“It is a wonderful thing to be able to grow old with a vibrant, healthy, and energised child-self accompanying us. The body may grow older, but the spirit stays young!”
Dear Integral Meditators,
Who is your child-self, and how can you start to relate to her/him min a mindful and fulfilling way? The article below looks at these questions!
In the spirit of play & healing,
Toby
Meditation & Mindfulness for working with your Child-self
Workshop: Saturday 21st June, 2-5pm SG time,
In a sentence: Learn how you can use mindfulness to discover & relate to the child-self that lies within you for the purposes of both therapeutic healing & personal thriving….read full details
Article: Relating to the child-self within you holistically
In my twenties and early thirties, after a decade of Buddhist meditating, I had enjoyed many experiences, and got several significant results. However, I also noticed that there was a part of me that had remained untouched by all the practice. Periodically he seemed to suffer from anxiety, fear, discombobulation, and a sense of ‘lost-ness’.
After leaving my life as a monk, one of the avenues that I explored related to this inner anxiety, was my relationship to the child-self within me. All of us have a child-self within us. It is the part of us that relates to our experience as a child, and that lives as a psychic reality within us now. Building a relationship to that part of myself, and helping him to heal, feel secure and build confidence was a large part of the experiential solution to the mysterious anxiety that I felt but could not resolve through conventional meditation. I have written about this in past articles, what I want to do here is to describe some simple mindfulness exercises that can help to build a relationship to your child-self in a way that is healing, confidence-building and strengthening.
Step 1 – Find a picture of yourself as a child, if you have a few available, look through them and pick one that resonates for you. Set aside a period of time, and simply look at the picture. Allow yourself to free-associate memories and feelings around your child-hood. Be curious about what comes up for you, being mindful that you are not trying to ‘solve’ anything at this stage. Sense into the image and your memories in three ways:
- From your head awareness – Images, memories, thoughts, narratives, inner voices
- From your heart and chest awareness – The range of emotions, feelings of closeness and distance, open-ness and closed-ness
- From your belly and ‘gut’ awareness – Body sensations, instincts, non-verbal impulses, sensations of safety or danger, subtle changes in your body posture and facial expression
Step 2 – Imagine your child-self present in front of you. Smile at her/him gently, invite connection. If s/he wants to talk to you, let them talk. Let them ask questions, respond to those questions, enjoy relating to them.
Step 3 – With their permission and when ready, hold them, give them a hug. Holding them in your arms, allow an exchange of love. Extend that love to them and allow yourself to receive it from them. Let this connection of love start to work on the healing of any traumas that your child-self may have, and allow her/him to start to build trust and confidence in you as a ‘parental’ figure.
A further step is to then engage in activities each day where you are consciously doing them together with your child-self, and where there is room for play, interaction, and expression of a range of emotional states relating to your child-self. And of course, when you are with actual children, see this as a wonderful opportunity to explore your child-self with them in the outer world!
This type of mindfulness is a rich area to explore that has much to offer anyone who is willing to take the time to engage with it. It is a wonderful thing to be able to grow old with a vibrant, healthy, and energised child-self accompanying us. The body may grow older, but the spirit stays young!
If this article resonates with you, then do consider the upcoming workshop on Saturday 21st June, 2-5pm SG time – Meditation & Mindfulness for working with your Child-self.
Related article: Meditating with your child-self
© Toby Ouvry 2025, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com
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