Guided Reconnection: The Practice
What is Guided Reconnection and how can it help you?
(Available in person or online)
Guided Reconnection is an integrative awareness practice that connects us with the divine knowing within and around us. It can heal physical pain and dysfunction, resolve trauma, increase clarity, and awaken joy and purpose by restoring connection within our bodies and between body, emotion, and spirit.
It grows from three interconnected roots: body-centred insight meditation, healing qigong, and channeled guidance. The process is simple to learn and practice, yet astoundingly powerful in healing a wide range of chronic, deeply rooted physical health issues and reconnecting us with wisdom, clarity, and a sense of purpose and meaning.
I’m really grateful to Tamara for introducing me to the Guided Reconnection technique. The fatigue associated with my illness means I spend a lot of time resting, but can also lead to depression and frustration where my body doesn’t feel like a great place to be. How much more rewarding to tune in, feel the movement of my breath through my body, bringing gentle loving awareness to what seems blocked or distressed. Not necessarily giving things names, just holding the sensations and releasing them, restoring an even flow of energy. Sometimes the practice leads me to a profound experiencing and release of deeply held feelings or memories; other times it’s a quick way of touching base, restoring my energy and good mood so I can move on with my day in a more genuine, grounded way.
-Carol Ross, 2023
the three roots of guided reconnection
First, at its foundation, this practice draws upon body-centred insight meditation—observing body sensations with a neutral, non-judging awareness, neither rejecting unpleasant sensations nor pursuing pleasant ones. This in itself is a powerful healing practice, as awareness is inherently compassionate, once our clouding agendas are cleared away, and compassion is healing.
Second, healing qigong is the most ancient element of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). It uses breath, intention, and movement to direct the flow of energy (or “qi”) within and between individuals, as well as between ourselves and the natural world.
There’s a paradox implicit in the relationship between a meditative practice that focuses on accepting what is present, just as it is (insight meditation), and a healing practice that deliberately directs the flow of attention and energy (qigong). This tension is reconciled by the third root of Guided Reconnection: divine guidance. In Guided Reconnection, we turn the process over to the greater wisdom we are all able to access if we allow it. Our busy thinking minds are only minimally involved, beyond creating the initial intention to be present to guidance and bring its greater wisdom into communication with the real and basic sensations of our physical bodies.
Turning our pain over to the guides is a real relief.
what’s divine guidance?
Each person’s experience of guidance is unique. Guided Reconnection doesn’t require any particular belief system about the nature of the divine in order to succeed. You don’t need to believe in God, or in a spiritual realm separate from physical reality. You don’t have to visualize an individual, person-like guide with a name (though some people may). You don’t need to have special psychic powers or even believe in such powers. You don’t need to know TCM theory or any other particular way of mapping the body’s energy system.
What’s essential is just that you’re open to the possibility that the universe holds deep mysteries beyond what our conscious minds can create or fully grasp, and that we’re able to receive wisdom beyond our own small minds just by inviting it, by accessing the truth that is always present everywhere within and around us.
You can learn more from Tamara about how to identify and connect with your guide(s). For now, what’s most important to know is that higher guides are entirely compassionate and without judgment towards you or anyone else. A guide will never criticize, will never make you feel anxious, guilty, or ashamed—though they may bring your awareness to anxiety, shame, or other emotions you’re already holding so you can shed the light of compassion on them. They will also never give you advice or tell you what to do; instead, they’ll open your awareness so you can make choices more deeply aligned with the life force flow. And if you allow it and invite it, they can adjust your body in ways that allow life force to flow through you more fully, resolving chronic physical pain and healing deep-rooted patterns of disharmony.
Click here for more info about what a Guided Reconnection session looks like in practice.
What guided reconnection is not
This practice will not turn you into a “best version of yourself.” This is because you don’t need to be improved, fixed, or perfected, however flawed you may sometimes feel. Nothing in you needs to be removed or corrected. You are good, you are needed by the world just as you are. Guided Reconnection brings you into a fuller connection with your own being, helping you befriend the self you have always been so the light of creation can shine through you more clearly.
Guided Reconnection is not a replacement for conventional medical diagnosis or treatment or for psychotherapy, though it may complement these approaches. If you need support from a doctor or a therapist, please seek it out. It’s also not meant to supplant existing healing or meditation practices that you have previously found helpful. It’s never a replacement for your own wisdom—only a way to access it more deeply.
