When the Body Holds What We Couldn't.

Over the decades of my life - through my own healing and walking beside others - I’ve come to understand something quietly powerful:

That the body does not forget.

Even when the mind does its best to move on.

Even when we tell ourselves we’re fine.

Even when years have passed and life looks functional from the outside.

The body remembers what we didn’t get to say.

What we didn’t get to feel safely.

What we swallowed.

What we endured.

When emotion isn’t allowed to move, when we feel we are unable to express our experience - for so many different reasons - it doesn’t disappear.

It settles.

It becomes density. Tightness. Heat. Cold. Constriction.

It becomes what many traditions describe as stagnant or stored energy - life force that never got to complete its natural expression.

Not dramatic. Not mystical.

Just unfinished business.

Where Emotions Can Live in the Body.

Ancient systems of medicine understood that emotions are not just thoughts - they are currents of energy. 

When that current is interrupted, it gathers somewhere.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, different emotional states are associated with specific organ systems:

• Frustration and anger with the liver
• Grief with the lungs
• Fear with the kidneys, urinary system and the womb.
• Worry with the spleen
• Shock and heartbreak with the heart

You can feel this in your own body.

Anger rises and heats the liver, the body and the mind.  Grief collapses, deflates the chest and shortens the breath.  Fear drops into the belly and lower back - settling in the urinary system and the womb.  Shock closes and armors the heart.

If our emotions weren’t safe to express at the time - if we had to be the strong one, the quiet one, the good one - or even the one that was powerless and unable to say or do anything - that energy can stay stored.

Until the body feels safe enough to move it.

But there is yet another piece to this puzzle. We also carry energy that may not have its origins in the lifetime that we are currently experiencing. 

The Ancestral Threads We Carry.

There is something even more tender woven into this. Ancestral energy patterns. In my experience, they can take two forms.

Direct physical lineage.

When your mother was inside your grandmother’s womb, she was already carrying the immature eggs that would one day become you.

Which means you were once present in your grandmother’s body.

Three generations, held at once.

Science now speaks of epigenetics - how trauma can influence gene expression across generations. But long before science named it, women knew this instinctively.  We inherit more than eye colour.  We inherit nervous systems.  We inherit coping strategies.  We inherit silence.

Sometimes what feels like “my anxiety” or “my bracing” has older roots. The unresolved trauma or experiences of your physical relatives - your grandmother, your mother, your great grandmother etc - can become a part of the energy you carry.

Spiritual ancestral lineage

And, just as we carry the imprint of our physical ancestors, we also may carry the echoes of our spiritual lineage. The unresolved grief, fears, and patterns from ourselves and those who came before us - across many lifetimes, across multiple realities and planes of existence, leave subtle traces in our energetic field. These can be energetic imprints woven into the body we bring into this lifetime. Waiting to be acknowledged, felt, and released.

In my work with shamanic healing, and my personal experiences, I have seen how these spiritual remnants can shape the ways we move through life - the invisible hesitations, the inherited blocks, the sense of carrying something too heavy for one lifetime alone. Healing, then, becomes not only personal, but ancestral and cosmic: we have the opportunity to honor what has come before, release what no longer serves, and step more fully into the life and body we are blessed to inhabit now.

This is not a story of burden.

It is actually a story of power.

Because if patterns can travel down these two lineages, then healing can travel upwards, back through them. When we heal - our ancestors surround us. Both physical and spiritual. Our healing can release energetic patterns across many lineages.

When I soften what was braced…

When I feel what was suppressed…

When I regulate what was dysregulated…

My entire lineage has the ability to heal.

Moving What Has Been Stuck.

You may ask - how do I know what energetic patterns are now carried in my body from my ancestors - how do I find out what happened and what I should do about it?

This has been my experience.   

You do not need to know. You need to work with what is exactly in front of you. Your life experiences will bring up the exact circumstances in your current life that are ready to be relased and healed for you and your lineages.  Maybe you will be blessed with an understanding of things that have occurred in the past,  maybe you won't.

But what I do know is that it is not necessary to understand all the things that have been experienced in order to heal and integrate the energy. Below are some of the things I have found helpful, when my life brings up issues I find challenging - where the opportunity is put in front of me (through what I experience in this life) to grow, expand, heal and integrate. I believe it doesn't matter if the origin is now or in the past lineages - work with what is right in front of you - and you will help heal generations of your ancestors.

There are many ways to gently move stored energy.

• Inner child work - meeting the younger self who learned it wasn’t safe to feel.
• Breathwork - softening the diaphragm where grief often lodges.
• Somatic therapy - allowing the body to complete survival responses that were interrupted.
• Meditation - creating enough safety for emotions to surface without overwhelming us. This a big one for me. I engage in meditation daily. Not the middle eastern type of meditation, where you strive to empty your mind - but the contemplative type - where I seek guidance for my current challenges and how I might heal and integrate the shadow nature of myself that often arises in circumstances that deeply affect me.
• Movement - grounding, shaking, walking, swaying - reminding the body that it is allowed to flow again.

And then there are the plants. Plants are such gentle allies. I love the word that I learnt when I did my shamanic training Mitákuye Oyásin (pronounced roughly mee-TAH-koo-yeh oh-YAH-shin) - the Lakota phrase that is often translated as “All My Relations.”

It is a central concept in Lakota spirituality.

