Our child within is instinctual and has an inexplicable knowing about the world around it. It knows its own feelings, and how to express them: it laughs when it is happy, cries when it is sad, and screams when it is angry. Each moment is filled with curiosity, wonder, and a need to play, discover, and create in the world.
Over the years, we force our child within into hiding, and bury alive a very real part of ourselves that never grows up, and will never go away. We make it to adulthood, with all its sensibilities, its heart-breaking lessons and its ever-increasing demands, but this causes us to repress our child within, and in doing so we rob ourselves of our natural spontaneity, lose our instinctual trust in our “gut”, and separate ourselves from others so they will never see our child within true feelings and desires.
We may suddenly want to skip through the park for no reason whatsoever… but our rational adult side says, “don’t be ridiculous”.
We feel an inexplicable desire to get out our painting set and create something messy… but we hesitate: “Why bother?” It doesn’t pay the bills.
We want cry uncontrollably over that which we’ve lost, without worrying about “staying strong”… but we smile and pull ourselves together instead.
The following process is designed to get us re-acquainted with our child within after all this time. We do this process confidentially, and all we need is a pen/pencil or crayons (as you feel comfortable) and paper.
When communicating, use your non-dominant hand (the hand you do not usually write with) when speaking as the “ child within ”, which directly accesses right-brain functions such as non-verbal visual/spatial perception, emotional expression and intuition, as oppose to our left “parent” side of the brain which centres on verbal and analytical processing.
How does our child look?
Sit quietly and close our eyes. Picture a beautiful place that both you and your child can visit together in your imagination. You should feel safe and comfortable, and just go with what feels right for you.
Open your eyes, and with your non-dominant hand, draw a picture of your child. You don’t need to rush or put pressure on yourself, reconnect with your inner natural flow.
Now using your dominant hand and a separate piece of paper, spend a little time reflecting on this process:
How did it feel while drawing your child? Were there any frustrations or blocks?
How do you feel now when you look at the picture?
Where do you think certain characteristics of the child came from – in physical or facial expression, or location, or outfit?
How old is your child?
We feel that our child within does not second-guess anything, full of energy and the will to explore in the woods, which made us feel safe, protected, and full of curiosity.
What does our picture of our child within tell us?
Conversing with our child within
The second part of this process is to have a conversation with our child within. Look at our drawing. our dominant hand (the one you usually write with) will take the role of the adult. We will then respond as our child within using the non-dominant other hand.
Once again, go with the flow of our intuition. Remember, as with any child, our child within must trust us enough to emerge, so stay patient and calm, and take our time during these exercises.
Open the conversation by telling the child that you want to get to know it so that you can take better care of it. You can start by asking for its name, and anything else it wants to tell you about itself: age, how it feels, what it likes and doesn’t like, and what it wants from you.
Don’t worry if the flow of the conversation doesn’t go exactly per the questions, just follow our intuition, and go with what comes up in the moment.
Close the conversation by asking the Child to tell you anything else it wants you to know, and thank the Child for coming out and expressing itself, and that you want to have more of these conversations so that you can get to know it better.
Using our dominant hand on a separate piece of paper, reflect back on the conversation with our child. This step is to help you raise awareness of your child’s needs so you can be more attentive in future. Was there anything surprising that came out from the conversation? Do you notice a pattern, or particular emotions coming up on both the part of the adult and the child? Any memories?
We are interested in our intuitions age feeling that we are aged about 6; We reflect on why. We sense this was the ‘felt age’ where we started to feel emotions such as embarrassment, and inadequacy — it was the beginning of closing the door on our child within.
We notice how much of our inner child’s worth begins to diminish from the time that joyful spontaneous acts started to scrutinised as achievements, and the bubbling anger felt about this – We have a sense of our child withins feeling and we start to acknowledge that there has been an injustice.
We are very surprised by the guilt we feel as our adult self that things have become this way, and that we feel saddened by this. It makes us want to reconnect further to make amends to our child within.
This process will shed a great deal of light upon our relationship with our child within; it is the beginning of a re-connection and healing for this perfect being inside of us.
As the relationship strengthens, we develop an on-going appreciation for the role of the child within in our lives. We become more aware of its needs and desires, and begin to utilise its intuitive gifts.
Our child within is at the core of our being, when this existence is cherished we are free to express openly its creative and spontaneous enthusiasm for life and understanding.
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