Buddha Belly Be-Gone: Effortlessly Shedding Stuck Ascension & Trauma Weight

In this Soul teaching on Buddha Belly Be-Gone: effortlessly shedding stuck Ascension & trauma weight you will learn:

• How weight gain is connected to the Ascension process
• What causes weight to get stuck and why eating less or exercising more often doesn’t make a dent
• What role trauma plays in weight gain and how it disrupts our hormones
• How to get your body out of fight or flight response aka survival mode
• And more….

This Soul Teaching was written in 2022 and updated in 2023 to match new insights.

Have you ever struggled to lose weight?

If you have ever struggled with losing weight and no matter what you did, the weight didn’t really budge – then this teaching is for you. If you have difficulties with emotional eating, overeating, and binge eating there are also some insights for you, but this teaching is more for those who are doing everything they should and still not getting results with releasing firmly stuck weight.

This is of course not meant to judge or shame people who struggle with eating disorders, rather it’s to help those in a different category that are often overlooked when it comes to the weight discussion. There are people who eat less, have an active lifestyle, and are still prone to weight gain and stuck weight that is resistant to their consistent attempts to shed those unwanted pounds.

This has been my story for the past 15 years, to which I finally found a natural solution. Because eating less and exercising more did not work for me and often caused me to actually gain weight, rather than shed it.

Many people on the Ascension path, those doing trauma healing and/or people coming out of for example an abusive relationship find themselves holding onto unwanted weight that doesn’t come off through eating less or exercising more but also does not budge despite efforts to mentally, emotionally or vibrationally release it.

This Soul Teaching explains the deeper dynamics of such weight retention and dives deep into why it is so difficult to release.

The obesity epidemic

We live in a day and age where obesity is growing not only in the USA (which ranks 12th on the list of countries by obesity rate) but worldwide. There are a couple of reasons for this such as:

• processed food 
• hormones 
• antibiotics
• food additives
• environmental toxins
• stress
• and last but not least the spiritual times that we live in.

If we learned anything from documentaries such as Super Size Me or others that look into the effects of eating highly processed food, it is that processed food is addictive because eating junk food (aka highly processed food) causes a release of dopamine in the brain. This reward encourages susceptible individuals to eat more unhealthy foods. This is also the culprit behind overeating (eating empty calories), bingeing, and emotional eating, which are food addictions as these are all dopamine-related afflictions.

‘Binge eating, overeating, and obesity often result from neurochemical changes in the brain that mimic addiction’.

Source: psychiatryredefined.org

Most people on the spiritual path are very conscious of what they put into their bodies, so junk food or highly processed food isn’t often the cause of their weight gain. It’s not daily pizzas, ice cream, and hamburgers that are to blame in this case, although worldwide low-quality food is a contributing factor to weight gain.

An underlying additional disruptor that even affects those who attempt to eat healthily is the use of hormones, antibiotics, and the various food additives that are for example FDA approved – but do wreak havoc on our health. Our food, facial creams, shampoos, deodorants, and other daily used products can also contain environmental toxins known as xenoestrogens that disrupt our hormones. This is why I buy certified organic foods and products as much as possible, especially shampoos, deodorants, etc.

Then we add stress to the mix which disrupts our internal processes (adrenaline, cortisol, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, etc.) because we are in a constant fight or flight mode. This links in closely to the spiritual times that we live in, where in order to ascend into the higher 5th dimensional frequencies we have to let go of all our excess baggage which includes all of our unprocessed mental and emotional pain (trauma) from this lifetime AND previous lifetimes.

We have to vibrationally make clean ship in order to be able to ascend, and if you have read the free Ultimate Guide to Inner Union (that you can download here) you understand that the lowest frequency emotions are those connected to unresolved pain and trauma.

This excess vibrational baggage has to be released in order to be able to ascend into the 5D, which is why many people on the Ascension journey struggle with Buddha bellies and inexplicable weight gain that seems to have no correlation with their food intake (food quantity or food quality) or their exercise regimen.

Why eating less & exercising more doesn’t work

The current solution to weight loss is to exercise more and eat less, it has become a game of calories where the goal is to create a calorie deficit that will inevitably lead to weight loss. The idea is that when you burn more calories while eating fewer calories than you need – this creates weight loss, and although this may work for some – it doesn’t work for every kind of weight issue.

