A Sacred Map for Soul Alignment

The Mountain Method ™

Apr 04, 2025

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There comes a point in many healing journeys where words begin to fail us.

Where diagnostic criteria no longer hold the soul’s ache. Where the spiritual bypassing of “everything is energy” starts to feel just as hollow. Where neither traditional psychology nor mystical spirituality is quite enough to hold the fullness of who we are.

This is where The Mountain Method™ was born—from the space between worlds. There is a place that exists between worlds—a liminal space where time folds, ego softens, and truth rises from the bones. This is the space a Shaman walks, eyes open to the seen and unseen, bridging dimensions not to escape the human experience, but to heal it.

This is a first in a series of articles exploring the layers of the personalised approach I use with clients when working holistically. For pure clinical psychology work (e.g. insurer-based work, court work and for those that want to) I stay within a purely evidence-based frame but I always have the mountain in mind.

As a Clinical Psychologist I’ve expanded my training over the years to build bridges between science and spirit. I am a trauma specialist, Jungian Life Coach, Spiritual Emergence Coach® Clinical Hypnotherapist, Yoga & Meditation Teacher, Ayurvedic Practitioner, Energy Healer, and Angelic Reiki and Shamanic practitioner. I’ve spent years traversing both sides of the healing spectrum. One foot in science, the other in spirit. My calling has demanded a way to speak to both.

So I built a bridge.

Metaphor and Map

Mountains are sacred in every tradition. They are thresholds between earth and sky - metaphorical bridges. In Jungian symbolism, the mountain is the journey of individuation—the path of becoming and accessing a high level of consciousness.

In my work, The Mountain Method™ became both metaphor and map with compass points that draw on a number of different theoretical perspectives, some empirical, some not - but each are landmarks on a route back to the blueprint of self.

Why I Called It the Mountain Method™

The name didn’t arrive all at once—it emerged over time, like mist lifting from a sacred peak. But looking back, it was always there. In my own life, the mountain has been more than metaphor. It has been mirror, teacher, and a physical terrain.

When I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, I was 47 (my first mountain! - blame the ADHD hyperactivity and impulsivity). I thought I was going for the adventure, the physical challenge, the triumph of reaching the summit and the best photos ever. But Kilimanjaro wasn’t interested in ego. It was there to strip me down, breath by breath. Altitude made my mind fuzzy. My body failed me in ways I couldn’t control. I vomited. I hallucinated snow foxes, my head felt ten times the size and not through self-importance, it was sheer pain. I peed on my last pair of thermal underwear in minus 22 degrees. I had a stomach upset behind a rock while a whole line of fellow trekkers passed me - I hadn’t seen anyone for days prior to this little gathering.

But more than that—I learned to move “pole pole,” slowly slowly, like the Swahili guides told me. I learned that I didn’t have to conquer the mountain. I had to surrender to it. Presence became the only oxygen.

And when I later walked the Salkantay trek in Peru (two years later - like childbirth, you forget the pain!), sacred mountains watched over me like silent ancestors. I felt their frequency in my bones. I felt held.

This trek was a path that once more, required surrender. Altitude sickness hit again, dizzying and disorienting, and I ended up on horseback only to be bucked off onto a rock, as the poor horse was also tired. I was then given to a local with a horse to assist me in the last part of the climb. I thought I’d be safe—until I wasn’t. The guide who placed me on the horse vanished with the others, taking my backpack, my wet weather gear, and any form of translation with him.

The horse, led by a quiet local man who spoke no English, took me high up the mountain pass… and then stopped. He looked at me gently, gestured that this was as far as he was to go, and turned back. Just like that. I was left—alone at the top of the Salkantay pass, snow falling fast, my body shaking in the cold with no weather gear. As the local wandered off in his sandals in the snow, a testament to how the human body functions with adaptation.

No signal. No guide. No map. Just thin air, freezing rain, and a sense that if I didn’t keep walking, I wouldn’t be walking out at all.

That moment, soaked through with adrenaline and snow, something primal awakened in me. A knowing that no one was coming to rescue me—not because I wasn’t worthy of saving, but because this was a moment only I could walk through. The only way forward was forward. I found my way to the new camp below hours later, wet to the bone, —but more alive than ever, the adrenaline was palpable.

That’s what the mountain teaches. Not just how to climb.
But how to be with yourself when everything external falls away.
How to access that inner guide when all other voices (and guides!) have left.
How to walk when no path is visible and no one is holding your hand.

