Journaling & the Self-Discovery Healing Process
3 TIPS To Get Started
Elizabeth Carpenter MSOM, LAC, CLHYP
16 min read
What do Leonardo da Vinci, Warren Buffet, Albert Einstein & Marie Curie have in common?
They all famously journaled.
Why Journal
Traditionally, journaling is a place and method to collect key bits of information, capture your ideas and thoughts, and reflect upon them.
That in itself is a boon and a basic in a world drowning in information yet pointedly lacking in wisdom.
But journaling is much more than that. It's a potent instrument of self-discovery, healing, and personal growth.
Journaling Can Be Used to
Clarify your thinking, lay out all the pieces of the puzzle and put it together
Process difficult emotions
Release stress
Work through challenges
and the grandaddy of them all . . . Get Deeper Answers
Journaling as a Self-Discovery & Healing Process
I’m not talking about, “Dear Diary, My life sucks and here’s my catalogue of all the ways it sucks and why” (and other tween and adolescent-type entries).
I’m talking about entering a state of flow, and taking up in earnest, what needs investigating.
By entering “flow” first, the practice of “automatic writing” becomes possible.
Automatic writing has historically been tinged with a woo-woo occult stigma, but actually is a vehicle for genius, personal truth, and spontaneous insight to emerge.
It facilitates a spill of key information and intelligence.
How
Flow state is a result of heart-brain coherence which taps into your subconscious mind, and opens the door to greater consciousness.
Your subconscious mind is the vault where what you’ve “forgotten” is stored, along with your lifelong trail of event interpretations.
Greater consciousness is the term I'm using here to collectively embrace and describe the unity and information flow universally experienced, but understood and interpreted differently, by disparate groups, such as those that: chant, pray, sing, dance, perform (from athletics to stages), create, meditate, engage rituals.
In sum, flow state is an altered state of consciousness that is at once super intelligent, seamless, timeless.
The heart-brain coherent state, flow, can be entered many ways, yet whether they are physical practices or spiritual practices, all involve:
Some combination of intention and breath
Opening to something greater and an internal energetic shift occurring.
Inner connectedness that is, simultaneously, participating in infinite intelligence.
The heart, as we will see later, is your portal, straight into flow.
Flow can be entered many ways.
Whether they are physical practices or spiritual practices, all involve:
Some combination of intention and breath.
Opening to something greater, and an internal energetic shift occurring.
Inner connectedness that is, simultaneously, participating in infinite intelligence.
Thus, the keys that unlock your prison of struggle are found there, whether your struggle is physical, mental-emotional, or spiritual.
Your subconscious mind houses all of the stored information of everything you have ever witnessed and experienced.
It’s where the story that you’ve concocted about yourself lives - the story you invented piece by patch by bridge to makes sense of it all [and survive it all], that’s operating today.
In fact, your subconscious mind doesn’t just hold onto your history, it is largely what runs your show. Full stop.
Until it’s brought to your conscious mind for re-evaluation, your subconscious is in charge.
Now let’s go one step further.
A lot rides on the [true & untrue] story of you,
you've concocted.
How you perceive and judge what’s going on in your life.
How you calculate “fairness” for yourself, others, society, the world.
What you believe your options are.
How you treat others.
How you value yourself - your self-esteem and self-worth.
The actions you will take, or refuse to take, to help yourself or get what you want.
Consciousness carries.
Due to the mind-body connection, consciousness permeates everywhere throughout your mind and body.
Traditional medicine systems, like Chinese medicine, are advanced in the specifics of how consciousness carries throughout your entire body via your meridian network.
What begins in one level of energy (commonly the emotion level) physicalizes over time if not resolved at that level. In fact "the 7 emotions" are considered a primary cause of internal illness in Chinese medicine.
Consciousness carries.
Hence, the placebo effect’s power to heal, and the nocebo effect’s power to make sick.
For those of us living the privilege of relative safety, the beliefs we hold about ourselves are quite possibly the single greatest determinant of our health, happiness, connection, prosperity & achievement.
By journaling in flow state, tapping your subconscious
mind and greater consciousness, grants you various advantages.
See your stories.
Learn their origins.
Acknowledge the truths and untruths you’ve accepted.
Revisit their legitimacy and sway for revision, upgrade or disposal.