My biggest problem with this approach is that it is unsustainable. you can eat less (aka diet) for a period of time but you can’t eat less all of your life. The same goes for exercising more, there are going to be periods in your life where you will for whatever reason not be able to exercise more and inevitably you will drop one or both, and weight gain will likely be the result.

However, for the group of people I am talking about eating less and exercising more simply doesn’t work. But because it is the weight loss mantra across all industries, you’ll often be told that you must be doing something wrong if it’s not working for you. You must be either eating too many calories or not burning enough calories through exercise. The problem of course is that there is no one-size-fits-all weight loss solution because not all weight gain is created the same way.

Like many modern ways of dealing with things, exercising more and eating less is battling the symptoms of weight gain.

It doesn’t address the root cause. The problem with battling symptoms is that it’s an endless battle, it never stops because it only addresses the external and not the internal or underlying issue(s) that are creating the external results. This is why so many people are stuck in yo-yo or weight cycling, often regaining more weight than they initially lost because they didn’t address the root causes of why the body retained the weight, to begin with.

Modern medicine tends to look at the body as a soulless machine with parts that easily break or malfunction, when in fact from a spiritual perspective the body is the vehicle of the soul within the Earth realm that possesses an innate intelligence that knows exactly what to do to support our Earth experience.

Ascension & trauma weight

You have probably never seen it this way but Ascension is not possible without healing our unresolved trauma, in a way you could actually say that Ascension is trauma healing as they go hand in hand. It’s the trauma healing that facilitates the Ascension which paradoxically is first and foremost a descension of the soul into the physical body.

This descension of the soul into the physical body is only possible when we have healed our unresolved pain and wounding (trauma) to a certain degree (I explain this process in-depth in the Ultimate Guide to Inner Union that you can download for free).

Now you may not consciously remember any particular highly traumatic event, but that does not mean that you do not carry unresolved trauma from this lifetime or other lifetimes. Everyone, every single human being of the currently 7.9 billion souls incarnated on planet Earth carries unresolved trauma within them from the moment they are conceived in the womb because it is our unresolved trauma aka karma (read this teaching on karma from a new paradigm perspective) that keeps us chained to the cycle of death and rebirth. If we had no unresolved trauma (karma) we would not need to reincarnate in this dimensional reality.

The reason we often do not remember highly traumatic experiences is because we hold them subconsciously, and even when we do remember traumatic experiences we tend to downplay them because we tell ourselves that they weren’t as bad as the cases that make it to the news. This is both a coping as well as a survival strategy to try to minimize the abuse or trauma we have experienced in order to be able to keep functioning at the most basic levels.

There are people who believe they have never experienced trauma in this lifetime because they didn’t experience abuse, but trauma can come in many different shapes and forms. One of my childhood traumas was created when my mother left me with my father and half-sisters in our family home for a three-month trip to the United States when I was around 4 years old. I was fine when she left, but because she was away so long and because we didn’t have cell phones or internet back then there was close to zero contact and I felt completely abandoned by her, even more so because she had unbeknownst to her, left me behind with my abuser(s) instead of taking me with her.

Trauma doesn’t have to come with a big ‘T’ in order for it to have an effect on us. Trauma with a little ‘t’ and especially chronic trauma that lasts over a longer stretch of time even if it isn’t severe can be traumatizing. Growing up in a toxic family environment we often don’t realize that what is happening to us is not normal, because it’s normal to us. This continued exposure to stressful and mentally/emotionally/physically painful circumstances is the deepest underlying cause of many health issues including weight problems.

‘Dr. Celan explains that trauma sensitizes something called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which is the body’s central stress response system. You can think of this as the intersection of our central nervous system and endocrine system.

Because trauma impacts the HPA axis, it can affect our hormones, especially adrenaline, cortisol, and oxytocin. Trauma makes us more reactive to stressors, and more likely to increase the stress hormone cortisol. In certain situations, hormones like cortisol are very important. Think: If you’re being chased by a wild animal, adrenaline kicks in to help you get out of danger’s reach. But when you’re not actively in danger, trauma keeps your body in that revved-up state, putting serious mileage on your body.

