In this episode, I go into why forgiving others is such a powerful exercise to heal ourselves and how to practice forgiveness.
In this episode, I go into why forgiving others is such a powerful exercise to heal ourselves and how to practice forgiveness. I explain what the mantra practice Ho'oponopono is, and how to do it, with my personal twist it to make it even more powerful and energy shifting.
Get the full show notes here.
INTRO
Welcome to Elevate Your Life and Soul. I'm your host Mala Kennedy, life coach, mama and spiritual soul seeker. Each week this podcast will bring you interviews, stories and mentoring. So you can truly know your value, know your worth and elevate all areas of your life. Let's rise together.
CONTENT
Mala:
Welcome to Episode Three. Today, I'm going to be jumping into forgiveness, which is something that's been really transformational in my life. But before I do, I just wanted to take a moment and give a massive shout out to the firies who are fighting the devastating fires in Australia right now...And also to all the people who've been affected by these fires and the wildlife and our beautiful countryside.
It's just devastating, and my heart goes out to everyone. And I'd like to invite anyone listening to this podcast, please, please, if you can support by donating and helping these people, and the animals, and our country and, Celeste Barber who is a comedian has actually set up this fund that you can donate to. And it's fee free. So there are no fees. It just goes straight to where it's needed. And I will put a link to that in the show notes. You can check it out. Yeah, and I'm sending everyone affected so much love because it's just such a tragedy. And we all need some hope. And we all need some love. And we need to focus on solutions and taking action. And coming from a place of love so that we can just heal all this stuff. That's happening in the world.
And I feel like today talking about forgiveness is really perfect because forgiveness is something that is so much about ourselves rather than necessarily being about the other person that we're forgiving. So I'm going to just dive right in now and share my experience and give you a little practice that can really help you experience forgiveness too.
So, for me, I have held on to a lot of anger over the years, and resentment, and when you hold anger or resentment towards someone because you think they've done something wrong to you, it stores in your emotions, and it stores physically in your body in your nervous system and can affect you in really, really stressful ways. It can create illness and disease. And I really believe that forgiveness is a powerful tool to release this so that you're not holding it and carrying it in your body and your way of being.
I have healed relationships through forgiving other people. They're relationships I never thought would heal and never thought would recover and they did. So, forgiveness, it doesn't mean you have to condone someone's behaviour and I want to make that really clear. It's not if someone has done something that has been really traumatic for you and really caused you a lot of pain and a lot of harm, then this is not condoning their behaviour. It's not tolerating that at all.
It's about you, it's about freeing yourself from the pain and letting it go. You don't even have to tell the person. In fact, I highly recommend that you don't even necessarily mention that you're forgiving them. You don't have to, I mean, by all means you could. But that's not the point of practicing forgiveness, it really comes back to how you're feeling and your emotions and your well being.
It removes the focus. So when you're holding on to anger or resentment towards someone, like I said, You're holding that, and storing it in your body, and you're putting your energy into having that anger, it takes effort, and it takes concentration and focus and it might be at a subconscious level. So you might not realise that this is happening, or that you're holding this so strongly and so powerfully but you actually are.
So when you remove the anger or the resentment through forgiveness, you release it. So it doesn't control you anymore. Because, in a sense, having anger or resentment towards someone means they have some kind of hold over you.
When you let that go, you're free. And freedom. Gosh, it leads to a much more joyful and happy life. So forgiveness is putting your focus onto it, and I really, really strongly believe that what you focus on expands. So when you focus on how someone's done these things to you or hurt you or all the negative things that are happening in your life, more of that will happen.
It will expand and you can experience more of that. Often it's because of your perception because you're perceiving all the bad things. It's. So that's what you experience. So when you release that, and you focus on feeling free and letting go of that, then you're going to experience more calm, you're going to feel more joy, you're going to feel more happy, and you will witness and see more of that showing up in your life.
