Healing Shame to Expand into Fearless Self-Love [Episode 946]

Topic: Healing Shame

Hi everyone and welcome back to our Thursday Q &A show. I hope you’re having a wonderful week so far. And today we’re gonna be talking about a topic that affects multiple cornerstones, especially our bodies and emotional wellbeing. And it has to do with trauma and specifically how to release trauma from your body and open your heart. So when I read this book a few years ago called Your Body Keeps the Score. I was surprised to learn that by his estimation, about 75 % or more of Americans have experienced some form of trauma in their childhood. And I imagine there are similar statistics depending on which country you happen to be from. But the point is that most of us, the vast majority of us, experience some form of trauma, something that makes us create certain patterns for survival or protecting ourselves into our adulthood, into the present moment where we are today.

 

Episode Summary:

Hello and welcome back to our Thursday Q &A show. I am so excited to talk about our very important topic today around shame and specifically healing shame to expand into fearless self-love. Shame is such a heavy energy that has become normalized in many of our lives. I know it was normalized in my life for many years and we don’t realize how much shame can really affect every part of our lives. For me, it affected my digestion. Of course, it affected my self-esteem. It affected my relationships. It affected my energy, my vitality, my ability to create in the world. Shame is this idea that we are bad or we don’t deserve love based on mistakes we’ve made or things that we’ve done along the way. And it very much needs to be detoxified from our system because….

 

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Episode Chapters

00:00 Understanding Shame and Its Impact
09:59 The Path to Healing Shame
20:04 Research Insights on Shame and Self-Compassion
30:09 Practical Steps to Overcome Shame

SOLLUNA PRODUCT LINKS

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KIMBERLY’S BOOKS

• The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts 

• Chilla Gorilla & Lanky Lemur Journey to the Heart
• The Beauty Detox Solution
• Beauty Detox Foods
• Beauty Detox Power
• Radical Beauty
• Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
• You Are More Than You Think You Are 

OTHER PODCASTS YOU MAY ENJOY!

• How to Believe in Your Self Worth with Jamie Kern Lima [Episode 907]
• How to Raise Your Standards In Your Love Life with Matthew Hussey [Episode 883]
• How to Eat to Beat Your Diet with New York Times best selling author Dr. William Li [Epsiode 913]
• The issues with consuming vegetable and seed oils with Dr. Catherine Shanahan [Episode #899]
• How the Power Foods Diet helps with Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard [Episode #877]
• How Not to Age with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Michael Greger [Episode #873]
• How to eat to reduce anxiety with Harvard nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Uma Naidoo [Episode #867]
• How to Optimize Your Metabolic Health with Dr. Casey Means [Episode 889]

STUDIES AND RESEARCH

• A 2008 Study in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology found that shame is significantly associated with depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues and addressing shame can lead to improved emotional well-being.
• A 2010 Study in the journal of Self and Identity studied the role of Shame on Self-Compassion and Resilience. It found that that self-compassion is negatively correlated with shame and positively correlated with resilience. Individuals who practice self-compassion tend to experience lower levels of shame.
• A study:in the journal of Psychiatric Clinics of North America demonstrated that mindfulness-based interventions significantly reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, which are often linked to feelings of shame. Mindfulness practices can help individuals observe their thoughts without judgment, reducing shame’s impact.
• A 2022 Study in the Journal of Personality found that forgiveness is associated with greater psychological well-being and lower levels of shame. Forgiving oneself and others can facilitate emotional healing and freedom.\
• A 2008 Study in the The Journal of Contemporary Social Services found that resilience to shame can be fostered through awareness, empathy, and connection. The study found that sharing experiences of shame can lead to healing and empowerment.
• A 2021 Study in the Journal of Clinical Psychology Review found a significant positive correlation between shame and social anxiety disorder and the importance of social support in mitigating the effects of shame
• A 2011 study in the journal of Psychology and Psychiatry found that self-affirmation exercises significantly improved body image and self-love among women and more resilience to shame. Participants who engaged in self-affirmation reported feeling more positive about their bodies and themselves overall.