Once the stressor is removed, the body’s hormones should respond in kind. The only problem? “A body that is exposed to trauma long-term will continue to produce these hormones, which may lead to negative long-term effects on the body,” according to Dr. Yasmin Akhunji, an endocrinologist with Paloma Health. “This puts you at an increased risk for anxiety, depression, heart disease, sleep disruption, weight gain, and memory/concentration damage.’ Source: endocrineweb.com

According to Louise Hay, the metaphysical cause of obesity is:
Fear, feeling a deep need for emotional protection. Running away from feelings, insecurity.

Weight as a way to protect yourself

These are all trauma-related feelings that Louise Hay describes especially the feeling of feeling unsafe, because when do we feel a deep need for emotional protection? When we feel unsafe. Now add to this that the Ascension process comes without a user’s manual and brings to the surface all of our old unresolved pain and wounding even from previous lifetimes and you can imagine that this in itself creates a deep sense of not being safe because all those fears and all those lower vibrational frequency emotions that we still carry have to be released when we often don’t understand their origin and that triggers the physical body to go into protection mode.

This is the kind of weight that won’t budge because it serves a deeper purpose – it serves to protect you which is why eating less and exercising more hardly makes a dent. Even if you successfully lose weight, it is regained just as easily and often just as quickly because the body is seeking to create this sense of protection that is so deeply lacking within.

My personal journey to weight loss

After my third child, I weighed 53 kilos and had a European size 34, I was super slim. It was after my fourth child who died shortly after birth that I have not been able to get back to my ideal weight. Not only did I lose my child at that time, but there were many compounding factors that made it one of the most difficult times of my life. The circumstances of my life had left me feeling backed up into a corner at that time, if ever there was a period that I would have needed weight as emotional protection – this was it.

Since then I have tried to lose weight in many ways that varied from obviously healing and different forms of therapy to hitting the gym, nutritional resets, various different detoxes, including expensive IV liver detoxes in Dubai, herbal remedies, homeopathic remedies, flower essences, calorie restriction, personal trainers, numerous different diets, hormone replacement therapy and so on. Nothing had a true lasting effect, even when I did lose weight and most had zero effect whatsoever.

By the end of  2019, I was doing three weekly sessions with a personal trainer for four months and I ate prepped meals that she picked out  for me for over one month. I only lost 1kg and 0 centimeters over that four-month period!

Especially towards the end of my healing journey, my weight became even more stuck and I gained an extra 19 kilos out of nowhere despite only being able to eat three small meals a day because I would be ravenously hungry, but feel full after only a couple of bites (which turns out to be a symptom of estrogen dominance).

Outsiders including professionals often think that being overweight is only caused by overeating or emotional eating, but this is not always the case or maybe even rarely the case. I would always tell them if it was a question of snacking too much or constant visits to the fridge or pantry, it would actually be easier for me because I would have the high self-discipline needed to break such a pattern.

The problem was that I could eat only a salad and still gain weight.

I know how to eat healthy, and I know how to regulate my weight, but still, my weight was out of control even though I eat the same as my mother who now lives with us – she weighs 48 kilos on the same food and portion size as me. I eventually weighed twice as much as she did not eating any differently. I felt so helpless and out of control when it came to my weight because I was doing everything the way it had always worked and still nothing I did at that time seemed to work anymore.

Not even acupuncture, or different types of therapies and healing made any difference. So, when I talk about weight that was stuck I am not kidding. I paid $1000 in Dubai for a revolutionary IV detox therapy that was guaranteed to have you lose weight. I did lymph drainage massage, cupping, and hydrocolon therapy and none of it helped me lose weight.

I spent a small fortune (multiple 5 figures) on finding the thing that would help me lose weight and aside from 2015 when I lost a substantial amount of weight, but then gained twice as much back because I did it through diet and exercise – nothing has actually worked until now.

Which is why the results I am getting now are absolutely amazing. It is my story of frustration to almost effortless victory that makes it that despite not having any credentials in weight loss I am THE person to be writing about this from a new paradigm perspective, instead of the old 3D perspective on weight loss. Further on, I will share the steps I took to lose weight without eating less or exercising more. Even crazier, I have actually regained my appetite and am currently eating more than I did before while losing weight nonetheless.

I am hoping by sharing my own journey of weight loss on the Ascension journey, to help others facing the same issues unlock the key to their weight loss as well.

