How would your life be without pain fear and suffering? In this podcast, I share a conversation with Barret Hedeen. Barret Hedeen is the creator of The Witness Energy Healing, a technique to witness the perfection and wholeness that is inside you, using insights into your energy, emotions and past lives. As you are witnessed more truly, the shadows and imperfections that you have believed are brought forward and fully released. In their wake is found your inner light, joy and peace. It has always been there, waiting to be discovered.
In addition, Barret has written two books sharing his connection to his inner guide, Jesus, whom he endearingly calls J. In Questions for J – And the Love that He Gave Me, Barret turns his questions of pain and sorrow over to J, and has words of compassion and grace returned. The result is a go-to guide for how to come back to our peace when the world and its issues are getting us down. His second book is a collection poems from this same inspired and joyful self, entitled Poems for J. Both are available at Amazon.com (link below).
Barret is a Certified Six Sensory with Sonia Choquette. He has studied a number of different forms of healing, including Quantum Touch, shiatsu, Qi Gong, Bowenwork, meditation and more. He is a certified Soul Realignment practitioner able to read the Akashic records. In addition, Barret has received a Bachelor of Science degree from Northwestern University in Computer Science, and is a graduate of the Chicago School of Massage Therapy.
MENTIONED IN THE SHOW
Past lives, energy healing, stepping into professional healing work, putting up with pain on a daily basis, reconnecting with joy and peace
HOST LINKS
Free E-Book on Repeating Numbers and Sequences
TRANSCRIPT
Interview with Barret Hedeen
INTRO
Laura Jean: Hello Everyone!
Thank you for listening to the Intuitive Journal podcast! I am your host, Laura Jean Warnke. For the past 8 years I have been a professional intuitive, spiritual advisor, and the author of the blog, IntuitveJournal.com where I write about stepping out of the psychic closet, repeating angel number patterns and developing your intuition. I also offer private Akashic Record readings and 1 to 1 mentoring services for those ready to step out of the psychic closet and into professional healing work.
Today, I am sharing a conversation with Barret Hedeen, who is the creator of The Witness Energy Healing, a technique to witness the perfection and wholeness that is inside you, using insights into your energy, emotions and past lives.
Barret has written two books sharing his connection to his inner guide, Jesus, whom he endearingly calls J. In Questions for J – And the Love that He Gave Me, Barret turns his questions of pain and sorrow over to J, and has words of compassion and grace returned. The result is a go-to guide for how to come back to our peace when the world and its issues are getting us down. His second book is a collection poems from this same inspired and joyful self, entitled Poems for J. Both are available through Amazon.com.
I want to welcome you to the podcast Barret! Why don’t you take a moment and say hello to everyone listening…
Barret: Hello! Thank you so much Laura! It’s really great being here and I’m excited that we are going to be doing this today.
Laura Jean: Yes, exactly! I am totally excited about our talk today. Okay, so I want to share with my listeners that Barret and I have known each other for I would say probably 4-5 years if I remember correctly. I believe we met at a healing workshop or two and more recently we have been doing weekly support calls to keep us both on track with our healing businesses. So, I guess, does that sound about right 4-5 years ago?
Barret: I think so. I think so, yeah. I remember it was a workshop about money and healing our issues around money.
Laura Jean: Yes! The ongoing work of healing!
Barret: Yeah! Most people have stuff in that area.
Laura Jean: Yes, definitely! So, I think my audience and my listeners would love to know more about The Witness Energy Healing and what that means to you.
Barret: The reason I called my practice The Witness Energy Healing is because that’s really the work that I do. And the healing perspective is I witness. I bear witness to past lives that people have when they come forward, I bear witness to pains or hurts that people are feeling, helping them to see them and to feel them in order for them to be gently released and undone.
So, this is a process of peeling back the layers, the false layers within us of fear, judgement, anger. Sometimes these are tied into traumas from earlier in this lifetime. Again, we can just keep going back even further. I have this ability to tune into people’s past lives too which actually grew out of my own healing journey. As I was doing my healing work I started to have memories, that I knew I didn’t experience them this time around. So it was very clear to me those memories were from other lifetimes.
And the reason they were coming up for me was that so I could actually heal whatever pain was connected to them and release that. In my journey I have just let go of whole different bits of things; fears, judgements, old past lives, patterns, issues around money, issues around sex, issues around even things that are awful like death and murder. Most of it being more mundane than that.
Every time I heal something and let it go I find that I step more into joy and peacefulness in my life and my clients are feeling the same thing and sharing the changes that are showing up in their lives as well.
Laura Jean: So can you remember a point when you really kind of knew that this was where you were going and doing healing work professionally was where it was supposed to go for you?
