Have you ever read the Harry Potter series? It’s the first time that I was ever introduced to the idea of a portal. In the fantasy world, it’s known as a sacred opening through time, space and dimension, but it’s a concept that is also used in energy healing to mend unresolved issues and pain.

Image by: We Heart It

My massage therapist summed it up beautifully the other day in relation to grief. After a particularly painful break up, he was surprised to find that the grief he was experiencing wasn’t necessarily related to his ex girlfriend, but was all about his mum who had passed away several years ago.

Despite how much he had cried and grieved at the time, the break up opened up a new layer of grief that he needed to go through in order to release the pain he felt regarding his mum’s passing.

I’m a huge believer in what you move from, is what you move to. If you’re feeling uninspired or drained, your new environment / relationship / job etc will only reflect your inner world. If you change your energy from the inside, then the outside world will reflect it back to you.

Last year, my soul felt that I needed a change and when I contemplated moving overseas, I found that the change I was longing for was something that had to shift internally first. A change in my external environment only reflected the changes I needed to make internally.

The outside reflects the inside. Always.

Sometimes the person that holds the key to that portal is our boss, a partner or someone in our life that can remind us of a previous time in our life when we were lost, sad, angry, bullied or hurt. It gives us an opportunity to release another layer of pain that we might not have been ready to process at the time.

And sometimes portals don’t just help us clear the wounds about past relationships; in fact they help us gain clarity regarding our soul’s deepest longing. On other occasions, the key holder that opens that portal is someone that brings us tremendous joy.

I saw it recently with a friend who had a baby. I would never have described her as being maternal in any way, in fact she had always been a career driven party girl who had a tough as nails exterior.

As soon as she fell pregnant, her entire demeanor changed, and as much as I thought she’d be the last person to join a mother’s group and stay at home to look after her baby, she has in fact softened and opened up in the most beautiful way.

That little baby was the key holder to her healing transition that helped her feel safe enough to be soft and vulnerable. It goes to show that we when we welcome our emotions as teachers, every feeling brings good news, even the ones that are painful.