Integrating Sexual Shame & Stepping into Our Spring
...reflections, journal prompts, ritual ideas, and a trauma-informed yoga practice for the full moon in Scorpio
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” - Anaïs Nin
Today is the full moon in Scorpio.
Like so many of us, I’ve been sifting through a lot internally. To navigate the stress, I’ve been taking a lot of walks around parts of Seattle and just pausing to admire various trees and flowers along the way. The tulips, the magnolias, the cherry blossoms, all with the backdrop of the snowcapped mountains and impossible green of the moss and the tree leaves – I don’t think I’ve ever been in a place that has such a gorgeous spring.
There’s a piece of me that still longs for the darkness and the rain and the long, cozy evenings because that feels safe, but there’s a piece of me that is so incredibly enamored with how green and gorgeous and full of life it is here now that spring has arrived. That wants to step into this joy, this sense of warmth and hope.
In some ways, I feel like this mirrors the way that we can get stuck in shame, especially when it comes to sexuality.
Shame keeps us small. As my friend Alejandra speaks about in the conversation I had with her for thecuriousclit podcast, it keeps us stuck in cycle of self-doubt and low self-worth. It makes us feel like we’re not worthy or lovable.
It can keep us from experiencing the joy and fullness of what it would be like to show up as our authentic, messy selves and also makes it so we have to mask parts of ourselves from those with whom we are close to. While we think we are protecting these connections that we have been hiding ourselves from, sometimes we are actually hurting them.
But even though shame can be so painful, we often choose to stay in it. It doesn’t feel good, but it’s also…safe. Dare I say even cozy. It keeps us from having to confront the sides of ourselves we might be scared to see, and it can help us distance ourselves from a large rupture in connection that we often fear will come with sharing the things we are ashamed about.
Sometimes though, whether we’re ready or not, spring arrives, and we are confronted with a choice. We can either stay stuck in the shame — or we can do the work to integrate it.
This process certainly isn’t easy. In her post about this full moon, astrologist and writer Jeanna Kadlec says, “Transformation is not pretty, and the process of confronting our most tender, vulnerable hungers is not a pretty one.”
Even though it’s not pretty, it’s sometimes necessary. We might reach that point where, as Nin pointed out, staying tight in the bud feels more painful than the risks we must take in order to blossom.
With the April 8th solar eclipse, the Jupiter/Uranus conjunction that happened over the weekend, and today’s full moon in Scorpio, I think we’re getting a lot of support from the universe to step into our power and to break the cycles of shame that might be holding us back from feeling safe in our bodies and embodying our radiant sexual selves.
For this full moon practice, I’ve included some journal prompts around sexual shame, a thirty-minute grounded, trauma-informed yoga class, and some ideas for making this into a ritual. If you’re into astrology, you might explore doing this ritual sometime over the next few days to tap into the planetary energies, but if you find this in the future or just aren’t into astrology, you can do it at any time.
As always, everything in this practice is optional - take what works for you and leave the rest <3
*Please note that this work can be quite heavy. I am not a therapist, nor does this work replace the work that you might do in therapy. If you need extra support, I encourage you to find a sex positive therapist that can help you navigate what comes up.