About the Author
Born in 1948 in Montreal, Liz Woodburn joined the ranks of the Baby Boom Generation. Her formal education includes university studies in Comparative Religion and the Social Sciences. Liz has pursued a life long informal education through the study of psychology and human behaviour, alternative health care, and various New Age studies. Liz is a regular practitioner of Tai Chi, Chi Gong, meditation and mindfulness.
Over the years, Liz has worn the hats of Nurse, Mother, Genealogist and Martial Artist. She currently holds third degree Black Belts in Karate and Traditional Asian Weaponry. Combining a spirit of adventure with a lifetime of ‘inner exploration’, Liz has now reinvented herself as an author.
Emmie Returns traces the development of Liz’s belief in reincarnation through the celebration and validation of feminine energy and wisdom. As an expression of inner power and authority, Liz has chosen to self-publish both in print and e-Book versions, thereby demonstrating a passage from post war Baby Boomer to modern self-determined Zoomer.
Over the years, Liz has worn the hats of Nurse, Mother, Genealogist and Martial Artist. She currently holds third degree Black Belts in Karate and Traditional Asian Weaponry. Combining a spirit of adventure with a lifetime of ‘inner exploration’, Liz has now reinvented herself as an author.
Emmie Returns traces the development of Liz’s belief in reincarnation through the celebration and validation of feminine energy and wisdom. As an expression of inner power and authority, Liz has chosen to self-publish both in print and e-Book versions, thereby demonstrating a passage from post war Baby Boomer to modern self-determined Zoomer.
Liz's Martial Arts Training - An Excerpt From Emmie Returns
"Curiosity led me to try out the more vigorous practices of Karate and Asian weaponry. I enjoyed observing how the personalities of my fellow classmates were expressed through the physical forms and methods of self-defense. On a personal level, the most prevalent instruction the teacher gave me was “You need to have more faith in yourself!”
I discovered that one of the most beneficial opportunities for mental self-examination lay in learning to defend oneself from physical attack. There were some big men in my classes who took on the role of attackers in simulated fight scenes. Needless to say, this was very intimidating, both mentally and emotionally. (Some of the women could be pretty scary too!)
Over time, as my months of training turned into years, I realized that I could take on the persona of ‘one of those scary women’ too. I found that my own fears of being harmed did not disappear but that, in the face of fear, I was capable of acting competently to defend myself. I was learning to deal with confrontation and to stand up for myself. At the same time my health was improving greatly with a much lower incidence of colds and other microbial infections. This was first-hand experience of a clear correlation between mental, emotional and physical health.
I discovered that one of the most beneficial opportunities for mental self-examination lay in learning to defend oneself from physical attack. There were some big men in my classes who took on the role of attackers in simulated fight scenes. Needless to say, this was very intimidating, both mentally and emotionally. (Some of the women could be pretty scary too!)
Over time, as my months of training turned into years, I realized that I could take on the persona of ‘one of those scary women’ too. I found that my own fears of being harmed did not disappear but that, in the face of fear, I was capable of acting competently to defend myself. I was learning to deal with confrontation and to stand up for myself. At the same time my health was improving greatly with a much lower incidence of colds and other microbial infections. This was first-hand experience of a clear correlation between mental, emotional and physical health.
While it had never been my intention to attain a ‘Black Belt’, I eventually realized that this was a possibility for me. The most striking thing about it was that my beliefs about who and what I was had been turned upside down. Martial Arts had been a great forum to see how beliefs can be formed or completely changed. The attitudes I had grown up with that women are weak and defenseless were blown out of the water! Through personal experience I saw that the mind is fluid and that truth is, indeed relative.
Martial Arts training challenged my childhood pictures of “the knight in shining armour “ as the epitome of strength and heroism. The Samurai, or Japanese knight, was known to have a well-developed intuition. I had always considered that intuition was a female trait associated with the ‘weaker sex’. It was a revelation to me that physical agility and intuitive acumen could be equally valued.
Though male in gender, the Samurai warrior acknowledged a ‘hidden’ feminine strength. I began to attribute strength rather than weakness to my feminine qualities. Of equal merit was the experience that there was a hidden male warrior within my physical female body. Yet, this was something my male instructor could not teach me. A seventeenth century Zen swordsman named Hori Kintayu spoke about this phenomenon:
Martial Arts training challenged my childhood pictures of “the knight in shining armour “ as the epitome of strength and heroism. The Samurai, or Japanese knight, was known to have a well-developed intuition. I had always considered that intuition was a female trait associated with the ‘weaker sex’. It was a revelation to me that physical agility and intuitive acumen could be equally valued.
