How we feel about our bodies
It was a warm summer’s day and my skin wanted nothing on it. To walk through the day with just my flesh, sweat dripping, messy hair.
To have my sun caress my skin, a little cool breeze too, to lay outside in all of the beauty of the heat. Soaking up all of the sensations that summer brings.
I looked down at my body laying on a towel. The round mass of my stomach that looked like it was sitting on me, the bright white skin at the top of my thighs flecked with the branches of purple and blue of veins, the large puffiness of unexercised arms and I felt such an intense disgust and hatred for all that I saw that it was almost like I disappeared into a hole in my mind of utter wretchedness.
I heaved a sigh – a sigh that felt the weight of all of my feelings about my body, and I just wanted to detach from everything I’ve ever thought and felt about this being that carries me around.
Oh why Di, oh why.
The errant hair.
The juicy flesh.
The aging soft skin.
The parts of me that have been burnt over and over, that now look like a worn alligator skin
I looked in the mirror and wonder – how does it come to this?
How we humans, who have so much to cope with, so much to learn and be in these lives, so many challenges like earning a living, looking after loved ones, dealing with illness and death, holding on to sanity as the world spins with tragedies and madness – why, oh why do we have such a hard time with our bodies?
It always seemed illogical to me that with all that we face in our lives – our bodies seem to cause so much extra unnecessary suffering.
So much shame, grief, despair, sadness.
Why should I hate my body?
Why should it hold so much shame?
My body is no less or more than any other body. No better, no worse. Just a body.
But here’s why it brings so much emotion to our lives.
Our bodies contain the imprint of our history, our experiences, our emotions and our traumas.
They are the carriers of memory. The receptacles of intense emotions. The rememberers of all that has been said and done to us.
They were there to absorb the emotions of humiliating experiences
To feel the strain of desire that was unrequited
To absorb the fear of threat, of illness, of pain
To remember the thoughts of how other people feel about our bodies
To absorb the shock of times of unsafety
To hold all the emotions we struggle to see and feel
To shut down or run away or explode or please our way out of danger
So many things are held in our body.
So many emotions.
A waking moment-by-moment history of all that we have encountered, felt and experienced.
And so it makes sense that when we think about our bodies we can feel disconnected, disgusted, sad, fearful…..
We can feel confused by lack of desire, by the disgust and hatred we feel about our bodies, and immense despair about how our bodies have evolved.
When we want to change our relationship with our bodies we must first start here – with all that it is carrying.
We must offer deep tenderness, deep empathy, deep support.
We must treat it like it’s the very best thing in our lives (because, if we are being logical, it is.) A friend, a lover, a provider, a keeper of life, a maker of things…
We must learn what it needs. What it deeply truly needs (acceptance? Rest? Adventure? Pleasure? Orgasms? Safety?)
But these journeys towards love with our bodies are not always easy. Because no one showed us how.
How to hold ourselves in empathy.
To tell us – insist upon! – how worthy we are of empathy and acceptance.
How worthy we are of LOVE.
When we haven’t felt the sensations of being held in unconditional love, unconditional support and safety – it’s very hard to feel unconditional love, down to a cellular level, in who we are.
It’s hard, sometimes impossible, to not feel judgment creeping in and shouting at us from the cheap seats in the back.
But what is so beautiful about us humans – so life-affirming and hopeful – is that we can learn ANYTHING.
We can learn to move away from that incessant judgemental mind, that tears us apart. We can learn how to react to shame and disgust in ways that quiets them and not inflames them.
We can learn to connect to our bodies and learn how to hear what it is actually asking for attention.
We can bring love and acceptance to our bodies when we know how.
We can cultivate an empathy for ourselves that makes changing habits, eating better, having free and wild sex, easier, simplier, a more natural state of being for us.
We can learn how to have an easier, more joyful relationship with our bodies. To learn how to celebrate all that we have been through, and bring more pleasure, fun, ease, joy and excitement in our lives.
And we do this through learning to hold, see, feel and heal everything that we have carried.
When we learn how to work with the shame, sadness, fear or any other emotion that has stayed trapped in our bodies for decades.
We can learn to be with our bodies when they fail us, break and age – in a space of love and healing.
In September I will be taking people on a journey of love, empathy & tenderness around our bodies.
On this journey over 4 weeks I want to share some powerful techniques and practises that will help you process what you hold, and help you connect in a much more tender, kinder and friendlier way with your body.
On this journey I want to bring into the light how you are feeling about your body and bring healing and emotional processing to all that you carry.
It is not through anger, through fear or through disgust that we create loving, peaceful relationships with our bodies.
It is not through force or control.
It is not through punishment or pain.
The purpose of this is to be on a tender-hearted journey to bring us into a gentler, kinder, more loving and accepting relationship with ourselves.
To learn the tools of working through how we feel about the bodies we inhabit.
To bring us into a relationship without bodies that is a union of togetherness, not a war against the bodies we inhabit.
We will use cutting edge brain science to build practices, process emotions and rewire how we feel about our bodies.
Our bodies are so often last on the list – or perhaps they are never on the list at all.
They are there to perform for us, to make us look better, different, hotter. We might be in charge of our bodies but how we feel about them dominates our daily experiences.
And so to feel free in ourselves and our bodies, we must heal all that we carry.
I would love you to be part of the beautiful journey to cultivate a loving relationship with your body.
Love to you, always,
Diana
