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The 5 Aspects of Holistic Healing & 40+ Tools for Your Trauma-Healing Toolbox

Long-time readers and friends have noticed some big shifts in my physical, mental, and emotional health over the last year. 2020 gave me the incredible gift of time to invest in myself and learn that trauma is at the root of almost all dis-ease — mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and ancestral. In this post I’m sharing the 5 aspects of holistic healing, 40+ tools for your trauma-healing toolbox, and why I started the Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast!

lindsey lockett in a blue jumper standing in lupines with a sun hat and her arms up

Newsflash: 2020 was a tough year for many.

It’s been difficult to spend less time with friends, to be unable to travel, to have lost employment, to have lost friends or family, to be struggling with mental health, to have kids home from school, to deal with racism and the election and everything else.

It’s been a LOT, friends.

While I recognize and validate the individual and collective pain of 2020, I must also recognize and validate that 2020 was NOT a “bad” year for me personally.

2020 was a year of massive of personal growth and transformation for me. Cocooned in my home, I was given the incredible gift of time — large pockets of time to invest in myself, to pivot my business, to learn, to heal.

I made profound discoveries about myself and my own health and well-being. 

I’ve gotten my hands on some excellent tools for my own holistic wellness — and I don’t just mean my physical wellness.

The word “wellness” is becoming increasingly meaningless to me. The health food and supplement industries have profited off that word, convincing us that with the “right” diet or supplements or practitioner, we will achieve what they’re selling. 

Which is “wellness”.

I disagree.

“Wellness” isn’t just a body free from symptoms or dis-ease.

“Wellness” isn’t found in a bottle of supplements. 

Physical wellness means very little if the soul is sick or the mind is uneasy or the feelings go unfelt or the inner child remains unheard.

We are more than physical beings. We have minds, emotions, souls, and an ancestral lineage. These are what make up our WHOLE being, so we cannot achieve “wellness” until we’ve approached our health in this holistic way.

The 5 Aspects of Holistic Healing & Why Trauma Is the Root of It All

In 2020, I reached the profound conclusion that the root of all suffering, pain, sickness, strained relationships, poverty, racism, bigotry, misogyny, and anything else evil is…

TRAUMA.

We cannot heal trauma with a keto diet and a supplement protocol. This is Toxic Wellness Culture, and I stand solidly against it. 

Yes, there is a physical component to healing trauma. I don’t believe we can heal trauma if we do not nourish our bodies.

But, we can’t stop with just nourishing our physical bodies. And that is where Toxic Wellness Culture has lied to us.

5 Aspects of Holistic Healing + Over 40 Tools for Your Trauma-Healing Toolbox

So, the purpose of this post is to share the best resources I’ve found and used during 2020 to address trauma in the same way it affects us — as WHOLE people.

As whole persons, we have a physical body, which we must care for.

We also have minds — most of us are so identified with the voice inside our heads that we’re completely cut off from our bodies, our Higher Selves, and our connection with others and nature. Our thoughts rule everything.

Additionally, we have emotions. We have real feelings — painful, difficult, uncomfortable feelings — that we do everything in our power to NOT feel. These very valid emotions are suppressed and silenced. Emotions are “energy in motion”, and it is scientific fact that energy doesn’t just go away. It changes forms, but it doesn’t stop. Emotions of grief, disappointment, abandonment, loneliness, fear, confusion, anger, hate, and more get trapped inside our bodies. Over time, these trapped emotions can manifest symptoms of physical dis-ease.

As whole people, we have thousands of generations of ancestors, whose lives made our very existence possible. Scientific research is proving that trauma is passed down in families, even altering genetic expression. All of us have skeletons in our family closet — known, unknown, and forgotten. These inherited family traumas need to be acknowledged, grieved, felt, and healed.

Finally, we are spiritual beings. Religion aside, we each have a soul — that part of ourselves where our intuition lives, where we sense our connection to something bigger than ourselves, where Love lives. Because of toxic systems like religion, capitalism, and patriarchy, we are cut off from our true essence, the spirit or soul that is part of the great universal consciousness.

Trauma affects each of these 5 aspects of our being-ness: the physical, mental, emotional, ancestral, and spiritual.

Therefore, if we are only addressing our physical beings with healthy food and supplements, yet still experience mystery symptoms, behavioral habits we can’t change, and spiritual sickness, we aren’t addressing ourselves holistically.

1. Healing Our Physical Beings

I’m beginning with this aspect of healing because I think it is the one most of my readers will understand the most (ie. it’s the one that’s the least “woo woo”).

I’m 100% done recommending special diets and supplements. The hamster wheel of chasing symptoms with protocols and practitioners and restrictive diets led me absolutely nowhere, so I stepped off of it.

I haven’t taken a supplement other than magnesium since March 2020 — for real. 🙂 And yet, I have experienced deep physical healing.

How is this possible?

To be clear, I can’t give credit to only the physical stuff. I have done “physical” things, but I didn’t stop there.

The Autonomic Nervous System

In 2020, I learned about the autonomic nervous system and cumulative brain injury that occurs with trauma, particularly childhood and developmental trauma.

The autonomic nervous system is responsible for all the things our bodies do without our conscious effort or thought: digestion, heart beat, blood pressure, hormone production, immune system, and sleep cycles. The autonomic nervous system can become hypersensitive and less resilient with trauma, so physical symptoms of autonomic nervous system dysfunction occur. 

