Body Self Consciousness

The experience of having some part of me made into a really big deal like that, and as if like the human being of me no longer could exist in the same way because I had these breasts and it meant something different, like it made me be different to other people. That had an impact for me and my body. Thank you for tuning in your consciousness to the Naked Human podcast. I want to acknowledge your presence and what it took for you to be here today listening.

My intention for you is that you receive what you came here for and. Find what you didn't know you needed. This podcast is about what it means to be a human being and what it really means to be naked and how our relationship with Mother Nature has the power to heal us. My name is Carrie Cott and I'm a new to nature photographer, licensed physician of Chinese medicine, plant guide and wild woman embodiment mentor.

I help women heal from sexual trauma, awaken their authentic voice, and distinguish between fear and intuition so they can be led by their deep feminine heart. I bring to life in this podcast my own internal wisdom. I will only share what I've learned and experienced on a personal level. As you listen, I encourage you to take from this what you need and just trash the rest. So happy listening. Hello. Hello beautiful spirit.

Today we're gonna talk about self consciousness and nudity and I just want to preface this with I'm feeling super tender today. And maybe this is just the like most beautiful thing to speak into for this episode, for this now moment and self consciousness. And you know, I'm speaking about it as it relates to nudity. And if you know, you've been listening, you know that everything translates to everything. Or at least that's my perspective.

So one of the common things that shows up for women in being naked is feeling self conscious. And self consciousness is this is my language. There's. I don't have any correct definition here, Google search or dictionary definition on this. Self consciousness is the experience of judging self over an appearance, a behavior, some whatever. The thing is about ourselves. There's a judgment of ourselves for some way that we exist.

And when it comes to the physical body, being self conscious of being naked, of what we look like is a judgment based on what we look like. So there's a judgment. This thing isn't fill in the blank. So maybe my breasts aren't big enough, my butt is too big. I have cellulite, I have a dimple on my butt. My right blessed. Exactly blessed breast. My right breast is bigger than my left breast. My bottom lip is Smaller than my top lip. I have four gray hairs.

I mean like whatever the, the judgment about these things are, there's, there's like, it's not good enough, it's not perfect. And there's these like memory connections to things of why we have judgment. Either we watched something, we watched a show and somebody in the show said something and about this woman's body and they were judged. And it doesn't have to just be about the gender of a body that you have being judged.

It's witnessing the judgment of bodies that can also be witnessed through our parents, through our peers, through hearing things. It's just something that we've witnessed a judgment of. So there's the experience of taking on the self consciousness, the judgment by witnessing them happening to others. I feel like that's such a good reminder that not everything that has imprinted our beliefs and how we're interacting with the world comes in direct connection towards us now.

It's there because it's part of our experience and we can witness these things happening with other people and then we internalize that and make a judgment about what that means. We bring that into our awareness, into our life, and then that has an impact in how we relate to others. So how my, my mom and dad interact with each other had impacted for a really long time what I believe relationships were supposed to be like and what they, they weren't and what was me and what wasn't.

So I was witnessing those two beings interact with each other. And then there's the direct experience where we experience and have experienced things with others who've maybe made comments or suggestions or what, you know, said things to us about our bodies. And this has been recently in my awareness. I've been doing some private pelvic and womb work with this incredible human being. Touches my heart.

And I just got really presenced to presence in the way of like, you know, feeling it differently within myself, within my body, of the experience that I had going through puberty when I came back to school and I quote, unquote, had breasts. And for me, the experience of having breasts wasn't just like, I woke up one day and like, boom, I have breasts. You know, not like a, a mushroom kind of like pops out and you're like, whoa, mushrooms are here for me.

For me, it was just a moment by moment experience. I was, you know, they didn't just appear one day. They, they were appearing and they were growing. This part of me was expanding and growing. And when I went to school after a summer break, everybody There, I don't know about everybody, but people there, my, my peers there, you know, it was like, boom, mushroom popped. Carrie has breasts. And you know, it was like a thing.

It was something that was noticeably talked about, expressed about my body, about me, and it just changed things. So there becomes this internal experience about my body, my breasts especially. And what I discovered in my, my recent womb work is it impacted what it means for me to be a woman, feeling, being a woman. And I didn't, I didn't, I want to say I didn't want that experience in the way that it was, but it happened.

