New Year's Explorations

Description

Do you know what 3 of the 10 most common New Year’s resolutions are?

• Lose weight
• Exercise
• Eat healthier

Every year, millions of people make their first act of a new year to focus on what’s wrong with their bodies. To make goals about how to shrink themselves to fit into societal ideas about what is healthy and what is attractive. These goals are often lofty and strict - go to the gym 5 times per week (from 0-2), do a Whole30 (from eating nothing like that), lose 50 pounds (which research shows doesn’t tend to happen in a sustainable way, almost ever). And then less than 8% of people stick with their resolutions, leaving the other 92% judging and shaming themselves for failing again.

We end each year focusing on what we think is wrong with ourselves, and start each year setting ourselves up for failure and shame and judgment.

When I think about this year, well, I think the only way to say it is that 2020 has been a hell of a year. As in, it’s felt like hell for most of us. We’ve been isolated, we’ve been faced with death everywhere, we’ve seen hints of a possible coup, we’ve had uprisings for racial justice, so much trauma, and a kick in the gut when it comes to the courts. So when I think about how I want to end this year and start the next one, I can’t even fathom wanting to add any more shame or guilt or judgment to my plate.

In 2020, haven’t we all suffered enough already? Do we need to set ourselves up for any more pain?

What if, even for just this transition to a new year, we chose to celebrate and enjoy what and who we already are?

With that in mind, I invite you to join me to spend 6 weeks diving into self-love for the new year in my new email course, New Year’s Explorations. Let’s move into 2021 together by focusing on pleasure, and joy, and beauty. Let’s celebrate the amazingness of these bodies that have carried our heart and our mind and our spirit through one of the hardest years on record.

In New Year’s Explorations we’ll tune back in to our bodies and our hearts and our desire. Each week, you’ll get an email from me with a focus of the week and ideas for exercises to bring that focus into your life. Exercise options will cover everything from reading and writing to conversation starters, activities, games, art/crafting, dance . . . basically any way to engage with your mind, body, spirit, and heart. We’ll have space to grieve and space to celebrate, time to play and time to learn, and a container for all the pain, pleasure, desire, or anything else that comes up for you.

This is also a hugely non-judgmental course! You can do all of the exercises, none of them, create your own - basically, I want to help you spend 6 weeks building the habit of loving on yourself in whatever ways work for you.

“But what about change and growth?! Aren’t those important?”

Yes! They are super important! However, we tend to be LESS able to make positive changes and grow when we feel shame. Shame tends to drive us to our most ingrained coping skills, often to skills based on numbing our painful feelings or punishing ourselves for our failures. When we laser focus on our faults, we end up drained and tired; if we think of our emotional and energetic reserves as a cup, guilt and shame and judgment drill huge holes in the bottom of our cup, not just draining what’s already there, but making it harder to fill it back up.

By spending this time loving on yourself, we can start patching those holes and getting that cup filled back up. Once your cup is full, you’ll find it’s much easier to determine what you actually want to change AND to follow through on changing it.

New Year’s Explorations is an email course that will start with a live kickoff call with me on December 30^th. In this call, we’ll take a look at where we’re starting and where we want to go over these 6 weeks. Every Wednesday for 6 weeks, starting the 30^th, you’ll get an email from me with that week’s focus and your weekly exploration exercises. Do as many or as few as feels good for you - definitely don’t use these as an opportunity to beat yourself up!

At the end of our 6 week, on February 10^th, we’ll have a live wrap up call where we look back at where we started and see where we are now. We’ll celebrate our wins and give ourselves grace for any perceived missteps or failings, and we’ll decide what we want to do moving forward from this focused time.

FAQ

1. Why 6 weeks? On average, it takes 6-9 weeks to form a habit. Plus, there are right around 6 weeks between the start of the new year and Valentine’s Day, a day we’re meant to be pouring love into others, so spending that time focusing on filing up our own love cups will help us have more to pour
2. Why emails? We’re all so so busy and most of us are getting so screen fatigued, so I wanted to create something that you can access whenever it works for you. This way, you can slot it into your schedule whenever it works for you and come back to it again when you need to
3. What if I can’t make the live calls? I’ll be recording both calls and putting them up where you can access them anytime, so even if you can’t make the call in real time you can still listen to it.
4. Do I have to be queer/kinky/non-monogamous/allosexual/LGBTQ/whatever to do this course? No! Everyone is welcome in this course! There will be some agreements for the live call to make sure it’s a safer space/brave space for all who attend, mainly about confidentiality and respect of others (no racist, sexist, ableist, fatphobic, etc. language allowed)
5. What if I don’t do any of the explorations? You are the expert of your own experience, so far be it from me to tell you how to engage with this course! In general, the more you’re able to integrate the themes into your life, the more likely it is you’ll be successful at making this kind of self-love a habit. But even just giving yourself space to think about it is likely to be beneficial. We all process things differently, and sometimes we need to plant a seed and give it time before it’s ready to sprout. You can also always return any time you’d like to do any of the explorations you didn’t before.
6. What if I can’t afford the $95 price? All of my courses have a pay what you can option, and I do genuinely mean pay what you can. I like to think of this course as a gift to yourself, and if all you have available for that is a few dollars, then that’s good for me. I don’t want anyone to miss out on this course for lack of funds, so I promise you’re not going to be “insulting” me with any suggested amount and you won’t be turned away for lack of funds.
7. What if I want a friend to do it with me? Forward them the link! Since it’s pay what you can, they can go ahead and sign up too.
8. When can I enroll? I’ll have sign ups open from December 14^th until January 5^th
9. Why can’t I sign up after January 5^th? Since this is really intended to be a journey we’re all moving through together at roughly the same time, I don’t want folks to end up too far behind when they get started, so I’m closing enrollment right before the second email goes out.