Painting by Nancy Wait, early 1980s

Wounds of the Soul – the Body Remembers, is the title of a show on Blog Talk Radio by Paranormal Matters. LINK.  It aired live on July 14th but I wasn’t able to listen then because I was talking about the X in Extra-Sensory on another show, The Healing Fountain. The X has to do with feeling on an energetic level. The sort that gets blocked when we experience the kind of wounding that leaves us feeling powerless and betrayed. Our self-worth plummets. Even if we change our location, our circumstances, we suffer the kind of post-traumatic stress that destroys future relationships and often leads to addictions and self-destructive behaviors.

What I didn’t understand until recently, when I began listening to Paranormal Matters with hosts Jennifer Warters and Carol Lamb of Rainbow Light Foundation, and then when I took the Foundation Course in Quantum Light Healing, was how what is known as the subtle energy body, was affected, causing imbalance and illness in the physical body. Because of what they refer to as an “energetic imprint” in the electromagnetic field, which underlies the conditions.

Thinking in terms of an “energy field,” one that I live in and am constantly projecting, it is no wonder how often in my early adulthood I was attracted to similar types of the treatment I had been forcibly subjected to in my youth.

Studying art in my late twenties put me on the path to healing, because it was only then that I began to differentiate between an inner and an outer life, and to see that I could access this inner life through pictures. On the radio show Carol spoke of how the closing off of the throat due to shame and fear is usually one of the immediate results from childhood abuse. With talking therapies I had either run amok or bowed out early on, and had lost all belief in its effectiveness.

Girl with Fish Bowl, by Nancy Wait; oil on canvas (1982)

The breakthrough of my “pictorial” voice came when at last I gathered up the courage to paint from my imagination. I told myself it didn’t have to be brilliant as long as it was real and the feeling behind it was a true one. What emerged then was a series of pictures representing my disassociation from myself. Which was exactly what Carol Lamb described on her show, the disconnection between mind and body, body and emotions, resulting from trauma to the soul. One of my first pictures shows a young girl and a fish bowl filled with colorful fish swimming around (seemingly happily) while she looks on in despair. I knew somehow that I was “outside” of where I wanted to be.

“Mask” by Nancy Wait; oil on canvas (1982)

I also knew that I was hiding behind a mask, not necessarily pretending to be someone I was not, but not being entirely true to who I was, either. My throat was still blocked. Masks serve a purpose, and this one seems more like a lighted torch, perhaps lighting the way. (A mask of the Soul?) It was an enormous benefit not only to put these feelings “out there,” thus giving them validation, but to realize I was creating a visual narrative of the journey I had embarked upon. Putting myself inside a story was another point of validation.

“Sinking” by Nancy Wait; oil on canvas (1982)

The next painting, or should I say the next step, was to sink beneath the waves, or perhaps tune into those particular “frequency” waves of the “see” of the subconscious. Lower myself into the depths, in order to recover the lost self. The disconnected self. The body I had fled from so as not to feel it, even though that body was my own. My underwater journey which lasted five years and produced scores of paintings, came to an end when at last I came upon the jewel I hadn’t consciously known I was seeking. The child-self I had left behind, pretending she was drowned at the bottom of a pool. (For more on that please see last week’s post: Seeing Myself As A Soul)

The body remembers. No matter how much we would prefer not to. I highly recommend the programs on Paranormal Matters. I administer the Rainbow Light Forum, which as well as listing the shows, is a place where you can ask your questions and make comments.

Looking back on my visual outpourings, I think my greatest achievement was finding beauty in the ugliness. An expression of beauty even in the despair. It matters. And so does practicing the Emerald Alignment, the meditation presented at the end of each show.