And the experience of having some part of me made into a really big deal like that. And as if like the human being of me no longer could exist in the same way because I had these breasts and it meant something different. Like, it made me be different to other people. That had an impact for me and my body. So it had had two impacts. An impact of like being sexualized in that way. And then later on in my life, this experience of like, wanting to tone it down to hide that part of me.

So there was this like, part of my journey where I was just like, with, you know, having sexual trespasses and like, I. I went into this space of like, well, if my body's going to be used like this, then I will at least be the one in control of having it be used in this way.

And so I like, gave into all that, like, discord and uncomfortability and, you know, like using, I guess this best word, like using my body in that way of like, here's my body, fine, if these things are going to happen, then here you go, world. Here you go, men. And then it shifted when I started to reclaim myself. And I don't know if reclaim is actually the greatest word for that in this moment, because I'm discovering something different about reclaiming my, my beingness, my body, myself.

But when I started to bring it back home to like, wait a second, all this shit's been happening and I have to like, gather myself, it. It shifted. It shifted from like, here's my body, here you go, men. To like the complete, like a pendulum swing, to the opposite of like, hiding, hiding my body keeping things tucked in, definitely not having, wearing things where, like, my breasts are showing and just really wanting to hide and tone it down, keep everything hidden.

Because then, you know, it can be safe that way. Can actually just be that whole opposite spectrum of the equation. Again, the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction and tucking and hiding for safety and to bring in that word reclaim. For me now the pendulum is much more moving, flowing in the center and I'm discovering new balance, new harmony, unification within myself, integration of these, these parts, these experiences.

And so it's like reclaiming isn't about going in the opposite direction of the pain or the discomfort and the way that it had been expressing itself. It's about unifying into what's absolutely true for me and bringing home these parts of me to be apart. Not as a self protection mechanism, as a blossoming and discovery of what is my ultimate truth. So all this to share on. The self consciousness really has all these tendrils of roots connected to all sorts of things.

So when we're being presented with being naked, whether that's with a lover, casually with a friend, or coming into a retreat, and things come up about our bodies, about the self consciousness of what we look like in our bodies. What our bodies look like is because they're rooted and connected to something deeper. And I get that like, or I have it that there's a part that's like, yeah, but like, come on, there's this like standard that still exists about like what my naked body should look like.

And I mean, come on, how can you tell me that this is actually beautiful? I still have those spaces within me where it's where I might look at my body and there's that story that's like, there's no way that this is beautiful. Nothing in this world tells me that this is beautiful. Ouch, ouch. That self consciousness of like there's no way that my breasts are so beautiful now.

They've changed, I've changed, I've done these things, had these experiences in my life that have changed this part of my body. And it's a really real experience, right? It's a really real experience to be like, there's no way this is beautiful. I can't see it. I don't have access to see that beauty. So I get it, I really get it. And it is possible to shift that. Maybe there's experiences with your body that have already shifted where you've opened and discovered beauty that wasn't once there.

Maybe there's parts of your body that you once judged and you don't even think about that in the way that you used to. The place of connecting to this and having a different experience with your body is in the roots and is connecting to this part of you that's been in pain, that is expressing itself as self consciousness of being self conscious is because there's you imprinted in a moment in time when something happened.

There's always an initial moment and then there's typically many, many moments following those initial moments that just solidify the belief that this part of you is something to be concerned about, is something to be shamed and hidden. And whatever you can connect to as it relates to a root is valuable. Even if you don't know if it's the ultimate route or not. It doesn't matter.

The important part piece in coming home to yourself and being able to shift the self conscious part of you is about connecting to any layer that you can, any part of you that is ready and willing to be looked at, to be loved. So if I have a judgment called I'm self conscious about my breasts and I discover and have this connecting piece related and really connecting on this deeper way and getting like whole, holy shit.

I hadn't really like felt and been with that experience of being a 13 year old girl who now has breasts and what, how that changed my experience with, with boys, with the male species. In that moment then I have access to something different for myself. And it's about being with that 13 year old girl and allowing, allowing the feelings, the emotions that she stuffed away to survive in the environment, to be felt, to connect with her, to bring her home.

