Description
What if…
“and i said to my body. Softly. ‘I want to be your friend.’
It took a long breath. and replied ‘
I have been waiting my whole life for this.’”
Nayyirah Waheed
This session is about having a relationship with the body and the possibility of befriending the body.
This is an important topic because shame makes us contract and feel separate and alone in our vulnerable bodies. And if we look at the history of our lives, when we experience harm and don’t have the ability to cope with it, it gets locked down in the body. Our body holds the harm and Shame keeps those experiences locked down in our bodies until we have the capacity to turn toward those experiences and heal them—until we can deal with the shame. When we can deal with shame with self-compassion this allows a loosening….
As a reminder, many of those locked-down shaming experiences occurred when we were children, or they came from our culture….so they are not our fault! But we can still do something to release their grip.
This session asks the questions,
“How can I have a more compassionate relationship with my body and
What would a more compassionate relationship with my body be like?”
We are going to briefly summarize the research on body dissatisfaction, body shame, and self-compassion.
Then, we also will be working with a part of the body that we feel ashamed about, and we’ll learn how to bring compassion to that part of our body, and to ourselves, for the shame we feel and we’ve been carrying around.
For most of us, compassion for our bodies is an aspiration—not a reality, but this session will hopefully give us a good start and begin to narrow the gap.
