Inner child healing is one of the most touching and powerful experiences during a guided OBE. When it occurs during a journey, it’s transformative and healing. While many people associate OBE (Out-of-Body Experience) with astral travel or leaving the physical body, in my work I use it in a broader sense: an expanded state of awareness in which non-physical senses and forgotten memories become accessible, allowing deep inner exploration and healing.
In this blogpost, I share how I apply this expanded OBE state to inner child healing. As always, although the concept of the wounded inner child is supported by many sources, this article reflects my personal opinion based on subjective firsthand experiences. Don't take this as an absolute truth, but as a potential roadmap to restore inner balance when past traumatic experiences still influence the present moment. And from personal experience, I can say that it is worthwhile going inward, in whatever way, and checking in on the state of your inner child.
What inner child healing Is
It is widely accepted that inner child healing is the process of recognizing, acknowledging, and nurturing the wounded or neglected parts of our psyche that formed in childhood. It involves reconnecting with the wounded younger self, validating his or her unmet needs (like validation, safety or love), and reparenting with the compassion and support the child may have missed, helping to release old emotional patterns and live more freely as an adult.
The core idea is that the "wounded inner child" still holds one's early memories, emotional patterns, and unmet needs. When that child experienced trauma, shame, or abandonment, those unprocessed feelings are often stored in the adult subconscious memory, (which includes the physical body) often surfacing as intense overreactions, people-pleasing, low self-worth, or even self-sabotage.
How I address inner child healing during an OBE
In most of my guided OBE journeys where inner child healing becomes a topic, the person does not usually address the fact that there is an inner child wound. Instead, they share a type of behavior they would like to change or understand, often related to intense reactions and patterns as mentioned above.
As we expand the person's awareness into an OBE or expanded state of awareness, we work with the client’s questions and main intention. The desired behavioral change is often just one of their questions, but when we dive into it, it receives the most attention when it involves a wounded inner child. This is because I take inner child healing most seriously and put great focus on doing it with care and respect.
The general process
When I guide someone into an expanded OBE state, the first objective is to meet a spirit guide. Since every journey is unique, we never know exactly where, how, or what will take place during this meeting. Once the connection is established, we continue with the client's questions. The order in which I address them is based on intuition and follows the answer to the first question: "Does your guide have a message for you, or does he/she want to show you something?"
The response to this first question is more often than not related to one or more of the client's questions. From there, I flow through the questions intuitively, and at some point, we arrive at the question related to an inner child wound.
General flow for inner child healing during a session
Every journey is unique, but the underlying structure is pretty consistent. Here is how a typical inner child healing session unfolds during an expanded OBE state:
1. Expanding awareness: relaxation, shifting focus from everyday thinking to a more open and receptive state. Non-physical senses become more accessible.
2. Meeting the guide: the connection with a guide is established. The guide is at times a silent witness, or has an active role. The guide observes, offers safety, and occasionally provides an impulse, but allows the client to discover and heal on their own. The guide is present throughout the whole journey.
3. Exploration: we ask: "What can your guide tell about …” The answer often points to a theme or memory that holds the key to the client's question.
4. Returning to the origin: only when allowed by the guide, we go back to the source of the inner child wound. The client observes their younger self from a safe distance, preventing re-traumatization. The client is the adult looking back, not the child reliving the experience.
5. Reparenting: we ask the child: "What do you need?" We support the child to receive what it needs, giving a new imprint in the system.
6. Somatic work: we locate where the energy of the younger self is still present in the physical body, and transform it together through breathing, light, or by inviting the child to a more pleasant place, such as the heart.
7. Integration: this part of the session needs to be fully integrated afterwards. The client connects with the younger self each day, just before sleeping. This turns the healing into a lasting inner peace.
An example session
Here is an illustration of how this flow works in practice. Notice how the guide serves as a silent witness, and how all healing ultimately comes from the client:
Jeroen: Can you ask your guide to tell you about your fear of not being heard?
Client: Guide says it's related to something in my childhood.
Jeroen: OK, please ask if the guide can show you an image of what happened.
Client: I'm a baby, I am crying.
Jeroen: Ask your guide if it's good to go back and understand what happened.
Client: Yes, I'm back.
Jeroen: OK. You can see yourself from a distance, you don't have to feel it yourself. Just see yourself as a baby. What do you perceive?
Client: I see myself in the living room. I crawl and cry. I look afraid and cry.
Jeroen: Can you ask the baby how she feels?
Client: She says she misses Mama, but Mama is not hearing her. She is desperate because she has been crying so long and so hard. Nobody hears her.
Jeroen: Please ask her what she needs to feel better.
Client: She needs her mom to come.
Jeroen: OK. Can you sense, perceive, or ask your guide where your mother is?
Client: She's at our neighbors' place.
Jeroen: Does the young you know that?
Client: Yes, mother told her. But she has been away so long, she forgot.
