FRAGMENTED (DISEMBODIED) DEFENSE

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Please note: This guide is designed for existing clients who wish to understand more about specific patterns discussed in session. Please be sure to read "Understanding Defenses” first.

HOW/WHY IT OCCURS

 

Imagine existing in a sea of oneness - a vast ocean of pure consciousness.  You're one with all life and with God.  There's no separation, so you have no concept of fear.  You are immortal, so you have no concept of danger or harm.  You understand the spiritual truth of who you are.  You have yet to be born into human form.

 

You look down at the Earth, seeing the beauty and perfection of it.  You feel the pull to incarnate - to experience life on the Earth plane.  You know it's very different from where you are now, but that there's much for you to learn.  You long for the adventure of human experience.

 

You make the choice to incarnate, and begin the process of building a human body for yourself.  In time, you begin to feel the pull of your human body.  It's calling to you from the dense, Earth plane.  The time for you to enter into the world is drawing closer.  From time to time, you descend into your human form.  How does it feel to transition from one plane of existence to another?  Can you hold onto your spiritual understanding of yourself in this material plane?  What does your body feel like?  It's heavier.  The vibration is denser here.  It's more difficult to see.  It's more difficult to remember who you are in truth.  Do you remember that you're completely safe, no matter what? 

 

What does your mother's womb feel like?  What's her energy like?  Is she happily expecting your arrival?  What if the pregnancy was unplanned, and she's feeling doubts?  Is her body capable of holding you safely?  Is she fully supported in this journey and capable of fully supporting you? 

 

What about the environment you're being born into? Sounds and even light penetrate the womb space, and you begin to sense things with your human body.  Are the sounds gentle?  Are there others in the environment?  Are they happy you're coming?  Is anyone angry or afraid?  Do you hear loud voices?  Is the environment safe?

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Perhaps you sense conflict.  You experience the sting of an unfamiliar emotion - fear.  It's uncomfortable.  So you pull back up to spirit realm, withdrawing from your body.  Once again, you remember that you're safe.  No harm can befall you.  You know the truth of who you are.  You remember that there's nothing to truly fear.

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In time, you feel the pull of your body again.  You descend once again.  Slowly, you start to adjust to the change.  You begin to spend more time in your body.  In time, you start to feel a pressure pushing down on you.  Your mother's womb is working to expel you.  You're on the verge of entering the material world.  Are you happily expectant?  Or do you feel that uncomfortable sensation of fear again?

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Transitioning into human form from spirit is challenging.  Like dying, it's a change that's difficult to comprehend until you're in it.  As a soul moving into physical form, there's a strong need to feel safe and wanted.  As an infant in utero or just entering the world, you were very busy with the difficult work of building a human body.  On the energetic level, you were trying to form your root chakra.  Your root chakra is what helps you connect to the Earth.  It helps you feel safe, and know you belong.  A strong root chakra is necessary to develop a strong, well-grounded body.

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So what if the environment you were being born into didn't feel safe?  What if your birth experience was traumatic?  Did your mother remain connected to you during this difficult time?  Was she afraid?  Did you feel welcomed and wanted?  Or did your longing to incarnate feel thwarted somehow?    Were you angry as a result?  Fearful?  Emotions were unfamiliar to you.  So was conflict.  But your right to exist was being challenged.  

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Perceiving an unknown threat, your nervous system activated its primitive fight or flight response.  This is the response that takes over in overwhelming situations where your existence is under threat.  But because your body was so undeveloped, you had no physical capacity to run away or defend yourself physically.  The tension of feeling threatened was unbearable.  You couldn't maintain that state for long.  But what could you do?

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As an infant, you really had only two options.  You could withdraw completely and give up on incarnating on the human plane.  Or you could find some way to keep going forward.  You wanted to stay and to go.  Your intention was split.  This split in your intention resulted in a split in your consciousness.  In trying to maintain the connection to spirit realm and incarnate on the earth plane, you had to "fragment" yourself.  By splitting your energy, you could keep enough of it in your physical form to keep going forward, while withdrawing the rest back into the world of spirit where you felt safe.  Your "flight" took the shape of fleeing from your body.

