A Soul-Based Model for Deep, Integrative Change
- Brainz Magazine
- 45 minutes ago
- 8 min read
Written by Eamon Willow Davies, Shamanic Practitioner
Eamon Willow Davies is a shamanic practitioner, storyteller, and artist with over 20 years of experience weaving together the fields of mental health, spirituality, and the creative arts. They offer integrative soul work from a shamanic perspective through Calon y Ddraig, their private practice based out of Austin, TX.
Have you ever had one of those recurring patterns in life that feels like your nemesis? Maybe it’s a particular relationship dynamic that repeats itself no matter who your partner is. A stuck emotional state, like rage, longing, or grief, or an addictive behavior that you find yourself falling back into over and over. Maybe you’ve tried self-help or spiritual approaches, talk therapy, and even trauma processing modalities, and yet some stubborn part of that pattern still persists. If any of this sounds familiar, you are not alone. Keep reading to learn more about growth and change from a soul-based perspective and how you can start to shift the lens through which you understand these recurrences in ways that allow you to begin to free them.
Levels of processing and change
While cognitive and behavioral interventions certainly have their place, function, and purpose, they are often more focused on creating change at levels that are closer to the surface. This kind of change can be particularly useful for achieving short-term gains and driving direct forward movement. It often includes more prescribed structures that can help build momentum and visible change in the outer world, which helps increase your sense of personal efficacy, confidence, and strength here and now, as well as in the short-term future.
When interventions at the level of the body and felt sense are introduced, the work begins to descend in depth. As it becomes deeper, the amount of prescribed structure generally decreases, and perceived forward movement in the outer world often slows. This slowing is due to the energy needed for growth being channeled toward the witnessing, metabolization, and integration of frozen and forgotten parts of the inner world that were previously exiled in the service of survival. As the body is often heralded as the portal to the soul, felt-sense trauma modalities (such as EMDR, Brainspotting, and Somatic Experiencing), mindful parts work modalities (such as Internal Family Systems and Hakomi), and movement-based approaches (such as Dance Movement Therapy) can open the door to some very important healing work that includes the level of the soul.
Blocks to deeper soul healing
Where these modalities sometimes stop short of the deeper aspects of soul healing and growth is when a practitioner or trainer may not be equipped to create and hold a container that includes space for images and experiences of the soul from past-life and ancestral perspectives, as well as experiences with intrusive unseen energies that may sit on an individual’s energy field, disrupting their psychoemotional and even physical health in the present. This phenomenon is not an uncommon experience for those with more sensitive nervous systems, whose energetic boundaries tend to be more porous in nature.
I spent nearly 20 years as a licensed mental health provider, with over a decade of those dedicated to advanced training in somatic and movement-oriented work, and found it extremely difficult to find training spaces where I could bring in and talk freely about the past-life and ancestral aspects of my soul experience that were very much alive in my imagery and in the felt-sense reality of my body in the present.
Gratefully, about 18 years ago, I met a shamanic practitioner and teacher, Karen Hutchins of Cicada Recovery Services, in Central Texas, who took me under her wing. She not only had space for my past-life experiences and those of my ancestry emerging from my very bones, but also had frameworks and tools to help me turn toward and work with this material in ways that felt in alignment with my soul’s purpose. This work created some striking and hope-filled changes in my life and in my relational dynamics with my family and lineages, and soon began to ripple into my work and approaches with clients. It has since become the center point of what I do and offer as healing work in the world.
And so, this brings us back to the issue of those stubborn and recurring patterns.
The growth lines of soul healing
As I began to weave together the worlds of Western mental health, somatic and movement-oriented approaches, and shamanic practice, there came an evening over a decade ago when I was on the phone with a colleague who had called to consult about a client situation that was evoking feelings of stuckness within her. As I listened and felt into the situation she was describing, my eyes drifted out the window to my back porch, where I found an opossum moving in these repeating yet advancing circles in the cold night air beneath the lit faery lights. At that moment, the opossum’s movement pattern felt like a teaching coming directly from the natural world. Through it, I saw the images of two overlapping growth lines that brought an anchoring to the situation being discussed on the phone and offered a deeply compassionate lens with which to view it from a broader perspective of time and healing.
I grew to refer to these two overlying lines as the Masculine and Feminine Growth Lines. Please note that I use the terms “Masculine” and “Feminine” here not in reference to a particular gender identity or expression but as Nature principles and archetypes.
And so, with this as our starting point, let’s first look at the Masculine Growth Line.
The Masculine Growth Line
The Masculine Growth Line is governed by the archetype of the Sacred Hunter. Imagine you are a hunter using a bow and arrow to zero in on what you seek. As you release the bowstring, the arrow sails through the air until it finds its mark. Now, also imagine that, tied to the tail of that arrow, is a long string, one end of which remains with you. As the arrow anchors into its mark, you pick up the end of the string and pull it taut. This string now traces a direct line from you to what you seek. This direct line is the Masculine Growth Line, a plumb line, if you will, that forms a sort of magnetized skeleton structure along which the Feminine Growth Line follows with its less direct path.
