Tag: Brenda Sutherland

  • What is Held In and What is Held Out?

    What is Held In and What is Held Out?

    Many years ago, whilst immersed in a silent retreat, in the bathroom of all places, I asked a question as my partner at the time walked past. The answer resulted in everything disappearing, and I experienced that we are consciousness itself. I saw how lifetimes don’t exist, there is no time and no space it is simply all now, I saw how we are never born and never die — only the body does. I have never been the same since.

    The question was: How can I experience nothing when my enlightened teacher walks past, and nothing when my partner walks past?

    My whole being replied, “Because you are nothing.”

    I laughed so deeply and with pure joy that everything disappeared.

    As a therapist, and for many gurus, how do you invite someone — including yourself when the ego takes over again — to that place of consciousness itself? Simple, sublime; there is nothing and everything at the same time. We can point to it, yet the moment the mind tries to grasp it, we are back in the mind.

    How do we navigate feelings, thoughts, and pain bodies enough to quieten them so we can experience what never leaves us, what the mind continually overlooks in its searching?

    I have discovered a technique that honours the premise that we are simply energy vibrating at a certain frequency. Scientists understand this in terms of viruses. Each virus vibrates at a certain frequency. Thoughts vibrate at a certain frequency, and we can observe their effect on water. Feelings vibrate at a certain frequency, and we experience their effects within our bodies.

    They are like radio waves moving through us, but sometimes they get stuck and we begin vibrating at that frequency. This can be distressing because it is not the vibration of who we truly are. We call this suffering.

    This is what we hold in.

    Which also raises the question:

    What do you hold out?

    What delicious feelings, experiences, and sensations do you hold out?

    If radio waves come and go, then the good stuff moves through you too.

    Joel Young created a very quick technique called ‘Non-personal awareness’ that the mind will likely dismiss because of its simplicity. Yet it is a powerful process that meets the frequency of the thought, feeling, or pain body and disengages it from our being — in other words, sending it back where it came from, letting it move through you easefully.

    Want to know how?

    It is simple.

    It involves six sentences.

    Yep. Simple and elegant.

    Here’s how

    1. Firstly, grab a pen and paper, or journal or your phone so you can record your own dialogue.
    2. Secondly, think of something that challenges you, constricts you, that you hold in. Just vomit it onto the page, or by speaking into your phone on record, and see what words, feelings, behaviours, thoughts, sounds, movements appear that are paramount, repeated. What is the fundamental thing. It does not have to make sense. You do not have to analyse it or figure it out, it is just energy stuck.
    3. Take one of these which may have sounds and movements with it , without analysing it or trying to understand it or find parallels with your childhood, no interpretation needed, simply bring it into these sentences. For example, I may have deep feeling that people don’t care about me and a hand movement, and a sigh that goes with it.
      • Simply say (whilst adding the sigh and hand movement)
        • This people don’t care about me
        • This energy people don’t care about me
        • This pure energy people don’t care about me’
        • ‘This pure energy people don’t care about me is not personal’ (3 times)
        • This pure energy people don’t care about me is not personal’
        • This pure energy people don’t care about me is not personal’
        • This pure energy people don’t care about me is not personal and I am willing to experience it’
    4. Allow space for the sensations to arise, you can go as slow as you like. You may say the last sentence again.
    5. Wait until you feel the clarity appear again and maybe a natural aliveness arises.
    6. Now if energy is held in and it flows out, what is held out? What energy would you like to replace the energy that was held in that has now gone with? Maybe joy, ease, love, peace…find yours. Sometimes it arises naturally after the first part of the exercise. For example: ‘Connection’ arose after the first part of the exercise.
    7. Take this feeling, sensation, whatever it is and bring it into the same sentences:
      • Simply say (adding your feeling in)
        • ‘This connection’
        • ‘This energy of connection’
        • ‘This pure energy of connection’
        • ‘This pure energy of connection is not personal’ (3 times)
        • This pure energy of connection is not personal and I am willing to experience it’

    Simply notice what happens.

    There is no need for analysing, interpretation, or fixing.

    Simply experience the energy moving through you.

    Some people have trauma leave their body, which can be overwhelming, I would simply allow the body to shake, cry and not to fear the movement of the energy. Simply repeat the sentences slowly.

    30 Day Challenge

    In this time in history, we are continually bombarded by radio waves — information, thoughts, pain bodies, feelings, and countless electronic frequencies that can interfere with our connection to our own true vibrational frequency.