The connection between trauma and weight gain

The connection between trauma and weight gain comes down to hormones, often when we hear the word ‘hormones’ we think of female hormones but cortisol and adrenaline are hormones too…

This is why hormone imbalances are not necessarily connected to the female menstrual cycle.

In fact, it’s not even a women’s thing, because men can have estrogen dominance as well. If you are a man you would have to research the cause of estrogen dominance in men yourself because I retraced my steps as a woman. One quick Google search already shows that cortisol decreases testosterone, while progesterone functions as a precursor in the male body to produce testosterone while also acting as a balance to decrease estrogen. Source: Hardingmedicalinstitute.com

This teaching therefore applies to men as well, even though I will be citing female-oriented research as I am a woman myself and did not research the science behind this phenomenon from a male perspective.

Science confirms that there is a correlation between trauma and weight gain:

• ‘Research suggests childhood sexual abuse increases the odds of adult obesity by between 31 and 100 percent. One study found that about 8 percent of all cases of obesity, and 17 percent of “class three” severe obesity, can be attributed to some form of child abuse.’ Source: theatlantic.com But it’s not only childhood abuse that can cause weight gain…
• ‘The risk of becoming obese was 36 percent higher for women who had experienced at least four negative life events in the past 5 years, compared with women who had experienced no negative life events. The more negative life events endured, the higher the obesity risk.’ Source: medicalnewtoday.com
• The more trauma we experience the higher the chance we become obese, while at the same time, another 2021 study supports the link between excess weight and higher hormone levels. ‘The study found that estrogen and testosterone levels dropped quite a bit when overweight and obese women lost weight.’ Source: breastcancer.org

What I was shown writing this teaching is that estrogen dominance is the body’s way to protect us from the effects of guess what?! TRAUMA.

Estrogen dominance is a protective mechanism

Estrogen dominance refers to excess levels of estrogen that can also occur when women move toward perimenopause. In actuality, the same levels of estrogen are produced but are out of proportion to diminishing levels of progesterone. A similar process occurs through stress and trauma. Here is some of the research on this:

• ‘Estrogen regulates the brain’s fear response, protecting against PTSD. New research suggests that its additional role could be protecting the female brain from trauma.’ Source: Medicalnewstoday.com
• ‘When your body is stressed, it works to produce higher levels of the hormone cortisol which manages stress in your body. Because progesterone is the precursor to cortisol, when cortisol levels increase, progesterone levels decrease. So, too much stress in a woman’s life can lead to a progesterone deficiency, causing estrogen dominance.’ Source: bodylogiccmd.com

Current research has found that high estrogen levels protect us against developing PTSD while low estrogen levels contribute to the development of PTSD. In case you are wondering PTSD stands for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

What I have found is that estrogen dominance is the body’s way of damage control during the healing process, without higher levels of estrogen we would be more susceptible to PTSD which is counterproductive to our healing. Becoming obese is initially a lesser threat to our survival and therefore ‘seen’ as a lesser evil than developing PTSD which is essentially a fancy term for a group of symptoms that describe someone stuck in their trauma response.

The body chooses storing fat over being able to function less efficiently cognitively, especially within situations where functioning less efficiently cognitively is not an option, for example within situations of domestic abuse where you need to stay sharp to survive. It isn’t surprising then that women who are victims of domestic violence are more prone to be obese (Source: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov).

It would make sense that in the process of healing our trauma, this same stress response is triggered that depletes our progesterone in order to create cortisol which then over time leads to estrogen dominance. Facing our painful unresolved emotions is stressful in its own way as it forces us to come to terms with the demons of our past.

I couldn’t find any research to corroborate this but this can simply be because it has never been researched.
Much of this research is fairly new and it is long known that there is a gender bias in medicine and medical research that puts women’s health at risk. (Source: theconversation.com)

For example, research has shown that women are almost twice as much at risk of developing PTSD (Source: apa.org) when according to that same research men are more at risk of experiencing trauma than women. However, women’s trauma stems primarily from sexual assault, incest, and domestic violence.

One has to take into account that sexual assault remains dramatically underreported (Source: brennancenter.org) the same is true for domestic abuse or intimate partner violence (Source: womensaid.org) and incest as well (Source: theatlantic.com).

