Jyotish is the science of light and gives us guidance from the heavens, and then there is also the inner light and your own guidance from the Self. However, this can often be confusing to find when there are clouds and conflicting parts, values and needs.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes it's hard to find a direction or solution as there might be one part that wants to go forward and another that holds back? Or voices from an inner critical part and maybe even a shy inner child that has some wounds?

Internal Family System (IFS)  - A spiritual approach to the heart and mind.

IFS is a powerful, transformative, evidence-based model of psychotherapy. Unlike other psychology models, which consider the mind to be singular and often focus on pathologizing the persona, IFS instead considers the mind to hold many parts that are doing their best to keep the inner system safe and secure. This system of parts is what we can see as the habits, behaviour, and personality of the being, when we look further we see it’s clearly not who the being really is at the core.

In an IFS session, the practitioner supports the Self of the client to shine forth and take leadership and become both a mediator and healer for these parts. The Self is not the mind, nor the parts of the mind; and the mind and the parts are not their burdens and trauma. It is due to our mistaken identification and relationship to our parts that we create the suffering in ourselves and the world. The root meaning of both religion (religâre) and yoga (yuj) means to unite or bind, in IFS we first untangle to  create space for a more compassionate realignment and peace in the  inner system where the Self can then consciously connect to each part.

This model fits well with the vast range of eastern thoughts and yogic approaches to healing and spirituality, at the core of the being is the Self which is untouched, who we are and have always been. In the Vedic tradition this self is called Ātman or Puruṣa, the different paths of yogas all have this Self-realization as the goal. Unfortunately, many of these esoteric paths consider our experience of nature (prakŗti) as an illusion (māyā); and therefore gets less value when the mind turns transcendental prematurely and even negate actual human integration.

Since this world of suffering (saṃsāra) is not an easy school, some of the yogic practises may also have lost their original real purpose and instead have become hijacked by parts that use them for spiritual bypassing. For example, on the jñana yoga path there is the practice of Neti-Neti (not this, not this), where the meditator may negate all that has a name and form as not the real Self, this could be mistaken as a full rejection, disassociation and cutting away of all parts of creation. But the real purpose of this apophatic method is not negating and rejecting, but rather a true identification with the Self that can experience all the parts of nature that has a name and form, without getting bound in the identification of these parts.

This approach is found in the compassionate and connected method of IFS as a constraint release model, by unbleding with our parts we get a healthier relationship with them, and we free up more consciousness and energy for the Self to take leadership in the inner system. All parts are welcomed, appreciated and acknowledged; because each part serves a needed function in the inner system. They are doing the best they can with the resources they have, but without the deeper connection and leadership of the Self, it may look like a group of hurt kids living in an abandoned school with no principle.

But, the principle of the Self is always there, it is however due to both larger and smaller trauma from our past or family and cultural burdens that it may be hard to recognize this. These parts step in when it’s too difficult and take over certain roles and functions which then act autonomously even against the will of the person or other polarized parts. Like when there is a wild drinking party part and a critical judge that fights on the inside creating strong polarized tension and resulting in less space for the Self. Even in this inner war, these parts are just trying their best to fulfill certain needs, maybe the drinking part needs to have fun and let go of stress (to avoid emotional pain) and the critical judge wants something more mature and serious (suffering from parental introjections). So, trauma and burdens are held by the parts and while they struggle  with this, they are desperately looking for support and help. In IFS it is the principle of the Self that can heal and create peace, union and harmony with the parts in the inner system. IFS is therefore a holistic spiritual healing pathway, cleverly disguised as a modern evidence-based psychological model.