January 2022 we are starting from the beginning. We are starting from one of the most dense and painful themes of consciousness and we are starting from a place of empowered relationship with our body, mind, soul, and emotions. You are not your emotions. You are not your mind. You are not your trauma. But you can foster an intimate relationship with yourself and this human experience that allows you to find balance, inner freedom, unconditional love, grounded stability, anchored truth, and conscious energy movement within the sometimes chaos we call life. This is a journey of turning the pain into beauty and remembering the strength in our vulnerability, of releasing the suffering and finding the hidden gem of inner guidance and wisdom within the mud, and of reclaiming your truth and your sovereignty over how you respond and experience every moment of your life. Because you know what?- Your life is sacred and you are here in this world for a reason. Let’s open this year remembering our reason, our truth, and our wholeness together.

This lunar cycle is dedicated to healing and moving through the theme of shame in our life. It is important to note that healing is not linear nor does it have a timer constantly ticking away the moments until it is done. Healing is not like baking a cake. There are no ingredients for the recipe, a time to wait, and then a feast at the end. Healing is a journey and a process that is vastly unique for each person. Just as there is no one like you, there is no other healing journey like yours. Yes, there are universal tools that help us create an internal environment for healing and yes, connecting in shared experience is a powerful part of this process, but know that there is no right or wrong in your healing journey because it is YOURS to experience. Next week we will explore our intention for healing, but this week we are diving right in!

SHAME and the wound of REJECTION

Let’s backtrack for a moment and define the term “theme of consciousness.” In my book Butterflies and Rainbows we explore themes of consciousness in this way:

“The way we see and react to life all comes back to our root program beliefs. If you try to change your life through action and environment alone, you won’t get very far, because it is our root programs and beliefs that control our perception of life and the actions we choose to take. We are all wearing colored glasses that match our beliefs and theme of consciousness and through those glasses we experience everything around us. Imagine your theme of consciousness as a radio station that your brain and body tunes into and which influences the energetic frequency of your body, beliefs, and how you perceive the world around you. It influences the color of glasses through which you view the world. It is time to take responsibility over the colored glasses that you want to wear and switch that radio station to one that inspires you.”

Butterflies & Rainbows: Reclaim Your Womb and Sovereign Truth by Lilia Gestson

Shame is the densest vibration that our consciousness can experience and when you think of any time you may have felt rejected, humiliated, or shamed you may recall the horrible feeling that it brings within our body and mind. The thoughts of “I am unworthy of love,” “I am unlovable.,” “I am ugly,” “Everyone rejects me,” and sometimes thoughts of rejecting our own self and life come with this theme and vibration. The most important thing to remember is that NONE of this- the thoughts, experiences, energy- is a reflection of you or is you. They are all “experiences” that you are having and just like any other experience we can choose to shift them and have a different experience. You do not need to stay stuck in this theme or stuck in the suffering that comes with it. And that is the healing journey we are on this month. One of remembering the difference between an experience and our core truth of who we are.

Shame is a projection loop. When we are faced with an intense emotion we have a few options of how we can process it. We can fully feel the emotion, process it in a healthy way, and let the uncomfortable wave flow through us and then back out. We can mask our emotions by distracting ourselves with pleasure. Or we can project our emotions onto the people around us (whether consciously or unconsciously) making them then feel as we do. When someone shames us, they are often battling with their own shame and trying to process its energy through projecting. This inevitably will not make them feel better and now we are hurting when we take on their shame as our own. There is always a healthy expression of every theme and processing rejection can be a very healthy process when paired with compassion for ourselves and others. One of the first things we need to process is the realization that not everything people say or do is a reflection of us, our wholeness, or what we deserve. It is in setting the healthy boundary of differentiating what is someone else’s emotion being projected onto us and what we ourselves are navigating within our own mind, actions, and emotions that we begin to build a responsible foundation. It is through this foundation that we learn how to stay anchored in our truth and compassion when experiencing and feeling the theme and emotion of shame. That is the process we will explore together this week with the support of the new moon!

