Sacred Self-Healing Method

By Betsy Leighton

The Sacred Self-Healing Method introduces a healing modality that combines intention, forgiveness, and the connection with divine beings to bring about self-healing. The benefits of the Sacred Self-Healing Method include increased peace, reduced stress and anxiety, improved relationships, and a deeper connection to your true self. The Sacred Self-Healing Method gives you tools for:

- Setting intentions
- Working in sacred space and a healthy resonant field
- Maintaining healthy boundaries, and learning physical and emotional inquiry processes to determine imbalances
- Discovering many Sacred Self-Healing protocols for self-regulation
- Developing a forgiveness practice
- Connecting with your inner guidance and protecting your medicine body
- Meeting your spirit guides
- Crafting rituals to shift energy, care for the living and the dead, and honor transitions
- Creating transformation in your life!

This book can be used by itself or as a companion to Betsy's online Sacred Self-Healing Certificate Program, an independent online program in the Sacred Self-Healing Method, where you can apply your learning in practical skills exercises, and earn a Certificate in the Sacred Self-Healing Method in a supportive container.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9798893798258

Betsy Leighton

Betsy Leighton is an author, blogger, student of "A Course In Miracles," and sacred healer living on the traditional lands of the Wahpekute people near Bdoté, the meeting of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers, in Mni Sota Makoze (Minnesota, USA). She is the author of Sacred Self-Healing: Finding Peace Through Forgiveness (2019) and the Sacred Self-Healing Workbook (2022). Betsy holds a degree in Spiritual Counseling, offers a spiritual community to share forgiveness coaching, leads Sacred Self-Healing sessions with individuals and groups, supports those with chronic illness and their caregivers, provides Sacred DeathCare services, and shares the Sacred Self-Healing Method through her classes, books, and certificate program.

Book preview

Copyright © Betsy Leighton 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission. For permission requests contact Betsy Leighton at [e-mail]

2024.

Cover and book design by Betsy Leighton.

Betsy Leighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Betsy Leighton takes no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

All quotations from A Course in Miracles, copyright © 1992, 1999, 2007 by the Foundation for Inner Peace, P.O Box 598, Mill Valley, Ca 94942-0589, www.acim.org and [e-mail], used with permission.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks, and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Leighton, Betsy Sacred Self-Healing Method / Betsy Leighton

Includes bibliographical references.

Summary: Forgiveness, self-healing, ritual, spirituality.

1. Forgiveness. 2. Self-care. 3. Ritual. 4. Spirituality. I. Title.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems either directly or indirectly. The material in this book does not constitute medical advice. This book is for information purposes only. The health-related information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, cure, or treatment. If you intend to follow any of the exercises or suggestions in the book do so only under the supervision of a trained professional. Always seek advice from your medical doctor.

First edition

www.betsyleighton.net

ISBN 979-8-89379-825-8

Table to Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Welcome!

The Sacred Self-Healing Certificate Program

Chapter One: Setting Yourself Up for Success

Journaling

Radical Self-Care

Understanding Trauma

Chapter Two: Sacred Self-Healing Basics

Intention

Opening Sacred Space

Grounding and Centering

Healthy Boundaries

Calling Your Energy Back Home

Chapter Three: Body

The Physical Body

The Physical Body Inquiry Process

The Chakras

Body-Based Sacred Self-Healing Practices

Chapter Four: Mind

Your Emotional Body

The Emotional Body Inquiry Process

Archetypes

Sacred Biography

Your Mental Body

Meditation

Forgiveness

Chapter Five: Spirit

Connecting with Your Inner Guidance

Your Medicine Body

Free Will

Working in a Healthy Field

Chapter Six: Sacred Self-Healing Protocols

Meeting Your Guide(s)

The Current of Light

Your Inner Sight

Negative Energies

Sacred Self-Healing Teams

Emotional Reset

Energetic Reset

Clearing Space of Negativity

Caring for Your Energetic Health

Chapter Seven - Customized Sacred Self-Healing Teams

Creating Customized Sacred Self-Healing Teams

Chapter Eight: Integration

Tools for Self-Regulation

Decision-Making

Pain and Discomfort

Triage

Chapter Nine: More Practical Tools

Sleep Health

Dreams and Dreaming

Core Limiting Beliefs

Ritual

Group Ritual

Initiation

Chapter Ten: Working as a Sacred Self-Healer

Healthy Communication

Managing Stress

Sacred Self-Healer Ethics

Caregiver Survival

Chapter Eleven: Sacred DeathCare

Demystifying Death

What is Sacred DeathCare?

Here and There

Disposition of the Body

Care for the Soul

Attending to the Needs of the Dying

Supporting Lost Souls

Karmic Healing

Learn More

Conclusion

Resources

Books

Recordings

Online Courses

Acknowledgments

This book would not be possible without daily collaboration with the teams of Divine beings who support me and my work. I am grateful to the Holy Spirit and my spirit guides for their presence, guidance, love, light, support, and healing.

