and extraordinary results are intact, chronicling the children’s triumph, awakening and healing.
To make the work easier and more user-friendly, I’ve organized the book into three main sections:
1. The first section is an introduction to the work. It includes the children’s stories, their issues and how they resolved them, ultimately teaching us how to liberate our own shining potential.
2. The second section focuses primarily on our little ones – five to seven year olds. It includes in-depth instructions and then a specially designed therapeutic fairytale-like story that works at a subliminal level with the youngsters. It is like a spiritual adventure and can be read as a bedtime story. Kids love it! Even if you intend working only with older children, I strongly recommend you read this section in full, as it contains many of the teachings on which the older kids’ work is predicated.
3. Section three is primarily for working with older kids – eight to twelve year olds – and also has some instructions for working with teenagers. It includes the actual Kids’ Journey process together with in-depth instructions.
Finally, if your children inspire you to go on your own Journey, which undoubtedly they will, I recommend you read the original book for adults: The Journey: An Extraordinary Guide for Healing Your Life and Setting Yourself Free.
Journeywork was originally born from my own direct experience of healing from a large tumour without drugs or surgery in just six-and-a-half weeks’ time. In 1992 I was diagnosed with a large tumour in my uterus. Having served for 15 years in the natural health field as both a teacher/seminar leader and therapist, it was the last thing I had ever expected to take place. I thought I had been doing everything ‘right’. I’d attended countless seminars, therapy sessions and had done a huge amount of emotional / physical clearing work – I’d definitely dropped a lot of my emotional ‘baggage’. Physically, I lived all the principles I believed in: I meditated daily, did daily exercise, ate clean, vibrant, whole, organic vegetarian food, drank pure filtered water and received regular massage and bodywork. More important than all these things, I felt fulfilled and at peace in my life: I was deeply in love with my husband of 18 years, the kids had been brought up with what I trusted were wholesome and empowering belief systems, and my work was hugely uplifting and satisfying – I travelled worldwide teaching tens of thousands of people how to create vibrant health. I was a living example of all that I believed in: I looked vibrant and healthy, and felt that way inside and out. So the last thing I ever expected was to be diagnosed with a large tumour.
I was sent reeling and was catapulted on a profound healing journey that ultimately led me to face an emotional issue that had remained blocked, stored in my body for years. In freeing that old cell memory, my body was finally able to go about its own natural process of healing.
The Journey was born from my deep desire to share with humanity what Grace had so generously blessed me with: the means to get direct access to our souls, to uncover old repressed cell memories, to release the stored emotions and finally to forgive and complete with these issues so that our bodies and our beings can go about the process of healing naturally.
In the original Journey book you join me on my personal healing journey. You are guided step-by-step through the two mind – body healing processes which were born from that experience: the Emotional Journey and the Physical Journey. And you are freshly inspired as you read how others have found true freedom and healing in their own process work.
From the moment The Journey was published the work caught fire internationally. Currently hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have read the book, and more importantly are using the process work successfully and fruitfully in their lives. With the Emotional Journey people have successfully cleared issues of grief, loss, abandonment, depression, jealousy, betrayal, low self-esteem, sexual blocks, fear and anxiety. They’ve cleared chronic fatigue, fear of criticism, long-held guilt, issues of abuse, hostility and rage. With the Physical Journey people have naturally healed from a variety of health concerns, including allergies, acute asthma, eczema, cancer of many kinds, Crohn’s disease, tumours, fibroids, sports injuries, arthritis, migraines and even the common cold.
It has been deeply moving to know that so many thousands from all walks of life have successfully participated in their own healing journeys. And it’s been equally rewarding to see so many therapeutic and medical practitioners offer Journeywork alongside their own healing work. Cancer centres, orthodox hospitals, alternative health practices, doctors, nurses, homoeopaths, herbalists, kinesiologists, chiropractors, physiotherapists, massage therapists, nutritionists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts – people in nearly every field of healing, both emotional and physical, have felt free to incorporate Journeywork into their own specialist areas.
This book gives you new, fresh ways of using Journeywork with kids. It’s your invitation to partner your child in liberating their shining potential, and I pray it will also be a catalyst for you to begin your own healing journey.
It’s time we all took the lampshades off our lights.
1 Discovering Our Shining Potential
I recently received a heart-rending letter from a deeply concerned mother of an eight-year-old boy, Matthew. Carla wrote that the school board had come to her about her son. He wasn’t keeping up with other students in his class. He couldn’t focus or pay attention, and often he appeared withdrawn from the other kids. He’d been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and dyslexia, and his teacher was apologetic and regretful, but she believed Matthew was too dysfunctional to continue at normal primary school. He needed to go to a school for children with learning disorders, as he was beginning to hold back the rest of his class.
Carla was stunned, horrified that they considered her son not only incapable of functioning in a normal school but so disabled that he needed to go to a special school. She just couldn’t and wouldn’t believe that her son was ‘stupid’ or abnormal. There must be some mistake, some explanation. She pleaded with the school board and begged that Matthew be allowed to stay at school just one more term. She promised to get him daily tutoring after school and, being a physical therapist herself, she would do regular therapy with her son. She’d also look into getting other alternative therapies that might help.
Reluctantly, the school board agreed, but with the proviso that if Matthew’s grades did not improve significantly by the end of term then, regrettably, they would be compelled to let him go and would recommend alternative schools which might be more suitable for him.
Carla gave Matthew her all. In addition to daily tutoring following school, she tried other therapies, including her own field, kinesiology. Matthew’s grades began to improve marginally … but not enough. Carla became desperate to reach her son, to find out what was really going on. She just knew in her bones that he was a beautiful and intelligent soul. He had always been a bright child. Even though he had been diagnosed with dyslexia, it did not mean that Matthew was inherently stupid. She just knew that there must be some emotional blockage that was holding him back. He was full of potential – she’d seen it from the time he was a toddler; sometimes that potential, that brilliance, would come out at the most unexpected moments. Yet she’d also sensed that there was something holding him back. She had noticed that often Matthew seemed quiet and isolated, shut down and emotionally unavailable. She just didn’t know how to get through to him, but with all her being she wanted to help him take this lampshade off his light. She was determined to do whatever it took to help her son find himself, to liberate his true nature, so that he could shine again.
Carla began to pray fervently to find a way to get through to her son. It was at this time that, by chance, she came across The Journey. She read the book from cover to cover – she could not put it down. It spoke deeply to her own wisdom. It detailed simple and powerful processes for opening into our