♾️ How to Finally Separate Movement from Shame

🎉 Happy Friday, Friends!

The biggest thing I notice when I'm in traditional fitness spaces is how shame and movement get entrenched. So today, I want to discuss how these two things became connected for so many women, and how we can start to separate the two in order to actually enjoy movement.

A lot of us learned to be ashamed of our bodies before we fully learned to use them. Some of these might feel familiar to you:

➡️ Parents commenting on what we ate as kids or teens
➡️ Coaches telling us our bodies were the reason we got hurt, or why we weren't performing well
➡️ A gym teacher who made it very clear where you ranked in the class
➡️ Men commenting on your body when you were a young girl

We take these moments for granted because they're so common. But that doesn't mean they're small moments. They shape how we see ourselves for a long time, sometimes forever if we don't process them. And processing is hard when you're hearing these comments as an impressionable young person.

Then we grow up and someone tells us to "just start working out," like we don't have all that uncertainty and shame still living in our bodies.

Here's something I think about a LOT:

When you're ashamed of a body part, you tend to immobilize it.

Not on purpose, but as a subconscious absorption of the things that other have said to us over the years. Just some examples that might feel true to you:

❗We might hold tension in our stomachs because we've been subtly encouraged to shrink our needs over the years
❗ The tension might be in our jaws because we've been silenced or ignored when we spoke up or expressed anger
❗ You might hold tension in your upper back because standing tall with your chest upright was a problem for adults around you
❗Some of us hold tension in our glutes and pelvic floor because we hold shame surrounding sexual expression

That chronic tension affects your breathing, your digestion, the pressure inside your body, your whole baseline. You can't take a full breath when you're bracing against yourself. When you're bracing against being seen or living your truth.

Try this: breathe all the way out, and then let your belly expand on the inhale. Don't pull it in. Just notice what that feels like, and whether there's any resistance there. Notice the feelings that might come up when you think about being seen fully relaxed. Breathe fully into your pelvis, then let the air relax your face and jaw as you exhale.

If you're feeling ready to unpack how movement and shame might have become intertwined for you personally, try making a list of things you heard about your body at a young age that stick in your mind. Consider how those statements might have made a home in your body. Then breathe into those parts of you and let them finally release what never should have been said to you in the first place.

With you as we let go of the tension,
Dana