What stands out to me is that you are circling a real truth: insight alone does not free us, and neither does intensity. People can meditate, journey, breathe, journal, and remain organized around the same old wound. That part feels right. But where I would take it further is this: the problem is not only an incomplete method. It is the mistaken center. As long as the ego remains the one trying to heal itself, even powerful practices can become renovations of the false self rather than a return to what is deeper and truer.
In my experience, many people are not simply “stuck” because they missed a layer. They are stuck because consciousness keeps bending around shame, fear, and adaptation as though those were the truth of who they are. So yes, story matters. Emotion matters. Behavior matters. But underneath all three is a more primary question: what in the person is leading? If the heart is not restored as a compass, then the work easily becomes another performance of becoming.
What I appreciate most is your insistence that people are not failing because they lack effort. I agree. Most are exhausted not from avoiding the work, but from doing so much of it without being helped to understand the human condition beneath it. Healing is not merely excavation, rewiring, or retraining. It is also a remembrance. We are what we were first, and unless the work helps a person return to that deeper truth, they may gain skill, relief, or insight and still not feel fully home.
I think we are in complete agreement. Ego is ultimately the story of I am.... and the defending of varying instances and expressions of I am. So in my view Ego is the construct I am speaking about here. I am just not calling it ego. I am calling it identity/identities.. and those are are construct or emotion/story/belief structures. So i agree "as long as ego remains the one trying to heal itself"... that is what the rewrite (or call it whatever you choose) is ultimately getting at. The ego is what must be rewritten and what is rewritten (edited not erased) in this work. Thank you for such an interesting addition.
You might find this useful. I love your intention. "... when egoic mass bends experience away from the center that actually is" --> https://zenodo.org/records/17847246
I am not sure I follow completely what you are saying here. The language and vocabulary are not common to me. I may be misinterpreting … but I do not think the psyche is self healing or directing. If it were humans would not to do this work to heal… we can just look around all over the place that many have identity crises and do not emerge more whole and healed… to the contrary.
What I mean by self-correcting is not self-healing automatically. A cut may be self-healing by design [the body's pull to homeostasis], but it can still become infected, ignored, or repeatedly reopened. The same is true of the psyche. I am not suggesting that people inevitably emerge whole simply because time passes. Clearly, they do not. I am saying as a trauma psychologist and guide: I have witnessed [in thousands of people] an inherent movement in the psyche toward coherence, truth, and reorganization when conditions allow it. When those conditions do not exist, the system adapts instead of fostering healing.
So the evidence against the psyche being self-correcting is not that people remain stuck. It is that the corrective movement gets obstructed by trauma, shame, fear, culture, and the ego’s need to survive. In that sense, symptoms are often not proof of a broken psyche, but proof of a psyche still trying to solve something with the limited tools it has. That is the distinction I am making.
The ego does not initiate healing. It initiates adaptation. But beneath adaptation, I've witnessed that the psyche carries a deeper organizing intelligence that pushes toward wholeness. Severe trauma patients reveal this all the time. Their breakdowns, dreams, grief, symptoms, catharses, and moments of ego-collapse are often not random malfunctions. They are failed or partial attempts of the psyche to reorganize around something truer than the false center it has been forced to use. So I would say it simply this way: The psyche is self-correcting by design, but not self-correcting without obstruction. That is why people need help. Not because there is no corrective movement, but because that movement is so often buried, distorted, or frightened off. I hope that is clearer.
When/if one understands the curvature law I sent...you learn that rewriting the ego improves the false center. But it is egosolarism that exposes the false center as the culprit altogether. In short, it is an existential problem of displacement. In this context, a next-level human...is a humane human. The solution is not a better ego-story, but a repositioned ego. With the heart restored as the center of human experience, the ego returns to its proper adaptive role. Where science has shown this and been accepted...human beings have not. An unbelievable recent truth of this: it was just in 1992 that the Catholic Church took the 'ego as center' out of doctrine. But in narrative only--not in practice. Countless theories restructure and name the ego problem. Unfortunately, changing the name or diagnosis does not change human orientation and stance. Something as simple as 'back-facing' the full moon to see the human shadow...is an example of this. The human ego is so taken by [and identifies with] its oscillating light that we forget it's simply a 'mirror reflection' of the source, not the light itself. Essentially, we've made the moon the sun. I hope you don't feel I am trespassing...or being critical. Next level human is absolutely the correct language, but Jade...the human psyche is self-correcting in that direction....by design. So many people on Substack are speaking of this...while severe trauma patients experience this truth daily. And in that realm...it's called ego-death. Few realize that this is the correct orientation for catharsis--something humans will not walk into voluntarily. If you ever wish to discuss this...I am open. I do love your focus and goal.
It’s so funny to me to watch people brand new to these concepts attack the ego…explain now..WHY must the ego be re-written and what has programmed you on this? I appreciate so much the parody on authenticity as you regurgitate psychological theory from the 40s but it’s laughable. Ego is only afforded to the privileged, and your parts/systems/concepts don’t work on the truly traumatized- just those traumatized enough to equally be capable of affording your BS rhetoric.
"We are what we were first" — that's the line that lands. Not a better center. Not a restored heart. What was there before the adaptations formed is still there — it was never damaged by what was built on top of it. The work isn't restoration. It's recognition. And recognition is different in kind from any form of excavation, rewiring, or retraining — because what you're returning to was never absent.
