Healing Your Inner Child: An Introduction by Sister Dang Nghiem | #7

Breathing in.

I befriend my inbreath.

Breathing out.

I befriend my outbreath.

Hello, inbreath.

Hello outbreath.

Breathing in.

I befriend my body.

Breathing out.

I smile to my body.

Hello, my dear body.

I know you are here, and I'm so happy and grateful.

Hello eyes.

Hello teeth.

Hello hands.

Hello belly.

Hello knees.

Hello feet.

Every part of my body is whole.

I have everything I need.

Breathing in.

I say hello to my inner child.

Hello, precious.

Breathing out.

I smile to my inner child.

You are so alive in me.

You are like these beautiful flowers.

Alive and vibrant and fresh.

Full of color.

Bless you, my dear inner child.

May I see you in my daily life.

May I listen to you.

May I take good care of you.

So

you can grow up healthy.

Be confident in yourself.

So that you have a chance to realize all your potentials.

You are beautiful as you are.

You don't need to be a rose.

You don't need to be an iris.

You just.

You can just be yourself.

Any kind of flowers that you are.

You are beautiful.

And that is my practice of being with my inner child.

When I go back to my journal in college.

There was an entry where I wrote.

In me,

there's a wounded child.

I was really surprised when I saw that line many years later.

As a nun, I learned from our teacher about the inner child.

About a wounded child.

And I've learned to recognize her, to listen to her, to heal her,

but for me to discover that I had been aware of that inner child, of that wounded child

way back then, when I didn't know about the practice.

That revealed to me that in me and in each one of us, there's deep wisdom.

But sometimes we don't know how to realize our wisdom in our daily life.

But the wisdom is there, and the practice can help us to realize our insights.

So in us, there's this inner child, however old we are,

there's still that five-year-old child, ten-year-old child. There's that teenager.

Who's very healthy, happy, alive.

And also who may be quite wounded.

Quite confused

Withdrawn.

Disillusioned.

So we recognize

our inner child through our thoughts,

our view about the world,

our view about ourselves.

We recognize that inner child through our speech.

Through our behaviors right in the present moment.

This body may have grown.

To be bigger, older.

We may have more jackets, more layers.

The shell is bigger, but essentially the core may be the same.

The child.

So, however, we may have gone through life.

The experiences that we have had.

They affect us.

So by recognizing the experiences that we have gone through

and how these experiences have affected us at different stages in our life,

we can heal them

and the inner child needs a lot of attention.

My healing journey has a lot to do with taking care of my inner child.

So some concrete practices that I do is

one is in sitting meditation.

I follow my breath.

I befriend my breath.

And then I befriend my body.

I scan my body.

Each part, part by part from the top of my head

to my eyes, my nose, going down.

Just say hello to each part and smile and relax the body.

And wherever there's pain,

I breathe longer into those parts

and I practice loving speech and deep listening to my body.

Hello pain,

in my belly.

Thank you for bearing the pain.

It's okay.

I'm here for you.

So I do that with each part of the body,

especially where there's pain

and where there's not pain,

I also thank my body.

Thank you knees.

There was a certain time when there was pain in my knees and I had difficulty with walking uphill.

And now I can walk quite easily.

So thank you.

Recognizing the positive conditions.

It's very important.

And using that energy of gratitude,

of peace, of joy, to embrace the painful parts of my body, of my mind.

And then I say hello to my inner child.

Hello, my inner child.

I know you are there.

Talk to me.

I'm listening to you.

Help me to take better care of you.

And then I just breath.

Quiet my mind.

And just listen.

Our inner child may speak to us with the voice in our mind.

All with sensations in the body

or with images like earlier.

Before we started this session, I was following my breathing,

relaxing my body, and I saw my inner child.

I saw her.

As a nine-year-old child, quite lanky,

walking through to the street and she was singing songs.

Pretty sad songs, but she was soothing herself.

So I breathe.

To that image, I breathe with that child and smile

to send her tender love.

And I also saw that little girl's standing on the bridge looking at the water flowing by and thinking dark thoughts.

And so I breathe with her.

Smile.

and say it's okay.

It's okay.

I'm here for you.

So when we sit quietly, we give ourselves time and space,

we'll see our inner child in many different ways.

And we breathe, we listen and we speak lovingly to that child.

We give reassurance that now we are here for the child.

We don't block out the voice.

We don't reject the child.

We don't run away from.

from her, from him, from them.

But we are here little by little, day by day.

The child feels secured.

Sometimes I lay down on my bed with my hands on my belly or on my heart.

Or I put my arms crossed like this.

And I just breathe.

And say to myself.

I love you.

I love you.

I'm here for you.

It's okay.

It's okay.

And I do this in the midst of the night when I have nightmares,

or I wake up suddenly and there's a feeling of anxiety, of confusion.

I do the same.

When we were children and our parents weren't able to be there for us.

And some other difficult situations took place.

And we felt so abandoned, so alone.

We might have lost trust in the adults.

That they couldn't be there for us.

We couldn't count on them.

But we have also realized, what's more devastating is that we have lost trust in ourselves,

in our capacity to be there for ourselves,

to protect ourselves, to listen and understand ourselves.

We lost that trust.

We may not have ever had that trust and confidence in ourselves in the first place.

But we can rebuild it now.

I have a niece.

She's nine-years-old, and I often praise her because I didn't get praises as a child.

I'll tell you are so beautiful, honey, You are so beautiful inside out.

And she said, thank you.

And I would tell her, I'm so proud of you because you're able to thank the person who praises you.

And she said, thank you.

So learn to think ourselves.

Learn to acknowledge the good qualities in ourselves, in our body,

in our mind, in our virtues, in the things that we do.

Say thank you for making that effort.

Thank you for trying so hard.

Thank you.

And when we make mistake, instead of saying to ourselves,

you are so stupid, you're so clumsy, you're good for nothing.

Some of us have learned to say those things to ourselves,

from our parents, from our caregivers,

from other kids,

but we can learn to undo those things by saying, I'm so sorry.

I didn't mean to say that to myself.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

For being here still.

I love you.

With positive thinking.

Positive speech and kind-loving embrace.

In our behaviors, we can heal

our inner child.