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WHAT IT DOES

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Withdrawing some of your energy from the physical world helped you feel safer.  Although it kept you from fully incarnating, it was fundamentally a life affirming choice.  It helped you keep a connection to your soul memory.  It helped you escape the pain of human existence enough to keep living.  Fragmenting yourself helped you survive an experience you wouldn't otherwise have been able to survive.  It kept your energetic system from being overwhelmed.  Fragmenting your energy and withdrawing some of it helped you feel safe enough to remain in physical form.  It became a very helpful tool you could use any time you perceived a threat in the future.  You learned very early on that in times of stress, you could always withdraw.

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This fragmenting of the energy field made your nervous system hypersensitive because a part of it remained stuck in the trauma and the fight or flight response.   You had little control over your infant body, and so very few ways to defend yourself.  Your eyes were one of the few body parts you could control.  But they were perceiving danger that you needed to escape from.  The fragmenting of energy distorted your vision (and your third eye chakra).  Instead of seeing clearly, your eyes were always scanning for danger.  A feeling that "the world is an unsafe place" became deeply ingrained.  Contact with others was perceived as frightening.  Withdrawing helped, so you learned to withdraw whenever things seemed dangerous.

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ENERGETICALLY: 

A healthy root chakra enables you to feel safe and grounded in the world. It's necessary for a strong, physical body. The “pulling up and out” of the fragmented defense causes trauma to the root chakra, which remains underdeveloped.  This makes it harder to ground and connect with the Earth energetically.  Without that connection, it's difficult to feel safe.  As a result, there's a strong tendency to perceive threats, even when there's no real, present danger.  This forces the adrenals to work overtime, keeping the body in a near-constant state of primal fear. 

 

As a result of all this disorientation and fear, the energetic system became “fractured.”  The stronger the defense, the more "compartmentalized" the field will be.  This results in overall instability and fragile, energetic boundaries.  Because there's a long-held intention to not fully be here, energy is always leaking out, especially at the joints in the lower part of the body where you would "stand your ground."  These energy leaks make it harder to ground through the legs, perpetuating the feeling of needing to run away because it's not safe and you can't protect yourself.  Some of the energy that would naturally be flowing through the root chakra got redirected into the 6th chakra (the third eye), where it's now utilized to constantly track for danger.  Disconnection from the Earth's stabilizing energy makes it hard to feel solid, stable and safe.  Because the energetic field isn't being fed, the entire system remains weak.

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PHYSICALLY:

Because of the habitual pulling of energy up and out or away, the physical body develops "twists” (i.e., one hip or shoulder higher than the other, one leg longer than the other, one side of the chest or torso protruding while the other is pulled back, etc.).  The more severe the trauma, the more severe the twists.  The “fracturing” results in body parts that don’t necessarily work smoothly together. Physical movement isn’t smooth and naturally arising, but directed by the brain.  Habitually using this defense creates a thin or underdeveloped physical body, with knobby knees, thin/weak ankles and wrists, and stringy muscles.  The extremities remain cold, as there is no energy available to them.  The rib cage may also protrude at the bottom, as if the breath is being constantly held in fear.  In this way, the body records the shock and terror that was experienced at birth.  The nervous system also holds the memory, remaining hypersensitive, in a perpetual state of fight or flight, along with a deeply held memory of being unable to fight to protect yourself.  This creates a bind in the energy field.  Neither here nor there, there's no ground to stand upon.  This defense can cause cervical vertebrae issues, headaches, adrenal fatigue, anxiety, eye trouble, and possibly numbness or weakening of the extremities from habitually pulling energy out of the body.

EMOTIONALLY:

Without a healthy root chakra, it's hard to feel safe.  Anxiety is one of the key emotional manifestations of this defense.  Your energetic system can’t ground. This means you can’t fully connect with the Earth and feel safe and supported here.  This makes it difficult to connect with others in meaningful ways.  This pattern can eventually progress to panic attacks, social disorders or paranoia. Usually, the pervasive fear is unrelated to the current situation (i.e., it’s existential...not a response to a clear and present, dangerous situation, even if it feels that way). 