Yes. That’s the distinction. What is deepest in us was never broken, only obscured. So the work is less about restoring something lost than recognizing what never left. But for most people, that recognition still needs enough safety, honesty, and holding to become lived reality rather than just a beautiful idea.
The silo problem is real and the diagnosis here is careful. What I find myself thinking about is the layer beneath the three layers. The biological substrate that all three processes depend on. You can do rigorous Rewrite work and the insight won’t hold if the system running it is operating on degraded membrane infrastructure. The emotional charge addressed in Rewire is partly a lipid story. The behavioral encoding in Retrain requires a nervous system with the capacity to consolidate.
I was lucky enough to have been trained from the early 60s by therapeutic emerging humanistic psychology era including wilhelm Reich, Wilfred Biin, Alexander Lowen, John Pierrakos, Paul Cornyetz, Moshe feldenkrais, Yvonne Agazarian, and more recently, jack kruse, Karl Friston and Frank Corrigan . The model as you’ve highlighted has a number of levels and their integration is critical in modifying character structure. The biological level is of great importance as we now see how the gut-brain relationship influences all aspects of our functioning and that infections can be lifelong and so can be core drivers of cognition and behavior. See my Substack for how this all comes together in my 3 Rs: repair-regrow-retrain. I’m looking forward to seeing how we might collaborate.
Also, there has to be heat / energy to drive the process deep. This is where Kundalini comes in. She rewires the entire system, clears the chakras, and upgrades the body to hold higher vibrations.
I love your rewrite, rewire and retrain framework. And all your work truly. I agree that “transformational experiences” have become a generic promise, and that real integration of big experiences is rarely actualised.
I also recently wrote about Ayahuasca and integration, but from the lens of - if the intensity of this medicine is meeting the specific predicaments of being alive in 2026. The framework I personally work with fuses terrain health, metabolic cleansing and connected breathwork. As you commented: Mind <—> Metabolism!
What I’m seeing is that a regular practice of Conscious Connected Breathwork can retrain and rewire, which then makes way for the rewriting process and the practice of personal responsibility, albeit as a low and slow burn, which to me is actually a sign of supported integration.
Love these thoughts Emily. I feel like I am indeed noticing the same. Sometimes all a field needs is good framework that aligns the parts. So many excellent practitioners are here and ready to work… we just need to either put all these pieces together or realize they are missing so we can get our patients/clients integrated with other practitioners who balance out what we do. Integrative medicine is not perfect but it has accomplished some of this. I think the self development and personal transformation fields need the same… 🙏🏽 grateful for your work
Thank you, Jade! And yes, exactly, better frameworks. It feels like a really good time to be a little audacious in fusing disciplines, ancient and modern, in service of whatever helps. Grateful for your work too. 🙏🏼!
Brilliant article. This is why I follow Dr. Swan @sacredbyswan. She is the real deal and helps people do exactly what you describe. And she understands this shadow, and speaks out about it. I hope you and she will connect.
I’m actually one of the people you’re describing. I’ve done a lot of the work in this space—psychedelics, deep personal work, different modalities—and for a long time I saw exactly what you’re pointing to: insight, release, even real movement… but no fundamental shift.
What changed everything for me was when the underlying imprint actually resolved at the nervous system level. The story, emotional charge, and behavior didn’t need to be worked in layers—they reorganized together.
Which makes me wonder if what looks like a “multi-layer” problem is sometimes just a sign that the source hasn’t been accessed yet.
Yes. I think that correct. Although the nervous system is simply a sensing and responding apparatus… it is reflecting psychic structures (MUD, emotion, beliefs —> identities—> personslity—> nervous system )…
Stephanie, such a rare comment. ... In 4 decades of working very effectively with peoples physical health and so called mental health problems, I totally agree with this. The appearance of so called " multi layering " (mentallisations or spiritualisations of the actual living problem) is like working with the smoke from the flame, whilst overlooking the source of the problem and solution in the body.
The original problem of the imagined mind body split, I suggest results in dividing the source of pain and memory in the body, from its expression as mental symptoms, appearing as these so called 'multi layered' levels, which are all simply mental modifications of one another.
Meaning, they are all the one thing or the one activity, and are expressions of the same common source of sensations/conditions/memory in the body. Sensations/feelings express as mental or physical conditions and these various displays of emotion, thoughts, hallucinations, and all the 'made up' psychological labels, are merely various symptoms of that common felt source.
I have found that because these symptoms, and treatments of them, are all disconnected from the body based source of trauma memory and pain in the body, any modalities for treatment of those, cannot and does not activate healing, or healing at its source.
I would go so far as to say the 'Multi layer' concept is 'made up' of thought/ images, which are only maintained, and therefore worsened by most modalities.
So I thought your point on resolution at the 'nervous system level' the most important, as the brings mental and physical healing back to an 'in the body' process, meaning, at its source the mental physical split is revealed to be simply two / different expressions of the same singular in body source.
I would take this a little further to include every cell in the body, not only the nervous system, is where the healing at source happens.
If you are interested to look further into my work on this you can tap into it through undoapp.com or matt.zoltan .com
Im always a bit confused by comments like this. What exactly are you saying here? That this article was written to advertise? It sounds like it. It also seems to suggest you see that as a bad or negative thing? Despite the fact that you claim it "makes sense." I am interested in this so much because it illustrates so thoroughly the MUD based story architecture I am pointing out here. Not everyone feels this way about things... not everyone has this view on advertising. That is your story architecture and I am sure there are patterns in your own life that this belief structure causes... My story structure and beliefs are oriented differently. I did not see this initially as advertising until you pointed it out. And my reaction is actually excitement that that is what it could be. Advertising to me is a good thing. I believe I have a product that can help massive amounts of people why would I not want to promote it? So... thank you.
