Simply Spiritual

When was the last time you laughed so hard that your stomach hurt? For me, it was when I was a young school-going girl in a small town called Ambala. Life was simple then—no deadlines, no deliverables, no emails, no political suicide or lame ducks to dodge. Just a little homework and entire days filled with ghar-ghar, cycling, chain-chain, and tippi-tippi-tap. It felt mind-blowing.

My father was a senior officer in the Indian Government, heading the entire Haryana. With government jeeps and ambassadors all around, life carried its own charm. Every morning, I cried not to go to school, and my mother used to dress me right there on the bed. At around 4–7 years of age, dad would literally push me towards the jeep. On the way, we’d pick up my two friends from our very own Ambala Cantt’s PWD colony. Sharing tiffins, eating chalk, disturbing the class monitor—it was pure fun.

With Christian teachers, convent school prayers, and a principal who once carried me in her arms, my early years were full of small wonders. Singing hymns and visiting the church added innocence and devotion to those days. Christianity says, “become like little children” to enter the kingdom of heaven. Perhaps that’s why gods always love the pure-hearted—the bhondu bacha. But once you grow into a spin doctor, dealing in “October surprises,” that blessing is long gone.

There were moments of pure mischief too. Once, I took my three Pomeranian dogs to my school. I told the driver I was saying goodbye to them but ended up letting them out. They stormed straight into school, chased by my driver, then guards, then my mother. Another day, I carried my toy dog by its ears into class. I was just four or five years old in LKG, already on a warpath with my teacher!

Then came change. I was in third standard and dad retired, and life transformed—from caterpillar to butterfly, from skin-shedding snake to seismic shift. We moved to Gurgaon, to a co-ed school where classmates felt like green fruits—shadows without form on an unpaved road. I ended up becoming a road lost in fog. From size-based prejudice (sizeism) to being treated like a punching bag, from being excluded to being a lone wolf—it all began here.

It felt like a geological era of pain that continued for many years, until I finally found a few lighthouses in this storm of life. Life had its own plan: to break me down and then help me rise like a phoenix from the ashes. Still, the wounds of childhood—feeling unseen, being compared, pressured—echoed into adulthood.

The Inner Child’s Voice

Our inner child is that part of us which carries emotional triggers and wounds from childhood. Every deep reaction we have today—is it truly about the present moment, or is it the voice of our inner child calling out? We are not “too sensitive.” We are carrying pain waiting to be healed.

I learned this lesson during sleepless nights and endless work, when being the “captain of the ship” meant wearing masks over deeper pain. That’s when I realized: Healing the inner child is like offering compassion to your younger self.

Innocence Across Traditions

In traditions like Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism, innocence is not ignorance—it’s returning to the origins. Across the world’s wisdom traditions, innocence is celebrated not as naivety, but as a return to truth—the soul’s original nature before ego, fear, or corruption set in.

• Buddhism (Shoshin – Beginner’s Mind)
  Zen masters teach shoshin, the “beginner’s mind.” It means meeting each moment without preconceptions, like a child seeing the world for the first time. It’s a reminder that spiritual depth is not about accumulating knowledge but about emptying ourselves to receive. For me, every time I sit in meditation or chant Buddha’s mantra, Tara Maa’s mantra, Krishna and Radha-Rani’s name, I feel a taste of shoshin—as if I’m that little girl again, curious, wide-eyed, unburdened.
• Hinduism (Atman & Lila)
  Hinduism reminds us that the soul (Atman) is always pure, untouched by the world’s dust. It can never be destroyed. Innocence is preserved through dharma (righteous living) and bhakti (devotion).
  • Krishna as a child in Vrindavan—stealing butter, dancing with gopis, playing his murali—shows us that innocence is divine play (lila). His mischief isn’t weakness; it’s wisdom wrapped in joy.
  • Meera, though not a deity, embodies childlike innocence through her unshaken love for Krishna. Society called her mad, but her surrender was purity itself.
• Christianity (Garden of Eden & Childlike Purity)
  In Christianity, innocence is both gift and longing. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve lived in purity—naked, unashamed, in communion with the God—until the forbidden fruit was eaten. That moment wasn’t just the loss of paradise, but the loss of innocence. Since then, humanity has longed to return to that state.
• Why Innocence Matters?
  Whether through shoshin, atman, the Garden of Eden, or Meera’s bhakti, innocence emerges as a spiritual condition, not just a psychological one. It is the lens of the soul before the dust of the world gathers.

And this is why healing the inner child is not merely therapy—it is spiritual resurrection. When we reclaim innocence, we don’t regress—we return. We return to the eternal spark that always lived within us, waiting for us to come home.

Healing Through Acceptance & Compassion

Childhood wounds often lead to shame, control, or defensive behaviors in adulthood. True healing doesn’t need labels—it needs love.

This I realized when Hanuman and Krishna entered my life. Chanting mantras, naam-japa, meditation, bhajans, and rituals created a sacred space for the little girl inside me. A space where she could talk, cry, laugh, and always be heard.

And once that connection deepened, he—my Krishna—played with her. The purifier of the fallen whispered truths, revealed the hidden cruelty of people (& the world around), and gave me strength to rise above. Yoga, bhajans, crystals, Tibetan bowls, and writing became her playground. Walking and singing bhajans heard in Shri Ram Sharnam in Panipat gave me life when everything felt dead. People wonder why I’m so devoted to Krishna. The truth? He is the reason I live. My breath, my heart, my reason.
The reason I look forward to every morning, the reason behind every step I take, the reason I eat, walk, speak, and even survive the toughest and the normal days. He is the reason my soul continues to breathe when the world around feels suffocating, the reason my heart still beats when pain feels heavier than life itself.