I am deeply grateful to my husband David for his support, and for believing in my work even when it’s not his thing.

I am grateful to my children, my parents, and my family.

My gratitude to the ancestors and teachers in my spiritual lineage who came before me, who nudge me on this path and offer me unlimited support.

I’m grateful to my spiritual sisters, spiritual community, students, workshop co-attendees, and friends, whose presence has influenced the ideas I generated, catalyzed growth, and served as the sounding board for projects. It takes a community to be a spiritual healer.

Thank you!

This book is dedicated to the

Divine beings and Sacred Self-Healing Teams

who support me from the unseen

Introduction

My spiritual journey followed a winding path while I gradually claimed my divinity through direct experience of the sacred. As a very young child I prayed to God because it felt right, and I had experiences of grace as a child where I felt spirit in my body when I was in nature and away from humanity. I was happiest when I was alone by the water, in stillness by a fire, or walking barefoot on a woodsy path.

I grew up attending a progressive Christian church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I was at home singing hymns during worship. My favorite class in college was an Old Testament survey course, where the professor made the language of the Bible sing to me. But as a Women’s Studies student I began to question a religion based on centuries of patriarchal rule. Something about religion and spirituality was calling to me, though not enough to make me want to change my major.

After college a friend and I started what we called a spiritual book group in Seattle, Washington, and along with a group of women we read Drawing Down the Moon by neopaganist Margot Adler, Starhawk’s book The Spiral Dance, Sherry Ruth Anderson’s The Feminine Face of God, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, several of Alice Walker’s books, Crossing to Avalon by Jean Shinoda Bolen, Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run with the Wolves, Suszanna Budepest’s Grandmother Moon, along with books on voluntary simplicity, holistic medicine, reclaiming feminine sexuality, earth-based spiritual practices, conscious childbirth and parenting, and feminist literature.

I wanted to experience a direct connection with spirit, so in 1996 I visited a metaphysical shop to create a home altar to open a tangible connection with spirit. I looked at the candles, figurines, and crystals, and purchased a 2-inch goddess statue, a few candles, and a candle holder. Back at home in my apartment with my boyfriend I moved a small side table behind the front door where it was mostly hidden from view, laid a colorful cloth upon it, and set up my first altar. I sat down and gazed at the lit candle, hoping and praying to reach my spirit guides.

My early yearnings to touch the spirit realm were constrained by feelings of unworthiness, fears that I was doing it wrong, and an inability to focus my attention for very long. I tried to meditate but my attempts were stymied by physical discomfort and a racing mind. I endeavored to create rituals by myself at my tiny altar, and felt glimmers of connection to something larger. But I was longing for a bigger, more meaningful affinity with the Divine.

Becoming a mother temporarily waylaid my attempts to join with spirit, because I was constantly exhausted and plagued with brain fog. But I kept reading spiritually-minded books trying to figure out where I was falling short in my spiritual practice. Something told me that I needed to connect with other like-minded women in ritual in order to progress. I was so hungry for meaningful connection that as a young mother in southern California I formed what I called an alternative playgroup, where I met with other moms and our children outside in nature, tried to support one another to parent consciously, and shared in one another’s joys and tears.

When a friend in the group lost a baby in late-stage pregnancy I was invited to take part in my first experience of group women’s ritual. We bathed the grieving mother’s feet, held space for her sadness, and surrounded her with support and loving presence. This experience was thrilling because I felt the connection with spirit through the other women, and it kindled my interest in Sacred DeathCare.

After we moved to Minneapolis, I became pregnant again and connected with other expectant mothers to do prenatal yoga, hold chanting circles, and prepare for conscious birth with somatic experiencing classes. I’ve written a lot about the spiritual awakening that accompanied my experience of giving birth unassisted to unexpected twins. But again my exhaustion and isolation during the next several years as a mom of young twins displaced my ability to act on my spiritual inclinations. Writing finally helped me to loosen that sense of stagnation and isolation, as I processed and shared my mystical birth experience in Mothering Magazine and in women’s spiritual circles.

A friend announced that she was starting an interspiritual spiritual direction training program called Spirations Institute, and I was called to take part in it, not really knowing what spiritual direction meant. I thrived in the program, voraciously reading through dozens of books on earth-based spirituality, mindfulness, dream symbolism, shamanism, sacred sexuality, and spiritualities of indigenous cultures. It was an extraordinary experiential program where we did loving kindness meditation, learned to chant the Beatitudes in Aramaic, took shamanic journeys with the drum, and cultivated sacred listening skills, all while creating integration pieces to live into the material.

After that intense learning experience I again felt adrift without a spiritual path and others to share it. But I had connected with my inner knowing and I recognized the liminality of birthing as a rite of passage. I did an independent research project collecting birth stories of women who shared similarly amazing birthing experiences, and I published my findings in Presence, a peer-reviewed publication for spiritual directors.

