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Restoring Self- Worth Training

When you understand how the body responds to threat, it is easier to appreciate why self-worth can be so elusive.

The heart of this work is based on self-compassion practice; offering yourself support and encouragement, especially during challenging times. As you learn to respond to negative feelings with compassion, these feelings will lose their grip on you.

To build resilience is important to enhance positive inner experience. One whole session is devoted to building resources, learning how to embody positive experience, and counter our innate negativity bias.

Somatic awareness is the practice of paying attention to the sensations and signals in your body, allowing you to connect with emotions, thoughts, and experiences on a deeper level. It can be a valuable tool for processing trauma and other emotional experiences.

Self-criticism can arise from a misguided need to keep ourselves safe. Our compassionate self also wants us to be safe, and you will learn practices that focus on replacing the critical inner voice with a more compassionate attitude.

Finally, when you understand that shame is essentially an innocent emotion, you can learn practices that will loose the hold that shame has held on you.

The Restoring Self-Worth training comprises six one-hour sessions, designed to teach you new ways of relating to yourself.

You can also book individual session that will be tailored to you immediate needs.

In this training you will learn skills that you can continue to use as you go deeper in your healing.

The outline below is a guide and will be adapted to match your individual needs.

Week 1- Getting oriented

Explore your experience of self-doubt, the way it affects your life & the stories that underlie it.
Learn what is going on in your nervous system that gets in the way of shifting negative beliefs.
Begin to learn some self-compassion practices as the first step to disempowering these beliefs.

Week 2 - Building resources to deepen safety and resilience

Explore embodied and externalised practices to help establish and maintain stability when exposed to vulnerable inner experiences and sensations.
Develop awareness of ways to enhance resilience by building inner resources and internalising positive experiences.

Week 3 - Exploring somatic awareness

Learn about the window of tolerance and its relation to the activity of the nervous system.
Begin to recognise when your nervous system is moving outside the window of tolerance, and understand ways to anchor awareness to avoid overwhelm.
Learn how manage difficult emotions by locating them in the body and practising the proces: 'soften - soothe - allow'.

Week 4 - Meeting the inner critic with compassion

Explore the role your inner critic has played in attempting to keep you safe.
Discover how your self-compassionate voice can be a kinder source of motivation.
Learn to savour and assimilate a more positive relationship with yourself.

Week 5 - Working with shame

Understand the components of shame and how it is created and sustained.
Recognise how unworthiness is one of the core beliefs that underlies shame.
Practice antidoting the impacts of shame with self-compassion.

Week 6 - Bring it all together

Review all that you have learned over the past five sessions.
Identify how the approaches learned can support you and which practices have been most valuable for you.
Develop a plan to work with these practices in the future.

Fees:

Series of six sessions $540.00

Six sessions paid in two lots $300.00 x 2

Single session $110.00

Concession available for students and pensioners. Also for those who have taken Nurturing Self-Compassion course.

Contact me re concession prices.

Book your training

How I came to this work

During over 40 years of meditation practice, I would often find myself paying attention to the sensations in my body where I could feel energy was stuck. And I learned that if I stayed present, accepting that energy as it was, that it would gradually soften and shift. There would be a sense of release, and a corresponding positive shift in my state of mind.

In 2018 I was introduced to Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) and that same year I took part in a MSC teacher training. Applying what I have learned from MSC I now bring an attitude of caring when I am sitting with inner discomfort, and this helps the tension shifts with greater ease.

In recent times there have been important advances in psychological research and techniques, applying the knowledge and experience of mindfulness and of somatic or bodily awareness.

I have been fortunate to study with many of these great-hearted teachers, including:

Chris Germer (Mindful Self-Compassion)
David Treleaven (Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness)
Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing)
Pat Ogden (Sensorimotor Psychotherapy)
Rick Hanson (Positive Neuroplasticity)
Rajan Sankaran (Wise Processes)