1. What is a Journey?
It’s a guided meditation, or guided introspection, where you look at emotions that are blocked in the body. There’s a connection between emotions and memory in the physical body, and it can come from when you were three years old, or something that happened yesterday, where you found yourself in an emotional situation and didn’t allow yourself to feel that emotion fully. That can create a block. The Journey can give you access to where emotion and memory come together.
2. How can blocked emotion manifest itself physically?
There are two levels on which you can look at the repercussions: at the cellular level, and the behavioural.
At the cellular level: If you accept that our body is made of cells, you can appreciate that our cells renew themselves. Over the course of a year, all of your cells are new. Different parts of the body have different rates of renewal.
The modern age philosopher and humanist Deepak Chopra introduced me through his book Quantum Healing to two ways of seeing physical illness: he noticed that most illness is measured in time, by how much time it takes for the illness to overtake the body. What he decided to look at was people who recovered from illness, and what their rates of healing were. The similarity between the people was that they each had access, somehow, to the infinite body wisdom, and in that way got access to healing.
Chopra wondered also: if the cells renew, why do they renew with the illness intact? If you have liver cancer, why does the illness transfer from the old cell to the new cell? The answer is that they pass on the illness memory: that’s what the cells do. And the Journey goes into that specific cell memory.
The second way that a blocked emotion may manifest physically is that you might realize that an emotion is being held inside, or is blocked, if it keeps repeating so much so that your body interprets the feeling as a new reality, and adapts. A healthy way of dealing with emotion is to let it out. But if, for example, fear comes up inside you, but you’re in the middle of company, you might stuff it back in and you contain it. Your body, however, honours you, and keeps it. It wants to protect you, and it remembers. When an unexpressed emotion stays, your body follows that knowing. It thinks that is the reality. And until you reframe it, and give it an option that is healthy, your body will stick to the old perception.
In Louise Hay’s book You Can Heal Your Life, there’s a chart that directly links parts of the body with unresolved emotions. You should look at it; it’s an invitation from your body to look at something.
3. What will I do on a Journey?
It starts with a short meditation that we do together, sitting in a chair, eyes closed. I have a set of questions and I ask you to just be aware of your body and what comes up – an ache or pain or stiffness, feeling stuck or isolated – any noticeable change. Within our time frame, an hour or a half, we honour what comes up. There is always a beginning and an end of a session, where an issue is looked at and certain healing is necessary.
4. How does it work?
When someone wants to address an issue they have, the first session can bring a great shift.You might have a session once, and find that you get it, and can move on. Or, you may choose to work on this ailment, issue, or wish with greater depth.
I’d like to see that my clients are served well, that they are supported well, and that their area in question is thoroughly explored. For something to implement its way into your personal life stream, or path of recovery, you may decide to have a series of sessions. You will know if it is time to check back in.
5. Why should I come on a Journey? Who does this?
People who realize that there is more in life, that there is a universality about even the most individual experiences – a quantum soup of wisdom – and that there is a way to access that. Sometimes you’ve tried everything and nothing works, and the issue is still not cleared, physically or emotionally.
What you think you need to do – the path that is mirrored to you by society or the medical world or alternative medicine world – may not be helping. This is different; it is your own body wisdom. With this kind of work, you become quiet and you find within yourself the steps you need to take, even if it’s just where to start.
People who come on a journey may have a physical illness, an emotional issue, a wish.
An answer that Brandon Bays gives to this question, in her book The Journey: “The thirst to come to know who you really are is to me the most profound thirst there is. A thirst of the highest order. Very often these seekers aren’t even aware that this is what they are seeking. All they know is that there is something greater, and they want to experience it, to know it, to live in it.”
6. Who is Iris Kiewiet?
I started doing my own Journey in 2003 in Netherlands with Brandon Bays, the founder of this practice. It reset my inner compass instantly, and I started to make better choices for myself. You could say that the Journey brought me to Canada, and fulfilled my deep wish of finding a life partner, having children and really progressing in my art. As I was doing this work in Canada, I felt a pull to do the whole practitioner program, to be able to offer this work and support to others. The feedback I got from people who experienced this work with me was quite strong. Becoming a full practitioner of Journey work enabled me to enjoy being part of a larger group, sharing work, and working on a community-wide scale.
7. Why do you do it?
This work helps me to stay open, to move through challenges, and to grow. The world changes, and I am inspired to trust and follow the path that I’m on, to honour my family, my artwork, my journeywork, my community.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves,”Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be?” – Marianne Williamson, from her book A Return to Love
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Iris Kiewiet:
Was a graduate of the first Journey Practitioner program in North America.
I work together with, Journey Practioners, but also other health practitioners in the Ottawa-Wakefield area.
I give receipts for insurance purposes.
I work with the federal government’s Health Statistics Canada department, with small groups, and with individuals.
Phone sessions are available.
The interview was written by:
Andrea Hossack
