The Past Is a Portal, Not a Prison

A Restful Reflection on Memory, Healing, and Wholeness

By Garima Verma, aka The Restfulness Therapist

We are often taught to leave the past behind.

To keep moving. To "get over it." To rush forward as if the past has nothing valuable to offer us.

But the truth is, the past doesn’t bind us — denial does.

The past, when left unacknowledged, festers.

It loops.

It lingers.

It rises through our triggers, our relationships, and our exhaustion.

It doesn’t disappear simply because we turn our backs on it. And yet, when we turn toward it with presence, something sacred happens.

The past becomes a portal — a soft opening through which lost parts of ourselves return.

The Past as a Teacher

Our memories — both conscious and cellular — hold information. They are not just archives of pain. They are maps of unmet needs, incomplete stories, and inherited burdens.

To listen to the past is not to stay stuck in it. It is to honour what shaped us. It is to gently ask, "What part of me got left behind here?"

In the Restfulness Method, we do not relive trauma. We witness it from the body’s intelligence.

We allow the nervous system to move at the pace of safety and compassion.

When we meet the past in this way, it doesn’t pull us back. It opens us forward.

Many cultures have long honoured the past not as something to be discarded, but as a sacred companion. Rituals, ceremonies, ancestral altars — these are invitations to stay in relationship with what came before, not in bondage to it, but in wisdom and clarity.

When we treat the past as a teacher, we allow its lessons to take root. We learn to discern which stories are truly ours and which were passed down.

The Prison of Suppression

Avoiding the past often feels like a form of freedom. But over time, it becomes heavy.

What is unspoken lives inside. What is unseen becomes how we see the world.

The prison isn’t the pain — it’s the loneliness of carrying it alone. It’s the pressure to pretend we’ve moved on when parts of us are still paused.

And in trying to "stay positive" or "look forward," we often bypass what still aches. We confuse bypassing with growth.

In truth, resilience isn’t forged through avoidance. It is built through integration.

The Restfulness Method invites us to pause on purpose —to give the past the space it never had so that it can finally exhale. So that we no longer have to hold it in tension or fear.

Suppressing the past keeps the body on high alert. The nervous system stays in a state of unfinished business, waiting for the story to be completed.

Integration, on the other hand, calms the body. It whispers: "I see you. I hear you. You are no longer alone."

Integration: The Art of Wholeness

Healing is not about changing the past. It’s about changing our relationship with it.

We don’t need to fix what happened. We need to befriend the parts of us that lived through it.

Integration means:

• Meeting old versions of yourself with tenderness.

• Offering presence to ancestral pain you inherited but didn’t choose.

• Unravelling the unconscious loyalty to someone else’s suffering.

This is not indulgence. This is maturity. This is how we step out of the cycle — not by running, but by returning with consciousness.

It is an act of courage to say: "I will not abandon these parts of me. I will learn to walk with them, gently."

Wholeness isn’t perfection. It’s continuity. It is learning to include all of you in the room. Even the messy. Even the hurting. Even the young, immature, frightened parts.

How the Restfulness Method Holds This Process

In the Restfulness Method, we don’t rush to solutions. We honour the rhythm of safety, the wisdom of slowness, and the body’s inner compass.

Through practices like:

• Conscious Somatic Body Restore — which listens to the body’s deepest rhythms

• Systemic & Ancestral Integration — which uncovers invisible loyalties and inherited patterns

• Somatic Journaling & Guided Inner Child Work — which builds a relationship with your inner world - we offer the past a seat at the table, not to dominate the conversation, but to be heard and finally, released.

Because when pain is processed, it no longer holds us hostage. It becomes part of our ground, not our weight.

The body knows how to release. The heart knows how to forgive. The nervous system knows how to complete the cycle.

But only when it is safe. Only when it is slow. Only when it is met with compassion.

You are not meant to carry the past alone.

You are not meant to run from it either.

You are meant to walk with it — slowly, kindly, and with support.

When we enter the portal of the past with reverence, we don’t get stuck.

We find the way home.

Let the past become your teacher, not your jailer.

Let it speak, and you will be surprised what soft wisdom it holds.

Because the past isn’t just what happened, it’s what longs to be integrated, loved, and finally, laid to rest.