Though male in gender, the Samurai warrior acknowledged a ‘hidden’ feminine strength. I began to attribute strength rather than weakness to my feminine qualities. Of equal merit was the experience that there was a hidden male warrior within my physical female body. Yet, this was something my male instructor could not teach me. A seventeenth century Zen swordsman named Hori Kintayu spoke about this phenomenon:
“The last thing can never be transmitted from one person to another. It comes from within oneself. All the technical discipline is meant to make swordsmen finally see this. It is also the case with learning generally. There is not much use in mere scholarship. You may read all the books there are on the subject of spiritual training and attainment, but the culmination is to realize the mystery of being, and the realization is from within yourself, for it cannot come from anywhere else. If it does, it is not yours but somebody else’s.”
A major shift in consciousness occurred once I had personal experience that women do not require male protection just because of our gender. My viewpoint altered from identifying with being ‘female’ to being a person who happens to occupy a female body. I also saw my male counterparts as people who happen to occupy male bodies. We were equal in essence, and men could only be dominant over women when there is co-operation in that scenario.
In spite of the fact that a slight ‘Western’ woman was an unlikely candidate to become immersed in ancient Samurai fighting traditions, it somehow felt very natural to me. I had a deep appreciation for Japanese culture that in no way had been part of my upbringing. The physical, emotional and intuitive experiences acquired through my training strengthened a belief that I had indeed lived in other times and locations.
A major shift in consciousness occurred once I had personal experience that women do not require male protection just because of our gender. My viewpoint altered from identifying with being ‘female’ to being a person who happens to occupy a female body. I also saw my male counterparts as people who happen to occupy male bodies. We were equal in essence, and men could only be dominant over women when there is co-operation in that scenario.
In spite of the fact that a slight ‘Western’ woman was an unlikely candidate to become immersed in ancient Samurai fighting traditions, it somehow felt very natural to me. I had a deep appreciation for Japanese culture that in no way had been part of my upbringing. The physical, emotional and intuitive experiences acquired through my training strengthened a belief that I had indeed lived in other times and locations.
Preface to Emmie Returns
The origin of this story dates back to 1897, the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. My grandaunt, Miss Emily Woodburn, had undertaken a voyage from her home in Canada to visit relatives in Limerick, Ireland. While in Ireland, Emmie, as she was known, wrote an extensive series of letters to her family in Canada detailing the daily lives of the wealthy elite social class of Limerick. I inherited these letters from my grandfather who had been Emmie’s youngest brother Ben.
Originally, I had considered that the story contained in the letters, merely offered a glimpse into the life of a distant relative. However, over time, I came to the conclusion that Emmie was more than just an ancestor. Through personal experiences that I deem to be aspects of ‘Feminine Wisdom’, I came to the realization that she was a former incarnation of mine. Over one hundred years after her death, I have retraced Emmie’s footsteps on a parallel journey to Ireland and recognized our many temperamental similarities.
It has taken some work to get my head around being two apparently different people. My ego desperately clings to one single identity as well as the impossibility of existing in two different historical time zones simultaneously. I had to suspend much of my childhood teaching in order to reflect upon the issue of identity and time.
A prominent feature of my early childhood was the frequent and vivid dreams that seemed as though I’d suddenly woken up in another body in a completely different time and location. Usually these dreams had a nightmarish quality where I was in the midst of a frightening and gory scene of death. This could involve bleeding to death on a battlefield, being burnt in a fire, or drowning in icy waters. My senses were heightened as I heard the sounds of cannon fire and bagpipes, smelled the acrid odours of burning flesh, or felt the pain of frigid ocean temperatures.
Like most Western children I was taught to dismiss the content of these dreams as meaningless and worthless. Relating stories of invisible friends, talking to my dead grandmother, or ‘having eerie feelings’ were all met with disapproval and sometimes punishment. Like all children, I wanted love and approval so I learned to block out any experiences that did not jive with my family and community belief systems.
Furthermore, my education focused on the high value of technology and science. Subjects that employed rationality, mathematics, and the gathering of hard scientific evidence were highly encouraged and touted as the route to a successful career and a high-paying job. My emotion-based artistic abilities such as drawing, singing and dance were tolerated but only as hobbies that could never be relied upon to earn a living. This climate resulted in even greater practice at tuning out the ‘female energy experiences’ that bring wisdom and inner conviction.
I wrote Emmie Returns for two primary reasons. The first is to fulfill a promise made at Emmie’s graveside that I would tell her story to the world. Secondly, this book is for the vast majority of ordinary people like me who have been taught that dreams, visions, and other ‘feminine’ ways of knowing are worthless and untrustworthy. I maintain that this stance results in loss of contact with important sources of Inner Wisdom.
An article in The New York Times of August 27, 2010 (“Remembrances of Lives Past” by Lisa Miller) indicates that one quarter of North Americans believe they have lived before. Currently there is a large body of excellent material available to the public on the topic of reincarnation. Many of the books on this subject have a ‘masculine energy focus’ on research, documentation, and logical attempts to prove that past lives have indeed occurred. However, the topic remains highly controversial. This is understandable when the majority of the population is unable to access actual memories that support a belief in reincarnation.
