Heat starts to permeate your body. An uncomfortable flush overtakes your face. Does everyone see the rosy cheeks?
Your shoulders hunch. You avert your gaze. Where’s the nearest exit? Everything in your system clamors to run and hide.
Do you recognize the sensation?
Shame. Humiliation. Embarrassment. Disgrace. Disapproval. Unworthiness.
Whatever you call it, it’s rampant.
Sometimes we conceal it well. Sometimes it’s obvious. Sometimes we don’t even recognize it’s there.
How often could shame be driving…
- the thoughts you have?
- the actions you take?
- the friends you make?
- the love you accept?
- the abuse you tolerate?
- the identity you claim?
- the body you judge?
- the goals you set?
- the options you perceive?
- the lies you believe?
- the mistakes you replay?
- the very self you defame?
After a decade working intimately with fellow humans, exploring their deepest fears, worries, and secrets, I recognize the debilitating, destructive, excruciating, shackling effects of shame.
To continue helping many pave the way out of shame and into freedom, I’ve created a brand-new virtual space dedicated to unshaming shame.
Because even talking about it starts to release its stranglehold on us.
We start to realize we’re not alone. We start to feel more connected to ourselves, our experience, and others. We start to see new possibilities. We start to reclaim our freedom.
Join us this coming Sunday for a compassionate exploration of shame from a mindbody perspective. Together we’ll begin to honor ourselves and shed the shaming tactics that no longer serve us.
Naming Shame
An Embodied Sharing Circle
with Stacy Claxton
Sunday, February 26, 2023
2:00 to 3:30 pm CST
(convert to your time zone here)
Why “Naming”?
So often shame goes unnamed. Untouched, unexplored, suppressed, hidden. When we see and name something, we call it out from this cave and create a new understanding, a new relationship, the possibility of intimacy. It’s time to understand and relate to shame in a way that brings it into the light.
Why “Embodied”?
The body is the vehicle of our experience. And shame creates a certain signature pattern in the body. When we start to spot it—shame’s characteristic footprint—we can begin to untether our whole mindbody complex from the tangles of shame. Embodiment is feeling empowered in our bodies and creates the possibility of a new experience.
Why “Sharing”?
While I’ll offer an introductory lesson on relating to shame in an embodied way, that’s only a small portion of our time together. I want to hear from you. And so does your community. This virtual space welcomes your questions, observations, insights, challenges, and celebrations. What are you learning about shame? How does your body express it? Where are you loosening its grip? What steps are you taking now to embody your more unapologetic self? Who is supporting you? This is our co-created experience, so let’s share and grow together.
Why “Circle”?
The circle is a wonderful shape. So simple yet richly symbolic, the circle represents totality, wholeness, perfection, infinity, unity, and more. Shame deludes us into believing that we are the opposite. Incomplete, broken, fragmented. Wrong, bad. Too much, not enough. It’s time to remember together, in the powerful connected circle we create when we share space in person or online, that we are already whole.
Shame also causes us to distance ourselves. To hide. To isolate. We may feel outside the circle—the circle of family, community, even humanity at large. I’m here to remind you that whatever you’ve been through, however strong or insidious or debilitating your shame, you are welcome here. However disgraceful or dishonorable you feel, there is grace and honor here.
Welcome back. This is your community. This is your circle. Join us this Sunday for a life-giving exploration of our human experience.
Come one, come all. Come with friends, come with family, come alone.
Come whoever and wherever you are. Come if you’re feeling blissful, come if you’re feeling blue.
Come with a specific issue or simply to listen. Come to be seen, with your face on the screen. Come anonymous, your camera off.
Come if you’re a heart-centered healer or embodied leader. Come if you’re a parent or teacher. Come because you care about the humans you serve.
Come for free or choose to invest.
Come because you need this and we need you. Yes, you. Your full expression matters and your freedom is worth it. See you Sunday.
Stacy Claxton is a transformational coach and somatic integration practitioner who helps stuck, burdened people find freedom and flow. She specializes in healing trauma in a safe, somatic way, using body-centered tools to rewire the nervous system for lasting change.