I am a Registered Nurse, a Certified Infant Massage Instructor and Certified Healing Touch Practitioner. I worked as a nurse with newborns and healthy premature infants for 25 years. During the last 15 years I also used Therapeutic Touch and Healing Touch on many infants and occasionally on their mothers. I also taught Infant Massage to parents in groups or privately in the nursery. One of my passions lately has been helping parents to connect with their unborn infants, both preconception and prenatally. So, you may be asking "What does healing the wounded masculine have to do with this?" 

But, of course it has everything to do with it. Until the masculine and feminine are in balance our infants will never be able to grow up in a completely safe environment. I don't mean only physical safety, but safety to be completely present as themselves. How different the world would be for our children if they didn't have to carry the wounds that are presently being passed down through the generations. I believe that the consciousness is ready to begin this healing, not only for ourselves but for our children. Are you ready to begin yours? 

Recently I have been having dreams about the wounded masculine. Simultaneously, I have been receiving information about the need for us women to be more open to assisting in the healing of the men around us. Some of their wounding has been inflicted unconsciously by our backlash against the patriarchal system. We all carry the cellular memories of the witch hunts, so it's difficult for many of us to let it go. Although it was women who suffered the most through this period, men also became painfully alienated from themselves. They were torn with the need to dominate and control, while simultaneously needing to idealize women. This split needs to be healed in both. I'm not saying the patriarchal system doesn't need to be dismantled. I'm saying that taking it out on the men who are sensitive and wanting to heal isn't the answer and isn't going to be helpful. We need each other to heal these ancient wounds. 
A vivid dream I had was very specific about one issue we need to deal with. This dream occurred the day after I had a minor surgical procedure to remove a benign cyst from the top of my vaginal wall.

I am in the finished basement of a house with some of my friends watching videos. There is a little boy running around who really looks more like a cartoon character than a real child, but he is cute and we are all passing him around to hold, but he also is running and jumping around. He apparently belongs to me. Then I realize that he is this lesion that needs to be removed and I have an image of him attached to the cyst by the top of his head. I know that he has to be removed for me to live, but that when that happens he will die. I wake up just as he is being removed.

This is the classic archetypal story of the needed separation of the son from the mother. The mother needs to do this consciously to continue her own life. The death of the boy is a symbolic death of the immature male that needs to occur for the birth of the mature male to happen. If this doesn't take place neither can move on to be healthy, independent adults.
In most ancient and aboriginal cultures, puberty was recognized as a transition time, when the men of the tribe introduced the young boys into manhood through initiation rites and ceremony. The ceremony encourages the youth to release the parental bonds holding him to his mother and father. During the ceremony the youth claims the Earth as the mother who will never leave him and the Heavens as the steadfast, reliable, enduring father. This ensures that the young person will continue to be parented, but now by powers greater than his biological mother and father. 
We are lacking this ritual separation, so there is rarely a healthy way for boys to know it's time for them to symbolically become men. If there isn't a good masculine role model boys may not be taught how to be men. They have deep holes in the center of their psyche because their father was not present for them, for whatever reason. They think the violence and domination they are bombarded with by the media is the norm. We use going away to college or to war as an excuse, but it's often not a clean separation. The man/boy finds himself recreating his mother in his partners. 

As a culture, we are presently stuck in parental complexes. The patriarchal system has profoundly wounded both the masculine and feminine, making mature relationships very difficult. Many women have struggled for years to find their own identity. Men are working on finding theirs. We must be freed from having to hate or please the Mother and Father and all they represent. We think of the Mother archetype as the nurturing, cherishing, protective feminine, but she is also voracious, devouring and controlling. She was also shaped by the patriarchy, and may have an essential hatred for men. If we fail to break out of the nest in our adolescence, we may find ourselves incapable of standing free. We may then be compelled to find another mother who will tenderly or voraciously take away our strength. Increasing numbers of men are becoming conscious of their wounding and taking on the task of healing. 

I am not a psychotherapist, but work entirely with the energetic system. Many of these issues can be helped by doing some kind of energetic healing. We store all of our experiences in our energy field or chakra system. Dr. Caroline Myss, a highly regarded medical intuitive, describes these as data banks storing the energetic information that corresponds to everything that happens in our lives. Clearings and removing unhealthy patterns and attachments can have profound effects.

Healing Touch is a program that teaches energy based techniques from healers around the world. I have been in private practice since 1993, and continued to work in nursing until last year. I have dealt personally with breast cancer twice. This experience gave me many insights into the healing that we as women need to do. Recently in my Healing Touch practice I have been presented with clients who are carrying wounds that appear to have been passed down through their ancestry. I sense this intuitively when I take a person's history or it may come up spontaneously during a session. Often clients will recall that their mothers/fathers, and grandmothers/grandfathers as far back as they know about have all had similar patterns. This can be anything from chronic headaches, alcoholism, to sexual abuse. 

I have come to realize that the consciousness is open right now to healing these generational patterns. When we begin to heal these patterns we are also healing our other simultaneous realities [or some people prefer to think of them as past lives]. I am getting the sense that when we feel entirely in "sync'" in our lives and feel we are on our life's path it's because we are in also coming into balance in these other realities. The healing is occurring at all levels of time and space.

Doing the work energetically is much different than doing it mentally and verbally through psychotherapy. It can be done as part of a Healing Touch session and usually doesn't require painful cathartic emotional releases. How many sessions needed depends entirely on why the client is seeing me in the first place. Chronic illnesses generally require repeated treatments. Since they build on each other each session may be different. The work with generational healing may be ongoing or one treatment may be focused entirely on a specific pattern or illness that has been recurring in the family. 

When it's time to work on this I will intuitively feel at the beginning of a session that this is what we need to do. After discussing it with the client I will do a specific opening technique and invite all the spirits of the ancestors and descendants to join us in this healing. The room will feel like it's filling up with people. I get the sense that these spirits are all grateful for the work this one person has undertaken for the sake of all. When one in the line chooses to heal a pattern it goes through time and space to heal past and future. It's not possible to assess the immediate effects this will have on the clients and their families but I have no doubt that as the energetic patterns are changed we will all benefit. 
This is a very general discussion about issues that are part of our culture and consciousness. I am being asked to work with these in my practice, and I'm sure it's happening with other healers also. I have no children of my own, but I am being presented with these issues in my clients. It's a pleasure to be working with people who are taking on the challenge to heal. Change that comes with healing is often far more frightening than staying in the old pattern. Are you ready to step into the fire and face the fears that have been keeping you in that pattern?

A book that I highly recommend reading is "Dancing in the Flames, The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness" by Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson.

Elly Leduc has a private practice in Healing Touch in Olympia, WA. She also can do this work at a distance if a visit to her office is impractical. Her video "Baby Massage, a Video for Loving Parents" is a great tool for getting in touch with the feelings around your parenting issues. Although it's an instructional video many adults have reported that they have watched the entire thing with tears streaming down their faces. Visit her website www.babymassage.net for more information For information about Healing Touch: www.healingtouch.net.