Developing Intimacy Through Healing Shame

In the beginning of this practice, progressive relaxation is engaged to tune into our bodies and clean the slate before evoking an emotional experience through memory. A shameful experience is brought to mind and experienced through the body to lessen the experience's grip on us, allowing for more intimate engagement with our partners.

Transcript

Welcome. This guided practice is named intimacy, Opening through life. In this guided practice, The first half will be a talk where I lay out a few concepts related to intimacy. And the second half will be putting those concepts into practice and embodying them through the guided practice. Deep intimacy and relationship is a skill. Learning to be fully intimate with others requires a deep level of acceptance of those individuals which builds a deep level of trust that allows one another to support each other. Typically in relationship, You are two individuals coming together to build a future with each other. In that future, So you can have the deepest level of love and happiness and joy. This requires fully loving one another and all their flaws and strength, Not just what maybe feels good in every moment, The sex, The traits about them that you do like, But for deep intimacy, Deep trust, This requires a deep, Deep level of acceptance of that individual and all the forms they come in. This is true in relationship with a partner. It's true in relationship with friends. I'm sure everyone listening has had friendships end due to a lack of acceptance over some topic, Some aspect of that person's life or your own life that your friend or you don't agree with. This can lead to a falling out. This same concept can be applied with ourselves and learning to practice that deepest acceptance to build that deep level of intimacy and trust with your partner to build that beautiful life together and lay that strong foundation. It can be difficult to practice that deep level of acceptance and openness. Thus, That acceptance can be practiced with yourself first, Deeply accepting yourself and deeply loving yourself. This concept can be broken down into the very simplest of terms of either opening or closing to the moment. Starting with what's unfolding in the moment, If someone's sharing something, If your partner sharing something deeply personal about themselves, Maybe they used to have a heavy drug problem or something similar to something that they're not proud of and typically carries a societal weight of shame upon those that do those activities. So they share about something in their past that they're not proud of that caused a lot of pain to them and to those they care about. They're sharing that with you because they want to test how much you love them and how much you support them and will be there for them. There's a few responses to this. You could either open to the moment, Meaning opening as in not changing anything, Opening as in not reacting. Think about the stereotypical societal response of someone with a deep drug addiction. This could be putting the weight on them of having low self-respect or self-control. Other forms of how them as an individual are flawed. Something could be seen as loving and accepting that part of them. You may still feel that self-critical side of you that doesn't agree with those activities. You can still feel that part of you and still practice deep acceptance and openness through practicing deep acceptance. That can mean not saying much of anything at all. Often when someone wants to vent or share something with someone they care about, They may not be looking for advice or any particular response or help even. All they're looking for is acceptance and to be heard. Again, They want to test the love of the individual they're with. Through that, The love can deepen. The deep acceptance allows the love and trust to deepen. Through opening in those moments, Through deep acceptance, A couple things happen. One, You're challenging the judgmental part of yourself. You're challenging the surface level part of yourself that wants everything to be perfect or in some idealized image, The perfectionist. Through deep acceptance, Those confining traits gain or lose power and trust, Acceptance deepen. With the person who's participating in that moment with you, The person who's sharing those deep parts of themselves, When you practice deep acceptance with them, You are helping them heal and grow as well. Their shame, They felt, Of their past existence becomes less heavy. They may have held a deep sense of fear in sharing some of the most vulnerable parts of themselves with you. Their act of wanting to share that with you, There already is a base level of trust there. Through sharing that, It puts it to the test. And your deep acceptance of them in that moment frees them of that shame and pain they once felt and allows them to complete their cycle of transformation where they've started to make it to the other side of that painful past existence. So what we're going to do shortly is we're going to practice opening to the moment. We're going to practice deep intimacy, Becoming deeply intimate with ourselves through deeply accepting moments of our past that bring us deep shame and pain. So if you're not already, Find a comfortable seat. Me personally in these types of practices, I like to lie down. If you have that luxury available, Lie down on the carpet or yoga mat or your bed and get nice and comfortable. We're going to begin this practice by clearing our slate, Meaning we're going to fully relax ourselves so we may become more open and receptive to what comes up. We're going to get to our baseline so we can excite ourselves with specific emotional memories. Starting with our breath, We're going to practice LSD breathing, Long, Slow, Deep breathing. Breathing through your nose, Nice and long, And a slow, Even exhale. Feel the rise of your abdomen and your chest as you breathe in and allow the settling of your abdomen and chest to pass through your torso, Pulling your shoulders gently, Allowing them to rest heavier towards the ground in your back and your spine to fully relax and all the muscles connected to your spine. Allow your head to sit nice and heavy against the floor, Your eyes to rest comfortably in their sockets, Your tongue to rest gently against the roof of your mouth and the back of your tongue to rest gently in your throat. Allow the muscles in your cheek to relax, Allow the muscles in your neck to relax, And allow your shoulders to be nice and heavy against the floor. Now we're going to dive into our memory bank and we're going to think of a moment where we felt deep shame, Deep shame. Ideally it brought shame and pain to people you love and care about. Maybe your parents felt that shame, Maybe a family member like your brother, Sister, Grandparents. Maybe it was a friend of yours, The closer they are to you or were, The closer they were to you, The better. And I want you to fully relive that moment where the person you loved, Your family member, Friend found out about what you did and feel how much that closed you off, Feel how much pain and shame that brought you. Feel where in your body that closes you off. Picture the look on their face when they saw you after they did that, Picture their tone of voice, The disappointment, Anger. Feel where in your body that hurt you. Do you feel your face scrunch up, Your ears get hot, Your neck tense, Maybe you feel your chest tense, Your heart hurt, Maybe you feel your belly constrict, Maybe all you want to do is say sorry, But your throat tightens and you feel choked up and you can't get the rest, But pray God so that you can hear all of the feelings from the heart affectively, Now go back to the LSD breathing, The long slow deep deep breathing, And all those tense part of yourselves that experience that shame and discomfort practice that deep acceptance. Own it. Own that painful experience. Shame may be useful in the moment. It is not a healthy trait to bring along in our lives. The wisdom that we learned from that experience, The wisdom we learned from hurting those individuals that we care and love about and hurting ourselves, That was the blessing that we were gifted from that painful experience. Deep acceptance allows us to receive that wisdom and to move on. Allow all that tension to dissolve, All that shame to release your body to relax and your breath to deepen. And tell yourself, I love myself. I accept every part of me. Say it as many times as you need to, To believe it, To embody it and feel that. If you find it hard to fully accept those shameful experiences, Those painful experiences, That's okay. What you can practice is relaxing. When something painful happens and our bodies constrict, Our voice constricts, Our breath shallows and it becomes hard to speak and be fully relaxed and open in that moment. We may not have to accept the circumstance, But we can relax our bodies so we can make it at least 1% more pleasurable to be there. Acceptance in our life can be difficult. Fully accepting and loving other people can be extremely difficult. Fully loving and accepting ourselves can be even more difficult. It can be a lifelong process, But what we can do is learn to relax and not make it so hard on ourselves in the meantime. At the end of the day, We all just want to be loved and accepted and when someone shares something deeply personal with us, That's typically all they're looking for. They're not looking for an answer. They're not looking for advice unless they ask for it. They just want to be loved and accepted. The best way to do that is just be honest and relax and open to the moment. Thank you for joining me.