This, too, lives inside The Mountain Method™—not just as metaphor, but as embodied memory. As a sacred map I built from surviving my own evolution.

Mountains, to me, are living archetypes. They remind us that true ascension is not about escaping the body—it’s about grounding deeply enough to rise safely. They hold wisdom about pacing, presence and perspective. They ask us to climb not for performance, but for remembrance. Mountains summon us not to rise above, but to return—to the parts of ourselves we left scattered in thinner air. They ask us to climb so we might remember how to adapt to the altitude of our soul.

And interestingly, in my Human Design (a self-discovery system that blends ancient wisdom and modern science—drawing from astrology, the I Ching, the Chakra system, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, and quantum physics.), the environment that best supports my soul is, quite literally, the mountains.

It makes sense. The higher perspective. The clarity. The solitude without isolation. The need to pull back and observe, then come back down and teach. It echoes how I’ve always worked and lived—not from the centre of the crowd, but from the ridge where I can see the whole terrain and guide others up their own sacred route.

The Mountain Method™ is all of that.
It’s a return to terrain.
It’s a soul map, a climb, a spiral.
It’s the space where psychology meets spirituality and safety meets transcendence.
It’s not linear. It’s not prescriptive.
It honours the weather. It respects the altitude. It knows sometimes you go down before you go up.

And it reminds you that your soul already knows the way, as it is already there and is looking forward to seeing you.

Meeting at Basecamp

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943, outlines the progression of human motivation as a layered pyramid—from the most basic survival needs to self-actualisation and beyond. While often viewed through a clinical or educational lens, I’ve found Maslow’s framework to be profoundly spiritual when seen through the body and the chakras (energy centres).

Maslow originally described five levels of human need:

Physiological needs – air, water, food, shelter, sleep
Safety needs – physical safety, health, stability
Love and belonging – relationships, family, intimacy
Esteem – self-worth, confidence, achievement
Self-actualisation – personal growth, purpose, fulfilment

Later theorists, including Maslow himself, extended the pyramid to include self-transcendence—a spiritual or transpersonal connection beyond the self (Maslow, 1971). This final stage aligns closely with the crown chakra (top of the head), and with the soul’s longing to participate in something greater than its individual journey.

Self-transcendence wasn’t just about becoming fully oneself; it was about moving beyond the self entirely. He described it as the desire to connect to something greater: a spiritual truth, a universal cause, or divine consciousness itself.

Decades later, psychologist Mark Koltko-Rivera (2006) revisited this part of Maslow’s legacy and called for its reintegration into mainstream psychology. He wrote:

“Self-transcendence involves giving oneself to something beyond the self, such as higher goals, altruism, spiritual experiences, or a cause.”

This higher layer validates what so many of my clients seek—not just stability or success, but meaning. A remembrance of their place in the cosmic web. A way to live not just from identity, but from soul essence.

It’s this expanded vision of human development that underpins The Mountain Method™ Not as a spiritual bypass, but as a return to what Maslow sensed all along: that the peak of healing is not the ego’s triumph, but the soul’s homecoming.

What Maslow understood—especially in his later work—was that unmet needs don’t disappear; they shape everything we believe, feel, and become. When someone’s root needs have been violated through trauma, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to access spiritual expansion safely. In this way, Maslow’s model is not only a theory of motivation—it is a map of energetic integrity. Where is your energy system able to support life force flow—and where is it stuck, collapsed, or leaking?

In The Mountain Method™, I overlay Maslow’s layers with the chakra system, creating a structure that is both psychological and vibrational. This fusion allows us to track where life force has been blocked or drained, and what developmental or spiritual need is still crying out to be met.

The Chakra Climb

The chakra system is an ancient energetic framework, originating from the Sanskrit word cakra, meaning “wheel” or “disk.” It refers to the seven major energy centres (there are more, but we stick to 7 here) that run along the spine—from the base of the body to the crown of the head—each corresponding to specific mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual themes.

Far from being abstract or purely esoteric, the chakras are intimately connected to our lived experience. They represent the subtle anatomy of how we process the world—how we store pain, express power, give and receive love, and even how we connect to something greater than ourselves.