Barret: Yes, well before I was doing energy healing I was a massage therapist for several years and that’s actually where I started to learn about a lot of these different things because I knew almost nothing about energy healing until I was a massage therapy school. Even then it was just like a little aside in one of the classes where it was mentioned. I was like I don’t know what that is.
But over time I started to learn about it and I started to realize that the work I was learning was actually much deeper than the massage I was doing. That massage was always nice and it could help people but then in a week or two weeks later their tension returned. A lot of the issues I was working on (with clients) just went back to how they were.
I could see that the energy healing actually had a more long-term impact. It was a deeper and more meaningful shift for people. Again, it really started with my life. I remember the first book that really got me into this area was a book called “Hands of Light” by Barbara Brennan. It was helpful to me because she had previously been a scientist. She had worked for NASA, and I think it was building satellites or rockets or something like that. Then she had this big psychic opening and she started seeing lights and auras around people and thought maybe she was going a little crazy at first but then realized it was just her authentic self coming forward. I was reading this book about her experience and eventually she went on to start a school.
I started to use some of these techniques with my massage therapy clients and I remember one experience I had where at the end of the massage I was just also incorporating energy healing while I was doing a very gentle kind of closing parts of the massage and this person had a massive opening of the heart. I had this feeling…you know how in the story of How The Grinch Stole Christmas, his heart grew three sizes that day? I had that feeling, like her heart was growing multiple sizes. It was like way bigger.
So, I am sitting there in silence while this is happening during the massage just feeling it and sensing it. She opens her eyes when the session was over and she said, “Oh my God, it felt like my heart expanded so much in that session!”
At that point I was like okay! This was probably the big light bulb. This work really does something, it really makes a big difference in people’s lives. It was profound. It was really profound.
Laura Jean: That is profound. To have that instant gratification, that instant feedback of like whoa! This works! This made a difference! That’s cool!
Barret: I think that my path has just gone deeper and deeper. I have incorporated different energy healing techniques and after a while it just turned into my, basically my own style, which again I named The Witness energy healing and it actually is more conversational than a lot of the techniques that I learned. I talk with people about what’s going on but then I also tune in while I am talking with them and I will share things.
Sometimes it’s something a person is very conscious of and will exclaim “I can’t believe you said that!” But other times it’s stuff that is a little more hidden, it’s unconscious to them and I’ll say something. They’ll be like “I’m not really sure what that part is about.”, and it might be later in the session or even after the session that people will come into realizing what that was for them.
It’s all helpful, right? Everything that we look at is for that undoing of what’s false because as these false layers fall away, well, what comes forward? The light and the truth and the joy that is in everybody. They are just forgetting it, they are not remembering that’s who they are. The more we can let go of the shadow, the more that the light just shines.
Laura Jean: That’s beautiful how you say that, it really is. One thing that is interesting, that I have been noticing for myself and I think it applies to others too, it’s how often we put up with the pain on a daily basis. Not just physical pain but it is like it just becomes a part of us. Through our work together when we’ve done some sessions to be able to take a piece of that (pain), even just one small piece of that pain. Whether it’s emotional pain or whatever is going on and be able to release it. It allows that expansion. It really starts coming through.
Barret: Yeah, I think like you are saying, so many people are walking around with these pains and they just sort of become their new norm. They forget that there’s a lightness and a joy that is possible. Most people I think have such a heaviness around them. They feel like they can’t even access their truth, but that false layer, that burden, that heaviness, is only ever something that can heal, right?
So, no matter how inaccessible your truth and joy feels, it is still there for you. It is always there for you. Every time you let go of even one layer…say there was a whole wall, and you could chip away even 10 percent of that wall…well, it still seems like there is a wall there, but you are closer to what you want, right?
Maybe there is now some cracks in the wall. Maybe you can see the light starting to shine through even if you are not feeling the fullness of it yet. All of those things…they help and they are cumulative right? The more you do it, another 10 percent every time, eventually you get down to zero. Then you are just in the light and in the love. So, that’s the work. It’s just continuing forward to do this and to heal all these false layers within our mind and within our soul.
Laura Jean: I think one of the biggest things that you said was that is (pain) becomes the new norm. Pain every day. You wonder why you walk a certain way, don’t pick up your feet, don’t put your shoulders back. There’s just so much heaviness. To be able to pull one layer, two layers off and just be able to breathe.
Barret: It’s true, it’s true. It is just such a common thing and I’ve experienced it myself and I see it with my clients. That shift of going into the issue, it is usually not too fun, that part. Usually we don’t like to go a little deeper into the struggle or the tension. But then to emerge through on the other side, it is always like this sense of openness, always this sense of relief.
