I had a client who, during our conversations, kept hiding her feet. Especially when we broached difficult topics. As I questioned her, she eventually confessed.
‘I hate my feet. They are so masculine. They remind me of my father’s.’
So she never wore sandals, and took great lengths to hide her feet. So, hiding her feet was a way to hide from me, and the world. Hating her feet was a way to hate her father.
So, I told her… ‘You can’t move any further in the healing until learn to love your feet.’ I saw her reel in confusion. She’d never considered this.
A judgment about any part of ourselves is a judgement about the whole. You cannot truly say ‘I love you except’… because is that really love? It is conditional.
We need to practice shifting that to ‘I love you exactly as you are’, and begin that with ourselves.
So I had her speak to her feet. Any body part where there are cells, consciousness, flowing energy, can be connected to in this way, spoken to, heard.
I saw the energetic shift in her feet, and her whole being as she apologized, made amends, heaped gratitude upon her feet for having carried her through life; for having moved her through years of dancing without every faltering.
Eventually, we reached the catharsis. The experience of the reconnection. Her voice softened. I love you, she said, in tears, to her feet and also to the rest of her body. It was complete.
And as she stood, we looked down, astounded at the shift. The arches were higher, the toes were spread, they looked more like ‘her’ feet;’. They weren’t her father’s anymore; she had reclaimed them, and they had changed accordingly. We are fluid beings. Where we are ‘caught’, it is in our minds.
She sent me a picture a few weeks later of her feet. She had gotten a pedicure, and bought her first sandals. I think she even posted them on social media, as a self love practice. She now took pride in caring for her feet, as a symbolic gesture, to remind her of how hard she used to be on herself.
(as an aside: Soon after reclaiming her feet, she met the love of her life).
I love checking in with her now, because whenever I do, she’s even happier than she was before.
Where can you soften? What can you reclaim?
In Truth,
Steven Budden
Budden Enterprises