Healing With The New Moon 

The New Moon symbolizes our own Inner Winter as does our bleed/period. The new moon and our bleed (if you are experiencing a regular menstrual cycle) are deeply connected as a time of rest, release, death and rebirth, turning inward, and listening to our own inner wisdom and compass. This week is a beautiful time to tap deeper into our intuition, find clarity in areas of our life that have felt fuzzy, and connect to our inner healer as we remember from the inside out. Self trust does not happen spontaneously. It takes practice as we learn how to trust what we can’t see within us. As we heal shame and our wounds of rejection this month, the New Moon offers us the opportunity to slow down, look deeper into the beliefs that lie beneath the narratives of our mind and actions, separate others words and actions from our innermost and radiant truth, and allow ourselves to have a phoenix moment of death and rebirth.

Learn how to track your menstrual and/or moon cycle with our Free Cyclical Living Bundle Here.

How Will You Know a Truth from a Non-Truth

One of the most challenging and liberating things we can do is take a moment to pause and witness our mind, the narratives running through our thoughts, and the self constructed images and beliefs that we have attached to our identity. You are not your thoughts, but your mind is a beautiful mechanism that helps you live a full and vibrant sensory human experience. You are allowed to pause and witness your mind for the beautiful mechanism that it is because as much as it wants to argue otherwise, what if your mind isn’t your identity? What if it is the powerful computer that helps you process your senses and steer your actions? And what if you had the courage to openly witness your mind and decide for yourself, deep in your body and inner knowing, which narratives are your truths and which narratives you can experience and then consciously let go, just like clouds passing through the sky? Some narratives within our mind we pick up from watching others model them to us in our life and others we take on as defenses after traumatic experiences to keep us “safe.” No matter where you picked up the beliefs and narratives that run like records behind your actions, my dear beautiful soul you have so much wisdom and discernment within you to fully remember your wholeness and sacredness. So let’s explore reclaiming our truths together.

What if the truth is- you are whole, complete, pure, innocent, amazing, and worthy of love and a fulfilling life of inner peace, just as you are right now? Please read that again- You are whole, complete, pure, innocent, amazing, and worthy of love and a fulfilling life of inner peace, just as you are right now. Take a moment to notice how this statement feels in your body and in your mind. It is ok if your mind is saying “No, that feels very uncomfortable and I can not see how that is true.” That is ok. Every part of your experience is important, valid, and welcome in this journey, even and especially the uncomfortable moments. It is from the discomfort that we are able to grow and remember our courage and truth. The answer to how you will know a truth from a non-truth lies within your body. Our mind operates like a computer and like a computer it needs a user to be guiding its processes and programs. It is when we come out of our mind and reconnect to our body, intuition, energy body, and the pure awareness at our core, that we remember how something that is true intuitively feels and differs from a non-truth.

The truth may feel uncomfortable (especially if our mind is not used to hearing it or if it requires our mind to take accountability), but the truth will always feel freeing, liberating, and rooted in love within our body.

On the other hand a non-truth may feel easier to reach for at first (if we are used to running this narrative in our mind), but it will always feel icky, heavy, and disempowering within our body and may hold us back from taking empowered action and responsibility in our life or keep us from feeling love and inner peace within our being.

We could not realize a truth if we never experienced the opposite, a non-truth, and vice versa. It is in this way that we learn truths and non-truths sacredly exist together in this world for a reason and together guide us back to realizing who we are in our truth and remembering how it feels to experience, consciously choose, and embody our own unique inner freedom. Understanding the difference in your body between the two is a powerful place to begin fostering a relationship not of control, but of love, compassion, and respect with your mind and emotions, which leads us into our healing process this week with the New Moon.

Reclaiming Your Truths Process

For this healing process you will need:

• A large coat or blanket
• 2 separate pieces of paper
• A pen
• Anything else that will make your distraction free space feel extra loving, cozy, relaxing, and safe (e.g. candles, essential oils, gentle music, warm tea…)

This process is simple but profound and has 3 parts. Join us in class on Thursday (or rent the recording following the live class) to explore this process with me or explore it on your own.

Part 1: Rediscover Your Non-Truths

Take a moment to look around and reassure yourself that you are safe right now in your environment. I invite you to think back on a difficult moment of life, maybe a moment that felt traumatizing, scary, or hurtful and take a moment to reflect on the beliefs or inner narratives that you took away from the experience and put on like a layer of clothing to hide an inner wound. When I was growing up I had multiple friends turn their backs on me, move away, or reject me and each time I took away the inner narrative that “There must be something wrong with me” or “Friends will always leave me.” These narratives then influenced the actions I took and I shielded myself from getting close to people outside of family.