Sometimes we are afraid of going there because we are like, well, if I let myself cry a little my tears will never stop. People are afraid of really going into the stuff within. But, I am here to tell everyone the tears will eventually stop.
You know, maybe there are a lot of tears that need to be cried, maybe you are going to by crying for a few days after you’ve owned some of these feelings within yourself. That’s actually okay, it really is okay.It’s okay to feel your feelings. It’s okay to move through them. It’s okay to be all of who you are rather than just some idea or some part of who you are.
Because, again so many of us are doing that. We are living these sort of half lives or even less than that and it’s sad. It really is sad. It’s not the way we have to be. Ultimately I would say that the biggest part of all this work is the CHOICE. It always come back to a choice we are making and remembering we have a choice. A choice to come into a greater sense of peace. A choice to come into a deeper sense of our truth. A choice to speak what we know is true in our life and with the people around us.
These things often feel scary or threatening, but as we do them we realize they are actually the avenue to our happiness.
Laura Jean: Sometimes it only affects you in one or two areas too, but it can be enough to affect everything. If it’s relationships or just something that happened with a family member, even if it was 30 years back. Those instances can really affect your thinking, your thought process, how you interact with others.
I guess I am curious, who do you feel you work with more than others? What kind of topic areas do you work with?
Barret: I do a lot of different kind of segments. I would say the general thing that connects them all is that people have to at least have a little bit of an open mind. I mean, if I am going to be sharing about people’s past lives, even if you are not sure you believe in it, you have to at least willing to kind of hear me out. So, that’s a commonality.
I do work with relationships and I do work with couples. I help people move though relationship issues. I can work with groups as well. I work with people who have physical pains or problems but I would say the large majority is emotional issues that people are going through or relationship issues or just a desire for spiritual growth. So, that sort of general area is probably the bulk of the work that I do.
The truth is everyone has some emotional issues, some hiddenness, some shame, some pain that if they work through it they can really come into a greater sense of peace. And a lot of those are connected to our relationships. Usually those relationships closest to us are sometimes the most painful ones. Because when the don’t look like we think they should, when they are not going way, the deep love we have for that person turns into a deep pain. So those kinds of things are things I work with people as well.
I should say right up front that my sessions are not for you to be fixed. I am not here to fix anyone. But I am here to kind of see your truth. I am here to see the different layers of the happiness within but also the sadness, because when we see all these parts they start to flow. You could say that a lot of times people’s energy is just frozen and it is stuck.
When we are in a frozen or stuck place, well, we can’t really move forward. We can’t really take the steps we need to. But when we can all of a sudden let the sadness flow a bit and even let the happiness flow and let all these emotions move through, what we find is that we are moving. We are moving through it. We might not move through as quickly as we want to sometimes, but we are actually doing the WORK. And it is changing. And it is leading us to that sense of peacefulness which is ultimately what all of us are looking for.
Laura Jean: So, how do you generally work with people? Is it just single sessions or do you do longer term sessions? I am sure people are interested to know that.
Barret: Most of the people I work with sign up for a series of sessions. I do single sessions as well for people who want that but most of the people that come to me…again, they have a desire for a big change in their life. And making a big change usually requires a certain amount of persistence and willingness.
Again, if we are kind of peeling back the layers of these walls and the challenges within, in one session we maybe can get 30 percent of a wall done. But do you want to stop at 30 percent of a wall? Most people want to kind of get most of the way through or have a really big change in their life.
I do three month coaching packages and I do year long coaching packages where I work with someone twice a month for an hour over the phone. Most of my sessions do happen over the phone.
In the larger time frames we can really go deep. We can make a totally different shift or change in basically all of the different areas. One of my long term clients, we looked at issues around her career, her job, and money. We looked at issues around her relationship. And she hasn’t really been in a relationship, but now she’s really opening up to having that in her life again.
So, there’s some really significant changes that are happening. Probably even those outer changes look pretty great but just the fact that when I talk to her she just seems really happy. I mean, to have someone who had different emotions a little bit more predominantly a year ago and now to be talking with her…I mean she’s just like bubbly and joyful. It’s just beautiful, so there are profound changes that can move through when someone is willing to make such a big change in their life.
Laura Jean: Yes, it all starts with that willingness and that openness to allow yourself to want something more, something better. I don’t know, maybe a realization like “ I don’t have to put up with this stuff anymore! I am tired of dealing with this!”
Barret: Yeah, I know you and I have talked about this before, but before I got into the healing work I kind of felt a little bit like a zombie. I had worked a job and you know it was fine. It helped me pay the bills and I did meet people and connect with people there but it wasn’t my passion. It wasn’t my real joy. I kind of had this feeling of going through life half asleep.