These are too numerous to list here, but the symptoms of ANS dysfunction that have been the worst for me include: anxiety, insomnia, hormone imbalances, brain fog, constant hunger, dizziness when standing, and fatigue.

I have been able to significantly reduce all of these symptoms in both severity and duration because I have learned about the ANS and taken tangible steps to heal it physically while continuing to deeply nourish my body.

Here are my recommendations for learning more about the ANS, healing it, and deeply nourishing the body:

The Nemechek Protocol

The Wim Hof Method & Cold Plunges

Deep Nourishment & Other Healing Tools

2. Healing Our Mental Beings

Our thoughts create our reality. And, because of the Universal Law of Attraction which states “like attracts like”, we attract whatever we’re constantly thinking about because thought is energy.

We will never stop our minds from thinking. Thinking is exactly what they’re supposed to do.

Additionally, I want to be really clear that I do not believe that simply changing your thoughts will change everything in your life. I don’t subscribe to “toxic positivity” at all.

However, we can change our minds — and this can have massive effects in our overall health. Here are the books and resources I recommend:

3. Healing Our Emotional Beings

Perhaps the most penetrating discovery I made in 2020 is that I wasn’t very good at feeling my feelings.

I was good at suppressing my feelings. I was even better at distracting myself from my feelings by scrolling on my phone, turning on Netflix, projecting on to others, or engaging in some other mindless behavior.

In 2020, I learned about the embodiment of emotions. Our emotions are energy in motion. They aren’t “good” or “bad”; they just are. 

Energy is in constant movement. It is never still or blocked. Emotions are energy. Therefore, they must move.

However, in our attempts to avoid feeling our feelings, to “keep it all together”, we have lost our disconnection with our emotions and also with moving them through our bodies.

Here are some excellent resources for learning how to get in touch with your feelings, feel them, release them, and experience far-reaching physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, and even ancestral shifts.

Emotional Healing Resources & Tools

Overall Mental/Emotional Health and Personal Growth Resources

4. Healing Our Spiritual Beings

Soul sickness is rampant. We are all soul-sick to some degree. 

Soul sickness manifests as anxiety and depression, other mental disorders such as schizophrenia, addiction, and even unexplained physical symptoms.

Because of the collective and individual trauma caused by religion, many of us have been brain-washed to believe that our spiritual lives are full of sin and evil, which causes hopelessness, self-deprecation, and a works-based existence.

I believe each of our souls chose to inhabit this planet at this time in these physical bodies. I also believe that our souls incarnate many times, gaining wisdom and lessons for individual and collective evolution through our lifetimes.

To learn more about this and spiritual healing, check out these resources:

5. Healing Our Ancestral Lineages

I would not exist if the thousands of ancestors before me had not existed. If one of them had died a day earlier or been barren or lived in another part of the world, I wouldn’t be here.

The same is true of your life and your ancestry.

The Western world is chronically disconnected from our ancestors. Our culture has not taught us how to honor them, soak up their wisdom, or connect with them in life or after death.

Yet, what happened in the lives of those who came before us affects us. Generational or ancestral trauma runs through each of our lineages. Studies have shown that events such as the Holocaust can cause such deep trauma that it is passed from one generation to the next in much the same way that blue eyes or red hair are passed down.

Then, sickness like addiction, poverty, abuse, and physical ailments begin to run in families and no one understands why. Ancestral trauma is WHY. 

Our ancestry is just as much a part of us as our emotions, our minds, our bodies, and our spirits. It’s time we reconnected to those who came before us, acknowledge the pain and trauma, and heal what we can. Here are my favorite resources:

holistic trauma healing podcast logo

Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast

If you’ve been a long-time reader or follower of mine, you’ve probably noticed that things have been pretty quiet here on the blog. I haven’t published very much new content in 2020, especially the latter half of 2020.

That’s because… I’ve started a podcast!

The Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast was birthed slowly during 2020 with the first episode airing in mid-October.

My goal with the Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast is to curate a toolbox of trauma-healing tools — resources that support holistic trauma healing.

I don’t believe therapy is enough to support our trauma-healing journeys. Nor is medication — though both certainly have their place!

A toolbox must be full of many different types of tools to get the job done. Sometimes we need a hammer, sometimes a flat-head screwdriver, sometimes a socket wrench, sometimes a drill. And usually, every job or project requires multiple tools.

Trauma-healing is the same way. Only using therapy as a trauma-healing tool would be like only using a hammer to build a house. You simply wouldn’t get the job done.

So, on the Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast, I talk about ALL topics and tools for healing trauma! The podcast provides resources, practitioners, and stories to support you wherever you are.

Some of the resources and tools won’t resonate with you; some will. The point is to take what you need when you need it.

The podcast also provides information about the autonomic nervous system so that you have the language and literacy of the nervous system. 

I fully believe that information about the nervous system should be available and accessible to everyone — not just people who can afford therapy.

The Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast is where I share the profound discoveries I’ve made on my own path to healing trauma. I believe, with the right tools, we can move out of the victim role and into the role of empowered, conscious creator of our best possible realities. The podcast offers hope, healing insights, and practical tips as you get to the root of how trauma has affected every part of your existence and how to weave a new web of life that isn’t ruled by the past.

Listen and subscribe to the Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast here!

Despite all its challenges and struggles, I truly hope 2020 was a transformative year for you. And I wish you the BEST in 2021!

December 31, 2020