Jeroen: Can you tell her that she can also call your mother telepathically? That means she connects energetically with your mother and tells her that she needs her. If this is too hard for her, you can help her.
Client: She knows how to do it. I see that she does it and I sense that mother is coming. Yes, mother is here now and she picks me up, giving me hugs and kisses and telling me she is sorry it took so long. (Client is crying)
[Short pause to give the client the opportunity to feel this moment fully.]
Jeroen: That is beautiful. Can you ask your guide why this experience was important for you to have?
Client: Guide says it's a lesson in separation. I needed to learn to be on my own and to ask for what I want.
Jeroen: Please ask your guide if the lesson is completed.
Client: Yes.
Jeroen: OK. Ask the younger you if she needs anything else from you.
Client: No.
Jeroen: OK, then say goodbye in a way that feels good for you and let her go.
Client: OK.
Jeroen: Now, with your guide, I'd like you to do the following: scan your physical body in the here and now, and see if the energy of the younger you is present somewhere in your body.
Client: Yes, I see her in my throat.
Jeroen: How does she look?
Client: She looks sad and down.
Jeroen: Show or tell her what you just experienced, how she actually could call mother, and that this experience was an important lesson.
Client: Ah, she lights up and looks different now.
Jeroen: That is beautiful. Can you ask her if she wants to stay there in your throat, or if she wants to be somewhere else?
Client: She would like to be in my heart.
Jeroen: OK. If that feels good for you, you can invite her into your heart for as long as is good for both of you. Create a nice space for her where she feels comfortable. Please let me know when it's complete.
Client: Yes, it's done. We are happy. It's a nice place.
Jeroen: Beautiful. Now, please ask your guide to have a look at your throat together with you, and see if the place where the young you was needs to be filled with new or healing energy.
Client: Yes. We are filling it with new energy. I really feel it.
Jeroen: Can you ask your guide if it's complete, or if there are other areas that need care?
Client: No, he says it's complete.
Jeroen: OK, now please connect with the young you in your heart. Ask her if it's OK that you will visit her frequently to play together; does she like that?
Client: Yes, she likes that.
Jeroen: Very good. Then for now, you can say goodbye to her in a way that feels good for you and ask your guide to bring you back where you have met your guide.
The importance of integration
After a session like this, I give the client dedicated homework for a period of at least one month: to connect with their younger self on a daily basis, just before going to sleep. Ideally with something from that period, like a doll or a fluffy animal. This is essential to integrate the whole experience and complete the healing process, rendering the unwanted patterns obsolete.
Without this daily integration, the healing remains superficial. With this repetition, it becomes a new, lasting inner relationship, and the patterns that once held a person back lose their grip.
Lost memory
When we go back to a past experience in this lifetime during an OBE, people often perceive things that are not present in their active memory. Or they miss essential parts of a memory. In my view, the process of healing comes with acknowledging and accepting this. Not to make the story heavier, but because acceptance clears the path to change and healing. The moment a guide adds the reason for why an experience was valuable, the acceptance part comes naturally, mainly because the client really feels the valuable depth of the whole experience.
Whether the memory is an exact and factual representation of a past event or a symbolic representation of an emotional truth is less relevant to the healing process. The subconscious presents the 'key' to restore the emotional charge. I work with the subjective reality of the inner experience.
Karmic past life trauma
It happens that past life trauma influences our current life experience. It shines through, as it were, manifesting as behavior, fears, or physical ailments that are past-life related. In those cases, we use a similar approach with some adaptations. One of these adaptations comes into play when we realize that the past life involves a trapped soul part. Then we assist that trapped soul part to continue its journey after death, completing a cycle that has been affecting the client in the current lifetime.
Why this OBE approach works
What sets this method apart from regular therapy, and even from many other OBE applications, is the following:
No intellectual analysis: we work directly with images, feelings, and body energy, not with explanations. The OBE state bypasses the analytical mind, allowing direct access to the subconscious.
Safe distance: the client observes the child from a place of expanded awareness, rather than becoming the child. This prevents re-traumatization.
The guide as silent witness: the client feels supported and safe, but all healing comes from the client. The guide does not judge, does not direct (unless specifically asked), but is simply there.
The body as compass: we follow where the tension resides and address it there, not just in the story. The expanded state of awareness makes somatic awareness more accessible.
Daily integration: the daily integration supports the shift in mental patterns as well. The wounded child associated thoughts or beliefs are no longer valid. The adaptation to a new mental awareness takes often a bit of time. Therefore, in most cases, healing is not a one-time experience, but a new habit of self-care. The daily connection anchors the transformation in everyday life.
Final thoughts
Inner child healing through guided OBE is not about escaping the body or having spectacular experiences. It is about using expanded awareness as a tool for deep, lasting transformation.
If you recognize yourself in this story, or you are curious about how a guided OBE session could support you, feel free to reach out. I am happy to explore what is possible.