By Rupali and Kapil Apshankar
A difficult conversation can take ten minutes and stay with us for the rest of the day. You have experienced this before. We all have.
We answer the email, leave the meeting, finish the argument, or tell ourselves that something is over. Yet hours later, we may still feel it in the body. We replay a sentence. We imagine what we should have said. We carry the irritation home. An old memory surfaces and suddenly the past feels much closer than it should.
We usually describe this as stress, and sometimes it is. But sometimes stress is only part of what is happening. Even after an experience has ended, some part of it may still be active within us.
And when we learn to notice what remains, we can begin to release it. That is where inner peace begins.
When the Moment Is Over, but the Feeling Is Not
We move quickly from one experience into the next. A difficult meeting ends and another call begins. A message arrives while we are eating. Work, news, family concerns, and unfinished conversations keep coming at us, often without giving us much time to notice how they are affecting us.
Even when our mind has moved on to the next thing, our body may not have. The jaw tightens. The shoulders stay raised. Our breathing changes. Irritation from one situation quietly enters another.
Sometimes we do not realize what we are carrying until we react to someone or something that had nothing to do with it.
This is one reason peace cannot depend entirely on what happens around us. If we wait for everyone to understand us, every problem to resolve itself, and life to become comfortable before we allow ourselves to feel peaceful, we may wait a very long time.
Inner peace does not mean ignoring the outer world. Problems still need solutions, boundaries still need to be set, and difficult conversations sometimes need to happen.
But there is another question worth asking:
What has this experience left inside me?
The Past Often Travels Into the Present
Our reactions do not always belong only to the moment in front of us.
Someone speaks in a certain tone and we feel more hurt than the situation seems to explain. A person does not respond to a message and an old fear of being ignored or rejected appears. A financial concern can awaken memories of scarcity or beliefs about money that began much earlier. A disagreement with a partner may touch something that existed long before the relationship did.
The present often shows up with somatic and emotional company.
Old memories, fears, and conclusions we formed years ago can become part of our response without our realizing it. The beliefs and patterns we learned from our families and cultures can influence our reactions too.
This does not make the present situation imaginary or unimportant. It simply means that we may be responding both to what is happening now and to what it has brought back from the past.
Once we begin to notice that distinction, peace becomes less about controlling every circumstance and more about learning how to work with what is happening inside us.
Responsibility Is Not Blame
This is where inner work can be misunderstood.
Looking within does not mean deciding that everything is your fault. It does not excuse harmful behavior, require you to remain in an unhealthy situation, or ask you to avoid a boundary or difficult conversation.
What happened to you and what you are now carrying because of it are not the same thing.
Taking responsibility for what is happening inside you is very different from taking blame for what happened outside you.
Blame says, I caused this. Something is wrong with me.
Responsibility asks, This is affecting me. What can I do with what I am carrying now?
You may not be able to change the past, make another person apologize, or control the outcome. But you do have access to what the experience has left behind: resentment, fear, grief, shame, judgment, an old belief about yourself, or simply the part of you that is still bracing against what happened.
That is not a burden. It is access.
Once we can see what is there, we have a chance to do something different with it.
A Simple Practice of Returning
Ho?oponopono has become an important part of our own lives and our work. Traditional Hawaiian ho?oponopono is associated with reconciliation, forgiveness, and restoring right relationships. The modern self-practice that has become widely known outside Hawai?i takes a more inward form, and this is the form we primarily explore here.
Many people know this modern practice through four familiar phrases:
I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
I love you.
Thank you.
We do not regard the four phrases as magic words, nor as a substitute for action or a way to make someone else change. For us, they provide a way to notice what we are carrying and begin to release it.
I am sorry begins with recognition: something is affecting me, and I am willing to look at it.
Please forgive me is an invitation to release. We do not have to keep carrying the experience in exactly the same way.
I love you brings love and compassion to whatever is hurting within us.
Thank you brings trust — even when we do not yet know how things will work out.
When life stirs us again, we return.
Peace May Be Quieter Than We Expect
We often expect healing to be dramatic, even a big-bang moment: a breakthrough, a sudden release, a clear dividing line between before and after. Occasionally it does. More often, the evidence is much quieter.
A conversation you once replayed for three days stays with you for an hour. A painful memory returns, but your body does not tighten quite as much. You pause before sending the angry message. You think of someone who hurt you and realize you are not as angry anymore.
These changes can be easy to overlook because we are trained to notice what appears, not what disappears.
Sometimes healing is known by what no longer tightens inside us.
Peace does not always manifest as joy. Sometimes it is simply a little more space between what happened and how we respond.
You Do Not Have to Carry Everything Forward
Life will always contain things we cannot immediately resolve: unfinished conversations, apologies that never come, people who do not understand us, choices we cannot undo, and questions that remain unanswered.
Inner peace does not require us to pretend otherwise.
Instead, we can ask:
Do I need to keep carrying this in the same way?
Perhaps there is something you have been carrying today. It does not have to be the biggest wound of your life, and you do not have to work on everything at once.
Choose one real thing: a conversation, a disappointment, a worry, a memory, or simply something that still brings up a reaction in you.
Pause for a moment and notice what happens inside you without immediately trying to solve it.
Place a hand on your heart, if you wish, and take a slow breath.
You may use the four phrases:
I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
I love you.
Thank you.
Or use your own words to acknowledge what you are carrying and your willingness to begin releasing it.
Then take another breath.
You do not have to know exactly what happens next.
Peace is not a state we achieve once and permanently keep. We will still react, revisit old patterns, and carry things longer than we intended. What matters is noticing it and choosing, once again, not to keep carrying it in the same way.
Perhaps that is why peace begins within. We cannot control everything life brings us. We cannot undo everything that has already happened. But we can learn to release what we no longer need to carry.
And each time we do, we make a little more room for peace.
About Peace Begins Here
Peace Begins Here: A Modern Guide to Ho?oponopono by Rupali and Kapil Apshankar explores Ho?oponopono as a practice of forgiveness, emotional release, self-compassion, and working with the things we continue to carry from the past.
Using the four familiar phrases — I am sorry, Please forgive me, I love you, Thank you — the book looks at how the practice can be used with relationships, memories, worries, regrets, recurring emotional patterns, and the residue of everyday life.
The focus is not on controlling other people or changing circumstances through repetition of the phrases. Instead, the book invites readers to notice what they are still carrying and begin to release it. The book combines the spiritual understanding behind the practice with personal stories, reflections, and simple ways to use Ho?oponopono in everyday life.
Learn More
Website: https://blissvana.com/blissvana_books.html
Amazon: https://a.co/d/0f8ox4XW
Instagram: https://instagram.com/blissvana
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@blissvana
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About the Authors
Rupali and Kapil Apshankar are the co-founders of Blissvana, where they teach, write, and create programs focused on personal transformation and emotional well-being. Both are Board Certified hypnotherapists and certified hypnosis instructors.
Rupali is also a Heal Your Life(r) teacher and coach and works with sound healing and music therapy. Kapil is a transformational coach, TEDx speaker, and author.
Together, their work brings together hypnotherapy, coaching, journaling, mindfulness, reflective practices, and the approaches they have personally found meaningful in helping people understand themselves, release limiting patterns, and live with greater peace and happiness.