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Many of us have probably heard the phrase, “Go within,” or perhaps Joseph Campbell’s famous words, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

A growing number of us have also felt this inner knowing, this inner experience of truth, within our hearts. Perhaps, it’s a quiet knowing, or a more subtle voice of fewer words, an image or a picture, a stillness, a peace, a deeper realization of the present journey of life we are on, giving us certain insights and answers to life and circumstantial challenges.

Many of us have found this feeling in various avenues: nature, meditation, yoga, plant medicine, somatic therapy, in the love we feel for another, or perhaps randomly driving in the car listening to music.

There is a voice that speaks to us. Maybe you know it too.

It’s not the external authority of God outside of us, or the clergyman in the church. It can be heard in the soulful voice and wisdom of our human counsel, our friends, our partners, our spiritual brothers and sisters. We are all emanating beings from the same source after all.

If we believe that all things are interconnected, how could we not believe that we, too, host this inner guidance system? An inner wisdom—an inner physician—that knows how and what we need at all times.

It is through the development of certain mindfulness-based, awareness-building practices that we remember—we come home. We come home to the body, to the wisdom within our skin, to the inner cosmos of infinite connections and truth.

I have been blessed to experience this throughout the last few years in my training of Craniosacral therapy and SomatoEmotional Release. Created and founded by John Upledger, an osteopathic doctor and pioneer of bridging medical-based practices with innate healing and facilitation, this particular branch of body-centered therapy focuses on you, the client, as the guide. The therapist is merely the facilitator, the space to hold you in, to help bridge your own conscious awareness to anything missed or needed in the nonconscious mind, also known as the body.

It is by going within the unconscious mind, with the guidance of the client’s inner physician (to which the therapist is deeply listening and following) that we find the healing we need, whether that be physical, mental, emotional, energetic, or spiritual. The healing we seek is within us. And it will always give us the necessary action steps in our outer world, or guide us to the external resources needed to better help support us.

It is by surrendering to this inner wisdom that we allow the healing to happen, wisely and innately. In a Craniosacral/SomatoEmotional session, this may come in the form of tissue and fascia (connective tissue) unwinding or perhaps in the more emotional landscape of returning to memories in the nonconscious mind and allowing those emotions to move through and out. After the release, we can follow the inner physician’s guidance to return to that light, that wholeness, that integration of such experience, perhaps in communication of what we need to hear or tell those parts of self now, or maybe in imagery and knowing of that peace and love, again.

It is truly a beautiful experience to witness this in sessions as a facilitator and to have undergone them myself, as a client. And, it reminds me that this inner wisdom is within us always.

We can always be seeking out the next “healing,” the next modality that will cure us, the next retreat, the next meditation practice, the next fix. But in the lens of Craniosacral therapy (among other wholeness-based modalities and traditions), all we need to “do” is surrender to what is.

Once we can let go of the need to know what’s happening or what’s next, magic can happen. It’s always our choice, of course. We can choose in any moment to return to the fearful gripping, the mind of horror stories and doom, to the what ifs, the hows, the whens, the list of worries. Or we can choose more presence. More embodiment of ourselves, of our direct experience, by going within the landscape of the body, guided by our inner wisdom.

Perhaps you can relate to a life lived in the mind alone. A life where because of the trauma and pain you endured, you thought you had to live in controlling mechanisms and self-protection. That is totally and completely valid. These patterns enabled your survival. And, that was self-preservation at its finest.

But a part of us knows that there is another way now, a way of more ease, trust, flow, surrender, beauty, and magic.

We know it because perhaps we’ve tasted it in a fleeting moment of feeling our heart’s joy come alive in painting a beautiful picture, writing a poem, singing a song, playing an instrument, dancing, or being in nature. A gentle breeze in the wind. A song we hear on the radio. A loving word from a friend. An embrace from a loved one.

This is how we come home. We return to the body, to the sanctuary within, to the cave within our hearts and souls. We return each time we take a conscious breath back into our bodies and hearts. A moment to pause. A moment to stop the doing, the seeking, the chasing.

It can all change in just a moment. A moment of surrender, to go within. To return home. To watch the truth come alive. To watch the healing happen. To watch the flow of wisdom come through you, as you.

Less seeking, more being. Less perfecting, more showing up as is.

This is the beauty of healing. We have everything within us to heal, guided by our inner wisdom; this is who and what we can trust, without a shadow of a doubt, as we begin to build and rebuild that connection and relationship with our guidance system. Call it God, call it our Higher Self, call it nature, call it truth, call it love. It is available to us, simply because it exists.

Love is the way home. Always, now, and forever.

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