 

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Transcript

Kimberly Snyder (00:00.622)
Hello and welcome back to our Thursday Q &A show. I am so excited to talk about our very important topic today around shame and specifically healing shame to expand into fearless self-love. Shame is such a heavy energy that has become normalized in many of our lives. I know it was normalized in my life for many years and we don’t realize

how much shame can really affect every part of our lives. For me, it affected my digestion. Of course, it affected my self-esteem. It affected my relationships. It affected my energy, my vitality, my ability to create in the world. Shame is this idea that we are bad or we don’t deserve love based on maybe mistakes we’ve made or things that we’ve done along the way. And it very much needs to be detoxified from our system.

from our energy field so that we can move forward into true self-love, into success, true success, true fulfillment, true energy, right? In fact, Swami Sri Yukteswar, who wrote the Holy Science, this incredible master of Vedic philosophy, this incredibly wise and connected yogi, wrote in the Holy Science, which is the book that the Five Hearts is based on.

the five heart stages that I wrote about in the Hidden Power, the five hearts. Sri Yukteswar says, the eight bondages or snares are hatred, shame, fear, grief, condemnation, race prejudice, pride of family and smugness. Removal of the eight bondages leads to magnanimity of the heart, hugeness, unbridled, unconditional love.

the true power coming forth, right? These are the bondages that Swami Sri Deshor said, wrap our hearts up and keep us small, keep us in ego, keep us held back. And one of these is shame. When we are in shame, we aren’t able to shine our brightest light. So this is such an essential topic to talk about. I know in my life, and I’ll talk about this more on the show, when I was throwing up in buckets, when I was bulimic,

Kimberly Snyder (02:23.438)
times that I felt really stressed or agitated and I spoke sharply or was mean to people close to me or that I loved and loved me, held a lot of shame around that. Felt like I was a bad person. was, you know, with the bulimia doing something in secrecy. I was screwed up. So, you know, quote unquote, things I would tell myself. And so over these years of healing, personal evolution and my own healing journey, I’ve come to realize how dark and heavy shame really is.

and also that we share this quality as humans to hold on to shame. And so it is so essential that we also share tools and strategies to let go of the shame. So, I’m really excited for today’s topic. I think this is something that we work on and sometimes just like the hard work and the hard stages, there’s quantum leaps and we have a big realization we’re able to really let go of one aspect of shame and sometimes we need to marinate it. We need to sort of sit in it and it gets processed through the heart in different ways. But no doubt about it, this is really essential to work on in order to get to those, to the really high levels of energy, of love, of fulfillment, of true vitality. When we let go of shame, it is a huge way.

to this is the ultimate anti-aging mechanism, right? Because shame is a heavy energy that constricts our energy. It dampens down all parts of our vitality. I believe from our circulation to our heart coherence, the ways our nervous system works, we are more in fight or flight. There’s more agitation, less efficiency in our system. So it really is something we want to detoxify just as we would want to detoxify something out of our GI tract from detoxing, which by the way,

physicality of removing toxins from the body can help to remove this energy. We talked about this recently in our trauma show, right? Old patterns can be removed through, you know, detoxification, through fiber, through taking detoxing. This is very much top of mind for me because the last few days I was feeling this connected to my monthly cycle and hormonal fluctuations. I was feeling a bit agitated and I took a mega dose of

Kimberly Snyder (04:43.246)
detoxing. Remember, please check the right dose for you. It might be just one capsule for some. I have clients that have taken one capsule for years or two. For me, I take four or five. I had a huge release and it was almost instant. It was like there was more light shining out of my eyes. I got up. I felt so light and amazing. So remember that all different parts of our lifestyle very much do work synergistically.

Before I get into the show, I’m rolling right in here, but I don’t want to forget that the show notes are over at mysalooner.com. If you enjoy this show, please pass it to others who could benefit. Please also write a review for this show and also for the Hidden Power, the Five Hearts. I know from my heart to yours, these ways in which you can support the community and the message are so essential and helpful in helping to spread the message, spread the word, helping to create a more

heart-centered, heart-led future society, the more of us that awaken into our hearts. So thank you so much for being in the community and thank you so much for your support ahead of time. All right, our question today comes from Bethany who lives in Nevada. Thank you Bethany for bringing this topic to our, to the forefront of our conversation. You’re right, Kimberly, I love the show. I appreciate what you do. My concern is that I often feel a lot of shame that is linked from my past.

I feel that it has a big impact on my ability to open my heart. What can I do to reduce and let go and deal with shame?