The meaning is deep: everything in creation is interconnected - humans, animals, plants, ancestors, the land, and the spiritual world.

Saying it is a way of honoring that interconnectedness and acknowledging that our actions ripple across the web of life.

It’s not just a saying. It’s a worldview: that we are part of a vast family of life, and we carry responsibility and reverence for all our relations. Plants are one of my most beloved relations. To work with them is a great honor. If we are open - they can tell us many things and walk with us in our journeys of integration.

Plants do not force release.

They create safety.

They create movement.

They create openings in places that have been closed for a long time.

Below are some of the allies I return to again and again - not just for what they do physically, but for how they work spiritually and energetically.

Tulsi - The Sacred Regulator

Tulsi feels like exhaling after years of holding your breath.

When stress and frustration and anger have tightened the liver energy, she brings clarity and steadiness. She helps us step back from the story and reconnect to something larger than the trigger.

Her gift is calm strength.

She doesn’t dig up trauma. She builds resilience so we can meet it.

Dandelion Root - The Emotional Digester

Dandelion grows through the cracks in the concrete! She is the ultimate example of resilience. 

Where resentment has hardened or unspoken anger has turned inward, Dandelion helps to move it - slowly, honestly.

She helps us digest what was hard to swallow.

Her gift is truthful release.

Rose - The Heart Softener

One of my absolute favorites. I put her in many of my blends for this exact reason. Her essential oil is my favorite perfume - just her scent reminds me to soften, that I don't need to be constantly braced against the world.

When the heart has closed from shock, betrayal, or grief, Rose opens it one petal at a time.

She reminds us that softness is not weakness. That tenderness can be strength.

Rose allows grief to move without flooding the system.

Her gift is safe vulnerability.

Motherwort - The Fierce Embrace.

I also love the energy of Motherwort. Think of ferocious Mother Bear. This energy has it's place too.

Motherwort steadies the heart when emotions feel too big.

There is something ancient and maternal in her energy - a feeling of being held through intensity rather than overwhelmed by it. She always says - you can do this.

She whispers, “You are allowed to feel this.”

Her gift is grounded courage. She strengthens the heart with bravery and courage.

Mullein - The Breath Restorer

Grief often lives in the lungs.

Mullein gently widens the chest where sorrow has collapsed it. She invites the breath back into spaces that have been braced for a long time.

She does not rush the process.

Her gift is spaciousness.

Ashwagandha - The Root of Safety

When fear has lived in the system for years, the body forgets how to feel safe.

Ashwagandha reconnects us to the ground beneath us. It nourishes what chronic vigilance has depleted.

The gift is deep, cellular steadiness.

Nettle - The Boundary Builder.

One of my absolute favorites! You only need to go near nettle to experience her powerful boundaries. She says - yes I sting!

Fear and prolonged stress often settle deep - in the kidneys, in the lower back, in the pelvic area.

For many women, trauma often imprints on the urinary system - the part of us responsible for release, for fluidity, for boundaries.

When boundaries were crossed…

When we overrid our intuition …

When we had to stay hyper-alert…

The lower body can grip.

Nettle works here not by forcing emotion out, but by rebuilding strength from within.

Rich, steady, and mineral-dense, she restores reserves. Energetically, she strengthens the field around us - helping us feel less porous, less depleted.

Her gift is resilient safety.

Not bracing.

Not collapse.

But quiet inner solidity.

Shatavari - The Womb Balancer

For many women, trauma settles in the pelvic area - the womb space where creation, sexuality, intuition, and boundaries live.

When this area has held silence, suppression, or depletion, it can feel heavy, disconnected, or contracted.

Shatavari moves with deep gentleness.

She does not force release. She softens what has hardened and restores flow where energy has become stagnant. Energetically, she nourishes the feminine waters and helps thaw places that have felt frozen for a long time.

Her gift is sacred softness.

A remembering that the womb is not only a place of memory - but of renewal and creativity. 

🩷🩷🩷

Healing Is Not Forcing. This work is not about dramatic release. It is about creating enough safety that the body chooses to release what it has been holding.

Plants regulate.

They nourish.

They soften.

They strengthen.

And sometimes healing is a flood of tears, and sometimes it is not.

To work with the energetic nature of plants - just be open to it. Take the plant in whatever form you feel drawn too. Thank her/him for walking with you on your journey. Ask them if you may recieve their gifts and give them one back too - give something back to nature. Be more mindful. More aware of how what you do impacts our Great Mother. I have another blog you can search for on my website about tea ceremonies - you might like to read that to get an idea of how to connect with plants in a sacred space. It doesn't have to be much. Just an acknowledgement and a heartfelt thankyou is all it takes.

The good news is that you don't need to energetically connect to plants for them to work. They will do their work anyway. Thats how giving they are.

Healing can take place. 

Most importantly - do what feels right for you. You can choose to seek others who may help you with this work - or not.

Sometimes it is simply this:

A deeper breath.

A softened jaw.

A pelvic floor that unclenches.

A nervous system that no longer feels constantly on guard.

A heart that becomes less guarded and more open.

Maybe the work you are doing now is not only yours.

Maybe when you soften your liver, open your lungs, steady your heart, and rebuild your kidneys - you are completing something that began generations and lifetimes ago.

Maybe you are the one that has agreed to do part of this work for your lineage. 

And maybe the plants are here because they have always known how to help us come home. 

Love Kim 🩷🩷🩷