By Lori Blumenstein-Bott, LMSW

As a therapist I know how important it is to continue to grow personally and professionally. Through self-study and mental health education we are able to continuously reexamine ourselves through our life. This is also a major cornerstone at PsychAssets to assure that we are able to bring to our clients the best version of ourselves as practitioners. Today, I had one of those examination moments…maybe it resonates with you too!

I finally decided to take a virtual yoga class. Yes, it does coincide with the New Year…

The first class was fine – nothing exceptional but certainly a beginning back to doing something I loved for a long time. I had stopped and started over the years due to injury or work but this last break was really neither. I was different and part of me could not reconcile that how I moved through the class and the poses felt uncomfortable. This was what I told myself but it was really just what I could hear in my mind at the time, on the surface of something larger.

Today, I realized as I went through another class virtually, it was really judgment that was holding me back! I was not the same as when I began the practice: flexible, high stamina and open to the experience.

The concept of judgement spurred so many thoughts in me… and it comes up in much of the work with my clients as well. I work with them to unpack its origins and process things so that it can be understood in a larger context. As I began to look deeper into how judgement was affecting me, I had to wonder if at times I might miss that it permeates our lives like a cloud that floats in and out, not always related to earlier parts of our lives but where we are now or where we cannot fully see ourselves in this present moment.

So, today I open 2021 with what has come into my thoughts…not judging myself for the feeling but just letting it in! To be able to see the opportunity to begin with an open door to whatever is there already.

That is the key to self-study practice; it is ongoing, ever changing, ebbs and flows and waits for us to be ready.

So, I leave you today with a question… If Judgment is the beginning, does Shame step in to hold us? And is Shame the barrier that we must really look at more deeply?