I don’t believe there’s a human alive who hasn’t experienced shame in some form.
Personally, I have carried a lot of shame around things I did as a teenager. Recently, I returned home to live with my 95-year-old father after being away for 36 years. I’m back in the old hometown.
While I was away, I worked a lot toward healing shame, and I’ve allowed the true me – the healed me – to emerge and live a joyful, fulfilling, authentic, powerful life.
—
But back in the old hometown, many scenes trigger the old shame. That feeling that if I dare show up as strong and powerful, someone will remind me of who I once was and knock me back down. Yes, after all this time, this still comes up and I can feel the shame in my body.
Shame is more than an emotion – it’s a visceral experience. It feels icky inside.
By its nature, it wants to hide. In hiding, it buries itself deep inside the body, and it stays there until we actively bring witnessing to it with love, compassion and acceptance, and allow it to heal.
The visceral experience and the trapping of the energy in the body is connected but distinct from what the ego does with shame. The ego takes cultural expectations, fears, emotional hurts and stories about the situation and piles on even more reason to bury the icky visceral shame and never see it again. Both the visceral shame and ego shame need to be healed.
Left hidden inside, shame can operate covertly to protect you from ever having to experience these feelings again. This can show up as
- keeping you from taking risks,
- keeping you from showing up as your best most powerful self,
- keeping you from losing weight and having the healthy body you want,
- and so much more…
In her interview in the While We Were Silent project, Joan Brooks shared that not all shame we carry even belongs to us. Sometimes we carry shame from other people, and the only way of healing shame is to give it back to them. We can only heal what is ours to heal.
In today’s Prayer & Healing Circle, we will bring love and compassion to the physical body with a special witnessing for releasing and healing shame. If it’s not our shame, we will return it to its rightful owner, and bring healing to the wounds and wholeness to our hearts.
You’re invited to listen in to this morning’s Community for Conscious Living Prayer & Healing Circle.
You are welcome to bring your prayers for personal struggles, challenges of and with those you care about, for peace, for fulfillment, and for the health and sustainability of our planet. Please invite your friends to join us, too.
If you join us live, there will be time for Q&A and individual support at the end of the call.
Sunday, May 6th:
Community for Conscious Living
Prayer & Healing Circle
Healing Shame: The Hidden Saboteur
You can listen in here:
You are invited to join us and bring your prayers for personal struggles, challenges of and with those you care about, for peace, for fulfillment, and for the health and sustainability of our planet. Please invite your friends to join us, too.
If you join us live, there will be time for Q&A and individual support at the end of the call. Q&A not including in the recording unless requested by participant.
Join us LIVE for the
Community for Conscious Living Prayer & Healing Circle.
Sundays at 7am US Pacific time / 10am US Eastern time.
Continue the conversation in the
Community for Conscious Living facebook group.
The Community for Conscious Living is dedicated to
Personal Transformation for Universal Harmony –
Healing the planet by making inspired changes in ourselves and our daily lives to create a sustainable environment and a peaceful world.
Photo credits: Adobe Stock Photo © Silvy K. #48284715