So Bethany this topic is a big one and it is you know one that impacts many of the quarterstones There’s a spiritual aspect to it. There’s an emotional aspect. There’s a physical body aspect to it and even a food aspect to it because when we have shame and we have a dark perspective of ourselves We don’t take care of ourselves in the same way we can abuse our bodies with alcohol and excess sugars and

Kimberly Snyder (06:46.982)
don’t really take the time to care for ourselves because when we have low self-worth it translates to low self-care. So the first thing that I want to address is that everyone can feel really bad about themselves and we’ve all done things that we aren’t proud of and this is what life is about. It’s about growth. Swami Sri Yukteswar writes, forget the past.

the vanished lives of all men, all men and women, of course, are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until anchored in the divine. Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now. So depending on your belief system, if you don’t connect with the divine and this idea of spirituality,

We can just say the heart, right? The true self, really pure part of you, which, you know, the soul, higher self, know, universe inside of you, whatever you like to, how you ever you like to conceive of it. But what Chwami is saying is until we’re really anchored in this identification, then we’re going to act out of the ego.

So there are going to be things that we’re not proud of. We may speak sharply. We make choices out of fear. We make choices out of anger or, you know, that hurry energy out of stress. So the more we anchor into the hearts, the more we live in love, and the more we realize that our true identity is this formless aspect, is beyond all the conduct, is beyond all the different shames and all the different mistakes.

And it’s hard to really understand that or identify with that until we have more experience of being in the heart, which is why the heart-based work and the heart-led living protocols are so powerful because moment to moment, right, it’s like, are we in the ego or are we in the heart? And the more we’re in the heart, the more we’re able to digest the shame and process it, and the more we’re able to actually be.

Kimberly Snyder (09:07.146)
in the true self where we are shameless, are fearless, we are in our true nature, we’re being kind in this moment, we’re being loving. So we don’t have anything to be shameful of. We’re not up in our heads, we’re not thinking about what we did yesterday or 10 years ago or, you know, two months ago, right? We’re here in this present moment, which is really where we are always in this eternal now. But it’s easy when we’re up in the mind to just think about the past.

you know, the so-called past and the things that we’ve done versus being here.

One last quote from Swami is that, divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change. The flux of the human heart is gone forever at the transfixing touch of pure love.

So.

As you can tell, so much of this shame healing has to do with the heart. And the more we cast off the heaviness of shame, which is one of the bondages. When we think about something bound up or a type of jail, type of prison that’s around our heart, a huge way to eliminate, let’s say, a huge wall that comes down, one of the bonds that falls off the heart is shame. It keeps us down.

Kimberly Snyder (10:29.922)
So there’s three things, three main thoughts I wanna talk about here today. I wanna reinforce to you and then we can get into the research, the modern research that reinforces a lot of these energetic and spiritual truths and then some really key takeaways. There are going to be eight takeaways that we will get into today.

exactly eight that I wrote for you. Okay, so the key points first are number one, what’s really needed here is more unconditional love and compassion. Starting to understand that we all have done things we’re not proud of, but that at the time we were doing the best that we could have with our level of consciousness, where we were on the journey, right? So here we are today, and so deep compassion is needed.

Number two, we have to acknowledge that it is okay to make mistakes because life, we’re here to grow and it’s about personal evolution. And number three, this is where we expand out beyond the constriction of shame, which is very heady, very mind-driven, very linear, very ego-based. We dim our light and our ability to shine that light on others and to be in service of others if our view of ourselves is dampened with shame, for the good of our path and for others.

we must shrug off the heavy blanket of shame and let our own light shine forth. This is where we start to acknowledge it’s not just about us. And there’s a bit of, even though it seems like, you know, extreme low self-esteem or self-deprecation to be like, I’m bad, I’m so ashamed of this. There is an egoic level where we’re so focused on ourselves that we’re not really focusing on how much we can give to others in that moment.

So this sort of turns our perspective to realize that healing shame is not just for us, but it’s for the good of the whole. It’s for the good of our families, our friends, our communities, the circle of people around us, anyone that we come in contact with. If we hold this darkness of shame, it means we are buying into the dark heart. So we have a lower level of coherence. Our heart feel is more fragmented, and this brings fragmented energy to everyone we come in contact with.

