Why it's sometimes so hard to succeed, and how the body remembers who we came from
I’ve often hesitated—not because I doubted my abilities,
but because something older held me back.
Not fear of failure—
but fear of leaving someone behind.
This hesitation, I’ve come to understand, is often not mine alone.
It belongs to a deeper layer of loyalty—one that stretches back into the roots of my family, my ancestors, my system.
A quiet vow: I won’t rise too far above those who came before me.
We don’t make this promise consciously. But the body remembers.
We stay loyal, sometimes not by action, but by identity—
as if staying in the narrative were the only way to remain connected.
The Unspoken Contract
In many healing traditions—whether systemic constellations, hypnotherapy, or trauma-informed somatic work—there is this shared insight:
That we carry loyalty to our lineage, not just in our thoughts, but in the very fabric of our being.
Sometimes, success can feel like betrayal.
Freedom can feel like abandonment.
Joy can feel like forgetting.
We don’t want to outshine the ones who suffered.
We don’t want to surpass those who were broken.
We fear becoming the ones they might have envied, misunderstood, or even feared.
And yet—perhaps—what they most wanted… was for us to go further.
But loyalty is not always love.
Sometimes it's a form of penance.
A refusal to let things be better.
A way of saying: “If you couldn’t be free, I won’t be either.”
And so we recreate the silence, the stuckness, the shame.
Not out of malice—but as a gesture of belonging.
But loyalty is not always love.
Sometimes it’s a quiet form of guilt.
Not for what we did—
but for what we dared to become.
A refusal to let things be better.
A way of saying:
“If you couldn’t be free, I won’t be either.”
And the system responds accordingly:
not with sabotage,
but with subtle limits.
A forgetting of direction.
A clenching around the heart.
A refusal to allow full breath.
The Body as Archive
This is not metaphor. The body actually remembers.
The fascia—that great shimmering matrix surrounding our muscles and organs—stores emotional tension like sediment. Especially along the chest, the shoulders, and along the heart’s edge.
Have you ever touched the front of the shoulder, just beneath the collarbone, where the articular head of the humerus rests?
It’s a tender gate. A place where grief and restraint often sit.
The lymphatic tissue, too—soft and often ignored—carries subtle memory.
It’s where the immune system meets emotion.
Where protection becomes perception.
And when we speak of releasing “blockages,” it is not just metaphor, but a physiological untangling of long-held systemic messages.
The autonomic nervous system—especially the vagus—can’t tell the difference between a real threat and an inherited pattern.
If it feels unsafe to thrive—because we associate thriving with disconnection—our system will shut it down.
The Ritual of Touch and Breath
So we begin with what is simple.
And because it is simple, we must meet it with reverence.
- Gently tapping on the chest, just over the heart.
- Stroking along the collarbone, down the shoulders, along the arms.
- Pausing the breath for a few seconds after the exhale.
- Letting the memory rise—if it’s ready.
- Speaking softly, maybe even internally:
“I honor you. I take you with me. I allow myself to go further.”
These are small movements. But they open the gate.
Still, there are days when the body resists joy.
When laughter feels foreign, and rest unsafe.
The nervous system doesn’t care for stories of potential—it listens to echoes.
And if the echo says: “You must pay with your suffering,”
then healing itself becomes disobedience.
Rewriting the Vow
You might sense resistance. That’s normal. That’s good.
Resistance means your system is listening.
Instead of forcing it open, we might ask:
“Who am I afraid to leave behind?”
“What success would feel like disloyalty?”
And then we listen.
We breathe.
We touch the shoulder again.
We let the lymph flow.
And slowly, perhaps, we hear a voice—not our own—saying:
“Go. Take everything we survived, and go further.”
Not all voices will say “go.”
Some will beg you to stay small—
out of love, fear, or habit.
That’s okay. Let them speak.
And still—walk on.
What Comes Next
This is part of a larger practice:
remembering, releasing, and re-rooting.
Soon, I’ll share a simple audio session—
a moment to be with your breath, your body, and those quiet loyalties you carry.
If you wish to go deeper,
we’re weaving together
fascia, trance, and ancestral reconciliation.
But for now—
touch your heart.
And listen.