Each chakra is associated with a vibrational frequency, a developmental stage, and a psychological theme. When one becomes blocked, overactive, or undernourished, it can lead to imbalances—physically, emotionally, or energetically. Conversely, when each chakra is in harmony, life force energy—also known as prana or chi—can move freely through the system, leading to a sense of alignment, health, and presence.

Here’s how they flow, from root to crown:

Root (Muladhara): Safety, survival, belonging
Sacral (Svadhisthana): Emotion, pleasure, relationships
Solar Plexus (Manipura): Power, self-worth, boundaries
Heart (Anahata): Love, compassion, grief, forgiveness
Throat (Vishuddha): Expression, truth, integrity
Third Eye (Ajna): Intuition, perception, clarity
Crown (Sahasrara): Spiritual connection, transcendence, unity

I often explain to clients that the chakra system is not a belief system—it’s a perceptual framework. It offers us a language for the unspoken, a structure for energetic mapping, and a profound diagnostic tool that often explains what traditional models miss. Diagnostic, not in the labelling sense but more in the ‘put a pin in a map’ sense to find the ‘You are Here’ point in order to plan the route ahead.

When I consider this system in parallel with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I find a mirrored spiral of development—moving from survival to selfhood, then through love and wisdom, toward transcendence and return. In The Mountain Method™, this fusion becomes like a compass. Not a map of dysfunction like standard diagnostics, but a navigation tool for remembering wholeness. And the key to understanding where someone is on that map is often not in what they say—but in what they emit, especially in the space between words.

Beneath every pattern, every protection, every story, there is a frequency. A vibration. The body, the breath, the words, the field—they all carry a vibrational signature. Shame has one. Grief has another. So does hope. So does joy. Healing, in this way, is not simply cognitive or behavioural—it is vibrational. This doesn’t devalue Cognitive or Behavioural but it brings to the fore the importance of timing and knowing the conditions that we are making our journey in. Cognitive work too early is like hiking in thick fog, you know there is a path but have no hope of getting on to it when you need to. If the weather is dysregulated and conditions are misty moving forward feels unsafe. Change is about shifting the energy you’re operating from. Not to reject lower frequencies, but to meet them, metabolise them, and restore the system to coherence.

Just like tuning a stringed instrument, the work is about coming back into resonance—not perfection, but alignment. We are tuning the instrument and perhaps this is why we talk of attunement in the early years being so important to the formation of our inner template of how we make sense of the self, the world and others from that point. For this reason, in The Mountain Method™, vibrational frequency becomes a route mapping touch point.

What Is Vibrational Frequency?

At its essence, vibrational frequency is the language of the universe. It’s the invisible rhythm that everything—every object, emotion, organ, thought, and soul—emits. Just as a tuning fork hums at a certain pitch, so too does every cell in your body, every feeling you experience, and every space you inhabit.

From a scientific perspective, everything is energy. Quantum physics tells us that even the most solid object is made up of vibrating atoms. What distinguishes one form from another—like a rock from a human, or joy from grief—is the speed and pattern of its vibration. This is its frequency.

In the human experience, vibrational frequency often refers to the emotional and energetic tone we carry and project. Different states of consciousness produce different vibrational signatures - - like radio stations. Love, compassion and gratitude and joy, are considered high-frequency states. Fear, shame, guilt, and resentment carry lower frequencies—not because they’re “bad,” but because they’re denser, heavier, and more contraction is happening in the body.

In the 1990s, psychiatrist and spiritual teacher Dr David R. Hawkins introduced a profound framework that would ripple through the fields of consciousness, healing, and energetic psychology. His book, Power vs. Force (1995), presented what he called the Map of Consciousness—a calibrated scale measuring human emotions and states of being based on their vibrational frequency.

Hawkins’ map proposed that each emotional state—from shame to joy to enlightenment—could be calibrated numerically on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 1000. The higher the number, the higher the consciousness and frequency. The lower the number, the denser and more contracting the emotional state.

According to Hawkins:

Shame vibrates at 20
Fear at 100
Courage—the turning point—at 200
Love at 500
Joy at 540
Peace at 600
Enlightenment between 700–1000

He used a method called applied kinesiology (muscle testing) to calibrate these states, suggesting that truth and higher vibrations strengthened the body, while untruth and lower frequencies weakened it. While the scientific rigour of this method has been debated, the spiritual resonance of his work continues to inspire energy healers, somatic therapists, and consciousness practitioners.

