Les 1
My Body, My Home
We'll begin our journey in the first and last place we will all call home: our bodies. Being in a woman's body brings unique challenges that vary depending on factors such as race, ability, size, and sexuality, but one thing all women have in common is that we've had to field someone else's opinion about how our bodies should look.
Today's talk will focus on the ways we are conditioned to associate having the "right" body with worth, identifying the social factors that impact how we experience our physical bodies. We will use reflection, journaling, and mindfulness to encounter some of the pain we have accumulated through being objectified, marginalized, or otherwise harmed on the level of the body, and dip our toes into the healing waters of self-compassion. Rather than emphasizing the importance of self-love, which many of us may find to be far too aspirational to attain, we'll start where we are by offering ourselves awareness, followed by respect, and finally, compassion as it naturally arises.
Les 2
Trauma & Womanhood
Trauma is a neurological, psychologial, emotional, and social phenomenon that will sadly touch the lives of most women in one way or another. Today's work is about naming the impact trauma can have on our experience of womanhood, unpacking the ways we have been taught to minimize, ignore, or alternatively identify with our pain in problematic ways. We'll discuss the basics of how trauma functions in the body, helping us to shine the light of awareness on processes that may be underlying some of our most problematic behavior patterns. We'll explore ways to teach our bodies how to feel safe, grounded, and empowered using reflective exercises and mindfulness prompts, and how we can share the safety of our regulated nervous systems with others.
Les 3
Love & Connection
Love is a basic need as critical to our survival as oxygen and water, but maintaining healthy connections can be challenging. As women, we are often conditioned to connect love with notions of self-sacrifice, leaving little room for ourselves in our relationships. Today, we'll explore boundaries, which are at the heart of any sustaining and sustainable relationship. We'll discuss the phases of boundary setting that many women experience starting with no boundaries, followed by having walls instead of boundaries, and finally finding a middle path where we can set and hold boundaries with less effort and more love.
Les 4
Motherhood Reimagined
While motherhood is not required to be a whole and fulfilled woman, it's a major life experience that many women will have. Today, we'll discuss the ways society distorts the mother role to maintain inequity for women. We'll highlight the beliefs we can internalize about selflessness that can make it difficult to feel the joy of motherhood. We'll discuss how inequities in emotional labor set many women up for burnout and resentment, and identify strategies for letting go of some of the conditioned narratives that keep us stuck in cycles of overgiving. We'll also dive into how emotions of guilt and shame shape our experience of motherhood and how to nurture ourselves more effectively through the ups and downs of caring for children.
Les 5
Women's Health Across The Lifespan
Sexism is a built-in part of Western medicine. Ever since Hippocrates first coined the idea of the "wandering uterus" to describe most physical concerns for women, it's been an uphill battle for women's maladies to be taken seriously. Today we'll explore issues related to puberty, perinatal concerns, and perimenopause as they impact general functioning and mental health. We'll reflect on how body changes at puberty can contribute to shame in our female bodies, and identify risk factors and warning signs of perinatal mood disorders. We'll also discuss how to effectively advocate for ourselves with our doctors if we are experiencing mood and physical changes that might be associated with perimenopause.
Les 6
Leading With Heart
Leadership as we understand it in the West is built on male-centered ideas of non-emotionality and aggression as evidence of strength. Many women can't even imagine themselves in leadership roles because they feel so disconnected from expectations of an ideal leader. Today we'll explore what it means to lead with heart, to embrace traditional feminine traits of compassion, empathy, and collective well-being as key to healthy leadership. We'll reflect on experiences you've had of being led, seen, and encouraged to be your best self, considering how those experiences may be invitations to your own personal brand of leadership. We'll also discuss self-leadership, a concept that helps us integrate aspects of ourselves that we would otherwise cut off or repress.
Les 7
Divinely Feminine
On our last day, we'll explore paths to experiencing the divine by embodying those aspects of womanhood that we've been taught to reject as liabilities. We'll discuss how mindfulness practice that centers intuition, creativity, and compassion can bring us into communion with the divine femine, helping us form a lasting and nourishing connection with our higher powers. You'll learn practices to enhance your intuition by connecting to the body, how to expand your awareness through creative endeavors, and how to leverage the power of compassion through Buddhist practices of loving kindness.
