The relationships we have with our bodies can get a little strange. I find it so weird, that the only place we have to live can be such a factor of torment, hatred and dissatisfaction (and yes, I am 100% guilty too).. We’ve learnt as a society to only love our body if it looks a certain way.
The past few months I’ve begun to notice some of my anguish about my body. Parts I don’t like or accept and constantly wish were different. It hadn’t quite clicked into place that what I needed was to learn to love the aspects of my body I didn’t like. It wasn’t about ignoring them, hating them or just being blase, growth was to come from learning to love them.
I never connected the dots that I even had a relationship with my body. I thought it was all about the internal relationship I had with myself, about the mind, the person. I disconnected the person that I am from my body. I realised that the next step in my journey was to integrate mind and body and let go of some of the fears that I was really gripping onto, I needed to heal – or at least learn to heal – my relationship with my body.
Acceptance is key
It’s funny to have to even say it, I’m 34, have had 2 children, spent my youth baking in the sun and have had a back injury the past 6 months that has prevented me from being as physical as I would normally be. All of that doesn’t matter.
I need to learn to accept the skin I’m in. So much energy going into wishing things were different, regret, loathing and for the most part, these are about things that I can’t fundamentally change. Yes, I’m sure my skin can improve and regenerate but the type of skin I have is set now, it isn’t going to change. So acceptance for me is to stop making it wrong and wish it was another way.
I’m currently learning to accept my body as it is, knowing that some things can still change and others can’t. It’s not easy and I haven’t come the full journey just yet, but I am willing to find a way to accept and hopefully eventually love all of my body, even the parts that make me cringe.
Living in the body
I have realised that a lot of my hatred has come from being so disconnected from my body. Our body shows us physical and emotional hurts, symptoms, subtle messages all the time and yet, often I am living up in my head, the disconnection is so real. I learnt that to avoid the discomfort that I feel in my body at times, I could break the circuit and go up into my head. I learnt to distract with habitual thinking patterns.
As I have learnt to master my mindset, it’s become crystal clear that the next step is full embodiment. Living in the body. To do so means to stop avoiding, stop disconnecting, embrace all of it.
I am very early on in this journey, for me it initially is a focus on being present, learning to accept my body and fully inhabiting it. This is a key area of work for me. 2019 is learning to accept all of me, mind, body and soul and find a way to truly integrate this way of living in my life. I hope to share more of this with you as I learn to heal my relationship with my body, I know that is possible.
Part of this journey is inner work, affirming, believing, part of this is physical practice and I am also starting yoga teacher training in March 2019 to further support me in this integration. I believe if my body is the only place I have to live, without it, there is no life, I want to learn to embrace it all, inhabit it fully and treat it as a temple – not just from a food level of what goes in but in a true relationship, deepening, intimate, loving, connected.
I fully believe I can heal this relationship with my body and I know you can too. Are you willing to come on the journey with me.