What Is Your Emotional Baggage Costing You?

I recently went on my 33rd trip to Hawai‘i. Every time I’ve gone there, it’s been in connection with studying Huna and in latter years, since 2005, it’s been in connection with teaching Huna. And sometimes I’ve just gone for the workshop, and sometimes I’ve stayed on and I’ve explored. Usually, I’ve explored in Hawai‘i.

I’ve studied Lomi Lomi with Auntie Margaret, the queen of Hawai‘ian massage. I’ve travelled some of the islands. I’ve helped out with competitors at the Merrie Monarch Huna Festival. So I’ve done a variety of things.

This time, when I come back, I’m making a small diversion to California to visit some friends who live in Yosemite. I’ve never been to Yosemite, and I’m just so, so looking forward to this. But it’s created an interesting problem.

Because of my age, and stage, and the number of times I’ve been to Hawai‘i, I’ve got lots of mileage points, and I tend to use these. So I go business class or first class as far as possible, which means I can take pretty much as much luggage as I want to. I’m a reasonably light traveller, but coming back, I’ll quite often bring cds or books to share with students and people who are interested in the UK, things I can’t actually get in the UK very easily, and that can add a little bit of a burden.

But by and large, I’m doing the business class, or the first class, or whatever it is, so everything’s cool. But this time, because of my diversion, flying out there’s going to be fine. And then I fly from Hawai‘i to California, and it’s a cheap little flight. And it’s going to be a pinch point where the weight of my baggage, is actually going to be really important.

And this got me thinking about the weight of baggage. Because on that trip, going there, mostly coming back, the weight of my baggage, it’s not relevant, it doesn’t matter. But there’s this little part of the journey where the weight of my baggage is going to be absolutely critical.

And it’s a little bit like that in life with the weight of our emotional baggage. A lot of the time, we cruise around, we don’t even notice the weight of our emotional baggage, and then something happens and we do.

One of the delegates at the recent Huna Live, Sarah, did a lovely, lovely video testimonial for us. And she was saying in the testimonial that she came back from the Huna Live workshop feeling much lighter. And the reason that she felt lighter was that she hadn’t even realised the weight of the baggage that she was carrying around.

And of course, when you travel long distance and you’ve got weighty baggage, they charge you for it. Weighty baggage has a cost when you’re travelling. And weighty baggage has a cost, as well, in life.

Weighty Emotional Baggage

Often, we’re not conscious of it, or often we feel like we’re moving in the greys, we’re living in the grey zone. Life’s okay, but it’s only okay. And you have that feeling there could be something more, that there should be something more, but you can’t quite think what the more is.

And sometimes that can grind you down. Sometimes you just trundle through and you’re never really filling your potential.

It’s an odd word that; potential. But it’s quite a good word. Stepping fully into your power, stepping into the real joy of living and how living really can be when you step up and you own it.

But the challenge is when you have the emotional baggage, especially when you don’t even know you have the emotional baggage, it becomes really difficult to step out, step up, own it, and really live in a state of joy. And that’s one of the reasons why for me, teaching Huna is so important. Because it gives people the tools and techniques to let go of the old baggage, to even recognize the old baggage.

And actually, with Huna, you can do a spring clean where it doesn’t even matter whether you consciously recognise your baggage. Because the unconscious mind knows. The unconscious mind’s been storing this baggage for you for a very long time.

The unconscious mind periodically will try and remind you to do something about the baggage. Usually, in those moments when you’re about to do something important, your unconscious mind will just remind you of something, something that you really would rather be forgetting.

Maybe just as you’re about to step on stage to do a presentation. Or you’re about to go and meet the headmistress or the head teacher at your kid’s school for an important meeting. You may go to the school and suddenly all your own stuff around school comes up and hits you in the face, and you don’t feel in a strong position in relation to the head of your kid’s school. Those kinds of things.

The unconscious mind’s really good at it. But it stores it in what the Hawai‘ians call black bags. That’s their metaphor for it. It stores it in our body. It affects our body, it can affect our experience, it can affect our businesses, it can affect our relationships. It can really come back to bite us in the bum when we don’t sort it out. And if we’re not conscious of it, we don’t think we need to sort it out, we don’t do anything about it.

So that’s why I teach Huna. That’s what I believe that Huna can offer.

I was the first person to start running 5-day live Huna intensives in UK. Right now we are running these events virtually. I also run 1 and 2 day Introductory courses. Again, we are currently running these virtually. If you want to find out dates, please get in touch.

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