Trauma often isn’t over when it appears to be over. The event – violence, serious illness or injury to self or a loved one, vehicle crash, or something else – occurs in a discreet moment in time, with a beginning and an end. Yet, the aftershocks or fallout can continue for years, even for a lifetime.
The result can be problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for a person who directly endures the trauma, and secondary traumatic stress for their loved ones or caregivers who also suffer in their own way. Another result can be poor physical or mental health from the psychological stress of dealing with a world that no longer makes sense or feels safe. These, in turn, can lead to more trauma, such as the loss of a job or a marriage. Without treatment, the cycle can feed on itself and become endless.
Dr. Valerie Foster-Young, LMFT, endured her share of trauma as she raised a daughter, Heather, who was born with many birth defects as a result of her father’s exposure to Agent Orange during two tours in Vietnam. Heather suffered another kind of trauma, as she underwent more than a dozen surgeries to correct the defects.
The most troubling occurred when she was 4. After surgery for craniofacial reconstruction that successfully rebuilt missing parts of her jaw, she had an unexpected and terrible reaction, with intense swelling that required her to be intubated so she could breathe. Pneumonia followed. Her doctors, whom Foster-Young describes as caring, courageous practitioners, put her into an induced coma for a week to save her life. She spent a month in the hospital and was unable to eat solid food for six more weeks.
Many years later, Foster-Young can speak calmly about this event, but at the time, she was traumatized, as was Heather. With more surgeries looming in her little girl’s future, Foster-Young remained fearful, living under a cloud of dread about what the future held.
Disruptions at the energetic level
Whatever the specifics and however they manifest, trauma disrupts a life. Yet, the real disruption happens in the person’s energy field.
Remember that everything is energy. Our bodies, as solid as they appear to us, are energy that has taken physical form in our consciousness. Our thoughts and emotions also are comprised of energy, including those unconscious thoughts we “inherit,” which affect us without our knowledge. In turn, all of these seeming bits of energy are part of the vast energetic web of Everything There Is. No part is separate from another; manifestations such as the tree outside your window and the squirrel gathering nuts beneath it only appear to be separate due to limited human perception.
In its natural state, this energetic matrix exists in perfect harmony, whole and unbroken. But when trauma occurs, the energy that is the affected person falls out of balance, which can lead to a host of troubles that show up in physical, emotional and mental ways.
Typically, we deal only with the manifestations of those troubles. We have surgery, visit a counselor or take antidepressants or a homeopathic remedy. These treatments can be helpful. Or we drink too much or kick the dog, which are not so helpful. Unfortunately, all these actions only treat the symptoms and do not deal with the basic cause, which is the unbalanced energy underneath. Various techniques can work on this imbalance, such as EFT or other methods that work energetically. But there is only one that can deliver energetic balancing around the clock, no matter what, with no effort on the part of the person receiving it.
Many years ago, Stephen Lewis, now co-founder of the Energetic Matrix Church of Consciousness LLC (EMC2), discovered an interest in self-healing. He became an expert in homeopathy and acupuncture. But his abiding interest in quantum physics and many spiritual traditions led him into working with the energetic field, which some call Spirit. He saw how consciousness gives energy material form, and how we can affect that energy.
Out of his research came the AIM Program, a computer-based “spiritual technology” that delivers energetic frequencies to enable people to heal themselves and improve their Life Force (Lewis stresses that the AIM Program is a faith-based philosophy, not a medical program, and that neither he nor the AIM Program do the healing).
As the AIM program eliminates energetic imbalances over time, a person’s Life Force and consciousness increase, and the body uses its innate wisdom and resources to create well-being, not only on the physical level but also on the mental, emotional and spiritual planes.
“No one can heal you but you, and no one can say, ‘I’m going to heal you.’ Technically, it doesn’t work. While the world teaches us that everything is out of our control, in reality, we create it all,” says Lewis, echoing Ernest Holmes and other spiritual leaders through the ages. He believes we should be honored to join them as “messengers” and our own enlightened healers.
Healing your traumas
Foster-Young met Lewis when he was using an earlier form of energetic balancing. Heather was 9 then, and every time she faced another surgery, her mother asked Lewis to use the technique on her. All the surgeries went well. At age 14, Heather required a reconstruction of the invasive jaw surgery from a decade earlier, performed again by the same excellent team in the same hospital. The only difference was that she was using Lewis’s energetic balancing.
“She was out of intensive care in 10 hours, out of the hospital in three days, and eating solid food in three more days,” recalls Foster-Young. “That was proof for me. It was a miraculous response.” Heather has been “perfectly healthy” ever since.
Foster-Young, 52, is still on the AIM Program, and plans to never leave it. She has inspired other members of her family to join it.
“I’m going a million miles a minute all the time,” she explains. “I worked full-time, raised my kids, and was in a graduate program all at once. Now I work 60 hours a week. I don’t get sick, and by all rights I should. AIM continues to keep me at my optimum so I can perform at my optimum.”
When she first met Lewis, she secretly tested him. She wrote a list of her health problems, all minor, and Heather’s but didn’t show it to Lewis. Using his earlier technique, which, like the AIM Program tracked energetic frequencies, he discovered all of them. So, says Foster-Young, “I know that AIM knows me.”
Beyond health issues, she says, being on the AIM Program “increases my sense of well-being and calm.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m reckless – it doesn’t eliminate personal responsibility. But there’s a confidence you can go forward and pursue your dreams.”
For Lewis, the trio of healing, spirituality and consciousness cannot be separated, making the process of self-healing a spiritual one. Unlike a medical doctor who diagnoses and treats in hopes of curing – doing something to you, in other words – a healer instead teaches you to access your innate healing power. This makes healing an inside job conducted in the spiritual realm, resulting from a shift in consciousness that heals on the spiritual level and manifests on the physical level.
The human body is miraculous in its power to heal itself.