For those of us working in vibrational healing and trauma recovery, Hawkins’ scale offers a non-pathologising language of growth. It invites us to view emotions not as problems to be fixed, but as frequencies to be honoured, felt, and eventually transmuted.

In The Mountain Method™, I use Hawkins’ map not as dogma, but as a diagnostic whisper. It helps me sense where a person’s energy may be vibrating—not just intellectually, but viscerally. It reminds us that healing isn’t about being high-vibe all the time—it’s about knowing the path upward when you’re ready. It gives clients a sense of movement, of calibration, of direction. Not toward perfection, but toward coherence.

Your vibrational frequency can shift from moment to moment. It’s influenced by thoughts, environment, energy hygiene, nutrition, breath, trauma, joy, connection, and intention. It’s why a single act of kindness can lift your whole body—and why holding unexpressed grief can slowly weigh down your system.

In The Mountain Method™, I work with vibrational frequency as a guiding principle. Where energy feels stuck, flat, agitated, or too diffuse, we explore where the leak originates. As you clear trauma, reclaim lost parts and rewrite your soul story, your frequency rises—not by bypassing pain, but by integrating it into a more coherent field.

Vibrational healing isn’t about always being “high vibe.”
It’s about becoming authentically attuned—to the truth of your system, the wisdom of your energy, and the clarity of your soul.

From Vibration to Coherence

So how do we actually shift from one frequency to another, especially when trauma, stress, or life’s harshness pulls us down?

This is where heart coherence becomes a vital bridge.

According to the HeartMath Institute, when we experience elevated emotional states—such as compassion, appreciation, or gratitude—the heart enters a rhythmic pattern called coherence. This isn’t just a metaphorical state. It’s measurable. It shows up in smooth, sinewave-like patterns in Heart Rate Variability (HRV)—a biological indicator of how well we’re emotionally and physiologically regulating.

Heart coherence improves cognitive clarity, boosts resilience, and enhances the electromagnetic field of the body—which extends several feet beyond us. In essence, your heart is broadcasting your frequency. And that frequency can either dysregulate or harmonise the field around you.

But this shift isn’t just energetic—it’s neurological. It happens through one of the most powerful pathways in the body: the vagus nerve.

The vagus nerve—meaning “wandering” nerve in Latin—is the largest and most far-reaching nerve in the body. It flows from the brainstem down through the heart, lungs, diaphragm, and digestive organs. It forms the core of the parasympathetic nervous system, which governs rest, digestion, and repair. It is also the key player in what Dr Stephen Porges calls the Polyvagal Theory—a framework for understanding how our body responds to threat, safety, and connection.

Polyvagal Theory explains that our nervous system shifts between three main states:

Ventral vagal – Safe, grounded, socially connected, open.
Sympathetic – Fight or flight. Energised but dysregulated.
Dorsal vagal – Shut down, numb, disconnected, frozen.

Many trauma survivors live between sympathetic overdrive and dorsal collapse, with a survival-based coping mode called fawning—the over-adaptive, people-pleasing response. In this state, people can’t regulate their emotions, hold presence, or access higher vibrational states—not because they’re spiritually blocked, the door to spirit is always open, but because their nervous system doesn't feel safe enough to find the doorway it feels as thought it is firmly shut.

This is why we begin healing not with mindset shifts through cognitive work but with nervous system repair. When we stimulate the vagus nerve—through breath, gentle sound, movement, or heart-based meditation—we increase vagal tone. And vagal tone is the body’s capacity to return to calm after stress. It’s the flexibility to feel deeply without being overwhelmed. It’s the anchor that allows ascension.

Higher vagal tone means:

Greater Heart Rate Variability (a key marker of physical and emotional health)
More access to heart coherence
Increased capacity for love, intuition, and trust

Lower vagal tone means:

Emotional reactivity or flatness
Shallow breath, poor digestion, sleep issues
Difficulty accessing spiritual states—because the body is still in defence

In The Mountain Method™, I always assess where someone is in their nervous system. Because healing isn’t linear. It spirals, like a climb. It allows you to adjust to the differing altitude levels. This starts at the root: with safety. Only when the nervous system begins to regulate—when the heart rhythm smooths, when breath slows, when the vagus nerve whispers “you’re safe now”—can we begin the energetic ascent.

From this place, frequency rises not by force, but by flow.
The body opens, the field softens, and the soul remembers how to return home.

How Is Heart Coherence Measured?

