Do you feel you have to hide or protect your vulnerability from the world? Or do you feel that you are too much or too little or just don’t fit in? Do you fear that something is inherently wrong with you? You may be battling with a “hidden” negative self-belief!

Nobody wants to talk about negative self-beliefs, because it feels shameful, although we all suffer from it. The less we talk about it, the more power it has over us.

A negative self-belief stems from an early childhood decision that “something is inherently wrong with me”, which can feel very shameful, and we have learned to keep them to ourselves. Negative self-beliefs can activate shame and be a debilitating reaction to the fear of worthlessness, which can impact our entire life and livelihood. We hide in isolation while struggling with the self-belief that “something is inherently wrong with me.” I call this phenomenon a “core-contraction.”

The good news is it is possible to release the power that lies within so that instead of impairing your life, the core-contraction can transform your life manifesting as wisdom, compassion, power, joy, and energy.

I am offering workshops on how unacknowledged core-contractions can stunt both your personal growth and your spiritual practice.

In these workshops, you will learn to recognize the universal core-contractions and reactions around the fear and feeling of worthlessness, cultivating the emotional resiliency to explore it, and release the energy to transform it. Workshop participants attest to the healing power of sharing this process with each other. Shame is a social pain and listening to others’ suffering, activates compassion, clarity, and healing.

Shame I experience as the ultimate contraction of the self, the cause of deep suffering as opposed to the vast open sky of Buddha-nature. I find working with these extreme opposites of contraction and expansion is meaningful because it allows for everything in between to be explored. I see this perspective as aligned with Buddha’s teaching of the Middle Way, which is not a fine line between two extremes but embraces and transcends all polarities of human experience.

Read my blogpost on Working with core-contractions

Method

I work with both the Big Mind process and meditation, the one revealing our hidden voices and shadows, the other grounding us in the stillness beneath all things. Together, they open us to the silent flow that moves through even what is most complex, most buried.

Acceptance of differences is one of the most fundamental principles we practice in these groups. Listening to one another and being curious from a non-judgmental heart, the varieties of background, experience, values, worldview, and pace bring depth and insight into what we do not already know.

The quirky and unexpected often hides new insights that we could never have imagined on our own.

We play, laugh, explore, we cry, grieve, rage, dance, listen, love, reflect or sit in silence..