Kimberly Snyder (12:53.4)
The more we step into this coherence, the more we come into steadiness, and then more of the devoted heart qualities, the more we really can be in service of others by our actions, by our words, and simply by our presence. We can just be more kind and loving and harmonious. This softness, this quality that’s so strong, that comes from the heart is what is needed in the world today. So please consider that. Healing shame is for the good of all around you.

Now, I wanna talk a little bit about research around shame because it’s something that’s been talked about, it’s something that’s been studied. Brene Brown, who’s an author, you may have heard of her, she did a really famous Ted Talk. She talks about shame quite a bit and the idea that when we have shame, we’re actually feeling something really negatively about ourselves. We have a belief system that we are bad versus feeling guilty for one particular action like,

I forgot to turn in that report on time or I feel guilty that I ate that whole box of cookies versus the shame of I’m a terrible person. I have no self-control. I have no will. I’m so dirty. I’m so bad. I’m so horrible. And I can say again for myself, I know this energy very well. How dark and deep and sticky and gross it can feel.

and sitting in darkness, literally in my bedroom, with thoughts in my head being up in the night, I’ve encountered shame as we all have. And there is a path out, and it’s very hard to get there through the mind, which is what creates shame in the first place. So we’re gonna work on it in a different way. But first, the research, a 2008 study in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.

and that shame is significantly associated with depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues. Addressing shame can lead to improved emotional well-being. Whether we talk about it or not, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Sometimes we push things down, sometimes we don’t wanna address them, sometimes it’s so painful or we feel so badly about something that we did that we don’t even wanna bring it up, but it’s sort of like the toxicity of food.

Kimberly Snyder (15:20.994)
Maybe you ate a huge amount of pizza with dairy and it’s sitting in your belly and then you just zone out and you watch a movie. Whether you’re tuning in to that pizza that’s sitting in your belly or not, or you’ve completely forgotten about it, it’s still inside of you. And that is the truth with shame. It’s a heaviness that starts to color our day-to-day experience.

It feels like the dampening of a light. So we want to start to root it out and to be more aware of what is inside of us. And on the other hand, as I mentioned with self-compassion, a 2010 study in the Journal of Self and Identity found that self-compassion is negatively correlated with shame and positively correlated with resilience. Individuals who practiced self-compassion.

experience lower levels of shame. So I love this word resilient. We become more resilient against stress. We become more resilient against these dark thoughts telling us lies, that we aren’t worthy of love, that we’re bad, right? It’s like, okay, we’ve done some things that maybe we’re not proud of, that we wouldn’t do again, but we want to be resilient against these thoughts. Now, here’s where I feel like some of us have some unlearning.

and relearning to do from our childhoods. Some of us have childhoods where there wasn’t a lot of self-compassion. And I even see it now in parents around that can be very harsh on themselves. And again, our little ones and us as little babies ourselves at that moment in time are absorbing so much.

from what we see in our teachers and our caregivers. And this isn’t about right or wrong, it’s about acknowledging an awareness. So if you start to consider what your parents were like or your caregivers were like when you were growing up, what you were exposed to, what you may have been taught about self-compassion vicariously in observation, indirect experience, as well as through verbal communication.

Kimberly Snyder (17:43.054)
no matter what it is, it’s good to be aware and to realize that we can change our relationship with self-compassion through intentional choice starting right now. We can decide that we’re not gonna buy into the harshness of condemnation, right? Condemning ourselves. One of the other snares of the human heart is condemnation. And how often do we tell ourselves that we’re bad, that, you know,

terrible, we shouldn’t have done this, you know, really, really harsh thoughts and ideas that we apply to ourselves. So when we can sit in our hearts and to allow this kindness to be directed back at ourselves and natural qualities of the heart, the harmony that starts to build, we’ll talk about the tools in just a moment, we realize that we don’t have to be in bondage of shame and condemnation any longer.

And again, this is all studied in formal research, which is amazing to actually see the effects in human participants in these studies. A 2022 study in the Journal of Personality found that forgiveness is associated with greater psychological well-being and lower levels of shame. I’ll talk about in a moment how important forgiveness is in expansiveness and energy and healing and freedom.

And as we’re talking about today, expansive self-love without fear. Fear that we don’t deserve love, which can create a fear that we don’t deserve the relationship that we’re in. And I’ll say that there was a lot of stuff that came up in the beginning of my marriage. And I wasn’t sure what it was at the time because so much was happening. We got married really quickly. We bought a house. I was pregnant.