And if you've heard the word soul retrieval, this is soul retrieval. You're bringing parts of you home, you're integrating into your being, parts of you. So it's like you're walking along the path and boom, this thing happens. There's 13 year old, you stuff things down and then you leave that there and then you keep walking along your path. You're in, but the path is, is that you're actually dragging these pieces along the way behind you.

But you've left them, they're behind you, you've left them there. And so a whole part of you got left.

And so the soul retrieval, the connecting to the root is actually returning to this moment in time within yourself and opening your arms, allowing the space for that experience to complete itself and the completion of it can look like, and be like anything for anyone. So there's not a specific way that you're supposed to do this. It happens by, you know, doing our work, showing up, having conversations, working with people we're guided to work with, going to events.

It can look like a moment sitting outside with yourself and visualizing this. It can happen in any way.

But you're, you're, you're literally opening your arms to create this space for this Fragment this piece of you that was left and abandoned to actually have room to like imagine if your arms are open and this part of you is actually able to like has space to come into your body, into your heart space and like maybe even like the image of a little, a little child like coming in and like nestling in your chest. And it's not just a nestling, it's literally like they melt into you.

So it's this part of you that's coming in and through, allowing whatever needs to be allowed, whatever needs to be felt in your body, whatever sensations need to happen, whatever sounds need to emanate from your body, whatever emotions need to flow. That's the re introduction, the integration of that part of you to come home. And so that no longer becomes fragmented, no longer is separate. And you'll be able to acknowledge like, yeah, I remember that this happened, this is what I experienced.

And it won't have an emotional visceral charge and it will forever change your trajectory in your life. So whatever has been tape looping happening in your life based on the story that you experienced, it will literally shift how things happen in your life. You'll be able to receive differently. Things that maybe you've been wanting to happen will start happening because there's an a root alteration. So self consciousness is a deeper wound.

It's. And only you will know what that's connected to for you. So if you're thinking about a particular part of your body that you're self conscious about, I would suggest opening the conversation with that part of your body. Hips, legs, womb, eyes, hair, whatever part of this. Just like opening that space to engage a conversation. Like just have a conversation like you would with a friend of yours and you can touch that part of your body just to bring more awareness there. Just same here.

And even if you don't know what to say, be like, I don't really know what to say here. And I want to connect, I want to discover what's really here. Whatever I need to discover in whatever way that has me actually deepen my relationship with you as a part of me. I want to feel love in this part of my body, as part of my being. And I don't have all the answers about it.

I just know that I yearn to connect, to be present and then say whatever you know, just say whatever's there in you that needs to give voice and creating openings for guidance and solutions and wisdom and awareness is super helpful in this space. Saying my intention is to connect deeper. Show me, show me how that guide me. I'm listening. Please help me.

Like, whatever's there for you, just allowing that open space for this part of you, this part of your consciousness, this part of your body, your body's consciousness to engage. And one of the powerful tools of wisdom is, for me, it's like, when in doubt, just ask a question. The question will move the energy. And I see it as creating an opening. It's like opening a door. Like, hey, I need some help. I'm not sure why, but, like, give you permission to interrupt what's happening here to guide me.

Creates an opening. Because there's a difference between, like, yeah, I'd really like this to change. I really like this to change. I'd really like to feel different and, like, actively engaging. Like, whoa, hey, buddy, I'm. I'm here. Let's do this. You know, so. And what just popped in is a reminder that we all have these. We all have these experiences.

No matter how evolved we become, no matter how tapped in and connected and aware and intuitive we are, there's just this endless journey of life called expansion that requires us to constantly shed the old to receive the new. So we're in this together. You're not alone. Definitely not alone. And if this episode has impacted you in any very particular way, please share with me your story. My email lines are always open, and until next time, we are complete.

Thank you for tuning your consciousness to this episode of the Naked Human. However you find yourself, whether it's relieved, enlightened, trouble, trigger, or as if the past minutes were a complete waste of your time, it's perfect. Be present to it and allow it to be the medicine you need. I welcome your feedback and heartfelt reflections of how this episode impacted you.

You can share with me online@thenakedhumanpodcast.com and if you're feeling called for a more personal, personalized experience into your nakedness, I invite you to join our community of wild women in person or online. You can find more specifics at the naked human podcast.com and until next time, bye.