I had found an outlet for my spiritual longing in writing and creativity, and I designed a creative collage process for exploring the threshold between the wisdom of the body and the capacity to self-heal through creative expression, which I shared with others in classes and workshops. Then I produced a CD of women’s sacred songs and chants to accompany ritual, and wrote booklets and created ritual kids to accompany a girl’s coming age and women’s ritual.

I joined a tiny spiritual community where I found a home to share interspirituality through experiential offerings. Chanting Sufi Zikr led me to study sound healing, where I learned how to use frequency to affect my body, mind and spirit. Using sound healing, I claimed my voice, moving past the limitations of shyness, eventually creating a YouTube channel of recorded guided meditations, chants, and sound healing demonstrations.

My spiritual progression then took what felt like a drastic detour when first one, then the other of my twin daughters became seriously chronically ill, and I became a full-time caregiver. But that period of intense caregiving provided me with exactly what I needed to uplevel my spirituality. I was nudged to begin a formal forgiveness practice to transform my grief and feelings of overwhelm. A forgiveness study group introduced me to A Course in Miracles (ACIM) in 2014, and with ACIM I realized I had found a practice that satisfied my longing for meaning and direct connection with the sacred.

I started a chaplaincy program in 2016, but because caregiving severely limited my time and energy I needed to switch to a self-study degree program that fed my soul much more than seminary. I apprenticed with a spiritual healer, and learned the basics of how to self-heal. And then I began a life-changing connection with my spirit guides, received the Sacred Self-Healing Method from my inner teacher, and wrote two books about the experience and my learnings.

Study of ACIM became my primary spiritual practice. I created my own spiritual community to offer forgiveness coaching, lead Sacred Self-Healing sessions with individuals and groups, support those with chronic illness and their caregivers, provide Sacred DeathCare services, and share the Sacred Self-Healing Method through my classes, books, and certificate program.

I never could have guessed where my spiritual journey would lead me from the first painful longings to create spiritual connection at my tiny altar. My spiritual awakening during childbirth and later the profound lessons of caregiving were the impetus to narrow my focus to what truly mattered. I was led to a forgiveness practice that is the direct relationship with spirit that I sought my whole life.

Because forgiveness is such a profound teacher for me, I want to share it with the world. So, in this book I share the Sacred SelfHealing Method which combines intention, forgiveness, ritual, and the assistance of spirit so that you can self-heal too!

Welcome!

Thank you for embarking on the Sacred Self-Healing Method! I wish you the highest happiness as you learn to change your mind for Peace and heal yourself.

You are embarking on a journey of self-exploration that will take you deep into your emotions, your energetic configuration, and how you have experienced the world in your past. You will explore the unspoken patterns of your family of origin, touch on forgotten feelings, and examine the coping mechanisms you developed as a young person to become your present self.

You will visit parts of your history that may be painful, uncover areas in your life that need healing, and explore the limits of your self-compassion. Though this path may sometimes be difficult, it will bring you untold blessings. You will be guided along the way to be kind to yourself, to go slowly and tread lightly, and to hold yourself softly in the arms of forgiveness.

The Sacred Self-Healing Method

Sacred Self-Healing Method came to me in 2017 as a co-creative healing modality. I have written two books on parts of the Sacred Self-Healing Method. Those books go into greater detail about how I received the Sacred Self-Healing protocol and specific spiritual technologies that can be used to facilitate inner awareness and self-healing.

This book focuses on the main spiritual technology that helps me the most: forgiveness. In this volume I expand on forgiveness, because it is at the core of Sacred Self-Healing. I discuss how to practice forgiveness, what it feels like, why love is the answer behind everything, and I share protocols that bring forgiveness practice into everyday experience.

The benefits of the Sacred Self-Healing Method are:

Co-Creation

As you learn the Sacred Self-Healing Method, you will discover the process of co-creation. Spiritual co-creation is the act of collaborating with the Divine for transformation. You align your intention with oneness to bring about peace.

When you co-create you combine forces with the unseen, which at its essence is what A Course in Miracles calls the Holy Spirit, but can represent whatever you call the Divine. Your intuition taps into spirit. Learning to see synchronicities, dream significance, and the archetypes at work in your life gives you the messages spirit would have you know to help you to heal. You can call this co-creative force whatever you like: God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah, Adonai, Elohim, Goddess, oneness, higher power, angels, or nature.

When you practice spiritual co-creation, you open yourself to possibilities beyond your limited egoic desires. You surrender to the guidance and wisdom of oneness, allowing it to lead you to the best possible outcomes.

Intention

Intention is a major tenet upon which the Sacred Self-Healing Method rests. Every Sacred Self-Healing skill begins with setting a clear intention to guide your work with the Divine. When you set a clear intention and join with the Divine, pretty much anything is possible.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is THE core principle driving the healing in Sacred Self-Healing. You will encounter different types of forgiveness in the world, but Sacred Self-Healing derives from how A Course In Miracles teaches forgiveness. A Course in Miracles (ACIM, or the Course, as it is known in shorthand) teaches that you can heal yourself, starting with your mind, with forgiveness. You don’t have to believe in