Hi Jade, Yes, It came across as a promo to me. But Im with you on it being a good thing and so I see this as a good effect, seemingly embeded in your article. So no thats not a negative thing to me but a clever (perhaps unintentional) informative approach on your behalf. There are no patterns in my life adverse to advertising. And yes, your article does make sense. Hope that clears any confusion. Matt.
Oh I didn't mean to call anyone out. Didn't even know whether Jade was male of female. But yes it did seem a bit of a word salad now you mention it. But so many do now...
The Tuesday afternoon problem is the real test. The cushion works. The ceremony works. The elevated state is genuine. And then the ex calls and the old shame fires and none of it transferred.
The gap isn't between the layers — it's between the practice environment and the moment the pattern actually runs. The only training that transfers is built inside daily life, in ordinary moments, before the big triggers arrive.
The only people I know who had great success with trauma & addiction recovery are the ones who had good trauma therapy and at least SOME 12 step experience. I’ve been in the field for 40 years, and this is consistent. The steps cause healing, because if worked correctly the cravings go away. The changes are permanent if done right. It’s very important to accompany the step work with eye movement trauma therapy for optimal success. The eye movement therapies, in my experience, are what makes or breaks a person’s recovery. I highly recommend Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART)—it’s the best & fastest of all the eye movement therapies. EMDR is less effective and VERY slow. ART is the game changer.
You can’t talk, meditate, or yoga your way to trauma healing. All the sound baths in the world won’t fix you. Neither will pilgrimages, expensive seminars, ayahuasca & other substances, hugs, “love & light”, or gurus. The whole world seems to think Joe Dispenza or Tony Robbins are the real trauma healers, and the whole world has been told the 12 step programs are ineffective. This is not true at all, but the 12 step programs are free, which would eat into New Age guru profits.
Thank you for this. I’m a huge fan of 12 step although I feel the research is clear its effectiveness has little to do with the steps. Also I feel there are better deeper techniques for reconsolidation than EMDR or other somatic bilateral stim. I personally am not at all bothered by people making money. In my view both Dispenza and Robbin’s as well as many others are doing very good work. I simply view it as incomplete. Money is often a psychological placebo for results. I wish we would treat it for what it is…. A tool for impact and income. I would rather see people pay 2k for a dispenza retreat versus a Disney vacation or a trip to the Super Bowl…. But that’s just me. Thanks for the comment 🙏🏽
Im in the 12-step AA and ACA program for many years, and as I get stronger and feel safer in my skin, older complexes emerge, and I can feel them without acting them out.
Yeah. I don’t think IFS does that at all. The layers we are talking about here are underneath the identities/parts… not to mention IFS is a narrow spectrum of parts since technically the subconscious holds these stories in emotional parts, in historical parts, in body parts/cells, in patterns, In pain, etc… And even then the stories that generate these parts are the building blocks of those parts which tells you there is something underneath. “parts” and especially emotional parts are bound to the structure but they are not the structure. And IFS certainly does not get at retrain unless that practiners is trained in habits and behaviors as well as nervous system regulation.
The exile is the deepest part, it's when the trauma formed. When the exile is unburdened of the beliefs it took on at that time - which it's led to do in an elegant and efficient way - there is incredible energetic relief on the higher levels. Ongoing work to stay in a "Self"-led place cements the new wiring. I've seen it work like nothing else.
As a bona fide Level 1 shaman (trained in the Peruvian Amazon), I no longer recommend anybody take aya from anybody whose not thoroughly vetted. Also, ceremonies outside of the natural habitat are a bad idea, for what should be obvious reasons.
Interesting. Thanks for jumping in. Is there a reason for this. It is not obvious to me. Given the power of these plants I would feel they can do good in any setting, but I would be curious what you feel are the major risks and downsides?
Yes - primarily based in experience, so just like with ayahuasca journeys it might be difficult to put into words
The point is to contact "Mama Ayahuasca." The medium is the beverage, specifically the MAOI inhibitors from the ayahuasca vine, and DMT from chacruna, a local plant.
Two things come to mind:
1. The sacred drink is like a communication channel. It isn't Mama Ayahuasca herself. Distance matters.
2. Because it doesn't hold indefinitely (a risk for any partakers who didn't see it made) people might use local sources of DMT. But the overall phytochemical profile is different, so that changes everything again.
Gotcha. Interesting. So there is something added in your experience from being local to the environment the plant is in and watching or participating in the medicines production
💯 My first experience was in 2006. Unfortunately, since then there has been some unsettling things happening with the local community. Bottom line is only take ceremony from a shaman who has been vouched for by a person with their reputation on the line.
You clearly haven’t remotely done research on how negatively these “medicines” effect the collective, can we dive in on how many “shamans” exist now because brown skinned folks know they can manipulate white people especially? I would love a real review of the healing community and to stop seeing you assholes beat around the bush.
The move of generating a framework that accounts for the blind spots of other frameworks is a very human thing to do, and not necessarily an escape from the problem being diagnosed. We've never had a shortage of frameworks, including frameworks designed to correct incomplete frameworks. And yet…
For me, the question underneath all of it is one of ontological orientation rather than structural completeness. How we actually digest or don't digest experience operates at a subtler level than any three-part sequence can hold… life is more infinite than that.