    Perhaps this is an opportunity.

    An opportunity to allow these energies to move out and to let who you truly are move in.

    So here is the challenge.

    For 30 days, use your phone, journal, or a piece of paper and spend just a few minutes each day with this process.

    Notice what you are holding in.

    Everyday bring something that you hold in to the challenge by using the non-personal awareness exercise. Remember to invite yourself to experience what you hold out too after you have completed the first round, or a few rounds of what energy you hold in.

    You may discover that the thoughts, feelings, stories, and sensations that once seemed so personal are simply energy moving through awareness.

    Perhaps beneath the noise, beneath the stories, beneath the endless radio waves moving through the mind and body, there is a natural clarity, aliveness, peace, love, connection, or joy waiting to be experienced.

    Not because you created it.

    Not because you earned it.

    But because it is already here.

    The challenge is simple.

    Thirty days.

    A few minutes a day.

    Six sentences.

    And a willingness to experience what arises.

    See what happens.

    Let’s share the energy and add your comments below

  • Moving In Tune with Your Ancestors

    Moving In Tune with Your Ancestors

    The idea that we are all connected becomes especially clear when we look at families and communities as living systems rather than just collections of individuals. Within a family, each person’s experiences, beliefs, and emotional patterns ripple outward, subtly shaping the behaviour and wellbeing of others—sometimes across generations. A parent’s unresolved stress can influence a child’s sense of safety; a grandparent’s migration story can shape values around survival, sacrifice, or belonging.

    These dynamics don’t exist in isolation, because families themselves are embedded within larger systems like culture, economy, and community networks. Communities, in turn, reinforce or challenge family patterns through shared norms, support structures, and collective experiences. When these systems are healthy and responsive, they can strengthen individuals by providing connection, identity, and resilience. When they are strained or fractured, they can perpetuate cycles of disadvantage or disconnection. In this way, individuals are both shaped by and contributors to the systems they belong to, constantly influencing and being influenced in an ongoing exchange.

    In this way, individuals are both shaped by and contributors to the systems they belong to, constantly influencing and being influenced in an ongoing exchange—and this interconnectedness extends beyond human systems to include the natural environment, where our wellbeing is intimately tied to the health of the ecosystems we depend on, from the air we breathe to the land and resources that sustain life.

    Family Constellations is a therapeutic approach that explores how hidden family dynamics, loyalties, and unresolved traumas shape our present-day behaviours, emotions, and relationships. Developed by Bert Hellinger, this method works on the premise that individuals are deeply connected to their family system across generations, often unconsciously carrying burdens that do not originate with them.

    In my article “I Will Do It for You, Even If It Costs Me,” I highlight one of the central themes in Family Constellations work: the unconscious loyalty that leads individuals to take on pain, hardship, or limitation on behalf of others in their family system. This phenomenon often manifests as a silent inner contract—an inherited belief that says, “If you suffered, I will suffer too,” or “I will carry this so you don’t have to.” While rooted in love and belonging, these patterns can become deeply limiting.

    The article illustrates how such loyalties may show up in everyday life. A person might struggle financially despite having opportunities, remain stuck in unhealthy relationships, or experience persistent feelings of guilt or anxiety without clear cause. Through the lens of Family Constellations, these struggles are not random; they may be expressions of unresolved family entanglements, where one family member unconsciously “represents” another’s fate.

    A key insight from the article is the idea that love, in these cases, becomes distorted. Instead of supporting growth and vitality, it binds individuals to past suffering. Family Constellations seeks to gently uncover these dynamics, often through experiential exercises where participants represent family members and reveal hidden connections. This process allows individuals to see their situation from a broader systemic perspective.

    Healing in this context does not come from rejecting one’s family, but from acknowledging what belongs to whom. Family Constellations emphasises that true resolution arises when individuals can honour their family members’ experiences without taking them on as their own. By doing so, they restore a natural order within the system—where each person carries their own fate, and love can flow more freely.

    Ultimately, “I Will Do It for You, Even If It Costs Me”sheds light on the powerful, often invisible forces of familial love and loyalty. It reminds us that while these bonds are essential to our sense of belonging, they can also limit us when expressed unconsciously. Family Constellations offers a pathway to transform these inherited patterns, enabling individuals to live more fully in their own lives rather than in service of unresolved pasts.