He is the reason of my thoughts, my words, and my silence. The reason why I don’t give up, why I rise again and again even after being broken. The reason my spirit still finds strength in the middle of storms.

For this bhondu bacha needs nothing else—no wealth, no applause, no validation—just him. He is the reason I stay alive, the reason my existence has meaning, the reason my soul continues its journey in this loop of life and death with hope of reaching forever home.

The Inner Child in Psychology

When I began to explore psychology, I realized it was not separate from spirituality—it was another language for the same truths. The inner child, innocence, purity, and pain have all been studied deeply by psychologists who gave them different names, but their essence was always the same: the child within us never disappears.

• Carl Jung – The Divine Child Archetype
  Jung described the “divine child” as one of the deepest archetypes in the human psyche. For him, the child wasn’t just about age—it was a symbol of innocence, potential, renewal, and transformation. The divine child shows up in myths and dreams as a reminder that the soul is whole, unbroken, and waiting to express itself. For me, this resonated deeply—because healing my inner child was not only about fixing wounds, but about reclaiming the joy, creativity, and freedom I once felt in Ambala when life was simple.
• Sigmund Freud – Childhood & the Unconscious
  Freud emphasized how early childhood shapes the unconscious mind. Pain, shame, or trauma that is unhealed gets buried, only to show up later as fear, anxiety, or unhealthy patterns. His work explained why certain triggers hit me so deeply—they weren’t just “today’s problems,” but echoes from the past. Healing meant uncovering those layers, seeing the unconscious, and gently releasing what my younger self couldn’t handle.
• John Bradshaw – The Wounded Inner Child
  Bradshaw popularized the idea that adult dysfunction—addictions, codependency, self-sabotage—often comes from an unhealed “wounded child.” His idea of “reparenting” struck me hard. It meant giving myself today the love, validation, and boundaries I missed back then. This reminded me of how chanting or meditating with Krishna feels—I, the adult, offer love and compassion to the child in me, and in that sacred space, she finally feels safe.
• Alice Miller – The Drama of the Gifted Child
  Miller focused on children who were praised for achievements but emotionally neglected. Outwardly they looked “gifted,” but inside they carried hidden pain. To me, this felt familiar—the way expectations, comparisons, and pressures from society left wounds that words couldn’t explain. Miller taught that true healing isn’t about intellectual understanding but about allowing yourself to feel the pain, acknowledge it, and honor it. Only then can the cycle break.

Therapy today—CBT, REBT, hypnotherapy, NLP—uses these ideas to reprogram beliefs, heal trauma, and reconnect with wholeness.

My Breakthroughs in NLP & Hypnotherapy

For me, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) was not just another course—it was a mirror that helped me see the younger version of myself. It gave me tools to listen to my inner child and reprogram the beliefs that held her back.

• Neuro means the brain—our nervous system, where all thoughts, emotions, and memories are stored. Every experience we have is wired into us as patterns.
• Linguistic means language—the words we use, the way we speak to ourselves and others. Language creates meaning and shapes how we interpret life.
• Programming means the strategies, behaviors, and thought patterns we run automatically, like a computer program. Some programs help us, others limit us.

NLP showed me that if these patterns were learned once, they could also be changed. Through techniques like calibration (noticing subtle shifts in behavior and physiology) and reprogramming tools (like spiral, Picasa method or childhood revisiting techniques), I learned how to gently guide my inner child away from limiting beliefs such as “I’m not enough” or “I don’t belong.”

From being a beginner to becoming a Certified Coach, I explored techniques that didn’t just sit in theory—they worked on me, deeply..

And then came hypnotherapy—like opening a locked treasure chest where my inner child had hidden her pain. Under the gentle guidance of my mam, I discovered spaces within me I didn’t even know existed. She was the same person who didn’t just help me heal my inner child, but also stood with me as I cut chords with “the crush” (let’s not name). That journey, painful as it was, became an initiation into deeper healing. And through her, I was also introduced to the vastness of the Akashic Records—a whole new dimension of understanding soul contracts, lessons, and release.

One technique that stayed with me in this work was the Balloon Technique (I call it like that). With her support, I revisited my younger self—not once, not twice, but as many times as it was needed. Each time, I gave that little girl a balloon and asked her to fill it with whatever she was still carrying—unmet desires, shame, guilt, or trauma. And then, together, we released it—throwing it out of the window.

The image of that balloon floating away was so simple, yet so profound. It was as if the little girl inside me finally believed: “I am free. I am allowed to let this go.”

And this wasn’t just one session—it was many sessions, each peeling away another layer of pain. Slowly, the frustrated self in me started finding joy again. I began to notice changes in everyday life—saying Good Morning to people I would have never approached earlier, smiling where I once carried silence, letting the child in me peek out again. Session by session, progress unfolded—not like a sudden miracle, but like a flower that finally felt safe enough to bloom.

These practices were never about erasing the past. They were about reparenting my inner child, embracing her not as a wound but as a guide—a small, playful, divine spark who had been waiting all along to be heard, healed, and honored. And for this, I carry immense gratitude to my all the mentors —their wisdom, their compassion, and their ability to hold space for my most vulnerable moments shaped my journey more than words can capture.

Closing

The world may call it erratic when old wounds rise as tears, tantrums, or silence. But healing the inner child is not regression—it’s resurrection.

These echoes are not weakness. They’re the voice of a child who was never heard. When that child finally speaks, the world calls it chaos. But in truth, it’s clarity.

Healing is remembering: Innocence was never lost. It was waiting—patiently, quietly—for you to come home.