You thrive when you find your Mojo. In my ‘speak’ this means finding your core values and aligning yourself to them.
One way of finding your values is to notice when you feel pain – when emotional pain becomes physical pain, like a punch in the stomach.
For all of us this can be triggered by something different. Some feel it when they are lied to. Others, when they or others are treated in an unjust manner. You might have felt your very first blow as a child. It is worth taking a pause and seeing what triggered it. There is a clue right there.
Already, as you reflect, you will have the tendency to explain away your bodily reactions, however, they are important signals, and how we acknowledge, address, deal and heal is actually critical to our quality of life.
A Huge Life Change

I recently came across Pascale Haller who had such a blow during her corporate career and after a series of punches, decided it was time for a change. Such a career change takes curiosity, courage, and clarity – all of which takes time.
After having worked in online media for over 20 years, Pascale realised that things in her life needed to change dramatically. She was no longer fulfilled in her career, she was burnt out and she had adopted some very unhealthy coping mechanisms just to get through the days. Alcohol became a daily part of her life and she knew she needed to stop before it was too late.
She resigned from her job and started meditation and yoga to support her journey back to health and sobriety. After a couple of years of healing work with various body-based, somatic therapies she became much stronger again, both physically and emotionally. And she felt called to help others on their journeys of self-discovery and healing.
She had read about this relatively new modality called Neo Emotional Release (NER) and immediately knew this was what she was meant to train in and signed up to the program.
Processing Traumatic Events

NER is a method that takes psychosomatic multilayered approach to release emotions that have been stored around any trauma we experience. It works with the body as well as the mind combining techniques to help with pain, discomfort and diseases – of a physical as well as mental and emotional nature. NER consists of bodywork/touch, breathwork, vizualisations and vocal guidance, energy work, inner child work and inner family systems/parts work.
Many of you will have experience breathwork, energy work, bodywork or guided visualisations. They can all be powerful healing methods by helping uncover difficult sensations, emotions or memories. What they usually can‘t do so well is connect the source of your physical symptoms and diseases and mental problems and blockages to the underlying emotions that were suppressed and stored in the body as a result of trauma.

Pascale tells me that combining all these methods during a NER session we can actually safely process what happened and then rewire our brain’s perception of the traumatic event(s) and thereby clear the imprint they left in the body – and thereby help heal the associated symptoms.
Using this holistic, multi-layered approach while the client is being witnessed and supported in a safe container can lead to dramatic improvements and transformation.
My Experience of NER
What struck me when I went to visit Pascale were the number of books in her practice that mirrored my own – from Eckhart Tolle to Peter Lavine, from Deepak Chopra to Dr Shefali, the Dalai Lama to David Walsh.
When finally on her table I was surprised to find that even though I might not have experienced war, my body would still respond to situations from a place of trauma.
No, I have never had a close encounter with a lion, or at least not nearly lost my life in an encounter, and yet my neuro nervous system would still respond to certain trigger situations suggesting that I had. Why is this? Are we simply a weaker generation than that of our parents who had to bear so much more hardship?

Thankfully, Pascale explained that as soon as we experience any form of fear or threat, whether perceived or real, the brain releases adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones prepare the body to either confront the threat (fight) or flee from it (flight).
These types of fear responses can be triggered by any unpleasant or traumatic memory either in childhood or later on in life. They are simply situations that scared us or made us feel uncomfortable in the moment and without the adequate tools to fully and safely process these events. They get stored in a “trauma container” deep within the body.
Examples could be something our parents, friends or even strangers said to us that made us feel inadequate, ashamed, unloveable. It could be an injury, an accident, a loss, a failure, a break-up. Even traumas we experience in our mother’s womb or during our birth can have an impact on our lives later on.
Therefore it doesn’t take a war or a lion to trigger a trauma response. All it can take is a smell, a sound, a word that brings back the memories of any of these unprocessed traumatic events that we still store in our subconscious in our body.
Caring for Your Inner Child is Essential

By working with NER, we go back into these old traumas and process them in a way that will support the body in finally releasing them, so that any situations reminding us of these memories won’t trigger a trauma response moving forward.
The inner child needs to be cared for, and only we can be there as guardian or parent. Our journey is unique and only few can really understand. I always thought I could get through anything in life ‘with a little help from my friends’ and yet have begun to realise the value of a safe space like the one that Pascale provides.
So when you next find yourself in flight, or fight, or freeze mode, and there is no lion to be seen – take the clues that your body is giving you and check out the NER method.
This practice might not have existed if it wasn’t for the signs and signals that our values give, so sit up, pay attention, and live the next chapter of your life with greater #vitality and #joy, than the previous.
We only have one wild and precious life. What are you going to do with yours?