MENTALLY: 

The pulling of energy away from the root chakra and withdrawing to the world of spirit causes an over-development of the higher mental/spiritual chakras.  This results in over-thinking and over-spiritualizing. You probably use your strong mental and spiritual understanding to compensate for your physical disembodiment and fear.  You may find you spend a lot of time “in your head.”  When faced with something challenging, you’ll look for a mental or spiritual solution, rather than a physical one. It might feel hard to simply be present.

 

Some of the limiting beliefs associated with this defense are:

• The world isn’t a safe place.

• It’s not safe for me to be here.

• I don't belong.

• It’s not safe for me to show up.

• It’s safer to hide who I am.

• It’s better to run away.

• The physical world is dangerous.

• I can overcome the physical world through my spirituality.

There's also a strong tendency to see yourself as separate from the world (and perhaps superior or "more evolved") when you're using this defense. 

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HEALING THE DEFENSE

Healing the fragmented defense is a process of bringing together, over time, all of your shattered parts. If this is your primary defense, one of your soul tasks involves bringing together all the different parts of yourself into one cohesive whole and bringing yourself fully into the world. This likely includes gathering the learning from other lifetimes.  By building upon feelings of safety and committing to being more physically present, primal energies can be integrated. As the splits are healed, the structure becomes more cohesive and integrated.

Much of the work is in challenging your belief that the world is unsafe, while also acknowledging your deeply held, unconscious feelings of rage.  As an infant, these primal emotions were too difficult to feel.  Your anger was real and understandable.  Primal anger serves a protective function.  Reclaiming this part of yourself can feel frightening, especially, if your ego understanding of yourself is largely rooted in your spiritual nature.  Primal feelings are the deepest and most difficult to integrate.

 

You can use your strong spiritual understanding of yourself, the nature of life and the world to assist you in these task.  You can probably see the spiritual nature of your experience, and glimpse life beyond the illusion of duality more easily than most.  It's easier for you to see the really big picture.  You've spent more time in the realm of spirit than most people do.  That means, in your deepest core, you know that you are safe.  Use the mantra "I am safe" to help retrain your nervous system.  Follow up with practical, human efforts that will help you feel safe and protected (like turning the lights on when you feel frightened, taking a self-defense class, etc.).  Use my “Creating Sacred Space” ritual to help create a protective energetic grid around you, and allow yourself to trust and feel safe within this grid. 

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When you feel anxious or afraid, breathe deeply and look around your environment, choosing to stay present, even though it's uncomfortable.  With this defense, the painful emotion you don’t want to feel is fear and the primal anger beneath it.  This fear is what must be faced to release the energy trapped in the defense.  You can face it by sitting in the place of your fear rather than running away from it or trying to make it go away.  Stand your ground.    Do this by allowing your fear to surface, and sitting with it, witnessing it and honoring its existence.  You've carried it for a very long time.  What has it taught you?  

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Try bringing your inner light to this place within you that is afraid, like a candle in the night.  See how the fear shifts when you're present with it.  Your presence - the thing that you've been denying yourself - is precisely the thing that can help you heal this wound.  Feel the big truth of who you are.

 

If you stay present, you may begin to sense the anger underneath your fear.  Know that this anger is life-affirming.  You are no longer an infant who will be overwhelmed by it.  You can safely hold these primal energies with your strong spiritual intention and connection.   Connect with your spiritual guides, ask for their support in integrating this energy, and allow your anger to safely discharge by punching a pillow  or using your voice.  Your fragmentation kept you from feeling these difficult emotions.  It served a purpose in your development.  You weren't able to face those feelings as an infant.  Perhaps you are now. 

Remember, this wound occurred at a very young age.  Be patient and gentle with yourself.  A part of your soul is still an infant.  It needs to feel safe and wanted.  Respect the very strong fears, but remind yourself that these are old beliefs and that they can be changed as you allow yourself to feel cared for, loved and protected.

For support with this, try my “Creating Sacred Space” meditation.