Download the instruction manual for your shift to “better.”
Let genius flow through you and to you.
The HeartMind, Where the Shen Dwell
Some medical transplant studies suggest your entire life is recorded in your heart. For that and other reasons, I like to refer to the subconscious mind as your “heartmind.”
A particular favorite account of mine is where someone woke from anesthesia craving KFC, having never eaten it in their life, but learning, eventually, that their heart donor was a regular consumer. But I digress . . .
We have many colloquial expressions about the significance of the heart:
It’s the “seat of your soul”, your “spiritual organ.”
“I know that in my heart,” means it’s a truth in your book.
“I put my heart into it,” means you gave it your all.
“I’m heart broken,” describes true emotional devastation.
“I know it by heart,” says it’s secured and embedded in your consciousness far deeper than in your thinking mind.
. . . and so many more.
In Chinese Medicine
Each organ not only has its physical jobs for you, but holds a dimension of your soul and spiritual energy, is linked with an aspect of your mental process, and carries a particular emotional capacity for you.
Your heart isn’t just the electromagnetic rhythm keeper and blood pumper of your body:
Your capacity for joy is the heart's emotional mandate.
Both your subconscious mind, and thinking, reasoning mind are its mental province.
Your hotline to the divine and infinite intelligence is spiritual yearning programmed in.
Chinese medicine’s term to hold these varied facets of your experience is Shen.
Shen
Shen is that aspect of consciousness you experience as your mental activity, emotional well-being, and spiritual connection.
The concept of Shen originates circa 1600 BCE, beginning as the concept of a divine force that could be accessed.
Today the concept encompasses the full range of mental-emotional and spiritual functions.
“Spirit,” whether following the Hebrew, Latin or Greek, comes from the word for breath, life force, incorporeal vitality, soul, the invisible animating force.
It is that non-physical part of yourself where you feel your emotions, think your thoughts, and house your identity.
It's your tether to universal consciousness, the unified field, God, OM, Source (whatever framework is meaningful to you for the great mystery of Life that religions have built themselves upon, and upon which ancient and living masters have expounded).
By journaling in the state of flow
you’re working the hotline, communing with Shen, advancing your ability to process all incoming sensory and intuitive information, and your body’s reaction to it.
Your own healing, and that of the collective.
It’s been said it takes one generation to heal generational hurt that preceded you for thousands of years.
Doing that spiritual work could mean offering a new world to generations forward, regardless of whether you have children yourself. The more of us that do it, the more we heal the generational fear embedded biologically in human DNA.
Epigenetic healing.
When you heal the hurt and fear in yourself, you create resonance in the field, so that the antennae of your neurons, heart and brain, are given something new to tune to that transcends the pain of the past.
Wholeness.
3 Tips to Get You Started
Know your style.
Are you the kind of person who’s drawn to the beautiful bound leather journal with the gold edges?
And feels at complete liberty to draw, doodle and write absolutely anything in it? Even rip out pages if inspired to do so?
Then the world of gorgeous finely crafted journals is yours!
On the other hand, perhaps you are the kind of person who will feel so much pressure to write something profound in a such a beautiful book that you won’t write anything - let alone rip out a page or 20 if necessary.
If you’re Person B then lower the stakes!
I personally have kept many kinds of journals over the years. Having desecrated several fine silky magnificent books, I eventually transitioned to the lowly spiral notebook some years ago, so I could rip without repercussion.
These days I prefer my laptop and the Notion app, paired with artist sketch tablets.
The one method I don’t recommend is using your phone. Too many distractions with everything else on your phone - social media, news, financial apps, you name it. Not to mention the texts, DM’s and email alerts popping up!
So….should you write or type?
Writing with your hand is special. You activate both sides of your brain. There’s something deeply surprising and revealing about watching words spill from your pen that you didn’t know were coming.
However, typing is fast. I use a laptop currently because my hand struggles to keep pace with what’s flowing through. And keep a sketch pad in my purse and in my desk.
To start, I recommend writing on paper until your method to enter flow state yields reliably and easily. For example, being able to take a refreshing breath while having the intention to connect, enter flow. And voila, you’re in.
Transportability is also key.
There are so many times during a day when you have a thought you want to come back to when you have time to ponder. Or a lightbulb moment while doing something else (spontaneous flow state). Your journal is the perfect place to quickly capture your insight, saving it for later reflection.
