S10/19 - Meditation to Move Through Shame

Now that you’ve noticed that shame is underneath SO much of what we deal with daily, you might be wondering… what now? This episode is for you. I take you through a subconscious practice to move the energy of shame, and promote healing… within 15 minutes, you’ll feel much better. 

In this episode:

• How healing work is done through emotion work 
• Sitting with discomfort and listening to the messages there for us 
• I take us through a somatic practice to move through triggers, something you can do for you, over and over again 
• Healing comes through the feeling (and changes you over time)

NEW PODCAST ALERT!! 

Welcome to The Art of Shame-Free Living… please take a second to listen to the trailer, and subscribe to the podcast, wherever you listen! 

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Connect with Crystal:

Intuitive Journaling Prompts HERE and a somatic meditation (Move through frustration in 15 minutes or less) HERE, The Art of Non-Attachment Workshop HERE
Get started on this work with daily practice in a journal, Burn This Book (a great intro to mental and emotional wellness) HERE
Work with Crystal 1:1: www.coachcrystal.ca/miracle or in group: www.coachcrystal.ca/creationroom
Grab your copy of Crystal’s feelings wheel here: www.coachcrystal.ca/wheel
Find your parenting personality (and get tips specific to it) by taking the quiz HERE

Full Transcript

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To experience the full conversation in its authentic form, please listen to the episode directly on your preferred podcast platform.

Introduction & Personal Story

00:00:00] Welcome to the Parenting Coach Podcast with Crystal. Over seven years ago, I felt like I was stuck in this cycle of yelling and reactivity in my parenting that I did not want to be in, but I didn't know how to get out of, I knew how I wanted to parent pretty much exactly, and I'd spent hours reading books, but not finding a way to show up how I wanted to.

That's when I started to turn inwards. My own inward journey was what my family needed. As I changed everything around me, changed my kids' meltdowns, decreased by 90% or more with no medications or therapy. I stopped yelling. Sibling fighting became almost entirely nonexistent, and I found that this change flowed into other areas of my life too.

My intuition increased. I started to run my life in business in a very different way. If this sounds like something you want, Sue, I can help. Join me each week as I share my journey, including the laughter, fun, hard times, and tears. Tune in for support, guidance, and fun conversations. With my favorite experts and really anything else that interests me too.

Purpose of This Episode

Welcome to today's podcast episode. We only have a couple of [00:01:00] episodes left, and I wanted to leave you with something really tangible, really practical, that you could use right now. I hope you come back to this episode over and over and over again and use it, and I hope that you find it so fruitful and so supportive for you.

Understanding Shame and Triggers

If you listened to last week's episode, we talked all about encounters and what this work really is. And what this work is, is recognizing our triggers, recognizing all the different areas in our life in which we feel triggered, recognizing that shame is below the surface in all of that. And as you recognize that, you probably wanna start moving through it.

Awake is the first step. Noticing it. Awareness is the first step, and once you notice it, you're probably recognizing like, wow, it's actually everywhere. It's all over the place. It's underneath a lot, and I feel it a lot, and that's not a problem. The first step is to notice. That there is that there so that we can then move through it.

Why Meditation for Shame?

But you might be asking yourself, well now what? How, what do I do? And I've given you some practical tips before, but I wanted to leave you with a meditation subconscious practice that [00:02:00] helps you to move through this, that you can come back and listen to if you're struggling to kind of move through this on, on your own.

How the Subconscious Affects Our Emotions

There's a couple things I wanna mention about the subconscious mind. First, our goal is to get our subconscious and our conscious mind, both on board in congruence. So oftentimes our conscious mind does already believe the things that we wanna believe about ourselves and the world and our relationships and what we're getting done and not done.

But subconsciously we might believe the exact opposite. And our subconscious mind really tends to rule the show. It's the ones that's going to lend us those trigger moments, those emotional intense, emotionally intense moments more than our conscious mind is. And so this work that I love to do with people and the work that I think is so important is the releasing the triggers.

Practicing Emotional States

And that's going to be in our subconscious mind. So, the phrase that I have heard over and over again is practice an emotional state until it becomes a neural trait. So I want you to focus on how you're feeling more than what you're [00:03:00] thinking. You might think, I don't really know if anything shifted for me.