Being inside a specialized world perhaps especially inside of the world of coaching, healing, optimizing tends to create its own kind of vacuum from the actual lay of the land. The organism moves through things in ways that don't resolve cleanly into layers, and I'm not sure the answer is a better architecture so much as a different relationship to not knowing.
Love that thought and agree 100%. Unfortunately we humans require frameworks to account for the complexity of what you are pointing at. And while no framework is perfect the best ones do thier best to fill in the gaps. An incomplete framework (which they all are by definition) is better than the single focused silos that dominate.
I tried restacking this thread and somehow deleted my comment… lame and annoying…. Here is the comment though I had saved -
We can all agree that frameworks are necessary.
With our intellect, we cannot track the actual complexity in real time, so we reach for structures to manage what the intellect alone can’t hold. That’s honest about our limits.
But there’s a framework we didn’t make that’s already doing that work… the body, nature, the organizing intelligence that runs beneath our attempts to account for it. Our man-made frameworks are downstream of that. I’m not even a fan per say if anything, criticizing people like Dispenza is a hobby of mine, and I’ve built whole frameworks just for such a task, but I don’t think he’s confused about this… what he’s doing is moving people toward the field, cracking the door open toward something real. Whether his framework is complete is almost beside the point if it’s oriented in the right direction.
The actual question isn’t complete versus incomplete. It’s whether a framework knows what it’s in relationship to. One oriented toward reconnection… even imperfectly… is fundamentally different from one that’s reorganizing the disconnection into a more sophisticated shape. Any framework that’s forgotten what it’s downstream of ends up propagating the very disconnect it claims to solve. That’s the Prajñāparādha piece that I’ve found to be a gem of a term/framework… it translates to the offense against wisdom or mistake of the intellect. It’s clearly articulating our intellect’s process of disconnecting from relationship with the complexity that it resides in… and saying that this initial disconnect is the root so to speak of what man made frameworks try and fail to account for.
Yeah, totally, it's Sanskrit (Prajñāparādha), best translates to "mistake of the intellect", "offense against wisdom", and it's said to be the root of all disease in Ayurveda. I find it compelling because it may be the oldest named version of something that see everywhere. The intellect loses its relationship to what it's downstream of, and from that severance, we lose the capacity to metabolize life. Living in this disconnection leaves behind or creates energetic residue that we struggles to metabolize, and this buildup of residue results in energetic lesions and armoring ourselves off further from life. We can restore the metabolic health of the "soul" simply by connecting with the forces of levity... there's then the vast systems and or frameworks of how to do that... but it's all typically getting back to what some call the zero point field or the realm of pure potential.
Yes. I love what you are getting at. Intellect is not in service to complexity and in fact misses much since it simply helps us make sense of what we have already presupposed. The way I see it is we have 4 capacities in this regard.. instinct, intuition, insight and intellect. Instinct protects, intuition guides, insight expands, intellect often simply reinforces. it seems in service of these others. But again... that was a framework i just provided to explain something that otherwise would not have been as cohesive.
lol yea, I actually have a 72,000 part framework for how thoughts move sideways 458 times a day and up and down the rest of the time. Still working out the kinks but I think it accounts for everything your four part framework missed.
Any structure you identify as the number of elements or categories of a "wholistic" view of human consciousness will be an artificial construct. Three levels? Four? Seven? Twenty? Take your pick. I teach a multidimensional approach to healing and awakening, called Trauma-Informed Therapeutic Coaching. We include as many dimensions as possible in each of our processes (a partial list): Physical/Somatic, Emotional, Mental/Intellectual, Spiritual, Linguistic, Relational, Biological, Political, Financial/Economic, Inherited Ancestral and Familial patterns, Karmic, Cosmic, Psychological, Sexual, Neurological, Socio-Cultural, Psychic, Conceptual, Imaginal, Soul-based, Visual, Experiential, and Behavioral.
Processes that are multidimensional in nature are more effective than any single or dual-dimensional process – because our patterns (beliefs, schemas, paradigms) are based on experience, and our experience is multidimensional. The processes we use to clear these patterns completely include core belief clearing, parts work, inner child healing, karma clearing, cord cutting, memory reconsolidation, guided visualization, and always somatic experience.
What you call MUD is what we call Core Beliefs - the conclusions we came to as infants or children that drive our perceptions, choices, reactions and behaviors. That is a multidimensional structure that must be cleared multidimensionally, otherwise you get what you described - lots of experience but the core pattern remains. We can override it, observe it, therapize it, or psychedelicize it, but it remains at the core until it is completely cleared.
What stands out to me is that you are circling a real truth: insight alone does not free us, and neither does intensity. People can meditate, journey, breathe, journal, and remain organized around the same old wound. That part feels right. But where I would take it further is this: the problem is not only an incomplete method. It is the mistaken center. As long as the ego remains the one trying to heal itself, even powerful practices can become renovations of the false self rather than a return to what is deeper and truer.
In my experience, many people are not simply “stuck” because they missed a layer. They are stuck because consciousness keeps bending around shame, fear, and adaptation as though those were the truth of who they are. So yes, story matters. Emotion matters. Behavior matters. But underneath all three is a more primary question: what in the person is leading? If the heart is not restored as a compass, then the work easily becomes another performance of becoming.