    SHORT VISUALISATION EXERCISE

    Find a quiet place where you can sit comfortably and bring your attention inward. Gently acknowledge that you are not alone, even in this moment—you are connected to a wider system that stands behind you. In your mind’s eye, imagine your family system: your parents behind you, and behind them their parents, extending back through generations. There is no need to know their stories in detail—simply sense their presence. Notice that life has flowed through each of them to reach you. Take a moment to internally say, “I honour your lives, your struggles, and your gifts. What belongs to you, I leave with you. What has been given in love, I receive with gratitude.”

    Now, expand your awareness to include the communities that have shaped you—friends, teachers, cultures, and places that have supported your growth. Acknowledge their influence and silently thank them for what they have contributed. Allow yourself to feel supported, as if you are standing within a field of connection rather than on your own.

    Finally, bring in the natural world around you. Imagine the ground beneath your feet, steady and holding you, the air filling your lungs, and the wider living environment that sustains your body and energy each day. Sense that you are part of this larger web of life, not separate from it. As you breathe, allow a feeling of alignment to settle in your body—supported from behind, connected around you, and grounded below. From this place, gently return to your day, carrying a quiet sense of strength, belonging, and clarity.

  • Dealing with Change Effectively

    Dealing with Change Effectively

    As we watch the world rapidly changing I have been contemplating a question, one that I have been researching for about 40 years as a therapist. The question is:“How do we optimise the brain and body to deal with constant change and challenges effectively?”
    As a teacher in holistic counselling I draw on many modalities from:

    Yet the one thing that protects us from our nervous systems going into overdrive and overwhelm and discombobulation is relationships, secure functioning relationships. We look after these relationships so they look after us. 
    Secure functioning relationships can be co-created, we do not have to be secure to co-create a secure environment with others, just committed to make it happen, know the ingredients, and the steps and then follow the rules, including repair and fighting fair.
    So what are the ingredients to create secure functioning relationships:

    1. A Shared vision and purpose – Why are you together? What can you do with each other, you can’t with anyone else (For intimate partners)
    2. What are the rules of engagement? (the governing principles) We expect each other to know the rules 
    3. Fighting fair rules as well as how to repair – repairing quickly means things do not go into long term memory
    4. Understand Attachment styles – our attachment styles affect our ability to move toward someone or away with ease or difficulty
    5. Launchings and Landings – here is where rituals take care of the relationship and each other. How do you connect in the mornings and the evenings, what are the little rituals you do together? Putting each other to bed at night? Date nights, coffee with friends? What’s your rituals? Meditate together? Walks and talks? 
    6. Welcome Home Hugs – the moment you arrive seek each other out and give each other a hug, don’t let go until each other is completely relaxed! We are wired to regulate each other! 
    7. Effective Communication – understand how to talk so you are heard as well as the other is heard. Understand the every behaviour has a need trying to be met, so communicating from needs is essential.

    This framework is NOT confined to couples! Parents, friends, family members, co-workers can all create secure functioning relationships, which right now are much needed. 

    Why this works


    Secure functioning relationships create buffers and help us by providing:

    • Co-regulation first preventing threat responses, conflict and prolonged fights,
    • Shared vision means that we value what we have and will protect it from outside forces
    • Rules + repair keep stress out of long-term memory
    • Needs-based language reduces defensiveness
    • Rituals create predictability in a changing world


    Exercise to Try At Home

    1. Welcome Home Hug – If in doubt hug it out – but hold onto each other until both are relaxed
    2. Spot the different attachment styles of your friends, partner, co-workers and family members and respond accordingly – if someone is avoidant-anxious – try giving them an escape route if you are wanting to connect by saying:
      • I know you are busy, but when you are ready I would love to…….(fill in the gap)” Or “I don’t want to stop you from what you are doing, when you are ready, could we….(fill in the gap)”. Avoidants get swamped easily, so we need to give them an escape route so they can come to us.
      • With an ambivalent- anxious, they are external regulators so go towards them with loving words when they criticise on returning from being away. For example: “I am not going anywhere today, and I would really like to hang out with you.” “When I come home let’s sit down and have dinner together” or “I really enjoy hanging out with you, as our friendship means a lot to me.”
    3. Be aware of the towards and away dynamics as conflicts arise when we move away from each other, in the case of ambivalent anxious, they need reassurance that you will return, and avoidants who need to know that you will not swamp them, and there is an escape route when coming towards them! Practice allowing space (if ambivalent-anxious) or go towards the others more often, if avoidant.
    4. How can you offer safety in all your interactions? What is possible when we truly feel safe?

    Here’s to creating a more secure functioning world, one couple, one friend, one family member, at a time!