Your heart knows how to heal you

(Global Heart | Cissi Williams) Your heart knows how to heal you. Let the sacred medicine of the four chambers of your heart awaken your inner Wise Woman.

Let the sacred medicine of the four chambers of your heart awaken your inner Wise Woman

Can you sense an untapped potential within you, longing to be expressed?  Yet, however much you try to access it, something seems to be in the way?

Or maybe you are longing for inner peace, but your inner voice keeps talking to you about everything that’s wrong with your life, with others, with the world, with you. The more you listen to this inner dialogue, the more stressed you feel. You just want this critical voice to be quiet, so you can get some peace, but it chatters endlessly.

Or perhaps you feel trapped in a whirlwind of emotions—such as bitterness, blame, overwhelm, anxiety, or inner turmoil—and your mind keeps raging at others for events that took place in the past. You want to feel happy again, but it is as if you can’t find the door that will lead you out of this dark place.

I’ve experienced all of this, and I want you to know that there is a way for you to heal this. My life today is so different from how it used to be. That inner voice that used to torment me from morning till night is quiet. 

I’m no longer poisoned by inner wounds that had become infected and toxic, because I gained and utilized powerful tools to heal and transform those old wounds.

But most of all, I’ve tapped into an incredible source of feminine wisdom, like an ancient healing power more magical than I could have ever imagined.

All of this happened thanks to my heart finally making sure I listened to its whispers, when on a full moon in November, at the age of 51, I had a heart attack. 

From that moment my heart became my teacher, and it led me down a path of deep healing, where I truly began to listen to my heart. 

And as I did, not only did my heart heal – but it also healed me. It transformed me. It ignited the magic in me. It awakened the Wise Woman within my core—and, my goodness, she is fierce! She is like an ancient witch, full of wild magic, ancestral wisdom, and feminine power. She was always there, like an untapped potential, deep within my core and, although I could sense her, I could never fully connect with her. This is because I had tried to reach her with my head, and now I know she can only be reached through the heart.

It was my heart that was the doorway into everything I had previously longed for. 

As I listened to its whispers, it took me on a shamanic journey into the medicine found in its four chambers. A medicine that dances with the sacred darkness and the magical light, being fully in tune with the seasons.

This really amazed me! Who knew that the medicine Mother Earth brings to us each year, is also available within our bodies – for every heartbeat. 

The sacred medicine of the four chambers of the heart

What I discovered (through doing shamanic journeying, combining my skillset as a cranial osteopath and shamanic practitioner) was that the medicine in each chamber follows the seasons.

• In the first heart chamber, the Chamber of Healing, we let go and shed what no longer serves us (autumn).
• The second chamber, Chamber of Transformation, transforms our wounds into wisdom, guided by the Dark Mothers (lunar goddesses), just as nature transforms the old into seeds of new life in winter. 
• The third chamber is the Chamber of Magic, where we receive nourishing, light-filled medicine from the Light Mothers (solar goddesses) to help us manifest our dreams, just as nature receives the sun’s light to ignite the seeds of new life in spring.
• And in the fourth chamber, the Chamber of Rebirth, we move through a rebirth, where we rise from the ashes, stronger than before (summer).

As I embraced the medicine in each chamber, I recognised how my heart was like this wise teacher, who knew my highest potential, and she wanted me to awaken this within me. And she knew I needed the medicine from both the darkness and the light for this to happen.

Your heart wants the same for you, and to help you reach that potential, your heart may send you challenges as spiritual opportunities that invite you to go deeper on your healing journey. While the outside world might see these challenges as “bad,” they may be exactly what is needed for you to become all that you are meant to be.

Stars cannot shine without the darkness of the night

Just as stars cannot shine without the darkness of the night, a diamond cannot be formed without pressure being exerted upon it.

You are meant to develop your inner diamond so that you can share your light and unique gifts with others. And for your inner diamond to form, you may need the pressure of various challenges coming into your life. These can often be experienced as periods of intense darkness.

Unfortunately, no one really teaches us how to move through these dark periods of our lives, so we often end up feeling that we have “failed” or something is “wrong” with us.

The self-help community says, “just change your thoughts,” and the pharmaceutical industry says, “we have a pill for that.” And often our loved ones freak out when they see us low and lacking in enthusiasm.