So there's this beautiful practice. It's an ancient Hawaiian tradition called Ho'oponopono. And it's basically a mantra that you say, and it means to make right right. I don't know the full history and the details of it but I found a beautiful article by a psychologist called Betty Phillips, which I will link to in the show notes and it goes into a lot of detail about where this practice came from and it's really informative, so I highly recommend you check that out.
But the mantra that you say is, I'm sorry, please forgive me. I love you. Thank you. Now, you might be backing up at this and saying, but why am I going to say that I'm sorry, please forgive me when it's someone else who has done me wrong. And the whole point of this, like I mentioned is to release the energy that it's holding over you. So, when you say this, it's known as an... it's mentioned in this article... It's known as cleaning, and it's cleaning yourself of the negativity and erasing the negative situations that you're storing, energetically in your body. They're erasing it from me so you can release all negativity and you'll experience and feel more peace and more calmness. It brings you back to the present as well because you're letting go of that past stuff and bringing you back to now. So it's really powerful. So you can simply just say this mantra, and repeat it throughout the day or you can set aside time and make it a meditative practice. Do it for five minutes. And I recommend doing it twice a day, if you can. Even do it on yourself, if you have felt anger or resentment towards yourself, you could do it on yourself and even stand in the mirror and repeat it to yourself.
What I love to do, and this is how it's been most powerful for me is to find a photo of the person that you want to forgive. And it can be on your phone, like on social media if you don't have a photo or you know...and you don't need a photo at all, this is just I what I find...
I'm not the most visual person. So, for me looking at a photo helps me visualise who I'm forgiving. Maybe you're really strong at visualising. So you don't need that support. But that's what works for me. And then I have an app, a meditation app, and it's my absolute favourite app, and it's free. It's called Insight Timer. And I will of course link to that as well.
On it, there's a song called thank you by Carrie Grossman, which I will link to. She sings this mantra, and it's so beautiful. It goes for about seven minutes. I will listen to this song, and you can sing it to if you want, if you don't just listen to it and say it in your head. I mean, it's so powerful to say out loud as well with the song and look at the photo while you do it, of the person and honestly, I have done this and I have healed relationships with people that I hadn't talked to for years from doing this twice a day for...I probably did it for a month.
Even relationships where there were just people that I thought had done wrong by me and who I didn't even talk to anymore and don't want to have a relationship of any sort with, I've done this with with and it's just transformed my feelings about them. So I've gone from feeling really angry towards them, to feeling love and just seeing them as this beautiful human that has their own experience. And that I don't need to have a hold of resentment towards it. It was amazing because I never like one of these people I never thought that would happen with and it wasn't necessarily someone that had done something huge. It was just someone that I would cringe when I thought about and felt really unworthy around. And now I just say nothing but love for them. So shout out to you human because, yeah, I feel love for you now.
I am being a bit silly, but I do I really invite you to try this practice, because it's so powerful. And please let me know what comes up for you and how you experience it. I'd really love to know and get your feedback as well about what worked, what didn't work and if you have any questions as well, please share them with me.
I'd love to remind you before I jump off that I have a new program that has just come out. I've just released it and it's starting on Feb 17th. It's a self care program 21 day of self care, it's, it's going to be beautiful. It's gonna be amazing. There'll be daily content, weekly calls in a really small group. And I'd love you to jump on board with it. So please please please check it out. And I am going to donate $10 from every person that jumps on towards the fires in Australia. So yes, doing something that makes it even more meaningful to me. So please, please jump on and check it out. And I will link the details in the show notes as well. So thank you so much for being here with me today. It's such a pleasure my heart is so full absolutely love sitting down at the computer with my microphone and talking to you. It just lights me up like I didn't even think it was possible, so thank you so much and I look forward to chatting with you again really soon. Have a beautiful day, beautiful souls.
OUTRO
Thank you so much for listening to today's show. If you like it, subscribe, wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you love this episode please give it an honest review on iTunes and let me know what you love and what you want more of. Your feedback helps me truly elevate the show into something that really serves you, and allows me to keep pouring my heart and soul into it. This is for you. Let's rise together. And remember, know your value know your worth. I love you beautiful soul.