Take a moment to write down on one of your pieces of paper all of the beliefs that have supported you like bandages over the years. They had a beautiful role in your mind’s effort to protect you but that doesn’t mean they are true and sometimes comfortable non-truths can cause us more pain and suffering than the discomfort of facing them and remembering what is true. Maybe you have not experienced a traumatic moment, but you have taken on the beliefs that those close to you have modeled or told you over the years. Write down anything that comes to mind. Allow yourself to come back to your breath in each moment. You are safe and you are brave. I believe in you and your ability to face your mind with compassion. It is doing its best and now you can lovingly hold it as you remember what your mind can’t always see.

I invite you to read over the narratives and beliefs that you wrote down on your piece of paper and as you breathe explore how these feel reading them back to yourself. Do they feel like the loving liberating truth? Or do they come with a heavy icky feeling within your body? If you wouldn’t tell these things to a 3 year old child, why continue telling them to yourself? Trust your body and the reaction it gives you, even when that trust feels uncomfortable. This is a beautiful moment to practice trusting the inner knowing within us that we can’t see, but we can feel.

Part 2: Reclaim Your Truths

It is time to counter the non-truths with what your intuition has always known is your truth. Take the second piece of paper and begin to write out the counter truth of each non-truth. What do you wish someone had told you when you were first wounded in the past experience? What do you wish had been modeled or repeated to you over the years? Trust yourself as you remember the truths that feel liberating, maybe uncomfortable, but always filled with love and compassion. Sometimes the complete opposite of our narratives are not true. With the non-truth “Everyone lies to me,” it would not be true to say “No one lies to me,” but maybe your truth is that “I can trust people. Not everyone will lie to me.” This is a sacred moment for you to breathe into your heart and listen to the whispers of truth deep within you. The whispers that remind us of our wholeness and the responsibility and autonomy we have in our life.

Take a moment to look down at your list of truths. How does it feel reading them allowed. What reaction do you have in your body? It is ok if they feel new, scary, or uncomfortable, but when you focus on your breathing and give your mind a moment to rest, can you feel anything deeper in your body? You are allowed to give yourself a moment of relief, a moment of love, a moment of infinite potential and possibilities.

Part 3: Let Go

I invite you to take your blanket or jacket and place it over your shoulders. Close your eyes and visualize the weight of all the non-truth narratives like extra layers of clothing and bandages layered onto your body. Take a moment to safely feel the energy of these phrases. Every belief carries an energy that we can feel in our body and, with a deep breath, ask yourself “Am I ready to let these bandages go so that I can fully heal the wound with love and my inner truth?” If the answer is yes, release the coat/blanket from your body and feel the weight of the cloth and the beliefs slip from your shoulders. Feel the spacious openness and lightness of your body.

Read through your truths and give yourself permission to truly feel their liberating freedom. You are the one at the seat of your experience and just like the beautiful goddess you are, you can decide what you keep and what you choose to let go. Stretch, sing, dance, scream… Do whatever you need to feel the openness and spaciousness of letting go of the non-truths that no longer serve you and explore the infinite potential of your truths and wholeness. You have always been whole and these have always been your truths, even if you may have forgotten them from time to time <3 You are truly radiant, amazing, wise, loved, and very important in this beautiful world.

This week’s Healing with the Moon Class

Join me virtually for a 90 minute special healing yoga class designed to support you this week in healing shame with the new moon. We will be exploring yin yoga (a style of deep stretching), classical tantric practices such as breathwork and visualization, and the Reclaim Your Truths process together in this class. Explore this week’s journey in your own life as you remember your truths, foster an intimate relationship with your mind, and become fully present as the wise healer within your own life. This healing space will be filled with an energy of love and safety to support you in your beautiful journey.

Rent the recording of the class HERE

Next Week on the Blog…

We are diving into healing shame with the waxing moon and exploring our intention within healing, yoga as more than a movement or form of exercise, creating a personal daily practice of relationship, and daily practices to support you this month…

Additional Resources and Reading

Butterflies & Rainbows: Reclaim Your Womb and Sovereign Truth by Lilia Gestson

The Inner Work: An Invitation to True Freedom and Lasting Happiness by Mathew Micheletti and Ashley Cottrell

Free Cyclical Living Bundle