Do you suffer from pesky, unexplained symptoms?  Is there a recurrent theme in your life that prevents you from moving forward or shining brightly? 

Dive deeper into the underlying message to find clarity, wisdom, and healing from within. I invite you to expand your beliefs around conventional understandings of your physical body and open your imagination to explore body part metaphors.

Health and wellness and disease and illness are such beautifully interwoven concepts that impact all layers of our being.  As I’ve said previously, in my own personal experiences and through my studies, I firmly believe that physical dysfunction is the manifestation of emotional, mental, and/or spiritual stagnation, and the product of Feminine Shame.

Frequently Asked Questions About Feminine Shame

What is Feminine Shame?

What is Feminine Shame:
Shame is an often misunderstood state that we do our best to avoid – and about which we rarely speak! However, it is a natural, necessary response that arises when we perceive our sense of safety, belonging, contentment, and/or joy to be in jeopardy. It motivates us to make change so that we may repair our sense of safety, belonging, contentment, and/or joy.
 
Feminine Shame, a phenomenon and concept created by InnerSpark, is when we perceive ourselves, in our innate, natural state, to be the barrier towards our sense of safety, belonging, contentment, and/or joy simply because of our existence and presence. It is an intense and deeply held resistance, aversion, resentment, and fear towards anything that is soft, transient, cyclical, fluid, passive, nurturing, intuitive, an/or emotional in nature.
 
It is a shame towards that which is natural in a world attempting to get us on board with what’s “normal.”
 
This learned disconnection leads us into a perpetual state of “not enough.” We feel wrong, bad, unworthy, fundamentally flawed just for existing. As a species, we’ve lost our taproot and have learned that it’s better to ignore the innate naturalness of our being, unless we wish to open ourselves to scrutiny, judgement, and more shame. What we’ve learned and emulated across many generations now, largely due to Puritanical programming, isn’t “natural,” although we’ve come to certainly view it as “normal.”
 
Living with Feminine Shame is a constant fight between natural and normal and an internalization that there’s something wrong with us. We are disconnected from our InnerSpark and continually seek cues and validation externally. This compartmentalized way of life makes everything harder and wreaks havoc on us physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually and contributes to dis-ease on a massive scale.

Why Does Feminine Shame Exist?

Why Does Feminine Shame Exist:
The root cause of feminine shame is in the programs that have taught us to shun our naturalness and to view it as wrong, bad, sinful. Since so much of our world in its natural state is meant to encompass these qualities (our physical bodies, the cycles of the Earth, the stages of life, growth, and aging, and more), it’s an unfortunate truth that we’ll all experience this feminine shame at some point our lives to varying degrees.
 
Always striving to fit into a rigid, external measure of “normal,” willing ourselves to continue the quest when what would truly bring us back to wholeness is embracing our natural state and our Spirally essence.

Who Does Feminine Shame Impact?

Who Does Feminine Shame Impact:
Feminine Shame impacts everyone – regardless of gender or physical anatomy. It’s an abstract, permeating concept that mostly refers to shame towards that which is natural and has virtually nothing to do with gender or anatomy.
 
It is when we believe our very natural existence and presence, especially those aspects that are fluid and natural, are the source of our sense of safety, belonging, contentment, and/or joy being in jeopardy.
 
While womxn do tend to experience it more directly, as a species, we’ve undoubtedly come to a place where the essence of “feminine,” or the Spiral Principle is not held with high regard. We are all impacted, as is our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health and the health of our planet.

How Do We Heal Feminine Shame?

How Do We Heal Feminine Shame:
We heal Feminine Shame intentionally, compassionately, gently, and lovingly. We do so by embracing what’s natural and letting go of what’s been deemed “normal.”
 
In The InnerSpark Method, a system for supporting deep-feeling, sensitive women in breaking the cycles of burnout, people-pleasing, anxiety, and constantly trying to “fix” themselves, we heal Feminine Shame through five phase approach: befriending the body, managing our energy system (with resources like InnerSpark’s Energy Management Tools) and connecting with our emotions, mastering our mind, and aligning with Nature’s wisdom and rhythms.
 
We do so by reconnecting with ourselves, our InnerSpark, to see the parts of ourselves riddled with shame. We do so in community where we allow ourselves to be seen and witness each other. We come back to a state of reverent balance and holistic living and thriving.

I believe a fully integrative and holistic approach is paramount in healing. So, it’s your turn to really become a witness to your entire being and pay attention to the many messages it’s sending you all the time.

Creating Wholeness

Chakras, whether you believe in them or not, correspond with the body’s endocrine glands and energy centers and have various vital functions physically – and emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.  We’ll do the following exercise together and use constipation (something so many clients struggle with) as an example to get your imagination flowing for investigating your own body part metaphors and messages to find connections and ultimately, healing.

• Identify your symptoms and the body part most associated with them. Begin by jotting down all of the clichés, metaphors, literal functions, etc. about this area of the body. In our example of constipation, we have the gut/large intestine: taking in more than can be digested and excreted, biting off more than can be chewed, full, stuffed, sluggish, bigger than space allows for, not releasing, suppressing, withholding, not extracting what’s needed and releasing the rest, wallowing in own waste, lack of ease and flow, uptight, not releasing that which no longer serves.
• Review your list after being as complete as possible (give yourself time for the process – there’s no rush).  Some statements will resonate immediately and will usually evoke a feeling of resistance or wanting to bypass or ignore.  When you feel that, pay attention and circle it.
• Ask yourself: Where’s your mind getting in the way of the natural process of this part/area of your body?   What beliefs are perpetuating this issue? An example of an answer for constipation could be: “I’m noticing an inability to accept what is, therefore, am not fully digesting the present because I resent it and am holding on and waiting for what’s next.  Sometimes it seems easier to wallow in the familiar, despite its (literal) toxicity.”  In this case, we can draw the conclusion that there’s resistance around change and expression.  Both of these functions take courage and an ability to digest experiences and emotions, which come from being self-aware, which comes from being grounded and feeling safe enough to fully embody your Spirit.  See how it all flows?
• As if you’re a neutral third party, analyze your resonating statements (the ones you circled from step 1) and intuitively create some conclusions like the above.  Finally, ask yourself: What’s the connection between what you’ve just discovered and the challenge(s) with which you are currently working?  What’s the most healing step you can take this week to honor, integrate, and acknowledge these valuable messages?

**Clearly, this is an overview and each person will be radically different.  I’m also in no way suggesting that a case of severe or chronic constipation can be solved with the aforementioned strategies and other chronic conditions may not also be present.  However, true healing takes a multifaceted approach.  To take it a step further, however, an underlying condition in our constipation case, for example, could be hypothyroidism (an under active thyroid).  The thyroid is in the throat, the place of truth speaking, speaking up for oneself, voicing one’s needs, etc.  This is where we vocalize and express with the confidence and power that should be flowing freely from the gut, yet is stifled, and if it’s stifled, well, the confidence and power are, too, and there’s not much truth speaking happening…  See the connections?

I could go on and on about this and all of the connections, yet I’ll end here because I want you to begin to get intimate with your own body and its messages.  My hope is for you to truly bridge the perceived divide between your body and your emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and sense of spiritual connection.