I have received a great deal of value from books about reincarnation that focus on documentation, research and verification of the facts of prior lifetime claims. (Some of these books are listed in Appendix A of Emmie Returns.) I appreciate all the study and effort that has gone into the work of authors like Dr. Ian Stevenson, Jenny Cockell, Carol Bowman, Dr. Brian Weiss, Rabbi Yonasan Gershom, Bruce and Andrea Leininger and so many others. They have all paved the way towards elevating the topic of reincarnation from idle speculation to a topic worthy of careful consideration.
I believe that the time is ripe to look at the subject from a different angle. Emmie Returns approaches reincarnation from the standpoint of ‘Inner Knowing’, a ‘feminine energy’ point of view. Focus on external proofs has been suspended as readers are asked to reconsider their beliefs about the value of knowledge gained through ‘feminine processes’. While the work of external authorities is certainly important, I assert that the modalities leading to individual ‘Inner Knowing’ are equally valid when considering whether or not we have lived before.
Regarding the structure of this book: the chronology of events has been deliberately mixed in order to demonstrate my own experiences in dealing with the issue of Time. The book commences in 2006 when I journeyed to Ireland, following in Emmie’s footsteps. It was there that I realized through a mystical vision supported by numerous synchronicities that Emmie and I are one and the same soul. It was with certainty at Emmie’s grave in Limerick that I made a promise to tell her story to the world, but it has also been difficult to simultaneously hold onto the notion of being two or more individuals.
During the five years following my trip to Ireland, my clarity was often sabotaged by self-doubt, distrust of my inner faculties, and fears of ridicule for asserting the value of knowledge that cannot be proven through traditional scientific means. I grappled with the meaning of my current life experience relative to Emmie’s life decisions in 1897. What became evident is, that in spite of different outer worlds, we were plagued by the same inner conflicts and weaknesses.
Emmie’s personal story existed within the context of her family as well as the confines of Victorian society. In later years her brother, Ben, confirmed that she had indeed been sent to Ireland to find a husband. Through limited surviving correspondence of other Irish relatives, I have been able to extrapolate and include the points of view of the main characters in the story. The politics of gender play an important role in the unfolding of events that occurred in 1897.
Integral to this book are my current investigations into issues of gender, power and how we must return to deal with unfinished business from the past. Through a mystical experience supported by uncanny synchronicities in Ireland, I received knowledge that satisfies me that Emmie and I are two aspects of the same soul. Yet it is entirely another matter to communicate this information to others who in many cases do not adhere to the same belief system.
My approach has therefore been to ask my readers to set aside judgment for the time being as I offer my personal story and thoughts about ‘life and the universe’. Through comparing two lifetimes, my intention is to demonstrate how one individual soul progressed from the strictures of a male-dominated society to become a self-determined woman in the modern world. In no way does that mean I advocate female domination. In fact I see the world today needing to find balance in the expression of both masculine and feminine energies.
My personal experiences of past lives, both male and female, have all come through what I term as ‘female energy modes’ – dreams, deja vu, visions, synchronicities etc. Paradoxically, a large contributor to the eventual production of this book has been my training in the very masculine activity of martial arts. Emmie Returns asserts the value of balancing male and female energies no matter the gender of the body we happen to occupy.
Originally, I had considered that the story contained in the letters, merely offered a glimpse into the life of a distant relative. However, over time, I came to the conclusion that Emmie was more than just an ancestor. Through personal experiences that I deem to be aspects of ‘Feminine Wisdom’, I came to the realization that she was a former incarnation of mine. Over one hundred years after her death, I have retraced Emmie’s footsteps on a parallel journey to Ireland and recognized our many temperamental similarities.
It has taken some work to get my head around being two apparently different people. My ego desperately clings to one single identity as well as the impossibility of existing in two different historical time zones simultaneously. I had to suspend much of my childhood teaching in order to reflect upon the issue of identity and time.
A prominent feature of my early childhood was the frequent and vivid dreams that seemed as though I’d suddenly woken up in another body in a completely different time and location. Usually these dreams had a nightmarish quality where I was in the midst of a frightening and gory scene of death. This could involve bleeding to death on a battlefield, being burnt in a fire, or drowning in icy waters. My senses were heightened as I heard the sounds of cannon fire and bagpipes, smelled the acrid odours of burning flesh, or felt the pain of frigid ocean temperatures.
Like most Western children I was taught to dismiss the content of these dreams as meaningless and worthless. Relating stories of invisible friends, talking to my dead grandmother, or ‘having eerie feelings’ were all met with disapproval and sometimes punishment. Like all children, I wanted love and approval so I learned to block out any experiences that did not jive with my family and community belief systems.