I'm not thinking any differently in this exact moment. You don't have to be thinking any differently. I want you to notice how you feel before you do this practice and how you feel in the body after you do this practice. Because the more you practice this feeling state, the more the neural changes that you want, the belief patterning changes, the congruence that you're looking for will come naturally.

And over time, you'll notice that you feel more calm and more confident. You will feel less triggered. And because you're less triggered, you'll be able to make decisions that feel more inc, more congruent to you, more aligned with who you really are. Your relationships will change. They will improve. You'll feel more successful.

You will see more success on the outside. Everything around your life and in your life will start to change as you do this work and as you notice it. It's a really beautiful way of living and being. And once you get really good at it, you'll be able to recognize when you're [00:04:00] triggered and know how to move through them.

Growth Through Repeated Practice

You won't be able to just not be triggered, but I do believe that it gets better and better and better as you kind of build this muscle and this strength of being able to move through it. so today we're gonna go through that, but I want to mention a couple things about our subconscious that will help this practice go a little bit better.

Setting Expectations for Meditation

One is to release any expectations that you have on your own self about how this should go. When I first learned about meditation, I thought that meditation meant clearing your mind entirely of thought, which seemed impossible to me. But when I heard that it was letting a thought in and letting it go out and letting another one in and letting it go out, and that I didn't have to be thoughtless, that my thoughts could just come in and go.

I was like, oh, I'm not doing it wrong. And I think that thought of, oh, am I doing this right or maybe I'm doing this wrong? Blocks us from being able to truly deepen our practice in the way that we want to. So I want to invite you that there's no wrong way to do it. that thoughts are welcome, that we can come back into our [00:05:00] mind and then we can just gently redirect it back into our body.

Imagination and Meditation

Is this practice? Is it going to be a practice in our body? and that there's no right or wrong way to do it. The messier you can allow yourself to be, the more incorrectly that you allow yourself to be, the better it will be for you. the other thing I'll mention, if you listen to my interview with my energy worker friend Maren, she talked about imagination and how kids can be really good at this practice because they're really open imaginatively.

I invite you to remember what it was like when you were a little, I. You could believe in things. You could imagine things. You spent a lot of time visualizing things and imagining things, and that's what this work is. so allow yourself to be as imaginative, as creative, as illogical as possible. Because I think our subconscious mind doesn't speak to us in logic, but it speaks to us, in illogic things that don't necessarily make sense, more in images, more in little fleeting thoughts, feelings, stuff like that.[00:06:00]

Alternate Approach for Non-Visual Thinkers

Also not everybody, envisions things in images. So if this is you and you're not able to come up with images in your mind, I invite you to stick with the sensation in your body. you do feel sensations just like you feel hot or cold or hungry or tired, and that feels a certain way in the body. So when I start to describe shapes or images or metaphors, I invite you to instead to go to sensation.

How are you sensely experiencing this emotion in your body and, and shift through that instead. 

Beginning the Meditation

Okay, so we're going to get into the meditation portion now. I call this meditation. It's really just a subconscious shift or a subconscious practice, so you can go ahead and close your eyes, and as you close your eyes, I invite you to settle down into the body and just notice how does your body feel today?

As you bring your awareness to the body, maybe you notice [00:07:00] some things. Just let them be. We're not gonna try to shift them. We're just gonna notice anything we notice about being in our body today.

And as you sit and feel drop into the body, this is where our feelings come to. Our feelings come to our body, our intuition comes to our body. So I invite you to stay with the feeling in your body, and we're going to focus on our breath for a moment. So that's going in through our nose. And exhaling twice as long out through our mouth, and we're just going to continue to do that breath together in through the nose twice as long, out through the mouth.[00:08:00]

I invite you to go at your own pace, breathing in and breathing out slowly imagining that that breath in is coming from deep in the belly. We're holding it for a moment at the top, and then the exhale is coming slowly from the top of our head all the way down our throat and our chest, our diaphragm, and releasing in our stomach.

And as you take your next few breaths, I invite you to imagine a blank canvas, a giant art canvas. Huge, huge, huge. You're the small little person looking up at this blank canvas. You can feel the openness, how you, your soul is open to whatever comes [00:09:00] today to receiving whatever is needed. I invite you to let yourself guide this experience.

You can listen to the words of my voice and follow along, or you can guide your own self through your own experience. I invite you to let a memory fall in today. Maybe a memory just came in as soon as I said that word. Maybe you want to think about something specific that feels a little stuck, something that's been sticking with you.