Travel, waiting rooms, standing in line - the many times and places you’d normally scroll your phone or consume other people’s content to distract yourself - are also really nice opportunities to instead, to be with yourself.
Insights, clarifying thoughts, processing - all good stuff that makes you happier, healthier and wiser.
Make it a daily habit, like brushing your teeth.
Perhaps:
Paired with your morning beverage.
As your bedtime wind-down for sleep.
Or your afternoon treat to reboot & refresh.
That said, whenever feels right, is the right time.
The main thing is to make it a daily practice.
The rewards of journaling compound. They pay out bigger over time, similar to the way regularly investing small amounts grows your wealth.
Positive accumulation, awareness increasingly fortifies your inner stability.
So develop a routine by claiming a particular time of day for the mining of treasure.
Find your transition mojo.
Entering flow is easy, once you're good at it (ridiculousness intended). But finding your method if you don't yet have one, can seem like a mystery.
Maybe that’s as simple as taking some deep, slow, even breaths in and out of your heart center, with the intention to become present.
Maybe that’s writing what you have to be grateful about….and letting yourself feel it, not just list it...until you're deep in the coherent energetic state of appreciation and wellbeing.
If you need help , check out MindBody Mentorship.
If you have a developed devotional or meditation practice, simply do your journaling on its heels.
The point is: going from full-on Life, busy-ness, thinking, planning, evaluating, rushing and typical activity straight into flow, is a demand that needs a transition.
So develop a reliable self-invitation to flow.
To assist, consider putting your headphones on, and playing something that harmonizes your energy.
Music created on the solfeggio frequencies are excellent.
And, if you’ve not yet discovered them, binaural beats help synchronize your brain’s right and left hemispheres. Thus they are both deeply relaxing and deeply focusing. They are a great way to zone in quickly.
Search "binaural beats" on YouTube or Spotify to find some you particularly enjoy.
I play them for patients on my treatment tables, putting them in a set of Bose headphones, to enhance their acupuncture experience and effects. I also frequently prescribe listening to binaural beats to help patients shift their brains for sleep.
They’re excellent for meditation, work and focus.
To Your Extraordinary Health & Wellbeing!
2
1
3
What do Leonardo da Vinci, Warren Buffet, Albert Einstein & Marie Curie have in common?
They all famously journaled.
Why Journal?
Traditionally, journaling is a place and method to collect key bits of information, capture your ideas and thoughts, and reflect upon them.
That in itself is a boon and a basic in a world drowning in information yet pointedly lacking in wisdom.
But journaling is much more than that. It's a potent instrument of self-discovery, healing, and personal growth.
Journaling Can Be Used to
Clarify your thinking, lay out all the pieces of the puzzle and put it together
Process difficult emotions
Release stress
Work through challenges
and the grandaddy of them all . . . Get Deeper Answers
Journaling as a Self-Discovery & Healing Process
I’m not talking about, “Dear Diary, My life sucks and here’s my catalogue of all the ways it sucks, and why” (and other 'tween and adolescent-type entries).
I’m talking about entering a state of flow, and taking up in earnest, what needs investigating.
By entering “flow” first, the practice of “automatic writing” becomes possible.
Automatic writing has historically been tinged with a woo-woo occult stigma, but actually is a vehicle for genius, personal truth, and spontaneous insight to emerge.
It facilitates a spill of key information and intelligence.
How
Flow state is a result of heart-brain coherence which taps into your subconscious mind, and opens the door to greater consciousness.
Your subconscious mind is the vault where what you’ve “forgotten” is stored, along with your lifelong trail of event interpretations.
Greater consciousness is the term I'm using here to collectively embrace and describe the unity and information flow universally experienced, but understood and interpreted differently, by disparate groups, such as those that: chant, pray, sing, dance, perform (from athletics to stages), create, meditate, engage rituals.
In sum, flow state is an altered state of consciousness that is at once super intelligent, seamless, timeless.
The heart-brain coherent state, flow, can be entered many ways, yet whether they are physical practices or spiritual practices, all involve:
Some combination of intention and breath
Opening to something greater and an internal energetic shift occurring.
Inner connectedness that is, simultaneously, participating in infinite intelligence.
The heart, as we will see later, is your portal, straight into flow.