And, you know, looking back on it from a different context, years later, I can see that abandonment issues got thrown up for me. And also some shame and idea. loved, you know, I do love and loved past, present, future, tense, my husband so much. And so it brought up ideas of maybe I don’t deserve this love. Maybe he’ll, you know, combined with the abandonment, maybe he’ll leave me.

Kimberly Snyder (20:04.022)
if he finds out something about me, of course there is, we always think there’s something to find out. He’ll find out I’m a really bad person or whatever. And these are, again, the inauthenticities that are linked to the shame that kind of latch on to our sense of self, almost like, you know, like a really sticky, like stickers. My kids have all these stickers and some, you know, peel off the wall really easily and some leave that residue, right?

shame feels like quite sticky, like it’s sticking there and we have these ideas. Even if the conscious mind doesn’t really believe them, there’s parts of us deep inside that can still hold on to these beliefs, which is why we have to really heal on a deep level, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. a couple other research studies and then I want to get into the tips. A 2008 study in the Journal of

of contemporary social services found that resilience to shame can be fostered through awareness, empathy, and connection. The study found that sharing experiences of shame can lead to healing and empowerment. This is what is so powerful about our community. And we will have more heart-led reset programs coming up. We’ll have a program in January, actually, around at-home heart retreat.

So to speak, so be on the lookout for that, where we’ll have a live Zoom, we’ll come together in community. It is very empowering to be vulnerable and to let it out, right? So it’s harder when we keep things inside of us, like we’re trying to keep that pizza down instead of maybe drinking lots of water, having more fiber, taking detoxing that evening and allowing it to just digest and process through. It’s very powerful to connect.

with others and even to share experiences with loved ones or therapists. And so that is why social support is very important here. 2021 study in the Journal of Clinical Psychology Review found a positive correlation between shame and social anxiety disorder and found that social support helped to mitigate the effects of shame. So this makes sense when we’re feeling like we’re bad, we’re up in our heads, the more isolated we become.

Kimberly Snyder (22:23.806)
It can drive us even more into our heads. So where our thoughts become unchecked. Now we’re really in ego, the unbridled mind as I call it in the Hidden Power of the Five Hearts. It’s like a wild horse running around telling us all these lies and there’s nothing to check it. That’s why we need our hearts to check the crazy thoughts that can come into our consciousness. Say, hold on here. This isn’t right. This isn’t true.

Sure, I made some mistakes. Sure, I wouldn’t do that again. You know, and I really apologized and I truly felt bad about such and such that I did or this or that. But it’s time to let it go. I can’t take it back. I know I’m not a bad person. I did something not great, but I am more than my behavior. I am more than my behavior. I am the heart. I am more than any of

any action that I take, I am the heart. I am the heart. So it’s really important as well, the lifestyle that we live back to our Four Corners Stone heart-led living philosophy, which is so powerful because it takes this very embodied approach. And in 2011 study in the Journal of Psychology and Psychiatry found that exercise,

helped to improve body image and self-love among women and made them more resilient to shame, as well as self-affirmations. I just naturally went into some affirmations a few moments ago. And this is how, when we are in our hearts, this really unbridled, I found this in myself, expression starts to come from this really deep place inside of you.

It just speaks, right? Your intuition can speak to you. Truth can speak up the more we get still and we go to this deeper place. I am the heart. I am more than my behaviors. I am worthy of love. I am the heart. am the light. It just starts to come out, which means that we’re starting to center ourselves more in this true identity, the true self, the energy in the heart, this gateway of the heart, which is a brain.

Kimberly Snyder (24:49.004)
Scientifically, it’s also an energy center, spiritually and energetically. So let’s talk about the eight points to really overcome shame, to heal the shame and to become fearless. When we are fearless, shame keeps us down in fear, fear that we’re not worthy of love, fear that we’re gonna be alone, fear that we’re bad. So fearlessness means the light and the love and the creativity and the health and the vitality.

really start to expand and our lives can drastically change. So the first step on this pathway to healing shame is to acknowledge your feelings. We need to identify shame triggers. What makes us feel shameful in the first place? What are situations, what are qualities, contexts, aspects of our relationship, behaviors? What is it that makes us feel the shame? And it can be really helpful in this way to journal about it.

