticed over my right shoulder a stream of what appeared to be liquid light shot into this woman's one eye. She exclaimed, "What did you just do to me? Something just went into my eye!" I had no idea what she was talking about, I did nothing. She bolted out of the room and came back a few minutes later after a visit to the ladies' room. When she returned, she said she wears contacts and something shot into her eye, again crediting me with the event. She said she "would never mess with me again."

Then it dawned on me. Skunk medicine! My totem animal had turned tail and sent a laser beam of liquid light into her eye. There it was, my reputation was established--and she never did "mess with me" again!

After working in the office for a while, I learned that this woman had lived with her partner for 10 years when he left her. She thought they would marry, but apparently he changed his mind. She had two nervous breakdowns over it, and was headed for a third, but the firm was not going to allow her the time off this last time. My heart went out to her in her loss and I always made sure to treat her with compassion. That was 23 years ago, but I'll never forget that experience. Every time I see a skunk outdoors, I'm reminded.
Posted on: 2018-05-02 11:58:08. Comments

Introduction

This is my first blog entry on my website. I want to test it out so if you have a question, please respond by clicking "comment" and we'll start. Happy Day!
Posted on: 2015-07-24 22:32:08. Comments