Flow can be entered many ways.
Whether they are physical practices or spiritual practices, all involve:
Some combination of intention and breath.
Opening to something greater, and an internal energetic shift occurring.
Inner connectedness that is, simultaneously, participating in infinite intelligence.
Thus, the keys that unlock your prison of struggle are found there, whether your struggle is physical, mental-emotional, or spiritual.
Your subconscious mind houses all of the stored information of everything you have ever witnessed and experienced.
It’s where the story that you’ve concocted about yourself lives - the story you invented piece by patch by bridge to makes sense of it all [and survive it all], that’s operating today.
In fact, your subconscious mind doesn’t just hold onto your history, it is largely what runs your show. Full stop.
Until it’s brought to your conscious mind for re-evaluation, your subconscious is in charge.
Now let’s go one step further.
A lot rides on the [true & untrue] story of you,
you've concocted.
How you perceive and judge what’s going on in your life.
How you calculate “fairness” for yourself, others, society, the world.
What you believe your options are.
How you treat others.
How you value yourself - your self-esteem and self-worth.
The actions you will take, or refuse to take, to help yourself or get what you want.
Consciousness carries.
Due to the mind-body connection, consciousness permeates everywhere throughout your mind and body.
Traditional medicine systems, like Chinese medicine, are advanced in the specifics of how consciousness carries throughout your entire body via your meridian network.
What begins in one level of energy (commonly the emotion level) physicalizes over time if not resolved at that level. In fact "the 7 emotions" are considered a primary cause of internal illness in Chinese medicine.
Consciousness carries.
Hence, the placebo effect’s power to heal, and the nocebo effect’s power to make sick.
For those of us living the privilege of relative safety, the beliefs we hold about ourselves are quite possibly the single greatest determinant of our health, happiness, connection, prosperity & achievement.
By journaling in flow state, tapping your subconscious mind
and greater consciousness, grants you various advantages.
See your stories.
Learn their origins.
Acknowledge the truths and untruths you’ve accepted.
Revisit their legitimacy and sway for revision, upgrade or disposal.
Download the instruction manual for your shift to “better.”
Let genius flow through you and to you.
The HeartMind, where the Shen Dwell
Some medical transplant studies suggest your entire life is recorded in your heart. For that and other reasons, I like to refer to the subconscious mind as your “heartmind.”
A particular favorite account of mine is where someone woke from anesthesia craving KFC, having never eaten it in their life, but learning, eventually, that their heart donor was a regular consumer. But I digress.
We have many colloquial expressions about the significance of the heart:
It’s the “seat of your soul”, your “spiritual organ.”
“I know that in my heart,” means it’s a truth in your book.
“I put my heart into it,” means you gave it your all.
“I’m heart broken,” describes true emotional devastation.
“I know it by heart,” says it’s secured and embedded in your consciousness far deeper than in your thinking mind.
. . . and so many more.
In Chinese Medicine
Each organ not only has its physical jobs for you, but holds a dimension of your soul and spiritual energy, is linked with an aspect of your mental process, and carries a particular emotional capacity for you.
Your heart isn’t just the electromagnetic rhythm keeper and blood pumper of your body:
Your capacity for joy is the heart's emotional mandate.
Both your subconscious mind, and thinking, reasoning mind are its mental province.
Your hotline to the divine and infinite intelligence is spiritual yearning programmed in.
Chinese medicine’s term to hold these varied facets of your experience is Shen.
Shen
Shen is that aspect of consciousness you experience as your mental activity, emotional well-being, and spiritual connection.
The concept of Shen originates circa 1600 BCE, beginning as the concept of a divine force that could be accessed.
Today the concept encompasses the full range of mental-emotional and spiritual functions.
“Spirit,” whether following the Hebrew, Latin or Greek, comes from the word for breath, life force, incorporeal vitality, soul, the invisible animating force.
It is that non-physical part of yourself where you feel your emotions, think your thoughts, and house your identity.
It's your tether to universal consciousness, the unified field, God, OM, Source (whatever framework is meaningful to you for the great mystery of Life that religions have built themselves upon, and upon which ancient and living masters have expounded).
By journaling in the state of flow
you’re working the hotline, communing with Shen, advancing your ability to process all incoming sensory and intuitive information, and your body’s reaction to it.
