A New Approach To
Emotional Healing
By Jon Terrell, M.A.

People search for emotional healing when they are suffering grief from a major loss or another difficult emotion such as anger or anxiety.  We lead retreats to help people heal deep emotional pain that keeps them stuck.

Sometimes a tragedy occurs...we lose someone we love. Othertimes its a slow process of getting stuck and caught up in destructive emotions. We can feel cut off from love, from our sources of aliveness and healing.

Life happens:

  • We experience grief with the painful loss of those we love.
  • We get caught up in relationship conflicts that can lead to rage, anger and fear. We keep repeating old destructive behaviors.
  • We can feel stuck, anxious and depressed, with nowhere to turn.
  • We can find that we are in a rut and don't know how to get back to joy, love, excitement, We may have lost our hope.

The day we realize that we’ve lost our way is the start of a new journey towards wholeness, healing, and love.

The journey is not about following another person's path but discovering your own.  

The key is emotional healing.

Within each of us are the keys to healing, awakening, and finding our way home. 

This site is about finding those keys.

Emotional Healing: Working Through Grief And Other Feelings

Grief Image


Our intensive Grief, Loss, and Difficult Emotions Retreat is our gateway program for emotional healing. People attend for all the reasons mentioned above.

Healing occurs when we fully experience our feelings. We experience grief when a tragedy or series of events/losses occur and we end up trapped in the past.

Humans don't know how to move through difficult feelings. Most of us just don't know how to do this.  We get stuck. We try to suppress or step over or just avoid our uncomfortable feelings.

We try to rise above them through meditation or prayer or affirmations and other techniques. These can be valuable tools for us, but we use them to avoid our feelings they can just postpone the emotional healing work we need to do.

We try to suppress feelings through alcohol and other drugs, through exercise or other addictions...overeating or another obsessive behavior.

We may try to medicate ourselves out of pain. And sometimes medication can be very helpful if it helps us also move through the feelings we haven't faced.

We try other methods....move somewhere else to avoid the pain, change our relationships, drop out, etc.

We Suppress Feelings To Avoid Emotional Pain 

We may be overwhelmed by uncomfortable and even scary emotions. We may have learned from an early age to avoid and push away our feelings.

We suppress our grief, anger, and fears. Our brains can feel threatened by these powerful, uncomfortable feelings. So we push them out of aware. This can lead to being stuck in the past, worried about the future, or trapped in our heads.

We lose contact with our bodies and the present moment.

Sometimes, uncomfortable feelings come screaming up as anger.  And, we can hurt others with our anger. Then, we can end up feeling guilt and shame.

At other times, we feel stuck and powerless.

When we suppress uncomfortable feelings we also suppress our light, our joy, our life force for good.

People come to our retreats for relief of emotional pain, and to feel fully alive again. As feelings are worked through, in a warm, caring environment, we come alive again, reclaiming our love, our joy, our light.

Some people come to our retreats because they feel depressed. When we have stuffed our feelings, especially grief, for a long time, we can end up depressed.

While clinical depression may be helped with medication, deep emotional work can often be valuable in reclaiming our life, returning us to wellness and being open to joy again.

What Makes Our Emotional Healing Unique

Feelings live in our bodies, below the level of thoughts.

Oh my gosh

We can have a complete understanding of our situation but still be stuck because people are stuck not at the thought level but in their feelings.

That is where the work needs to happen!

And that is what makes our retreats unique.

You can talk about emotions all day and still not change them. To transform feelings, we need to experience them thoroughly to allow them to evolve.  That means moving from mental activity, your thoughts, ideas, and concepts, to experience  your feelings.

At our retreats, we help you do this. We create a safe environment where all feelings are honored. Where it is okay, and even encouraged, to express emotions that have been suppressed and avoided.

All of you is welcome.

And we have the tools to help participants work feelings through to the other side.

The other side of:

  • grief is joy
  • fear and anxiety is excitement and peace
  • anger is passion, aliveness, and focus.

People sometimes attend because they are trapped in one emotion to the exclusion of others. They may be sad all the time, or angry, or anxious. At our emotional wellness retreats, they learn to be whole again and experience the full spectrum of life.

Within these uncomfortable feelings are our joy, passion, aliveness, and excitement, waiting for us to reclaim them. 

Feelings, especially the challenging ones we tend to avoid, are our greatest teachers and healers. They hold treasures waiting to be discovered and embodied.

Retreats We Offer

We offer two emotional healing retreats:

Grief, Loss, And Other Difficult Emotions Retreats are small group events (maximum of 12 participants) from Thursday evening to Sunday afternoon, for people seeking relief from emotional pain. These retreats take place in western Massachusetts, at Star Dance Ranch. Once a year, we offer this  retreat in Florida, and every few years, we lead one in California.

Breaking Free To Emotional Wellness is an extended version of  our Grief and Difficult Emotions Retreat and is one day longer than the other retreats, which allows for a more relaxed pace and some additional processes.

The Healing Power of Community

Healing is best done in groups, where the power of love is unmistakable and pervasive.

What can take years in a private psychotherapeutic setting can often be worked through in the course of a retreat or two that focuses on feeling and transforming emotions rather than talking about them.

When shared with others, the pain of our wounding brings both relief and a recognition that we are not alone.

Participants reclaim lost power and awareness as they transform the emotional energy locked in old feelings. They experience a new sense of emotional and physical wellness, feeling whole, loving, and joyful.

The Second Key Is:
Energy Healing

3 Candles

Energy Healing can rebalance, renew, and awaken us to our full potential. It's a wellness practice that helps us access our deep Self and the forgotten gifts within us.

I've been a pioneer in the field of Energy Healing. In 1973, I directed one of the first Wellness Centers in the U.S., offering energy healing, acupuncture, holistic services, and meditation training.

My energy healing work includes deep tissue bodywork and more subtle energy approaches called Consciousness Clearing. I teach unique Inner Light-Fire tools for healing and awakening based on years of exploration and personal study.

This work helps people cleanse and purify their bodies, including the energy centers (chakras) within us, as part of a full program of body/mind integration and awakening.

Most people start with an energy healing Assessment and Consciousness-Clearing session. We evaluate the condition of each energy chakra, and the whole body and energy field. Then, we focus on transforming what we have assessed, lifting consciousness, and guiding future work. 

It's offered in Sunderland, Massachusetts, in the western part of the state.

Once a year,  I lead the Inner Light Healing Retreat, which focuses on teaching participants how to work with Inner Light-Fire to transform their bodies and minds. It includes learning hands-on healing techniques to work with others through the power of touch.

Start with this page to explore these offerings.

This website can help you find your unique path to the limitless power of love and healing within you

The site itself is designed as a journey. Explore it.

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