How do we deal with it ourselves? Usually by trying to avoid the feelings as much as possible, so we escape into our heads by distracting ourselves with work, watching TV, eating, drinking, focusing on everything else, all so that we don’t have to deal with the real underlying issue that needs our attention.

But why do we go through these periods of intense darkness? Is something wrong with us when we experience this? Or is it perhaps a metaphor for how the night is always the darkest just before dawn breaks?

For many of us, this darkness is like an invitation from our soul, urging us to go deeper on our healing journey—so instead of avoiding this darkness, we are being invited to journey into it. 

These invitations tend to show up through different hardships, such as an illness, the loss of a relationship, or the ending of an aspect of our lives.

Initially, we may feel confused and overwhelmed by this challenge, but when we start to view what is happening as an invitation from our soul, then we come to understand that this upheaval is actually a doorway into a sacred, healing journey.

Trust that whatever challenge you’ve experienced in your life, whatever turmoil you’ve been going through, whichever path you’ve been on, has all led you here—to this place of even deeper healing—a healing that will develop your inner diamond even more, so it can shine and glisten like a star in the night.

And as you begin to listen to the whispers from your heart, your heart will become your teacher, taking you on an incredible journey of healing, transformation, magic, and rebirth, awakening your inner wise woman.

But who is this Wise Woman?

The Wise Woman is the ancient feminine wisdom wired into your DNA and maternal mitochondria, inherited through the mother line—your direct link with the Ancient Mother.

She is the one who governs your wellbeing, and she responds to the natural elements of earth, water, air, and fire, and to the cycles of darkness and light.

She knows it’s the darkness of the womb that births the light of new life. She also knows this new life must continue to receive light to grow, so she is always seeking the light and letting it nourish her.

In the old days, those who embodied this ancient feminine wisdom were called Wise Women, wise folks, the wise ones, folk healers, völvas (meaning staff carrier, who were female shamans in the Norse tradition), and cunning folks. Cunning comes from the Swedish word kunnig, which means knowledgeable.

Before Christianity took hold in Europe, these Wise Women were revered for their knowledge as healers, midwives, herbalists, mystics, oracles, and seers. As Christianity gained more power, the attitude changed. Instead of being revered, they became feared. The wise ones became “witches.”

The older meaning for the word witch comes from the word wicche, which means wise one, and also from the word wit, which means wise, and to bind, shape, and alter. 

These Wise Women knew how to bind, shape, and alter reality, by changing the energetic hold of the past, and by weaving and spinning new energy into the future—through healing practices, songs, sacred ceremonies, binding spells, and shamanic journeying into the World of Spirit.

The church saw these Wise Women as a threat to their authority, as the Wise Ones were able to communicate directly with the Divine. To silence them, the Wise Women were made into “evil witches,” and as the witch trials swept through Europe, this ancient feminine wisdom was pushed underground, as it was no longer safe to practice. This forced women to fear their own feminine power and magic.

As this ancient feminine wisdom was pushed underground, women began to forget that it’s only by dancing with the seasons of darkness and light that life can blossom and expand. 

But although women forgot, it is as if Mother Earth has been whispering to us all this time, through the medicine found in her seasons, where the Dark Mothers are present in the autumn and winter, guiding us to let the old go so we can birth something new. And then, in the spring and summer, the Light Mothers take over, igniting the spark of creation, so life can blossom and expand.

It was this that my heart taught me, and as I embraced this sacred medicine of darkness and light, my inner Wise Woman awakened. And as she did, not only did my heart heal, but my life healed too. 

This ancient wisdom in your heart can heal you too, when you begin to listen to its whispers. And you can do this by just placing a hand on your heart, and say to yourself: What my heart wants me to know is . . . 

Then just listen to the whispers from your heart. Trust that your heart knows how to heal you.

If you want to listen to a guided shamanic journey into the sacred medicine found in the four chambers of your heart, then visit cissiwilliams.com/heartjourney

 

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This article is an excerpt of the book Your Heart Knows How to Heal You by Cissi Williams, published by Inner Traditions International and Bear & Company, © 2025. All rights reserved. Innertraditions.com Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

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