Similarly to how when you keep a food journal, you may be surprised at what you’re actually eating or what’s going on because it brings self-awareness. Actually writing about this can be healing and it can bring things forward. When you see things on paper, it brings it out of the subconscious where sometimes we push things down or we don’t really want to see. But writing in the privacy of a journal, which will not be shared with anyone else, can be tremendously healing.

The next thing is to digest shame with self-forgiveness. Now, self-forgiveness from a heady place can feel almost impossible. So what I highly recommend is that you check out the forgiveness practice in the Hidden Power of the Five Hearts, which is in the Devoted Heart stage, which is stage four. If you have the hard copy, which I always recommend, it’s really nice. I think we…

taken information, especially spiritual teachings, in a very different way through, and the written words, through hard copy. Right? I think it’s convenient if you want to listen to the book, if you want to read it on the plane on an e-reader. It’s really nice to also have a physical copy. And this Heart Aligned, Forgive and Let Go to Freedom Practice is on page 144. It starts with some of the steps of the Heart Aligned Meditation.

Kimberly Snyder (27:13.654)
And then it guides you through how you can really and truly digest and actually forgive through the wisdom and the power of your heart, which again is, I believe, almost impossible through the mind. We often think of forgiveness with other people, but there is so much to forgive with ourselves correlated to shame. Things we’ve done in the past, maybe belief systems we have had, maybe ways in which we treated other people.

Before we are, we know we are where we are today. There’s so much that’s led up to this part of the journey. And again, in today’s level of consciousness, you might not do the same thing. But we have to realize, similar to what Sri Yukteswar taught us, that the lives of all men and women are dark with many shames. It’s time to forgive. So I encourage you to try this heart-based practice.

to use the tools and to go through it, all the steps of self-forgiveness through the heart, which is incredibly powerful. I know in writing the book, researching the book and doing this hard work over the past three years, so much energy has healed in me. So much. I mean, there’s levels and levels. I’ve been on a healing journey now for about 15 years.

starting with healing my GI tract, healing my acne, healing my eating disorders, healing, you know, my energy, my bloating, working with food. And it seemed all of it is major, right? And now it’s like you get lower down towards the bottom of the lake, so to speak, or the bottom of the pot where you start to get near the bottom and you get near the roots. And

couldn’t believe some of the things that were unearthed. I was starting to unearth really deep belief systems and how much shame I really held and really what I thought about myself, which is sad in a way. But with compassion, say that it’s just the journey that we’re on and it’s complicated and there’s darkness and there’s the light underneath and it’s beautiful.

Kimberly Snyder (29:39.37)
And it’s amazing and it cracks us open to more love, self-love and love of others and the softness. And when we let go of shame, I do believe it allows us to love others more because we’re loving ourselves more. This bondage of the heart, shame keeps love constricted. It keeps it at a certain level. And so self-healing and self-love is absolutely essential for unconditional love to come through, which is why…

The third point, which I just kind of talked about, is to reframe the narrative with self-compassion. To really see that you were doing the best you were at the time. And to, when these thoughts arise, to meet them with these thoughts of self-compassion, besides doing the heart align, forgive and let go to freedom practice. To, you know, consciously go in. Sometimes the thoughts come in randomly, or in the middle of the night, or where you’re driving the car. Do you want to meet them?

equally with the strength of the heart-based thoughts. I was doing the best I could, right? Real self-love, real self-compassion. So when I look back on those times where I was throwing up in the pots and I said mean things to people, I realized I didn’t have the tools to digest all my emotions and that was my outlet. I didn’t have the tools to communicate my real needs. So out of frustration, out of pain, I was speaking sharply, not because I’m a bad person.

But because there was so much in me that I couldn’t deal with, did it again. I just didn’t have the tools. So when I see it that way, I see it, you know, a younger version of myself that was really struggling. And it allows me energetically to almost, you know, hug, wrap my arms around that less mature version of myself, that younger version of myself, the way I would one of my children, and to love myself.

and to nurture myself back to identifying with the heart. Because again, all that past stuff, all that behavioral stuff is not the real identity. It’s not really who we are. It’s just behaviors on top of the true self.

