As a Compassionate Inquiry® Practitioner and Facilitator, an EFT Practitioner, a Registered Massage Therapist and a Death Doula, Pam has a deep commitment to healing and self-discovery. Her approach is rooted in empathy, understanding and her genuine desire to support others on their paths to well-being. Personally, Pam finds joy in simple things, including yoga and being active in nature. This short edited excerpt of Pam’s interview takes us from her first experiences of self-trusting to her generational trauma, to integrating CI with EFT & RMT. Hear her full interview on The Gifts of Trauma.
I trust that good things come to me in life.
Years ago, my husband and I bought a piece of vacant, unserviced property. We didn’t know what we were doing, but we both trusted that everything would fall into place. Today we live in a wind and solar powered homestead built on that land. A battery bank stores our power, we heat our home with wood and our stove and hot water with propane. We love and care for five goats, a cat, three dogs, ducks, chickens and pigs that offer us their funny quirky little selves. We grow some food and my husband’s parents share the bounty of their gigantic garden. Sometimes I’m really keen on canning, pickling and preserving. At other times, I’m not. I’m on a bit of a sourdough bread kick now, as most perimenopausal women are…
We decided to homeschool our children. Again we had no idea what we were doing, but it seemed to work out. And we both run our own businesses. We didn’t know what we were doing, and it’s working out.
I met my husband when he was 20 and I was 16. Young and in love, I wanted to stay near him, so again, trusting that things fall into place for me. I looked for a career that didn’t take a long time to learn, didn’t take me too far away from home, and paid well enough. I was drawn to massage therapy. That’s how my journey into the healing arts lifestyle began. We live in the country, surrounded by bush and farmland, but we’re not far from a sizable town and there are other little towns around us, so this community supports my healing work nicely.
I’ve been an active massage therapist for 22 years. Most don’t continue for this long as massage therapy is physically and emotionally demanding. So it’s a blessing to have two other modalities, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and Compassionate Inquiry® which let me work without physical exhaustion.
Massage Therapy is intimate. I’m touching people and creating safety so they can open up emotionally. It can be very taxing, especially in a small town as I see my clients regularly, inside and outside my therapy room. I know what’s happening in their lives, in their families, at their work.
I had an old belief, that I had to fix my clients, that I had to ensure they were emotionally and physically better when they left my office than when they arrived. Before adding my EFT and Compassionate Inquiry skills, that intimacy landed more heavily than it does now. It was too much, and it took a toll on me. Believing I had to be the fixer was the straw that “broke” my back. Per Gabor’s book, When The Body Says No, the responsibility I put on myself led my body to say no, really loudly. I didn’t listen, so it kept telling me, “No!” This started with headaches. I didn’t connect the dots at the time, though I see it now in hindsight. In 2011, I herniated a couple of discs in my back, which created tremendous pain.
At that time, I was raising a family, running a home-based business, my parents were unwell, a lot was piling up, but I didn’t stop working. I was already seeing a chiropractor and a naturopathic doctor. Both were incredibly helpful. So I tried acupuncture with a beautiful woman from the former Yugoslavia. She told me to tap on different parts of my body. I didn’t understand and in all honesty, I thought she was a bit crazy. But when I went home, I was flipping through Facebook and saw something about EFT tapping. I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s crazy!’ I’d never heard of tapping and it had come up twice in one day. So I looked it up and found a course being taught a half hour away from where I live. This was also wild, because we live in the country… So I signed up for the training and started on this psycho- emotional, spiritual growth path. EFT was definitely the catalyst for me. If I hadn’t first trained in EFT I would not have found Compassionate Inquiry, nor been ready for it, you see…
Years prior, my sister gave me Gabor’s book, When The Body Says No, but I couldn’t hold the concept, I wasn’t ready. My mother-in-law also gave me the book Gabor co-authored with Dr. Gordon Neufeld, Hold On To Your Kids. Again, I couldn’t hold the concept, it was too much for me at the time. But one day my best friend said, “I’m going to this conference in Toronto, it’s Gabor Maté. Have you heard of him?” I went with her and on the first full day I experienced the biggest migraine of my life. I could barely keep my eyes open. However, Gabor simultaneously pulled me in and blew me away. We were in a massive auditorium with hundreds of healers; therapists, psychotherapists, doctors and psychologists. One of the first things Gabor said was, “Who needs therapy more than anyone else?” We shouted out answers but didn’t get it, so he supplied, “Therapists.” At that moment I realized that having to be the one to fix everyone else was a belief from my childhood. After that conference I told my husband, “If this ever becomes a course, I’m taking it.” That was back in 2017. Sat Dharam, in her incredible wisdom, probably already had it mapped out in her mind. And then in 2019 I joined the first CI training cohort.Once trained in CI, my work with clients definitely changed. When a client had a big emotional response to my work on one part of her body, initially, I had no idea what to do. She said it wasn’t physically painful, but I really wanted her to stop crying, because part of me believed (or remembered being told), “If you’re not crying then you’re good.” Note the sarcasm. That was a really profound experience for me. Many clients have since had big reactions. In CI we say, “All parts of you are welcome here.” It’s safe. It’s appropriate for people to share what’s happening in their lives. Big emotional responses are expected, and there’s nothing to fix. The emotion coming through my clients’ bodies is their innate wisdom. That’s the fix. They have the capacity to heal if they are able to simply step out of the way and trust that what’s happening in them is happening for a reason.
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, transformation, healing, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the interview, and if you like it, please subscribe, leave a rating or review, and share it with others in your community.
