Forgiving Your Partner

When you've tried to convince yourself to forgive your partner, but you feel your body resist and unable to let go, you must embody forgiveness in a way that is right for YOU. There cannot be a "blanket prescription" for forgiveness, as each of our bodies process anger, resentment, and betrayal in unique ways. Find out how your body is holding onto anger and allow it to show you - through movement - how you can finally let go.

About betrayal trauma, processing rejection, and abandonment.

Transcript

Hi, This is Orie Krug, Board certified dance movement therapist and trauma and relationship expert. Today, I would love to guide you through a movement based meditation on forgiving your partner. This will be especially helpful for you if you've been holding on to resentment and anger for a while and you've tried to talk yourself into forgiving, But you just don't feel that you've really let go in your body. To begin, I'm going to invite you to allow your body to come into a comfortable position, Whatever that looks and feels like today. And from here, You can close your eyes or lower your gaze and we will take a deep breath in together. Breathing in and breathing out. Let's do that one more time. Breathing in and breathing out. Now I would like to invite you to imagine or visualize or feel into the situation or the feelings that you are still holding onto. And notice as soon as you do that, The first sensation that comes up in your body, Forget the labels, Forget naming it as anger or resentment or fear or whatever it is. We'll put the words aside for now and just feel and identify the sensations. And whatever sensation you feel in this moment related to being unable to fully forgive, Invite movement into that sensation right now. For example, If you felt your heartbeat a little faster, How might your body want to organically move through that? You might find that you want to place your hand over your heart firmly but gently, Perhaps rubbing around in circles or if the sensation you felt was a heated energy and tension running through your arms, How might your body like to organically respond? You might find that you naturally want to use your hands to gently squeeze both of your arms up and down your arms or maybe you have the natural urge to shake your arms. Whatever you choose to do, There is no right or wrong but I would like to remind you not to try to solve whatever the sensation is or push it away or make it lighter or more quiet. Without any expectation of what happens with the sensation, I want you to simply invite movement without an agenda. So how does your body want to move right now to this sensation and any sensations that are coming up as you're moving? Moving through these sensations, Allowing your body to feel them. And as you're doing this, As you continue to move, I want to invite you to also now picture your partner standing across from you, Watching you be with these sensations, These feelings. Really see them seeing you as you continue to move with and be with the sensations that are coming up in your body. And allow whatever wants to happen to happen. Maybe you start directing some movement towards them. That's okay. This is only an imagination and you cannot hurt them through this meditation. As you start to interact with your partner through this movement visualization, Or as you just simply see them seeing you, Try to hold another vision of what they're doing, How they're responding. Don't force it, But just allow whatever image wants to happen. Whatever visualization happens, Let it happen. So you might imagine them coming closer to you. You might imagine them holding you. You might imagine them walking away and that creates some other movement response from you. Or you might simply imagine them standing there and watching you for as long as you'd like. Now tune into if there's anything that your partner or that you are doing right now in this experience that allows you to feel more forgiveness. Is it a certain way that you've expressed yourself and allowed yourself to be seen? Is it a certain way that you imagined that they've responded? And if you haven't imagined your body softening into theirs, Perhaps hugging them or holding them or whatever physical way you imagined you would show forgiveness and really feel it in your body too. If you haven't seen any of those things yet in this experience, What needs to happen in order to do so? Remember that right now. Voiceover And whatever you're doing right now, Whatever visualization you're in, Whatever way you're moving, Start to come out of it. See the image of your partner begin to dissolve and doing whatever you need to do before that happens. Whether it's giving another hug or choosing to walk away and take some space. And then coming into a pose, Perhaps a self-hug or hands on heart. Something that feels natural for you to connect back to yourself with only you in this imaginary room and acknowledging this experience you had with yourself and your body and your partner. And take a deep breath here, Breathing in and breathing out. Only opening your eyes, Looking around your space, Reacquainting and grounding yourself in this physical space in the here and now. And spend a few minutes reflecting on what needed to happen in order to feel more softness in your body, More forgiveness, More of a letting go. And it's okay if you didn't fully get there today. You can come back to this meditation again and again and make a little bit more progress each time. Until next time, You deserve to be able to let healthy, Lasting love in.