What I appreciate most is your insistence that people are not failing because they lack effort. I agree. Most are exhausted not from avoiding the work, but from doing so much of it without being helped to understand the human condition beneath it. Healing is not merely excavation, rewiring, or retraining. It is also a remembrance. We are what we were first, and unless the work helps a person return to that deeper truth, they may gain skill, relief, or insight and still not feel fully home.
I think we are in complete agreement. Ego is ultimately the story of I am.... and the defending of varying instances and expressions of I am. So in my view Ego is the construct I am speaking about here. I am just not calling it ego. I am calling it identity/identities.. and those are are construct or emotion/story/belief structures. So i agree "as long as ego remains the one trying to heal itself"... that is what the rewrite (or call it whatever you choose) is ultimately getting at. The ego is what must be rewritten and what is rewritten (edited not erased) in this work. Thank you for such an interesting addition.
You might find this useful. I love your intention. "... when egoic mass bends experience away from the center that actually is" --> https://zenodo.org/records/17847246
Yes clearer. And I agree
I am not sure I follow completely what you are saying here. The language and vocabulary are not common to me. I may be misinterpreting … but I do not think the psyche is self healing or directing. If it were humans would not to do this work to heal… we can just look around all over the place that many have identity crises and do not emerge more whole and healed… to the contrary.
What I mean by self-correcting is not self-healing automatically. A cut may be self-healing by design [the body's pull to homeostasis], but it can still become infected, ignored, or repeatedly reopened. The same is true of the psyche. I am not suggesting that people inevitably emerge whole simply because time passes. Clearly, they do not. I am saying as a trauma psychologist and guide: I have witnessed [in thousands of people] an inherent movement in the psyche toward coherence, truth, and reorganization when conditions allow it. When those conditions do not exist, the system adapts instead of fostering healing.
So the evidence against the psyche being self-correcting is not that people remain stuck. It is that the corrective movement gets obstructed by trauma, shame, fear, culture, and the ego’s need to survive. In that sense, symptoms are often not proof of a broken psyche, but proof of a psyche still trying to solve something with the limited tools it has. That is the distinction I am making.
The ego does not initiate healing. It initiates adaptation. But beneath adaptation, I've witnessed that the psyche carries a deeper organizing intelligence that pushes toward wholeness. Severe trauma patients reveal this all the time. Their breakdowns, dreams, grief, symptoms, catharses, and moments of ego-collapse are often not random malfunctions. They are failed or partial attempts of the psyche to reorganize around something truer than the false center it has been forced to use. So I would say it simply this way: The psyche is self-correcting by design, but not self-correcting without obstruction. That is why people need help. Not because there is no corrective movement, but because that movement is so often buried, distorted, or frightened off. I hope that is clearer.
Thank you so much. This is right up my street. I am going to read this tonight.
When/if one understands the curvature law I sent...you learn that rewriting the ego improves the false center. But it is egosolarism that exposes the false center as the culprit altogether. In short, it is an existential problem of displacement. In this context, a next-level human...is a humane human. The solution is not a better ego-story, but a repositioned ego. With the heart restored as the center of human experience, the ego returns to its proper adaptive role. Where science has shown this and been accepted...human beings have not. An unbelievable recent truth of this: it was just in 1992 that the Catholic Church took the 'ego as center' out of doctrine. But in narrative only--not in practice. Countless theories restructure and name the ego problem. Unfortunately, changing the name or diagnosis does not change human orientation and stance. Something as simple as 'back-facing' the full moon to see the human shadow...is an example of this. The human ego is so taken by [and identifies with] its oscillating light that we forget it's simply a 'mirror reflection' of the source, not the light itself. Essentially, we've made the moon the sun. I hope you don't feel I am trespassing...or being critical. Next level human is absolutely the correct language, but Jade...the human psyche is self-correcting in that direction....by design. So many people on Substack are speaking of this...while severe trauma patients experience this truth daily. And in that realm...it's called ego-death. Few realize that this is the correct orientation for catharsis--something humans will not walk into voluntarily. If you ever wish to discuss this...I am open. I do love your focus and goal.
It’s so funny to me to watch people brand new to these concepts attack the ego…explain now..WHY must the ego be re-written and what has programmed you on this? I appreciate so much the parody on authenticity as you regurgitate psychological theory from the 40s but it’s laughable. Ego is only afforded to the privileged, and your parts/systems/concepts don’t work on the truly traumatized- just those traumatized enough to equally be capable of affording your BS rhetoric.
"We are what we were first" — that's the line that lands. Not a better center. Not a restored heart. What was there before the adaptations formed is still there — it was never damaged by what was built on top of it. The work isn't restoration. It's recognition. And recognition is different in kind from any form of excavation, rewiring, or retraining — because what you're returning to was never absent.
Yes. That’s the distinction. What is deepest in us was never broken, only obscured. So the work is less about restoring something lost than recognizing what never left. But for most people, that recognition still needs enough safety, honesty, and holding to become lived reality rather than just a beautiful idea.
The silo problem is real and the diagnosis here is careful. What I find myself thinking about is the layer beneath the three layers. The biological substrate that all three processes depend on. You can do rigorous Rewrite work and the insight won’t hold if the system running it is operating on degraded membrane infrastructure. The emotional charge addressed in Rewire is partly a lipid story. The behavioral encoding in Retrain requires a nervous system with the capacity to consolidate.
Yes. Really good points! Thank you.
