The Body as a House: Building a Home for Healing

When I guide people through HETA, I like to begin with The Body as a House exercise.

It asks us to imagine our body as a home — whole, complete, and perfect at its core. In this metaphor, your body is not something broken that must be fixed. It is already whole.

Anything covering up that wholeness — the crumbling foundation, the overflowing trash bags, the blocked doors — is not you. It’s the residue of conditioning, trauma, and not-love. When we name it, honor it, and begin to clear it, we don’t become whole — we simply reveal the wholeness that has always been there.

And that wholeness isn’t just purity or light; it’s the full, embodied spectrum of your being — the grief and the joy, the anger and the tenderness, the stillness and the fire.

It’s tender work.

Recently, I revisited this exercise alongside a client, and as I sat with them, I drew my own house again too — letting the image reflect where I am now, what I’m still holding onto, and where I’m consciously choosing to live. Today, I want to share that drawing with you. Not because it’s perfect — but because it’s true.

My body home, as I drew it, radiates the colors of the Rainbow of Resonance — a central map we use inside HETA to track nervous system states and healing stages. Each color connects to a value I’m actively nurturing:

• Red (Root): Trust

• Orange (Sacral): Mutual Aid

• Yellow (Solar Plexus): Self Expression

• Green (Heart): Compassion

• Blue (Throat): Kind Communication

• Indigo (Third Eye): Ability to Look Outside of Self

• Purple (Crown): Open with a "Yes, and" Mentality

It’s the kind of house I want to live in — internally, relationally, spiritually.But like any real house, it’s never just the sunlit rooms we inhabit.There’s also the trash that accumulates when life gets hard, when energy runs low, when old patterns sneak back in.

I labeled my metaphorical trash bags too:

• Physical Trash: Low-energy and Pain

• Mental Trash: "I can’t." "I don’t want to." "Well, you too!"

• Emotional Trash: Anger and Resentment

• Relational Trash: Seeing each other as enemies, forgetting our interconnectedness

• Spiritual Trash: Feeling disconnected from Nature

Seeing it all laid out this way — the ideals and the debris — is powerful.

Why I Teach Through Exercises Like This

HETA (Harmonized Embodied Transformation Approach) isn’t just about fixing what’s broken. It’s about re-remembering — returning to the innate wholeness already inside you — from the inside out, with love, with curiosity, with an understanding that healing is not a straight line, but a spiral.

When we map our inner world like a house, something clicks open.

• We see how physical symptoms — like chronic pain or fatigue — aren't just "body problems."

• We notice how mental blocks ("I can’t" or "I don’t want to") seep into our emotional states, coloring our connections with anger or withdrawal.

• We recognize how relational struggles (the feeling that others are enemies or obstacles) mirror back our own wounded places.

• We feel how spiritual disconnection — from Earth, from each other, from a deeper sense of belonging — can quietly starve our vitality.

This isn’t "woo." This is the real architecture of our being. And seeing it clearly is the first act of love toward re-remembering.

The Unique Power of HETA

HETA offers:

• A scientific and spiritual framework that honors the nervous system while integrating emotional, relational, and energetic realities.

• Tools that invite compassionate self-responsibility — without blame, shame, or bypassing.

• A universal model grounded in universal human needs (safety, connection, expression, belonging) — yet flexible enough to meet your unique life, your particular house, exactly as it stands.

• An emphasis on embodiment — because real healing isn’t something you think into existence. It’s something you feel, breathe, and become.

Exercises like The Body as a House aren’t just therapeutic metaphors.They’re doorways. They’re the first step into homecoming.

You don’t need someone to fix you. You don’t need another system that shames or diagnoses or overwhelms. You need a guide — someone who knows what it’s like to live in a house that feels half-ruined and still find a way to rebuild with fierce hope and honest tools. You need real, grounded methods that respect both your wounds and your wholeness.

Free 30 minute introductory calls always available. 1:1 HETA Foundations Guideship open. Seeking: HETA Workshop hosts.