Such conclusions are indicative of the male bias in research as any woman would know that all three of these types of crimes against women and girls are underreported. Of course, men and boys can be and are victims of such crimes as well, but statistically to a lesser degree although I have no doubt that these cases are underreported too.

Just look at the trial of Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard and how this is raising awareness for male victims of domestic violence. Notice that Johnny is the one who has gained weight (Source: houseandwhips.com) in 2022, while Amber claims to have lost weight due to the alleged abuse she experienced in her marriage. Stress does sometimes lead to weight loss, but it is interesting to see that Depp as a survivor of childhood abuse and in his marriage with Amber what appears to be spousal abuse has suddenly started to gain weight.

Perhaps this is because he has to confront his alleged abuser in court and is feeling a need to protect himself while he has allowed himself to be so vulnerable in the public eye. This would then be an example of how men can be influenced in the same way as women by this dynamic. ‘As the high levels of cortisol course through your bloodstream, the hormone increases your appetite, causes insulin resistance, and slows your metabolism. This leads the body to store fat and calories to help you cope with stress.’ (Source; bonsecours.com)

Even women who suffer from PTSD are statistically prone to gain more weight, which would make sense if estrogen works to protect the female brain. The body would want to ‘produce’ more estrogen to protect against the PTSD, when physiologically of course the PTSD would work in the same way as chronic stress due to trauma leading to a depletion of the body’s progesterone reserves to fuel cortisol which creates estrogen dominance and the with estrogen dominance associated weight gain.

As the body becomes estrogen-dominant, the metabolism slows, resulting in excess weight gain. The abdominal tissues begin retaining more water, resulting in bloating. Insulin is unnaturally released, resulting in constant hunger along with craving sweets.

Medcraveonline.com

‘Women with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) gain weight more rapidly and are more likely to be overweight or obese than women without the disorder, find researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and Harvard School of Public Health. It is the first study to look at the relationship between PTSD and obesity over time.

The biological pathway of how PTSD leads to weight gain is unknown, but scientists have a number of guesses. One is through the over-activation of stress hormones. PTSD may lead to disturbances in functioning of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the sympathetic nervous system, each of which is involved in regulating a broad range of body processes, including metabolism.’ Source: cuimc.columbia.edu

This is the same mechanism that triggers estrogen dominance. This means that even when we develop PTSD through the stress of not being able to heal or recover from our trauma, the body goes into protection mode as we have learned that higher levels of estrogen protect against PTSD. Emotionally the extra fat or thick skin may increase a sense of protection as well while going through deep emotional pain whether that is through reliving it or by healing it which also asks us to revisit it.

This is sheer ingeniousness from our bodies to protect us in this way from further damage to our nervous system, brain, and other key functions of the body. As ingenious as storing childhood trauma in the feet as far away from the heart as possible in order to protect it (something that I have written about before after falling down the stairs and breaking my foot two years ago). It makes me marvel at the innate intelligence of our body that is indeed so much more than just a meat suit, constantly looking out to ensure our survival by protecting our most vital functions and organs.

The metaphysical cause of estrogen dominance

I always look up the metaphysical causes of my physical conditions or ailments and found this explanation particularly interesting:

‘The teachings of the ancient wisdom through many sages in the past from Pythagoras, Patanjali, Plato, etc. all describe how our emotions are responsible for all our illnesses and diseases. When emotions are not dealt with, and thus buried into the body, they create a stagnation or excess in the etheric (energetic) body which then affects the corresponding physical body.

The undealt with emotions of self-loathing and/or a lack of self-worth experienced by most women is the underlying emotional hurt which is the cause of estrogen dominance. To protect yourself from these hurts women disconnect from their natural nurturing and gentle way of being, often described as a stillness, beingness, or femaleness, opting for a more protective hardness which is a doing, driving, and achieving male energy. This causes women to lose their ability to self-nurture as they operate from a more male (doing) energy which is a harder way of being than that which comes naturally for a woman. These emotional hurts are buried in the etheric ovaries creating a stagnation in the corresponding physical glands which results in suppressed ovarian function. This causes a decline in progesterone production by the ovaries creating a hormone imbalance in the physical body which ultimately causes estrogen dominance and its corresponding illness.