Mind <— > Metabolism
I was lucky enough to have been trained from the early 60s by therapeutic emerging humanistic psychology era including wilhelm Reich, Wilfred Biin, Alexander Lowen, John Pierrakos, Paul Cornyetz, Moshe feldenkrais, Yvonne Agazarian, and more recently, jack kruse, Karl Friston and Frank Corrigan . The model as you’ve highlighted has a number of levels and their integration is critical in modifying character structure. The biological level is of great importance as we now see how the gut-brain relationship influences all aspects of our functioning and that infections can be lifelong and so can be core drivers of cognition and behavior. See my Substack for how this all comes together in my 3 Rs: repair-regrow-retrain. I’m looking forward to seeing how we might collaborate.
Marvin
Nervous system capacity is so important.
And Grace is everything!
Also, there has to be heat / energy to drive the process deep. This is where Kundalini comes in. She rewires the entire system, clears the chakras, and upgrades the body to hold higher vibrations.
Bypass and override are extremely common in spiritual circles — using resources to get up and out of the shadow.
I love Internal Family Systems parts work because it digs out at the root — from the bottom up.
If you start with constraint release, you clear out what’s holding you back where it originates.
It’s a better place to build from.
I love your rewrite, rewire and retrain framework. And all your work truly. I agree that “transformational experiences” have become a generic promise, and that real integration of big experiences is rarely actualised.
I also recently wrote about Ayahuasca and integration, but from the lens of - if the intensity of this medicine is meeting the specific predicaments of being alive in 2026. The framework I personally work with fuses terrain health, metabolic cleansing and connected breathwork. As you commented: Mind <—> Metabolism!
What I’m seeing is that a regular practice of Conscious Connected Breathwork can retrain and rewire, which then makes way for the rewriting process and the practice of personal responsibility, albeit as a low and slow burn, which to me is actually a sign of supported integration.
Love these thoughts Emily. I feel like I am indeed noticing the same. Sometimes all a field needs is good framework that aligns the parts. So many excellent practitioners are here and ready to work… we just need to either put all these pieces together or realize they are missing so we can get our patients/clients integrated with other practitioners who balance out what we do. Integrative medicine is not perfect but it has accomplished some of this. I think the self development and personal transformation fields need the same… 🙏🏽 grateful for your work
Thank you, Jade! And yes, exactly, better frameworks. It feels like a really good time to be a little audacious in fusing disciplines, ancient and modern, in service of whatever helps. Grateful for your work too. 🙏🏼!
Most people aren’t stuck because they won’t do the work. They’re stuck because they keep working the layer that hurts least.
Can't argue with that
Brilliant article. This is why I follow Dr. Swan @sacredbyswan. She is the real deal and helps people do exactly what you describe. And she understands this shadow, and speaks out about it. I hope you and she will connect.
I’m actually one of the people you’re describing. I’ve done a lot of the work in this space—psychedelics, deep personal work, different modalities—and for a long time I saw exactly what you’re pointing to: insight, release, even real movement… but no fundamental shift.
What changed everything for me was when the underlying imprint actually resolved at the nervous system level. The story, emotional charge, and behavior didn’t need to be worked in layers—they reorganized together.
Which makes me wonder if what looks like a “multi-layer” problem is sometimes just a sign that the source hasn’t been accessed yet.
Yes. I think that correct. Although the nervous system is simply a sensing and responding apparatus… it is reflecting psychic structures (MUD, emotion, beliefs —> identities—> personslity—> nervous system )…
Stephanie, such a rare comment. ... In 4 decades of working very effectively with peoples physical health and so called mental health problems, I totally agree with this. The appearance of so called " multi layering " (mentallisations or spiritualisations of the actual living problem) is like working with the smoke from the flame, whilst overlooking the source of the problem and solution in the body.
The original problem of the imagined mind body split, I suggest results in dividing the source of pain and memory in the body, from its expression as mental symptoms, appearing as these so called 'multi layered' levels, which are all simply mental modifications of one another.
Meaning, they are all the one thing or the one activity, and are expressions of the same common source of sensations/conditions/memory in the body. Sensations/feelings express as mental or physical conditions and these various displays of emotion, thoughts, hallucinations, and all the 'made up' psychological labels, are merely various symptoms of that common felt source.
I have found that because these symptoms, and treatments of them, are all disconnected from the body based source of trauma memory and pain in the body, any modalities for treatment of those, cannot and does not activate healing, or healing at its source.
I would go so far as to say the 'Multi layer' concept is 'made up' of thought/ images, which are only maintained, and therefore worsened by most modalities.
So I thought your point on resolution at the 'nervous system level' the most important, as the brings mental and physical healing back to an 'in the body' process, meaning, at its source the mental physical split is revealed to be simply two / different expressions of the same singular in body source.
I would take this a little further to include every cell in the body, not only the nervous system, is where the healing at source happens.
If you are interested to look further into my work on this you can tap into it through undoapp.com or matt.zoltan .com
It’s sad to me that it takes this much mental labor for you to tap in to your intuitive understanding of self.
Advertorial… but still, you made sense.
Im always a bit confused by comments like this. What exactly are you saying here? That this article was written to advertise? It sounds like it. It also seems to suggest you see that as a bad or negative thing? Despite the fact that you claim it "makes sense." I am interested in this so much because it illustrates so thoroughly the MUD based story architecture I am pointing out here. Not everyone feels this way about things... not everyone has this view on advertising. That is your story architecture and I am sure there are patterns in your own life that this belief structure causes... My story structure and beliefs are oriented differently. I did not see this initially as advertising until you pointed it out. And my reaction is actually excitement that that is what it could be. Advertising to me is a good thing. I believe I have a product that can help massive amounts of people why would I not want to promote it? So... thank you.