The Feminine Growth Line
The Feminine Growth Line is governed by the archetype of the spiral. It feels important to note here that the relationship between the Feminine and the spiral has long been named and honored by folklorists and depth psychologists alike, as I was first introduced to this relationship through the potent writings of Jungian Analyst and Storyteller Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés in her seminal work, Women Who Run With the Wolves, several decades ago.
To illustrate how this Feminine spiral works with the straight-lined Masculine, imagine you are that most classic of spiraling toys, the Slinky. Now picture yourself stretched out along the full length of the masculine growth line you just created above. With each successive turn of the coiling metal, you wind yourself further and further around and along that direct line until, eventually, you, too, end up at the place marked by the arrow. This spiraling path of the Slinky traces the Feminine Growth Line, and it is the key to deep integrative growth and change.
If you step back from this spiraling and view it now out in front of you, it becomes clear that this line includes successive and advancing circles that involve forward movement for a little more than half of their progression and then backward or regressive movement for the remaining bit of each cycle. So, during those times when you find yourself caught back in that old familiar pattern that you wish would just go away, you are actually in one of the regressive loops of the Feminine Growth Line. And, believe it or not, this is where the magic lives!
Mindful regression is key
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I find myself in one of these regressive places with an old pattern, it is all too easy for the voices of the critic and the victim archetypes to run amok in my head. They tend to piggyback off one another in rapid succession, often taking me down an all-too-familiar descent through a rabbit hole of shame-filled self-talk that can lead to emotional and physical dysregulation and collapse.
While not exactly fun, this is often the beginning of the magic, as it is what first garners the attention of my inner parent. As this adult self arrives on the scene (however long that takes) and brings with it mindfulness and curiosity, I begin to be able to step out of the chaotic emotion and despairing question of “Why is this happening to me again?” and move toward the heart-centered question of “Who has brought me back to this place again?” Following the curiosity of this latter question into the felt-sense experience of my body opens the doors for the imagery and memories of the forgotten story beneath this activation to emerge.
We regress to retrieve
Ultimately, the purpose of the regressive parts of the cycling of the Feminine Growth Line is to retrieve, to retrieve parts of yourself that may still be frozen in time and space as a result of earlier traumas in this life, to retrieve parts that may have been exiled and separated from you for many, many lifetimes, to retrieve hidden or forgotten stories of the ancestors so that frozen ancestral energy might be thawed and returned to vital flow within the line, from which all may benefit. These are all different forms that soul retrieval can take.
Retrieval requires time, as it calls parts and energy home that have been absent for years, generations, and even lifetimes. This requires the restructuring of your physical body in subtle and, sometimes, not-so-subtle ways to make space for the energy returning. Sometimes you may be able to integrate this on your own. Sometimes, you may need the support of a practitioner or therapist who is more familiar with the landscape of soul retrieval integration.
So, why do it?
This may all sound like a lot of hard work, and, well, it is. So why do it? The reason that this kind of work is worth doing is that when the parts that had to be separated are allowed to return, they bring back with them the soul and energy gifts they took to keep safe. These gifts can include (but are certainly not limited to) things like joy, playfulness, spontaneity, and voice.
Also, as you call these parts and their gifts home, the changes you are making along the Feminine Growth Line become deeply anchored intrinsically. This means that, by the time your Feminine and Masculine Growth Lines converge at the arrow of your seeking, the change you have lived into is deeply integrated, rock solid, and nobody can take it from you!
Deep, integrative change is possible
Deep, integrative change at the level of the soul is possible and offers the promise of a greater felt sense of your own wholeness, vitality, connection, and belonging. Having the right support as you navigate the lived reality of your overlying Feminine and Masculine Growth lines can make all the difference.
Feeling a resonance with this model? Schedule an opening conversation with me here to learn more.
Check out upcoming group opportunities, community rituals, and events on my website.
Read more from Eamon Willow Davies
Eamon Willow Davies, Shamanic Practitioner
Eamon Willow Davies offers integrative soul work from a shamanic perspective from their home base in Austin, TX. An emissary of the Sacred Feminine, Eamon Willow's work weaves the threads of conscious embodiment and the rewilding of instinct, the rekindling of right relationship with the Land and all of her beings, and resourceful connection and collaborative partnership with the ancestors altogether on the loom of story, archetype, and remembrance. A complex depth-creature at heart, Eamon Willow is passionate about creating healing spaces and containers where fellow soul journeyers are invited to claim the bigness and depth of all that weaves together within them, including current life, past life, and ancestral lineage threads.
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