Those women who excessively live life from the hardness (male energy) often have this reflected back to them with elevated testosterone levels. If this is the case you need to let go of the hardness and reconnect to the gentle, nurturing loveliness it is being a woman. Low progesterone levels reflect you have lost connection with your natural nurturing aspect. Self-love, self-acceptance, and self-nurturing will help heal the hurts of self-loathing and lack of self-worth and thus overcome these imbalances.

As illustrated above the teaching of the ancient wisdom agrees with the assessment of modern medicine but goes deeper to explain why and how the hormone imbalance was initiated.’ Source: custommedicine.com.au

This metaphysical explanation is the same process of protection but on an emotional level. By going into their masculinity, women are trying to create that emotional safety that is lacking inside. It shows us the emotional state that triggers the physiological response which has the same function of protection.

Being a woman and looking feminine, does not guarantee that we are in our feminine essence in fact many women that I have worked with and even women in general tend to be very much in their masculine energy because it feels safer to them than being in their feminine energy. Due to my own childhood trauma, I was no exception.

In fact, in exactly the same period that I was deeply healing the balance of the inner feminine and the inner masculine on a childhood level I was diagnosed with estrogen dominance by my doctor, and she started treating me for it on a physical level. She gave me a supplement for the adrenals, recommended the keto diet, daily green detox juices to remove the estrogen excess from the body, and prescribed me body-identical progesterone which worked well to lose weight.

Her solution, however, was symptom-based in its own way. The body-identical hormones created issues of their own, which made me quit them after discussing this with my gynecologist. Just like for example a drug such as Ozempic, hormone replacement therapy only works as long as you take it. As soon as you stop, the underlying issues return because they have only been suppressed instead of addressed.

Because weight was the only reason for me to take the hormones, I decided to stop taking them because of the side effects. Immediately the weight loss stopped and I was back at square one. But what I had learned is that with the right approach, my weight wasn’t stuck. I could lose weight, whereas before nothing had worked. I just needed to find a more natural solution.

Why trauma healing is important for the body

In the past twenty-plus years, I have worked a lot on trauma healing for various reasons, including losing weight. In that time I have done numerous sessions that focused solely on weight issues which are too many to describe in detail. I also did numerous sessions to get my body out of the continuous fight or flight response aka survival mode including craniosacral therapy sessions that went into the amygdala which is the organ that controls our survival system.

I would say that I have done at least 100 sessions that worked directly on aspects pertaining to the excess weight I am carrying, although I didn’t lose weight through those sessions, all the sessions I did led to becoming completely trauma-free which allowed my body to come out of its trauma response.

Imagine trauma being like a constant background noise that is playing 24/7 on rinse and repeat, nagging at you, disrupting your sleep and all other functions within the body.

When the trauma is healed, that noise is finally shut off and there’s an inner peace that allows the body to fully return to homeostasis and function the way it should. It removes the biggest chronic stress that the body can experience, which allows the body to finally go into a restorative state instead of simply trying to survive the non-stop internal disruption caused by unresolved trauma.

When we still carry a lot of unresolved trauma and emotions, the body is already in a perpetual state of alarm (chronic stress). It’s as if it is filled to the brim and any extra external stress makes it flow over, aka floods the whole system with high-intensity levels of stress. When the trauma is healed, the body is in homeostasis and can easily deal with external stress because peace is its natural state therefore it is rested, resilient, and strong enough to face external difficulties without and this is equally important – triggering old stories and old pain that cloud what is happening in the here and now.

In this way, it is vital also on a physical level to release the subconscious burdens we carry, because not only do they subconsciously create the reality we live in as I have explained over and over again throughout all the teachings within the Soul teachings, these subconscious burdens wreak havoc on our bodies and in many cases can even create disease. Especially unresolved emotions as you will find in all literature on the connection between emotions and the body or the metaphysical meaning of our physical ailments, are connected to many of our current-day illnesses. This teaching focuses on just one of the many ways that our unresolved pain and wounding can alter our physiology and how addressing the root causes of our issues, can then change our physiology for the better.

How I turned things around

I am not a doctor and everything I have shared is based on my personal experience and internet research backtracking why all of a sudden I am able to lose weight when before I couldn’t. Do of course always consult a physician to advise you in your specific situation based on your personal health history. You should always check with an expert about what is best for you. With this medical disclaimer out of the way, let’s dive into the details of what I did that has been working and that could potentially help you lose your trauma or Ascension weight as well.