Hi Jade, Yes, It came across as a promo to me. But Im with you on it being a good thing and so I see this as a good effect, seemingly embeded in your article. So no thats not a negative thing to me but a clever (perhaps unintentional) informative approach on your behalf. There are no patterns in my life adverse to advertising. And yes, your article does make sense. Hope that clears any confusion. Matt.
I love when men call out women who think some healing word salad they adopted from everyone else is going to sell. I’m glad people are catching on.
Oh I didn't mean to call anyone out. Didn't even know whether Jade was male of female. But yes it did seem a bit of a word salad now you mention it. But so many do now...
The Tuesday afternoon problem is the real test. The cushion works. The ceremony works. The elevated state is genuine. And then the ex calls and the old shame fires and none of it transferred.
The gap isn't between the layers — it's between the practice environment and the moment the pattern actually runs. The only training that transfers is built inside daily life, in ordinary moments, before the big triggers arrive.
The only people I know who had great success with trauma & addiction recovery are the ones who had good trauma therapy and at least SOME 12 step experience. I’ve been in the field for 40 years, and this is consistent. The steps cause healing, because if worked correctly the cravings go away. The changes are permanent if done right. It’s very important to accompany the step work with eye movement trauma therapy for optimal success. The eye movement therapies, in my experience, are what makes or breaks a person’s recovery. I highly recommend Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART)—it’s the best & fastest of all the eye movement therapies. EMDR is less effective and VERY slow. ART is the game changer.
You can’t talk, meditate, or yoga your way to trauma healing. All the sound baths in the world won’t fix you. Neither will pilgrimages, expensive seminars, ayahuasca & other substances, hugs, “love & light”, or gurus. The whole world seems to think Joe Dispenza or Tony Robbins are the real trauma healers, and the whole world has been told the 12 step programs are ineffective. This is not true at all, but the 12 step programs are free, which would eat into New Age guru profits.
Thank you for this. I’m a huge fan of 12 step although I feel the research is clear its effectiveness has little to do with the steps. Also I feel there are better deeper techniques for reconsolidation than EMDR or other somatic bilateral stim. I personally am not at all bothered by people making money. In my view both Dispenza and Robbin’s as well as many others are doing very good work. I simply view it as incomplete. Money is often a psychological placebo for results. I wish we would treat it for what it is…. A tool for impact and income. I would rather see people pay 2k for a dispenza retreat versus a Disney vacation or a trip to the Super Bowl…. But that’s just me. Thanks for the comment 🙏🏽
Im in the 12-step AA and ACA program for many years, and as I get stronger and feel safer in my skin, older complexes emerge, and I can feel them without acting them out.
IFS gets at all three layers - all the more so when you add psychedelics :)
Yeah. I don’t think IFS does that at all. The layers we are talking about here are underneath the identities/parts… not to mention IFS is a narrow spectrum of parts since technically the subconscious holds these stories in emotional parts, in historical parts, in body parts/cells, in patterns, In pain, etc… And even then the stories that generate these parts are the building blocks of those parts which tells you there is something underneath. “parts” and especially emotional parts are bound to the structure but they are not the structure. And IFS certainly does not get at retrain unless that practiners is trained in habits and behaviors as well as nervous system regulation.
The exile is the deepest part, it's when the trauma formed. When the exile is unburdened of the beliefs it took on at that time - which it's led to do in an elegant and efficient way - there is incredible energetic relief on the higher levels. Ongoing work to stay in a "Self"-led place cements the new wiring. I've seen it work like nothing else.
IFS is fantastic … not arguing that. 🙏🏽
As a bona fide Level 1 shaman (trained in the Peruvian Amazon), I no longer recommend anybody take aya from anybody whose not thoroughly vetted. Also, ceremonies outside of the natural habitat are a bad idea, for what should be obvious reasons.
Interesting. Thanks for jumping in. Is there a reason for this. It is not obvious to me. Given the power of these plants I would feel they can do good in any setting, but I would be curious what you feel are the major risks and downsides?
Yes - primarily based in experience, so just like with ayahuasca journeys it might be difficult to put into words
The point is to contact "Mama Ayahuasca." The medium is the beverage, specifically the MAOI inhibitors from the ayahuasca vine, and DMT from chacruna, a local plant.
Two things come to mind:
1. The sacred drink is like a communication channel. It isn't Mama Ayahuasca herself. Distance matters.
2. Because it doesn't hold indefinitely (a risk for any partakers who didn't see it made) people might use local sources of DMT. But the overall phytochemical profile is different, so that changes everything again.
Gotcha. Interesting. So there is something added in your experience from being local to the environment the plant is in and watching or participating in the medicines production
💯 My first experience was in 2006. Unfortunately, since then there has been some unsettling things happening with the local community. Bottom line is only take ceremony from a shaman who has been vouched for by a person with their reputation on the line.
You clearly haven’t remotely done research on how negatively these “medicines” effect the collective, can we dive in on how many “shamans” exist now because brown skinned folks know they can manipulate white people especially? I would love a real review of the healing community and to stop seeing you assholes beat around the bush.
