{"id":5665,"date":"2016-11-27T23:23:25","date_gmt":"2016-11-27T23:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelamplighters.org\/llblog01\/?p=5665"},"modified":"2016-11-27T23:40:45","modified_gmt":"2016-11-27T23:40:45","slug":"natural-rhythm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelamplighters.org\/llblog01\/natural-rhythm\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural Rhythm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Below is an excerpt from my book Repair Your Life<\/em>.\u00a0 Rhythm is the last letter in the acronym REPAIR. It stands for Rhythm.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe path we took in life and the decisions we made at the crossroads were shaped by our experiences.\u00a0 As a child of sexual abuse, those experiences were a horror most people cannot imagine.\u00a0 Nor would they want to.\u00a0 People who were free to become all they wanted to be cannot know what it is like to live in a prison.\u00a0 In completing this program you are releasing yourself from that prison.<\/p>\n

Once you are free, you begin to return to one of the greatest joys all living creatures have\u2014their own rhythm.\u00a0 Even animals have their own rhythm and would fight mightily against anyone who tried to take it away.\u00a0 If you go back far enough, you can remember waking at the same time every morning and getting tired at the same time every night.\u00a0 You had a time for hunger, a time for energy, and a time for languor.\u00a0 Being a part of that natural rhythm brought joy as well as serenity.\u00a0 Life, predictable and comfortable, contained meaning and purpose.\u00a0\u00a0 It was like a dance, one where we moved freely through our own universe, bending and swaying our bodies in time to our inner voices.<\/p>\n

A newborn child has its own rhythm.\u00a0 They sleep through feedings or are constantly hungry, they eat at six hour intervals instead of four, they cry a lot or they’re quiet.\u00a0 They respond to Uncle Jake who has a delightful sense of play, or they cry when Grandma Benton with her loud, shrill voice, comes into the room.\u00a0 They are already their own unique personality with no one in the world quite like them.\u00a0 Their rhythm is not right or wrong, only different, but it is theirs.\u00a0 Your rhythm may be the only thing that is truly yours.<\/p>\n

As a child of trauma, your natural rhythm was interrupted.\u00a0 Sexual violation shattered the serenity of your early rhythm.\u00a0 A child violated at the age of one has already established a natural rhythm.\u00a0 Once molested, the older the child grows, the more unnatural adaptations are made to their own rhythm.\u00a0 They hide their intense emotions out of fear of punishment and a parent’s rage.\u00a0 When laughing at the dinner table sends them to their bedroom without food, they learn to contain their sense of humor and playfulness.\u00a0 Building tunnels in the living room out of blankets and chairs, a marvelous example of a child’s creative nature, causes Mom to go into a fit of anger over the mess.\u00a0 The child learns to stifle their creativity.<\/p>\n

As the years go by, out of a sense of fear, rejection, and feeling “less than,” the real person hides deeper and deeper until once into adulthood, little remains of that spontaneous, childlike human.\u00a0 The mask they wear contains a great deal of anger.\u00a0 Who wants to be somber when your nature flows with joy?\u00a0 Why pretend we are submissive when being strong-minded is the real us?\u00a0 Holding our bodies stiff when we inwardly crave hugs is a sad, almost anguishing part of so many humans.<\/p>\n

Natural rhythm is just that\u2014natural.\u00a0 It is the essence of who and what we are.\u00a0 Being able to return to it is freeing as well as strengthening.\u00a0 As was clearly illustrated earlier, we had gifts of awareness that could have enabled us to be and have whatever we wanted.\u00a0 All the tools for a happy life were taken away by the childhood sexual abuse.\u00a0 At birth we all had potential for the inner strength needed to deal with life’s problems.\u00a0 As a sexually molested child, we lost it.\u201d<\/p>\n

(To read more purchase a copy of Repair Your Life at any online book distributor like amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com or from my publisher Victor Volkman at Loving Healing Press.)<\/p>\n

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