Kimberly Snyder (31:52.718)
So the next, the fourth point is to seek support. Remember the research around connection, around sharing stories. So this could be in close trusted friends, this could be in family members, this could be in professional, with professional therapists or people that can help you move through these feelings and help you process. There’s telehealth today, there’s so many ways in which we can reach out.

for help and many times insurance can even cover some of these practices and treatments. So I encourage you to find connection where it suits you most and to be consistent into, know, maybe once or twice, but maybe over an extended period of time, you can let go of more of the shame. Number five, focus on growth, right? So identify areas in your life where you can

grow and you can acknowledge and celebrate little achievements, right? So maybe, you know, you want to grow into more softness, kindness with yourself. You can celebrate that you didn’t say anything mean to yourself for a couple hours or you practice really beautiful self-care and love. You made really healthy food for yourself for a whole weekend or for a whole day. You really treated yourself with kindness and love.

for whatever it is. So achievable goals, focusing on growth, giving yourself some positive momentum to keep expanding into this abundance and self-love is so powerful. And number six, this is one of my favorite ones, live with kindness. So we feel shameful when we aren’t proud of how we’ve behaved or what we’ve done. So in this present moment, today in this interaction,

Can we choose the kind thing to say? The more unified, peaceful way to bring energy into this interaction. The kind thing to do. Because when we’re kind, when we’re loving, when we’re compassionate, this is how we can be really proud of ourselves in the real way. Right? This is heel shame if we know that in this moment we are being, we are aligning with our hearts and not with darkness, not with ego, but in our hearts.

Kimberly Snyder (34:16.674)
Number seven, besides the forgiveness practice, I highly encourage you to practice the Heart Aligned Meditation, which is also featured in the new book. It’s also the tracks are on the website, mysaluna.com. What’s really powerful is to experience this formless part of us, the heart energy to experience expansion, because we come to know this part of us more. It’s really hard to, you know,

feel connected to someone that, you know, let’s say we never see. I mean, of course there’s relationships where we don’t see that person a lot. We still, you know, start to talk to them. We feel that connection come back. So maybe that’s a bad example. But what I mean by this is the more we really get to know our true nature by spending time in there and building what is called our coherence capacity,

our ability to feel this inner harmony between our hearts and our brains, our nervous systems, to open up the gateway of the heart, this energy, this love, this fullness inside of us. We come to know that we really are whole. And in this wholeness, in the love that will pour out of your heart, this is the most potent medicine to heal shame energy.

It just goes through and it will rebalance in its infinite intelligence. It will heal on a cellular level, on a bodily level, somatic level, emotional level, mental, spiritual. It’s just going to heal everything. It’s the most powerful energy. And so you can also couple that with number eight, doing a ritual to let go. The temple we go to in Hawaii is a fire temple. Lots of fire, right? You burn. You can write things on paper and burn them.

burn them up, imagine they’re disintegrating from your consciousness. A monk, they are described it as a color photo going to black and white. You still have the memory of that experience, but you don’t have the emotional correlation. So it becomes more neutral, right? With intention. That is my favorite ritual is to write something on paper that you release and you burn it, of course, in a fire safe container. Or, you know,

Kimberly Snyder (36:39.8)
burying something or ripping a piece of paper up or, you know, letting something go down the water, down the river, like a stick or rock, something eco-friendly, of course. it can be really, ritual can be really powerful, really powerful. Rituals have been used in spiritual practices for millennia, especially in Ayurveda and ancient India and Vedic times. So consider for yourself from your heart’s intuition what…

could really signify to you a way to let go of the shame and place the energy of shame energetically with intention into that piece of paper, whatever it is, and really launch it forward. So for me, the fire has been really powerful. I’ve let go of a lot. And then the consistency of doing the heart aligned meditation, the journaling, all of the practices I just shared with you has helped to heal my own shame further and further. And along with that,

the closeness in our relationships, more love, more lightness, more joy, more health, more fulfillment will build more and more in your life as it has in mine. So thank you so much for being here with me today in this very special topic. I hope you were inspired to let go of the heavy energy of shame because your true nature is light and love and we need your light and love to shine out in the world today.

You can ask me further questions on the podcast link at mysaluna.com. Please, once again, support the show by sharing the show with others, by writing a review. I am here for you always. Check out all the other offerings in the Heart Aligned Meditation at mysaluna.com. Going into the holidays, I highly recommend you check out the Digestive Enzymes and Detoxy to support yourself through the coming months, which are busy and full of lots of different foods and…

exposure to many different peoples and activities. We need as much support as we can. I will be back here Monday as always for our next show. Till then, take care and sending you so much love from my heart to yours.