March was Val-David Women’s Month, and many workshops were held on women’s condition and position in our world. I haven’t offered anything this year, but I’ve done much work on the topic.
But, I have been looking at how I am conditioned as a woman in society, the family, the culture, and my environment. I grew up in Germany and was fortunate to be born into an avant-garde family.
Unconscious conditioning …
Even though that’s the case, it’s impressive how much unconscious conditioning still lingers in me. I saw that I take after my mother and grandmothers, the devoted wives of Protestant ministers who were expected to serve their husbands and the congregation. And that’s what I learned, and I occasionally still automatically do! It’s not with the people of a church, but with my relating to my partner and the people around me.
Sometimes, the conditioning is apparent; often, it’s just a given, an underlying emotion or belief driving us to behave in specific ways and do certain things. “No man is an island,” or how one could say, “No Woman is an island.” I don’t know who said that, but it is true. We are all interconnected and related, influencing each other whether we want to or not.
Today, I read an article in “la Presse” newspaper in which a public female figure here in Québec talked about how, when she was young, not having children wasn’t something generally accepted in society. That’s why she had children. Today, she said it wouldn’t be so unusual anymore and not as negatively judged. This shows me how the awareness of conditioning shifts long-held beliefs.
Fortunately, things are changing between the sexes
That’s just one example of how things change for women to have more choices nowadays. Also, in the same newspaper, I read how it’s still common for women to do much more unpaid work at home and go into less-paid professions. Abuse and violence against women are still occurring and are current problems in our society, which, in comparison to many in Eastern countries, is already much more equal.
Where does this violence come from? Often from people who haven’t had resources, have been abused, and haven’t been cared for enough to develop and understand how to relate peacefully and lovingly.
How do we go beyond conditioning?
The good news is that this can be undone by receiving love, becoming conscious, and being open to letting go of all patterns and old hurts.
Lately, my path has confronted me with old childhood stories—perceptions of the baby and the little one that have shaped who I am today. By becoming aware of them, I can update these perceptions to my reality now as a grown-up with many resources and possibilities.
That’s why I love to offer you the opportunity to work with me. We build resources, become conscious of blockages to positive perceptions, and take care of old hurts that need to be allowed to be there so that we can let them go and open up to new ways of more joy, love, and laughter.
Here is my March resource: a mindfulness exercise to transform negative conditioning
I invite you to a mindfulness exercise to help you become more aware of your unconscious pattern as a woman or a man and choose new ways.
- Take some time, just for yourself. For about 20 minutes.
- Think about your current partner or a significant person of the opposite sex in your life. Now, choose a problem area in your relationship. See, feel the emotion that comes up when you think about the situation that has been difficult with this person.
- Stay with this emotion and allow yourself to feel it.
- Is it anger? Helplessness? Frustration? Sadness? Or some other emotion?
- Where do you feel it in your body, and how?
- Give it a number from 0 to 10. Zero: no feeling at all, 10: totally in the emotion.
- Now, without making an effort to think about it, allow yourself to go back in time to allow memories (they could be visual, emotional, or sensory) to come up where and when this feeling was there for the first time. Usually, it goes back to a childhood story. For some, it can come even as something from another life – if you believe in that.
- See the situation at that moment; feel it. If it feels overwhelming, bring in the adult you are now. As an adult, you can take care of many things; you have support in many ways and are able to deal with many things. Bring this adult to this situation. Help the child in your past in a way that it needed help. It may have needed protection, someone to hold it, someone who explains, someone who cares; whatever it needed, give it to your little self.
- See, feel, and experience how having your adult self-help starts changing/transforming what happened. Don’t force anything. Stay with your loving presence and support your past “I” as it needed it.
- You may see the child growing up, or at a given moment, this child wants to play or relax. Whatever it is, give it the time it needs to complete what it needs to do.
- Once you feel that (some) peace is there, you can come back with your awareness of the here and now in the present.
- Finally, think about the problematic situation of the beginning. How do you feel about it now? How does it feel in your body? Does it still have the same charge from 0 to 10?
Write me!
I would be happy to read about your experience with this mindfulness exercise.
Also, if you can’t do it all alone (because that was the child’s experience and that was too much for the little one), I love accompanying you on this healing journey and supporting you in any way you need with all the tools I have learned in the last 35 years I’ve been on my healing path.
Contact me for a discovery phone call or session
Contact me for a session or an introductory phone call to see if and how I can help you at 514-296-7877, or you can also reach me through WhatsApp since these sessions can be done live in person or through video conference.