At the beginning of this year, I decided that this was the year that I was going to get my health and normal weight back.

I started out strong by walking a minimum of 5,000 steps daily starting in January.
By the end of April, my daily walks had gained me 3.5 kilos!

My chiropractor and others said not to worry because it just meant I was building muscles and would soon start losing weight, but I didn’t. I suspect that the walking was increasing my inflammation and that this was leading to the weight gain. But I kept at it until I was forced to stop walking because I fell down a complete-story building after a session I had with a healer. I fell down a full flight of stairs and was forced to lie on my back for a week and sleep on my back even longer. That fall literally pushed me out of doing (masculine) into being (feminine).

This taught me that rigorous exercise is not the answer to this kind of excess weight.
I still walk sometimes and enjoy long walks, but I don’t take long walks daily anymore.
I swim daily which I can do about 5 to 6 months out of the year when the weather is warmer.
In the winter I don’t swim because the pool water is just too cold as the pool in our yard isn’t heated.

With time on my hands, I read a book that was recommended in one of the coaching programs I am in. It’s called Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott and although her method didn’t fully resonate with me, it made me realize how I was giving away my power when it came to my weight. Because honestly, I felt so powerless doing everything that I was told I should do and not getting the results I wanted. Or worse such as with the walking, actually gaining weight instead of shedding it when logically the daily exercise should have helped decrease my weight.

I decided to fully own that I had created this situation on a subconscious level because it somehow served me even if I couldn’t see exactly how. For a couple of days that was all I did. simply say out loud that I took responsibility for the subconscious creation of my weight.

During a checkup with my chiropractor, I discussed my inflammation theory in relation to my unexpected weight gain from walking and he told me about the carnivore diet as a great way to heal inflammation. I have been vegan and vegetarian for large periods of my life, so eating only meat seemed insurmountable to me, but I did look into it. I don’t think I would ever be able to eat only meat, yet I did decide to increase my animal protein intake largely because I have blood type O and my acupuncturist has told me more than once how important it is for people with my blood type to eat enough animal protein. We went from eating meat once in a while to eating animal protein daily, either meat or fish.

Because I have been at this for quite some time, I have really healthy habits already in place like daily fresh green juices to decrease the estrogen dominance, but these were not doing the trick. In fact, they weren’t making a dent. One of my biggest issues aside from the weight was water retention in my legs and in my face, my face was really puffy.

I was researching reducing inflammation, which the carnivore diet does but because I know myself well enough to know that I cannot live on a meat-only diet I was looking for alternatives that could get me the same results.

Somehow I stumbled on the solution to my problem when I thought to research the link between dampness and inflammation. I mention this because I feel like I was internally guided to this solution when I decided to take full responsibility for the overweight that I didn’t want and had done everything that I could think of to get rid of but that had remained stuck nonetheless. I feel this shift in perspective, from feeling powerless no matter what I did to being willing to take responsibility for my weight was what unblocked the energy around losing weight and allowed me to be intuitively guided to the solution that had been eluding me all this time.

TCM internal dampness & estrogen dominance

I knew the Traditional Chinese Medicine term ‘dampness’ but I had no idea what it really was. I literally just received the inner prompt to look up ‘tcm dampness‘. When I looked it up, it was the missing piece that brought everything I already knew together.

The Chinese Medicine perspective on estrogen dominance is as follows:
‘In the case where there is not enough yin (or estrogen) conditions that are hot and dry will arise. Since yin is cooling and moistening, too much of it creates symptoms that are cold and wet, or what is referred to as damp in Chinese Medicine. Dampness occurs when digestion fails to transform food and water into usable nutrients for our body. When fluids are not getting metabolized there is a buildup of moisture where there shouldn’t be.’ Source: acusalida.com

Hormonal factors of internal dampness

Like dampness, female hormones are yin substances. When these hormones become deficient (during perimenopause and menopause), the body will tend to hold onto whatever yin substances it can manage to gather, including pathological dampness, in a misguided attempt to resolve this deficiency. The effort on the part of the body to replace the missing healthy yin substances (hormones) often takes the form of cravings for sugar, bread, or dairy and results in weight gain (unhealthy yin) that resists even very consistent and disciplined efforts to get rid of it. Source: Liveoakacupuncture.com

Emotional factors that create internal dampness

When a person does not feel secure physically and/or emotionally, the body will tend to hold onto dampness in a misguided attempt to protect itself against threats. This is similar to the way that the body forms mucus (a form of dampness) in response to exposure to allergens (a type of threat). Source: Liveoakacupuncture.com

This brings us full circle to everything we have discussed in the previous paragraphs both from a physiological standpoint as well as an emotional and psychological standpoint; estrogen dominance and a need for protection cause the body to hold onto (accumulate) dampness and this is what is causing the Buddha belly.