Heart coherence is measured by looking at the patterns in your heart rate over time, particularly through the metric of Heart Rate Variability (HRV).

It's not just about how variable your heart rate is—it's about how rhythmically variable it is.

HeartMath and other researchers use electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG)–based devices or photoplethysmography (PPG) (like finger or earlobe sensors) to measure the intervals between heartbeats (also known as R-R intervals on an ECG).

When those beat-to-beat changes create a smooth, sine wave–like pattern, this is what HeartMath calls a coherent heart rhythm.

What Does a Coherent Pattern Look Like?

Incoherent HRV (low coherence): Irregular, jagged, or chaotic heart rhythms—often seen during stress, frustration, or fear.
Coherent HRV (high coherence): Smooth, ordered wave patterns—seen during states like compassion, appreciation, or inner stillness.

So while standard HRV measures the amount of variability, heart coherence specifically refers to the quality and order of that variability.

Devices Used to Measure Heart Coherence

HeartMath’s Inner Balance & emWave devices
- Use finger or ear sensors to track HRV in real-time
- Provide coherence scores based on algorithms that assess heart rhythm smoothness
- Offer biofeedback: breathing prompts and visual cues to help increase coherence

Other HRV apps/devices

Elite HRV, Oura Ring, Whoop, Biostrap, Welltory ., can give HRV data, but may not interpret coherence directly the way HeartMath does. However, when used with a smartwatch or similar device it gives a guide that can help you track change.

When you help clients enter heart coherence or you monitor this yourself, you’re not just helping them or yourself feel better—you’re helping:

Stabilise the autonomic nervous system
Increase vagal tone
Prime the brain for insight, connection, and transformation
Shift their vibrational frequency toward resonance and receptivity

In The Mountain Method™, heart coherence becomes a marker of nervous system safety and an invitation to rise—again not by bypassing pain, but by regulating the field in which healing can take root.

Chakras, Endocrine Wisdom & the Metaphysics of Healing

One of the early voices to suggest a relationship between energetic centres and the physical body in the form of glandular function was Swami Sivananda Saraswati (1887–1963). A physician-turned-spiritual master, Sivananda brought together Ayurvedic wisdom, Western anatomy, and yogic philosophy. He spoke of how concentration on specific chakras could influence nearby organs and glands, enhancing vitality and aligning mind and body. His work paved the way for more integrative thinkers like Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama, and Anodea Judith, Louise L Hay and Yvette Rose, psychospiritual and emotional correlations of illness and energetic dysfunction. For example:

In this view, physical symptoms are not merely biological malfunctions, but energetic messages—invitations to explore what is unresolved, denied, or disowned in the psyche. Illness becomes not a punishment or flaw, but a metaphysical mirror, reflecting where the system is misaligned with truth, self-expression, or inner safety.

Similarly Author of You Can Heal Your Life (1984), Louise Hay has suggested that every physical symptom carries an emotional root. Her work is intuitive and empowering. She believed that affirmations could help reprogramme the energetic imprints behind illness—offering not just a diagnosis, but a path toward inner healing. For example:

Throat issues = Repressed self-expression, fear of speaking truth
Low back pain = Financial stress or lack of support
Diabetes = A resistance to joy, sweetness of life denied

She created affirmation-based antidotes for each condition, aiming to restore vibrational balance and belief in the body’s ability to heal.

In her encyclopedic work Metaphysical Anatomy (2015), Yvette Rose deepened the emotional-energetic diagnostic model by weaving in developmental trauma, epigenetics, and ancestral imprints. Where Hay's work was personal and affirmational, Rose’s is intergenerational and psychospiritual, rooted in trauma-informed language. For example:

Adrenal fatigue = A body that never learned to feel safe
Autoimmune conditions = A war with the self, often rooted in early betrayal
Endometriosis = Unmet emotional needs, self-sacrifice, and suppressed rage

In my own integrative approach, I’ve found that the insights of these authors can serve as entry points—ways to begin a dialogue with the body. I’ve created a brief guiding table for structuring conversations (there is much more to say, but this begins the narrative):

I then use tools like talk therapy, somatic inquiry, chakra mapping, and energy healing to support clients in unpacking the deeper truth beneath the symptom. The body isn’t betraying us—it’s communicating, often in the only language it can.

The Nervous System is Shouting

Before we ask someone to explore their beliefs, their emotions, unconscious patterns, past lives (if it resonates for them), or their purpose, we must ask:

Does their body feel safe enough to begin?

Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, offers a powerful lens for understanding how the autonomic nervous system shapes our moment-to-moment experience of safety, connection, and threat (Porges, 2011). It suggests that our nervous system doesn't just react to danger—it constantly scans for cues of safety or danger in our environment through a process called neuroception.

This theory helps us understand why someone may dissociate during meditation, cry after yoga, or panic when silence falls. These are signals that the nervous system hasn’t yet returned to its baseline of trust.

Polyvagal Theory proposes three main states:

Ventral vagal – a state of calm, presence, and connection
Sympathetic activation – a state of fight or flight
Dorsal vagal shutdown – a state of freeze, numbness, or disconnection

In my work, I witness these states as energetic signatures. The Root Chakra often reflects dorsal shutdown, the Solar Plexus reveals sympathetic drive, and the Heart opens only when ventral safety is felt. By tracking the nervous system alongside the energy body, we ensure that spiritual or emotional exploration is not just enlightening—but safe, embodied, and sustainable.

The Energy Bodies

Maslow’s hierarchy, starts in the physical, moves through the emotional and mental, and ultimately culminates in the spiritual and transpersonal realms with self-actualisation and self-transcendence.

To understand healing in this way is to work with the human being as more than just a body or a mind—but as a system of layered energy bodies, each with its own rhythm, language, and needs. In yogic and esoteric frameworks, these layers are often referred to as the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies.

In my own work, I’ve come to see them as distinct yet deeply interwoven. Trauma, illness, and disconnection often show up as misalignments or energy “leaks” or “blockages” across these layers. Healing isn’t about addressing just one—it’s about working across the full energetic system, helping each body return to its natural frequency and restore communication between them. Every model I draw on —Maslow’s hierarchy, the chakra system, Polyvagal Theory, vibrational medicine (there are more than this that I will explore in other articles in this series)—is ultimately a way to read and respond to the energy body as a whole.

Each of the energy bodies—the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual—forms a layer of your energetic anatomy, radiating outward like concentric fields from the centre of the physical self. While different traditions describe these layers in various ways, many energy healing systems agree on approximate distances:

The physical body is the densest and most tangible.
The emotional body often extends about 1–3 inches beyond the skin, pulsing with feeling and vibrational response to relational and environmental stimuli.
The mental body, where thoughts, beliefs, and inner narratives live, expands around 3–8 inches from the body.
The spiritual body, or causal field, can extend up to several feet, connecting us to transpersonal awareness, archetypal wisdom, and soul memory.

When these bodies are in alignment, energy flows cleanly between them—insight integrates into emotion, emotion grounds into the body, and the whole system hums with coherence. But when trauma, grief, or energetic overwhelm disrupt that alignment, one or more of these bodies may pull away, distort, or contract. This is often felt as disconnection, dysregulation, numbness, or a sense of not being fully “in” your body.

Tracking Energy Leaks & Blockages

The most vital questions I ask in every assessment is this:

“Where are you losing energy?”

“Where does your energy feel stuck?”

Leaks and blockages show up in many ways, for example:

People-pleasing and emotional over-functioning (Heart/Solar Plexus)
Shame and self-censorship (Throat)
Spiritual disconnection or overload (Crown/Third Eye)
Dissociation or numbing (Root/Sacral)
Hypervigilant perfectionism (Solar Plexus)

Using this model, I map where energy is draining or stuck across physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies—and which chakra or developmental need is trying to be heard.

Our Journey So Far

We’ve traced a path through frameworks that may appear distinct—but when brought into resonance, reveal themselves as different languages for the same sacred architecture. Maslow’s hierarchy, often reduced to a psychological pyramid, is in truth a vibrational ascent through the energy bodies. It begins in the physical field—safety, food, shelter, touch—and rises through the emotional, mental, and ultimately spiritual dimensions of self.

The chakras echo this spiral, offering us an energetic anatomy for growth. Polyvagal theory maps the nervous system’s ability to move us from protection into connection, while heart coherence and vagal tone reveal how emotional frequency becomes embodied regulation. Together, these systems give us a multidimensional map for healing—not just physically or cognitively, but energetically, across every layer of being.