And as we go to that moment in time, that felt a little sticky, we're gonna allow that memory to drop in. Like we're in that memory again. We're in the moment walking around it like we're watching a movie trailer and just noticing what we notice.

What do you notice about that memory? [00:10:00] Who is there? Where are you? What's happening? I.

And as you do, I invite you to go to the specific moment in time in which you felt that sticky emotion, that trigger or activation pop up.

Pause on the feeling pause in the very specific moment in time. Was it body language? Was there a word? Was there something that happened? We're gonna pause right in the pinpoint of that feeling. We freeze it in time. We walk around and see [00:11:00] again, what do we notice? Was it a facial expression that triggered us even before words were said?

Was it the way the word was said? Was it something we saw?

And we're gonna stay in this moment as we watch that pinpoint of a memory. Frozen in time. We receive the feeling, the energy of that memory inside ourselves. We feel it in our body somewhere, and we go to that feeling. We go to that space where we're feeling it. We're gonna allow the memory to float back up and out, and we're gonna stay with this feeling that's present in our body. [00:12:00] Bringing our awareness down from our mind to our body. Go to where you feel that energy, the most strong head, heart, stomach, legs, wherever it is.

We're gonna focus all of our awareness in that specific place in our body in which this energy feels held.

I invite you to imagine what does this feeling feel like? Feel as if it is. Remember to use your imagination, metaphor, shape, object. It can be anything.

Whatever it morphs or shapes into is right for you today.[00:13:00]

And again, if you are not a visualizer, it can be the sensation of the feeling in your body.

And as it takes shape or form and you notice what it feels like, I invite you just to sit with it. Just be present with it. We're not gonna do anything more for now, but just sit notice, feel, watch, be.[00:14:00]

As you watch that shape or image or feeling. I invite you to ask it. Is there a message there that's trying to come through? Are there words or a thought that comes with it? Again, let's just sit and listen. I.

I invite you again to go back to that image metaphor shape again. Just watching it, being there, sitting with it. Sit even deeper with that feeling [00:15:00] sink even deeper into the body if you can.

See if any other thoughts or messages or words come to mind as you sit with this feeling even deeper, allowing those messages to come in and just receive them. We're not gonna question or doubt or judge just receive.

Going back to that imaginative space again, I invite you to imagine, it doesn't have to make [00:16:00] any sense, but what does that shape or image object being need, what do you imagine it needs in order to feel safe? I. To feel complete. It can be anything. It can be a word, an object, an image, a hug. I invite you to imagine giving yourself your shape, your object, that thing that it needs.

Again, I invite you to see if there's another message there, a word or a thought that come to mind as you [00:17:00] sit there having been given the thing that you need.

We're gonna close this circle. Close this loop with our breath. Breathing in through the nose, exhaling twice as long. Out through the mouth. I invite you to take three deep breaths, and while you are breathing, take your hands and kind of push them into the top of your thighs. Making a little physical reminder, physical connection of this feeling that you feel now,[00:18:00]

maybe giving yourself a shake or a wiggle. This is a good time also to practice beliefs that feel true to you. Like I am safe, I am loved. It is safe for me to be present in my body, safe for me to allow all my emotions, all parts of me are safe with me. I belong. I'm seen, I am heard. I'm deeply loved and valued.

My worth is innate. It is within. There's nothing I can do or not do. That changes it.

Sit with whatever feels like truth in your body right now. Take a few more breaths and then gently open your eyes. [00:19:00] I like to end these practices just by sitting for a moment and just feeling into whatever I feel.

I like to journal on my experience, see what comes up for me, see if there's anything I wanna remember, anything, any insight that I gained that I want to stick with me.

And I'll share a couple of philosophies I have now. One is that feelings or emotions and intuition is in the body. It's in the body work. I also feel like the more we can get out of our mind and more into our body, the more we're able to move through and release these things and to receive the messages that are there for us.

I imagine that it's like a child. If a child came up to me and I said, I need you to feel better after. We talk, I only have two minutes to talk to you. I don't want you to feel too strongly or I [00:20:00] can't handle it. They would feel dismissed. They would feel like we're condescending. They wouldn't feel supported.

But if I allowed them to just be present for as long as they wanted to be present for, if I allowed them to just be there in the extremity, they need to be there in the intensive, immense. Feelings for as long as they need to, that they would feel so much more able to release to really be, and that's what I imagine.