Furthermore, my education focused on the high value of technology and science. Subjects that employed rationality, mathematics, and the gathering of hard scientific evidence were highly encouraged and touted as the route to a successful career and a high-paying job. My emotion-based artistic abilities such as drawing, singing and dance were tolerated but only as hobbies that could never be relied upon to earn a living. This climate resulted in even greater practice at tuning out the ‘female energy experiences’ that bring wisdom and inner conviction.
I wrote Emmie Returns for two primary reasons. The first is to fulfill a promise made at Emmie’s graveside that I would tell her story to the world. Secondly, this book is for the vast majority of ordinary people like me who have been taught that dreams, visions, and other ‘feminine’ ways of knowing are worthless and untrustworthy. I maintain that this stance results in loss of contact with important sources of Inner Wisdom.
An article in The New York Times of August 27, 2010 (“Remembrances of Lives Past” by Lisa Miller) indicates that one quarter of North Americans believe they have lived before. Currently there is a large body of excellent material available to the public on the topic of reincarnation. Many of the books on this subject have a ‘masculine energy focus’ on research, documentation, and logical attempts to prove that past lives have indeed occurred. However, the topic remains highly controversial. This is understandable when the majority of the population is unable to access actual memories that support a belief in reincarnation.
I have received a great deal of value from books about reincarnation that focus on documentation, research and verification of the facts of prior lifetime claims. (Some of these books are listed in Appendix A of Emmie Returns.) I appreciate all the study and effort that has gone into the work of authors like Dr. Ian Stevenson, Jenny Cockell, Carol Bowman, Dr. Brian Weiss, Rabbi Yonasan Gershom, Bruce and Andrea Leininger and so many others. They have all paved the way towards elevating the topic of reincarnation from idle speculation to a topic worthy of careful consideration.
I believe that the time is ripe to look at the subject from a different angle. Emmie Returns approaches reincarnation from the standpoint of ‘Inner Knowing’, a ‘feminine energy’ point of view. Focus on external proofs has been suspended as readers are asked to reconsider their beliefs about the value of knowledge gained through ‘feminine processes’. While the work of external authorities is certainly important, I assert that the modalities leading to individual ‘Inner Knowing’ are equally valid when considering whether or not we have lived before.
Regarding the structure of this book: the chronology of events has been deliberately mixed in order to demonstrate my own experiences in dealing with the issue of Time. The book commences in 2006 when I journeyed to Ireland, following in Emmie’s footsteps. It was there that I realized through a mystical vision supported by numerous synchronicities that Emmie and I are one and the same soul. It was with certainty at Emmie’s grave in Limerick that I made a promise to tell her story to the world, but it has also been difficult to simultaneously hold onto the notion of being two or more individuals.
During the five years following my trip to Ireland, my clarity was often sabotaged by self-doubt, distrust of my inner faculties, and fears of ridicule for asserting the value of knowledge that cannot be proven through traditional scientific means. I grappled with the meaning of my current life experience relative to Emmie’s life decisions in 1897. What became evident is, that in spite of different outer worlds, we were plagued by the same inner conflicts and weaknesses.
Emmie’s personal story existed within the context of her family as well as the confines of Victorian society. In later years her brother, Ben, confirmed that she had indeed been sent to Ireland to find a husband. Through limited surviving correspondence of other Irish relatives, I have been able to extrapolate and include the points of view of the main characters in the story. The politics of gender play an important role in the unfolding of events that occurred in 1897.
Integral to this book are my current investigations into issues of gender, power and how we must return to deal with unfinished business from the past. Through a mystical experience supported by uncanny synchronicities in Ireland, I received knowledge that satisfies me that Emmie and I are two aspects of the same soul. Yet it is entirely another matter to communicate this information to others who in many cases do not adhere to the same belief system.
My approach has therefore been to ask my readers to set aside judgment for the time being as I offer my personal story and thoughts about ‘life and the universe’. Through comparing two lifetimes, my intention is to demonstrate how one individual soul progressed from the strictures of a male-dominated society to become a self-determined woman in the modern world. In no way does that mean I advocate female domination. In fact I see the world today needing to find balance in the expression of both masculine and feminine energies.
My personal experiences of past lives, both male and female, have all come through what I term as ‘female energy modes’ – dreams, deja vu, visions, synchronicities etc. Paradoxically, a large contributor to the eventual production of this book has been my training in the very masculine activity of martial arts. Emmie Returns asserts the value of balancing male and female energies no matter the gender of the body we happen to occupy.
Header: Contemporary photograph of Liz Woodburn: Dave Battler Photography.
Website © Liz Woodburn and Woodlandstream.com. All rights reserved.
Book excerpts © Liz Woodburn. All rights reserved.
Website © Liz Woodburn and Woodlandstream.com. All rights reserved.
Book excerpts © Liz Woodburn. All rights reserved.