After grounding in the body and tracing the pathways of energy through vibration, breath, and coherence, we now turn toward the landscape of the mind and meaning—where thoughts, beliefs, parts of self, and unconscious patterns quietly shape our everyday experience. This is the realm where therapy becomes translation—giving voice to the silent scripts we’ve lived by, the roles we’ve internalised, and the deep inner knowing that longs to lead. In this next phase of The Mountain Method™, we look to a constellation of mind-based approaches to guide us further (More will be explained about these model in following articles)—Internal Family Systems (IFS), Transactional Analysis (TA), Jungian shadow work, dream work and archetypes, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), and The Good Lives Model (GLM)—each offering a unique way to understand, befriend, and transform the internal architecture of the self.

This is not a new section of the journey, but a deeper spiral inward—where energy leaves breadcrumbs to enable us to find our way back to the soul. When we start to work with the upper levels of Maslow’s hierarchy and the higher chakras we are bridging psychological healing with soul development taking us closer to a sense of ‘alignment’, which is a term I prefer to ‘enlightenment’.

While many spiritual paths speak of enlightenment as the ultimate goal, I find myself more drawn to the language of alignment. Enlightenment, can sometimes carry a subtle weight of hierarchy—implying that we must transcend, outperform, or perfect their humanness to reach a superior spiritual state. It can unconsciously invite comparison, or feed the very spiritual ego it’s meant to dissolve.

But alignment is different. Alignment is about coming home—not rising above, but going within. It is about integration not elevation. It asks, Where am I out of step with my truth? What wants to move through me now? Alignment honours that no two souls are the same, and so no one’s path can be measured by another’s. There is no competition, only calibration. We don’t ascend to become someone else. We align to return to our true selves. The mask is dropped.

Perhaps this is one of the deeper messages the universe is offering us now, as we see a rising wave of neurodivergence being recognised. Maybe it is a call to evolve. A reminder that there is no singular way of healing, thinking, feeling, being—or awakening.

Where enlightenment can separate us through comparison, alignment invites us into connection. It asks us to honour the diversity of human experience by becoming fully aware of our own uniqueness and connecting with this. It says: you don’t need to ascend to be worthy. You need only to align with who you truly are. That’s where the soul speaks clearly. That’s where the collective heals.

When this alignment begins to settle across the energy bodies—when the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual systems are no longer in conflict—something ancient and powerful begins to stir: the awakening of Kundalini. This isn't something we force, but a sacred consequence of coherence. The inner fire rises not as a peak experience, but as the body’s way of saying, I am ready now to show the world who I am and to carry more light.

To carry more light through the rising of Kundalini is not about bypassing the shadow or escaping the body—it is about becoming energetically refined enough to be fully present in this life, in this body, with this soul. But that light can only flow through a vessel that has been softened, not perfected. One that has turned inward with courage, and met what Jung would call the shadow—the parts of us we exile and then see mirrored in the world around us.

Jung taught that what we disown internally, we inevitably project outward—creating a reality that reflects not truth, but fragmentation. If we are filled with unexamined rage, we find the world hostile. If we are numb to our own needs, we feel perpetually abandoned. In this way, inner misalignment becomes external distortion. The world we see is not the world as it is—but the world as we are.

True alignment, then, is not only about nervous system regulation or chakra balancing—it is also about integrating our inner contradictions, so that our projections dissolve and we meet the world with clarity rather than illusion. Only when we are internally coherent can we resonate in harmony with others and with life itself. Kundalini rises when we are energetically authentic.

The Mountain Method™ provides containment and structure so that spiritual expansion doesn’t become psychologically overwhelming. It’s a lighthouse for those healing and awakening—and an anchor for those burning out and shutting down.

Why We Need a Map

We live in a world with no instruction manual for the soul.

The Mountain Method™ was created to be that guide.
To help you locate yourself when you’re lost.
To bring your energy back when it’s been scattered.
To offer structure for your healing and spiritual growth—without spiritual bypassing.
To remind you that recovery and growth is not linear—but you are still ascending.

When you know where you are on the mountain,
you stop climbing blindly…
and begin rising with purpose.

Look out for the second article in this series, about the next phase of the framework.

Subscribe to gain access to: A brief chakra assessment tool with guided exercises.

To start to decondition your ego find your inner child and clear unnecessary interference in your energy field, why not work with the self-print journal below: Click on the image for more information

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If you are interested in developing your intuition and psychic awareness, consider my online psychic day retreat that was named in the Independent as one of the best for 2025. Click the image below to find out more.