Counter Shame with Somatic Exercises
Shame is insidious. It’s like a possession that knows how to attach to another feeling or thought and bring you to a halt physically.
You know it as the inner critic. Telling you you are flawed. Unworthy of love and belonging.
Not so in CORE Expressions Group. We take a Radical Aliveness approach to
Group cultivating a non-shaming heart by honoring multiple perspectives and more. All are welcome and all of you are welcome tonight.
Shaming is often used in cultures to socialize children, protect the tribe, and establish hierarchy and power. There is a response to that.
If the shame comes as a threat it can feel like life and death.
Our reactions to a negative shaming experience can include: a break in social engagement, we go into brain fog, our larynx constricts to stop us from saying whatever it was we were saying, and our body becomes immobilized to stop us from doing whatever we were doing. A frozen state is born… and underneath the freeze is often an enormous amount of energy… grief, anger, hurt, vulnerability, and firmly held negative self-beliefs.
Join us doing SoulWork LA to do CORE Expressions group work to uncover the hidden parts of ourselves wrapped in shame. Let’s do some somatic exercises together to counter shame or hopelessness or shut down.
Let’s move into healthy shame and transform that which is bringing us down right now!
Still not sure what shame is or how to recognize it?
Check out these definitions of shame:
“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we
are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” — Brown
“Shame is the breaking of the interpersonal bridge.” — Kaufman
“Shame is being seen in a way you don’t want to be seen—the
unbearable exposure of parts of self one doesn’t like.” — Broucek
“Shame is the sudden interruption of pleasure.” — Tompkins
“Shame is a parasympathetic break on excited states—a fast track
physiological response that can overwhelm higher cortical functions.”
(Drawn from Porges)
“Shame is a combination of an emotion and a freeze state.” — Lyon
“Shame is feeling like an outsider—not belonging.” —
“Shame is feeling defective. ‘There’s something wrong with me.'”— Rubin
“Perfectionism and the inner critic are manifestations of shame.” — Rubin
Check out a Two-Step Approach to Working with a Client’s Inner Critic.
