Pamela Madsen, Founder of Back to the Body and The American Fertility Association, shares a passionate and moving story about body positivity. Pamela is a pioneer in fertility and sex advocacy. She is a fearless advocate for women’s health and integrated sexuality who leverages her raw honesty and well-informed wit to help strip the stigma from infertility, female desire and body image.
Image and Video Credit: Back to the Body
Day 22 of 22 recording my thoughts on the spiritual practice of receiving. Today’s post is about the relationship between self-love and being open.
I have committed to 22 days of exploring the spiritual practice of receiving. I will examine my heart’s greatest desire of complete self-love and its relationship with a variety of receiving states.
Receiving State: Releasing
When I think of how self-love relates to releasing, I think of how we must release our limiting beliefs to open ourselves to transformation. This usually means releasing old ideas of ourselves based on our past. Stories we repeatedly tell ourselves about who we are and can be in the world.
Because of my growing need to release, I wrote the following letter to my bodywork practitioner, Roger Hughes:
Can you connect me with the energy work practitioner you mentioned? It is becoming apparent to me that I have a lot of energy that needs to be released and I don’t know how to let it go. Something is telling me that my physical condition will not be completely healed until I can completely release. That realization actually came across in a dream.
I’m not really sure what is looking to be released but I know it pushes against my boundaries as soon as our sessions begin. I think because I suppress ‘It’, hyper-sensitivity has developed which makes me hesitant to interact with people. I think the hyper-sensitivity camouflages as sexual arousal as a way to entice me into opening up. I know that beneath the arousal is a deep well of shame and grief I have not allowed myself to truly feel. So as a protective measure, I stay relatively numb and closed.
I’m excited about the next steps.
You may have noticed that just during that brief time I was crafting the email, I went from not being sure what needed to be released to knowing. That is why journaling is so powerful. The contemplation required to express ideas automatically triggers self-exploration and release.
Each day, I grow more excited about this self-love journey.
Image credit: Laura Kasperzak
![Pamela Madsen on Body Positivity [Video]](https://communitysoulwork.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/pamela-madsen.jpg?w=500)
Community Soulwork 