Your own healing, and that of the collective.
It’s been said it takes one generation to heal generational hurt that preceded you for thousands of years.
Doing that spiritual work could mean offering a new world to generations forward, regardless of whether you have children yourself. The more of us that do it, the more we heal the generational fear embedded biologically in human DNA.
Epigenetic healing.
When you heal the hurt and fear in yourself, you create resonance in the field, so that the antennae of your neurons, heart and brain, are given something new to tune to that transcends the pain of the past.
Wholeness.
3 Tips to Get You Started
Know your style.
Are you the kind of person who’s drawn to the beautiful bound leather journal with the gold edges?
And feels at complete liberty to draw, doodle and write absolutely anything in it? Even rip out pages if inspired to do so?
Then the world of gorgeous finely crafted journals is yours!
On the other hand, perhaps you are the kind of person who will feel so much pressure to write something profound in a such a beautiful book that you won’t write anything - let alone rip out a page or 20 if necessary.
If you’re Person B then lower the stakes!
I personally have kept many kinds of journals over the years. Having desecrated several fine silky magnificent books, I eventually transitioned to the lowly spiral notebook some years ago, so I could rip without repercussion.
These days I prefer my laptop and the Notion app, paired with artist sketch tablets.
The one method I don’t recommend is using your phone. Too many distractions with everything else on your phone - social media, news, financial apps, you name it. Not to mention the texts, DM’s and email alerts popping up!
So….should you write or type?
Writing with your hand is special. You activate both sides of your brain. There’s something deeply surprising and revealing about watching words spill from your pen that you didn’t know were coming.
However, typing is fast. I use a laptop currently because my hand struggles to keep pace with what’s flowing through. And keep a sketch pad in my purse and in my desk.
To start, I recommend writing on paper until your method to enter flow state yields reliably and easily. For example, being able to take a refreshing breath while having the intention to connect, enter flow. And voila, you’re in.
Transportability is also key.
There are so many times during a day when you have a thought you want to come back to when you have time to ponder. Or a lightbulb moment while doing something else (spontaneous flow state). Your journal is the perfect place to quickly capture your insight, saving it for later reflection.
Travel, waiting rooms, standing in line - the many times and places you’d normally scroll your phone or consume other people’s content to distract yourself - are also really nice opportunities to instead, to be with yourself.
Insights, clarifying thoughts, processing - all good stuff that makes you happier, healthier and wiser.
Make it a daily habit, like brushing your teeth.
Perhaps:
Paired with your morning beverage.
As your bedtime wind-down for sleep.
Or your afternoon treat to reboot & refresh.
That said, whenever feels right, is the right time.
The main thing is to make it a daily practice.
The rewards of journaling compound. They pay out bigger over time, similar to the way regularly investing small amounts grows your wealth.
Positive accumulation, awareness increasingly fortifies your inner stability.
So develop a routine by claiming a particular time of day for the mining of treasure.
Find your transition mojo.
Entering flow is easy, once you're good at it (ridiculousness intended). But finding your method if you don't yet have one, can seem like a mystery.
Maybe that’s as simple as taking some deep, slow, even breaths in and out of your heart center, with the intention to become present.
Maybe that’s writing what you have to be grateful about….and letting yourself feel it, not just list it...until you're deep in the coherent energetic state of appreciation and wellbeing.
If you need help , check out MindBody Mentorship.
If you have a developed devotional or meditation practice, simply do your journaling on its heels.
The point is: going from full-on Life, busy-ness, thinking, planning, evaluating, rushing and typical activity straight into flow, is a demand that needs a transition.
So develop a reliable self-invitation to flow.
To assist, consider putting your headphones on, and playing something that harmonizes your energy.
Music created on the solfeggio frequencies are excellent.
And, if you’ve not yet discovered them, binaural beats help synchronize your brain’s right and left hemispheres. Thus they are both deeply relaxing and deeply focusing. They are a great way to zone in quickly.
Search "binaural beats" on YouTube or Spotify to find some you particularly enjoy.
I play them for patients on my treatment tables, putting them in a set of Bose headphones, to enhance their acupuncture experience and effects. I also frequently prescribe listening to binaural beats to help patients shift their brains for sleep.
They’re excellent for meditation, work and focus.
To Your Extraordinary Health & Wellbeing!
2
1
3
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