You immediately sound dumb within the first sentence. I’m so sick of “shamans”.
this from "Mana Grace" jajajaja
you sound like a bitter old wench
fuck off, you stupid bitch
mother, healer, visionary,
moron
The move of generating a framework that accounts for the blind spots of other frameworks is a very human thing to do, and not necessarily an escape from the problem being diagnosed. We've never had a shortage of frameworks, including frameworks designed to correct incomplete frameworks. And yet…
For me, the question underneath all of it is one of ontological orientation rather than structural completeness. How we actually digest or don't digest experience operates at a subtler level than any three-part sequence can hold… life is more infinite than that.
Being inside a specialized world perhaps especially inside of the world of coaching, healing, optimizing tends to create its own kind of vacuum from the actual lay of the land. The organism moves through things in ways that don't resolve cleanly into layers, and I'm not sure the answer is a better architecture so much as a different relationship to not knowing.
Love that thought and agree 100%. Unfortunately we humans require frameworks to account for the complexity of what you are pointing at. And while no framework is perfect the best ones do thier best to fill in the gaps. An incomplete framework (which they all are by definition) is better than the single focused silos that dominate.
I tried restacking this thread and somehow deleted my comment… lame and annoying…. Here is the comment though I had saved -
We can all agree that frameworks are necessary.
With our intellect, we cannot track the actual complexity in real time, so we reach for structures to manage what the intellect alone can’t hold. That’s honest about our limits.
But there’s a framework we didn’t make that’s already doing that work… the body, nature, the organizing intelligence that runs beneath our attempts to account for it. Our man-made frameworks are downstream of that. I’m not even a fan per say if anything, criticizing people like Dispenza is a hobby of mine, and I’ve built whole frameworks just for such a task, but I don’t think he’s confused about this… what he’s doing is moving people toward the field, cracking the door open toward something real. Whether his framework is complete is almost beside the point if it’s oriented in the right direction.
The actual question isn’t complete versus incomplete. It’s whether a framework knows what it’s in relationship to. One oriented toward reconnection… even imperfectly… is fundamentally different from one that’s reorganizing the disconnection into a more sophisticated shape. Any framework that’s forgotten what it’s downstream of ends up propagating the very disconnect it claims to solve. That’s the Prajñāparādha piece that I’ve found to be a gem of a term/framework… it translates to the offense against wisdom or mistake of the intellect. It’s clearly articulating our intellect’s process of disconnecting from relationship with the complexity that it resides in… and saying that this initial disconnect is the root so to speak of what man made frameworks try and fail to account for.
I think we are very similar in our thoughts. I am curious about this "Prajñāparādha" care to explain?
Yeah, totally, it's Sanskrit (Prajñāparādha), best translates to "mistake of the intellect", "offense against wisdom", and it's said to be the root of all disease in Ayurveda. I find it compelling because it may be the oldest named version of something that see everywhere. The intellect loses its relationship to what it's downstream of, and from that severance, we lose the capacity to metabolize life. Living in this disconnection leaves behind or creates energetic residue that we struggles to metabolize, and this buildup of residue results in energetic lesions and armoring ourselves off further from life. We can restore the metabolic health of the "soul" simply by connecting with the forces of levity... there's then the vast systems and or frameworks of how to do that... but it's all typically getting back to what some call the zero point field or the realm of pure potential.
Love that. Thank you!
Yes. I love what you are getting at. Intellect is not in service to complexity and in fact misses much since it simply helps us make sense of what we have already presupposed. The way I see it is we have 4 capacities in this regard.. instinct, intuition, insight and intellect. Instinct protects, intuition guides, insight expands, intellect often simply reinforces. it seems in service of these others. But again... that was a framework i just provided to explain something that otherwise would not have been as cohesive.
lol yea, I actually have a 72,000 part framework for how thoughts move sideways 458 times a day and up and down the rest of the time. Still working out the kinks but I think it accounts for everything your four part framework missed.
hahahhaa. Ok
Healing is not the same as curing.
It certainly can be
That’s not integration 🔥 yes bro
Any structure you identify as the number of elements or categories of a "wholistic" view of human consciousness will be an artificial construct. Three levels? Four? Seven? Twenty? Take your pick. I teach a multidimensional approach to healing and awakening, called Trauma-Informed Therapeutic Coaching. We include as many dimensions as possible in each of our processes (a partial list): Physical/Somatic, Emotional, Mental/Intellectual, Spiritual, Linguistic, Relational, Biological, Political, Financial/Economic, Inherited Ancestral and Familial patterns, Karmic, Cosmic, Psychological, Sexual, Neurological, Socio-Cultural, Psychic, Conceptual, Imaginal, Soul-based, Visual, Experiential, and Behavioral.
Processes that are multidimensional in nature are more effective than any single or dual-dimensional process – because our patterns (beliefs, schemas, paradigms) are based on experience, and our experience is multidimensional. The processes we use to clear these patterns completely include core belief clearing, parts work, inner child healing, karma clearing, cord cutting, memory reconsolidation, guided visualization, and always somatic experience.
What you call MUD is what we call Core Beliefs - the conclusions we came to as infants or children that drive our perceptions, choices, reactions and behaviors. That is a multidimensional structure that must be cleared multidimensionally, otherwise you get what you described - lots of experience but the core pattern remains. We can override it, observe it, therapize it, or psychedelicize it, but it remains at the core until it is completely cleared.
Happy to discuss this further. My training is described at Institute.ClearBeliefs.com.