The Unshaming Way
WEEKEND WORKSHOP
with David Bedrick
Apr. 26 &/or Apr. 27th | London
ABOUT THE EVENT:
Location: Birkbeck College, University of London
Saturday, 26th of April: 10am – 5pm
Sunday, 27th of April: 11am – 4pm
This weekend is suitable for mental health professionals as it provides a 12-hour CPD certificate. If you are a mindfulness teacher, therapist, healer and are working with those affected by issues around shame, internalized oppression or trauma or want to learn more about this vast topic for your own growth, this event is for you.
What is Unshaming?
Most of us are, consciously or unconsciously, imprisoned by shame.
When you try to silence or change parts of your personality because they’re “too much”...
When you wish for a different body because you believe yours isn’t attractive enough…
When your inner voice abuses you with words like “I’m not smart enough,” “I’m too ugly,” “I’m a failure,” “I’m a procrastinator,” “I’m undisciplined,” “I self-medicate”...
When you hide, self-censor, and reject yourself before others have a chance to…
When you wonder, “What will people think of me?”...
When you constantly try to heal, fix, or change parts of yourself…
All of these are ways shame can have a hold over your life.
Over the course of our lives, layers and layers of shame build up based on ideas about who we’re supposed to be. It comes from external voices – your family, society – but as a child, you internalize it. And all of those “shoulds” become a wall that separates you from who you truly are: your gifts, your purpose, the essential aliveness you were born with.
In this way, shame prevents you from fully knowing yourself and sharing your gifts with the world. It keeps you small and invisible, afraid to fully explore the parts of your soul that are yearning to be brought forward and celebrated.
When you learn how to Unshame, it feels like meeting yourself for the first time.
The result is a life where you are liberated from judgment, connected to your inner intelligence, freer to express your true self, and able to create YOUR own path that is aligned with your soul purpose and the unique medicine you are here to share with the world.
Unshaming is one of the most impactful and fast-working techniques available to help you understand the true value and intelligence you have to share.
ABOUT THE TRAINING
In this training, you will forge a new, loving and compassionate relationship with your authentic feelings by addressing shame at the root and learning techniques to divest it from your consciousness.
You will see how shame pervades the way you look at your own development, how it leads you to try and heal yourself of yourself. You may even be shocked to learn how rare it is to be looked at with Unshaming eyes - eyes that delve fiercely and gently into what it’s really like to be you.
When you Unshame, you are nurturing the garden of your healing by allowing the seeds of your true purpose to flower within you.
Every “bad” thing you see within yourself is a seed with profound potential to blossom into something wonderful.
That means the things you most desire to change about yourself. Your depression, your body image, your insomnia, your relationship problems, your codependence, your migraines, your parenting…
Each of these things is a seed inside you.
When you learn how to witness them without shame, you will find that they become the most beautiful flowers in your garden.
Shame is how you face what disturbs you. Shame twists your healing path, leading you to turn against yourself, wishing you were someone else, or simply believing that something is wrong with you.
But there is another option: Facing your difficulties as if there is a deep message and meaning in them, as if they are offering doorways to the shadow’s gold, as if they are invitations to embracing your wholeness like never before.
You will leave Unshamed with new eyes and a new relationship with yourself.
There will be 3 parts of this training over the two days:
Day 1:
I. Introduction to Shame
In part 1, we will define shame and elucidate its meaning. You will have the opportunity to experience unshaming firsthand as David takes student questions and guides you through unshaming your difficulties and feelings in real time.
You’ll understand how shame shows up in your own narrative, which is the vital first step to welcoming greater self-awareness, love, and compassion into your life.
II. Unshaming Your Feelings:
Deepening Your Relationship with Your Body/Soma
Our feelings are a living world within us. Many of us were shamed for our emotions as children, especially if you’re highly sensitive or people in your life told you to “toughen up, ” or if you had a powerful voice and expression and silenced, censored, or muted.
In part 2, we will work with the intelligence of your emotions, including how they show up in the body and how you can identify feelings that have been stifled by shame. You will learn to identify how shame fits into your narrative around emotions, so you can release it. You will practice the specific skill, through somatic experiencing, of Unshaming feelings that create difficulty for you.
When you unshame your feelings, you will open a doorway to the intelligence they are here to share with you.
Day 2:
III. Unshaming Inner Criticism and Internalized Oppression:
Abuse and Trauma
Shame has its origin in the painful experiences we have when we are young. When you are denied, dismissed or gaslighted at a young age, you internalize these ways of witnessing yourself. That is to say, you learn to treat yourself internally as you were treated as a child AND learn how to deny, dismiss, and gaslight your inner experience.
The result: You fall prey to destructive inner criticism, which lives in the shadows of your mind, under the radar of your awareness. In essence, the abuse continues internally, AND you remain unconscious of it and, therefore, don’t address it, stop it, or care for yourself properly.
In part 3, you will learn drama-therapeutic techniques to begin processing the inner dialogue (this is similar to one of the central tenets and approaches of internal family systems).
You will work on your deepest responses to these forms of abuse and criticism, develop your power to defend yourself from these abuses, and develop compassion for yourself.
REGISTRATION DETAILS:
You can register for both days or either Saturday or Sunday on their own.
Prices are in USD.
SATURDAY ONLY
April 26th - 10am-5pm
$168 USD (£130 GBP)
SUNDAY ONLY
April 27th - 11am-4pm
$104 USD (£80 GBP)
SATURDAY & SUNDAY (standard price)
April 26th & April 27th
$272 USD (£210 GBP)
SATURDAY & SUNDAY (student price)
April 26th & April 27th
$194 USD (£150 GBP)
LOCATION
Location: Birkbeck College, University of London
Address: Malet St, London WC1E 7HX, UK
In addition to the in-person weekend workshop in London, I am also teaching a free Unshaming Way Webinar on Zoom...
Join me for this FREE webinar in collaboration with MNPC (Mindfulness Network for People of Colour)
DETAILS:
When: Sunday, April 6th at 7pm British time (11am Pacific time)
Where: on Zoom
IN THIS WEBINAR YOU WILL...
Discover what unshaming is + why it is the key to your deeper healing, self-love, and the unfolding of your gifts and “medicine."
Learn about the root causes of shame in your life so you can connect your early experiences of abuse and trauma with shame’s power in your life.
Experience the unshaming process in real time. (My students say that my modeling of UnShaming can be an eye opening and life changing moment.)
Most essentially: Get a deep and nourishing taste of my paradigm and medicine.
MEET YOUR FACILITATOR:
David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW, is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He was on the faculty for the University of Phoenix and the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland and is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies where he offers facilitation training to deepen the skills and awareness of healers as well as workshops for individuals to further their own personal development. David’s embodied way of teaching is far more than informational, students are often brought to tears and face to face with their beauty, power, life path and soul.
David’s passion for studying shame arose from his childhood, growing up with a father who used fists and belts to express his rage and a mother who coped by denying and gaslighting his experience. Over thirty years of research, teaching and working with individuals awakened his heart and mind to how the dominant healing paradigm pathologizes people - seeing our sufferings and ills as something to fix and cure, instead of messages to be understood and invitations to deepen our relationships with ourselves and the world around us. In this way, David understands our difficulties to be “dreams” - invitations to insight, soul, and the divine unfolding of our lives.
David writes for Psychology Today and is the author of three books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology and Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change. His new book is You Can’t Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women’s Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption.
His newest book, The Unshaming Way, was published by North Atlantic books in November 2024.