At a certain point I just had to say it’s time to wake up and I actually needed help to do that. I worked with healers, you and other people, to help me move through these things so that I could claim my truth. I could step into what it was that is my purpose, which is helping other people moving through these shadows so that we can come into the light within.
I think that we are all in this together and you know is it possible for people to do all this work on their own? I don’t know… I suppose…probably. But is it easier to do it on your own? I would say definitely not. It is easier if you have someone who can help you point out some of your spiritual blind spots and pain points that maybe you are a little afraid to look at on your own.
To know that someone is there for you and will compassionately and non-judgmentally look at these things with you to help them heal and let go. I think we can all use some of that.
Laura Jean: I definitely agree! I will just say when I started down the path of healing I was on the do-it-yourself track. You know, your read a lot of websites and it is all very helpful and it is an awesome starting point but there does come a point when you cannot see your blindspots. You can’t admit to yourself that what you are doing or not doing or that your thought process needs tweaking because your are IN it, you are LIVING it. To have somebody that you don’t know come in and be able to go…hmm…all right…what’s that about? Tell me more about this. I’ve picked something up here. It can be like “Oh, really?! I can’t believe I’m doing that.”
So, it’s just a whole other level of healing. Starting out with reading and books is awesome and I still do, but to have somebody else helping and holding your hand through it and offering that support. That’s something that just goes so much further in being able to hold that light and to allow it in more. Beautiful.
Barret: And I think that how healing always happens. It happens in togetherness. We can do a certain amount, ant what that looks like on our own is with our Spirit Guides. Our Spirit Guides are always helping us.
I would say that is another facet of the work that I do. It is helping people access their own inner wisdom. I don’t feel that my function is to tell people what to do with their lives. I don’t need to be that guy. Everyone has that messenger within themselves. Most of are even somewhat or eve a lot clouded to hearing that voice, hearing that voice, hearing that part of us.
That doesn’t mean it’s not there, it doesn’t mean we’re broken, it doesn’t mean we can’t get to that point. I mean, fore me in my own life it took many years of working on these things, to open more and more fully in to this. I wasn’t always able to see people’s past lives or my own as clearly as I can now. But because I have been persistent with the healing, it has just deepened and gotten more profound as I have gone forward. So, i think that is sort of an example of how the path unfolds.
It is not wrong to be where you are on your path, it just means you have a few steps ahead of you so why not take them.
Laura Jean: Exactly. Love that! So, can you tell everybody where they can find out more about you and your services?
Barret: Yes, the best way is to go to my website, which is just my name Barret Hedeen at www.barrethedeen.com and that lists about the packages and the healing sessions that I was sharing about today and then the pricing around them. It also lists all the workshops and events that I am doing coming up, and it gives you the links to order my books at Amazon, so it’s a great resource to really see everything that I am doing and to connect with me more.
Laura Jean: And I know you have a newsletter as well so anybody can go and sign up for your newsletter on your website there. That way you get all of that information because you do a lot of live workshops, not just locally here in the Illinois area, but you have flown many states, gone to many states and done workshops for various things.
Barret: Yes, and that’s continuing. Coming up this new year (2018) we are going to be doing an event in Sedona, Arizona, a healing retreat from a Thursday to Sunday, so we would love to have you at that too. Again the details for that are on my website.
It’s really going to be about experience, going into the experience and moving through whatever shadows we are carrying forward so that the light can shine in the way. Because the light shines the shadows away. The only power a shadow has is in its hiddenness. And when we reveal it to the light, what happens to a shadow when it meets the light? The shadow is gone. It is really that simple. So, it’s only ever our fear of going into that is the problem.
So, yeah, all of my events are focused on that and some of them are specific about past lives, others are about the chakras – the energy centers that are a major part of our experience of life. I also do teaching about A Course In Miracles, which is really central to my path, which is a beautiful spiritual teaching about how to choose love in our lives and let go of fear.
And even more stuff. There is always more coming. I am actually writing a book. That book is going to be called Forgiving All My Lives and it will basically be a memoir of my past life healing journey sharing all kinds of pretty amazing experiences that I have had since I’ve gotten on this path. I am hoping that will be ready for release in 2018 as well.
Laura Jean: Awesome! Well, thank you, thank you so much for joining me on this podcast. It has been a pleasure talking with you today and I look forward to talking with you again soon.
Barret: Thank you so much Laura. This has been a real joy and a really fun conversation. So I am really glad you had me on today.
Laura Jean: All right. You have a great day and have a great day everyone. Bye for now!
Barret: Bye everyone!