Removing internal dampness from the body

I followed the recommendations for eliminating internal dampness and the bloating and puffiness are gone, while the weight is steadily going down completely naturally. The funny thing is that I actually didn’t start this to reduce weight but to reduce water retention and inflammation, the weight loss is a beautiful side effect.

I realized that the keto my doctor had recommended last year was actually only worsening this condition of dampness for me as was the high humidity here in Ibiza. Many of the keto staple foods create internal dampness such as eggs, avocado, bacon, and dairy. I also avoided the mistake I had made before which was substituting dairy with plant-based options like oat milk for example which is made with vegetable oils that causes inflammation in the body. I simply didn’t make any dishes that contained milk, cream, or cheese.

One of the many recommendations to eliminate dampness is to include animal foods in moderate amounts for the yang qi boost they provide (salmon, beef, pork, and/or chicken). It also stated that vegetarians are strongly advised to increase warming spices to simulate the yang qi contribution of animal food. All my life I had learned that animal protein is bad for you, but this confirmed that increasing the amount of animal protein was the right thing to do for me to heal this condition.

To check if your issue is also an issue of internal dampness, check the symptoms and dietary and other recommendations in this article.

From there you can find other articles and resources on dampness. I also recommend finding an acupuncturist and discussing dampness as a diagnosis with them. I started the anti-dampness diet without telling my acupuncturist, by the time I saw him I had already lost weight and healed most of my bloating, water retention, and puffiness. He was incredibly impressed with my weight loss and very enthusiastic to give me more tips to keep the momentum going.

I think often acupuncturists don’t start with this diet because it takes some self-discipline to get started, you have to eliminate dairy, sugar, and glutinous grains (wheat, primarily) from your diet among other foods. But these are the top three that not only create dampness but also inflammation. I have personally decided for myself, that no food no matter how much I enjoy it and I love cheese for example is worth being overweight over. But that is of course a choice you have to be willing to make. I am losing on average 2kg (4,4lbs) a month by excluding these foods from my diet and NOT substituting them.

I don’t use plant-based milk and I don’t buy gluten-free. This was the mistake I made before, which was sabotaging my weight loss as plant-based milk, cheese, and cream can aggravate inflammation, and gluten-free is still wheat.

Another recommendation is not to eat cold or raw foods, it’s summer here so I haven’t completely eliminated them but drastically reduced them. Instead of raw salads, we make partially cooked salads like potato salad (limit nightshades), tuna salad, beet salad, etc. I also love avocados which I haven’t completely eliminated, but drastically reduced. There are also some other recommendations that you can follow and one of the things I have done is turn on the dehumidifier more often as external humidity can aggravate internal humidity aka dampness.

The internet has loads of information on TCM dampness so you can search and decide for yourself how much of it you want to implement in your own life. But this is the NATURAL WAY to heal estrogen dominance, which is the culprit behind the difficult-to-lose weight underlying Ascension and trauma weight as discussed in this Soul teaching. Implementing the food and other recommendations has no side effects and is a completely safe way to lose weight. If you try it, let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear if it helped you release your Buddha belly.

I pray that this teaching brings you what you need in this moment, to move forward in your own process of both trauma healing and Ascension. Estrogen dominance is one of the most common hormone imbalances in our modern world, that is rooted in everything that we have touched upon today.

As we were shown by my soul, there are many different aspects (layers) to this condition on different levels of existence that can be reversed and healed through a multi-layered approach that addresses the various underlying dynamics as discussed in this teaching.

It is my hope that this teaching will help you and others like you, feeling helpless and frustrated around your ability to lose weight or inability to stop unwanted weight gain – see your experience from a different perspective and receive the tools necessary to fix what has been sabotaging your weight loss journey all along.