Now, I imagine that I'm the energetic home for all of these little members of my family, and these little members of my family are a little, they're like younger ages of me. Maybe one is stressed, maybe one's fear or worry, maybe one is sadness or anger or rage. And I'm gonna let them come forward and I'm gonna sit and I'm gonna feel with them.

Maybe there's a message that comes through, but maybe I'm also just going to sit and feel. I think that life is two rooms. I think there's two rooms in life. There's this left hand room that we get ourselves in, and the left hand room is shame, fear, guilt, worry, anxiety. And when we're feeling that type of [00:21:00] energy, it doesn't even matter which of those it is.

But when we're feeling that type of energy, we don't have even have to name it. The only solutions that come to the problems we have in that room are control and apathy. I'll make this work. I will figure it out, or apathy, I'm gonna throw out my hands and not do anything about it 'cause I have no control.

Both come from two sides of the same coin, and that is all that comes to us when we're in this left hand side room. Well, we don't realize that there's a door adjoining these two rooms and that we can open that door and get to the right hand side room. And in the right hand side room is trust, energy, trust that things are happening for me and my good.

As they should, and the timing they should. Trusting the infinite possibilities that are out there for answers. All of the intuition, all of the, the ideas that drop in the creative solutions. Creativity is in the right hand side of the room, but we're not meant to only live in the right hand side of the room.

We're meant to go to the left hand room and to get the gift that's there. There's [00:22:00] always teaching. There's always a learning. There's always a purpose. Our subconscious is always creating our reality for our good. So something in there is for us, and as we find the gift, as we move this emotion through our body, as we do the work, the energy shifting, we open up that door and we just naturally end up in the right hand side room.

Not because we're banging on the door, not because we're trying to open the door so badly that we get in there. Because we release ourselves into the gift, into the feeling, into the energy of the left hand side room. We recognize that it's necessary and needful and for us, and the more deeply we allow that, the more we can move to the right hand side room.

Again, I. And then we just cycle back and forth and back and forth, and that is what life is. It's a series of gifts, of shadow and light. It's a series of both we need, we need both. And there's beautiful gifts that I learn when I'm in that left hand side room when that I learn from my triggers that I learn from.

My mistakes from my judgment, from my [00:23:00] defensiveness, from my guilt. that's where learning and growth comes in. We need both. We need contrast, contrast between the left and the right hand side room so that we can feel what it feels like to be in both. And this is the work that I feel like there is to do.

If this is work that you feel called to do, I would encourage you to start, start now. Get out your journal, sit, meditate, be with your feelings, sit with discomfort. I think the message there is that I can feel safe even when I'm feeling discomfort. That's what we want to teach our body, that it is safe to feel discomfort, and I'll be okay and I can handle it.

And the more that I allow myself to sit with those feelings, the more that my body, my entire system, my entire being will believe that. That is what will change me. It will change as I am applying for jobs or looking for a new career or deciding what to do in school or deciding what to, to end a relationship or to start a new one, or, [00:24:00] manifesting more wealth.

the, this is the skill. The skill is sitting with my discomfort, knowing that it's part of the process, sitting with myself, allowing myself to feel. And, if this is work that you would like guidance and support with, this is the work I do on myself every day, on my clients almost every day. And, I'm here for it.

And if you're interested, you can go to coach crystal.ca/miracle and look about how we can work together for a year. only one episode left. I don't even know what it's gonna be yet. You and I'll both be surprised about what topic that episode will bring for us. But thank you for being here in my over 200, maybe over 250 episodes over the last four plus years.

thanks for being on this journey for me, with me, and I hope that this subconscious practice was supportive for you as it was for me and for my clients. And, just remember that, things are happening for a reason. There's purpose in it. And as we. Can understand [00:25:00] whatever learning there is. We can also find gratitude for that.

We can even find gratitude for the negative beliefs I held about myself. I can find gratitude for the uncomfortable feelings that I have in life. and I can, thank them and I can release them. And that's what this work is all about. thank you for being here and if you've enjoyed this episode, I would love for you to share it with a friend.

We'll see you next week.

If you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, I would love for you to help spread the word by getting this message of support and guidance out to as many people as possible. So text it to your best friend or tag me on Instagram and share it. Leave a review, rate it, subscribe it, or follow on your favorite platform.

Send me a DM on IG letting me know which parts have impacted you or what you'd like to see on future episodes. We'll see you next week.