Every now and then, I teach a 4 week class called “Body Sense, Body Magic”. The class involves creating a better understanding of and connection with your body, and becoming more aware of the effect of other peoples’ energies, and outside influences on your ability to enjoy and be comfortable in your body – all of this with as much fun and light-hearted energy as possible! Bodies can be very serious!
I was thinking back to one of these classes recently and, in particular, an exercise I gave the students that involved writing on one piece of paper a list of all the things they disliked about their body, and on another piece of paper all the things they liked about their body. One student immediately said “Well, there’s nothing I like about my body”.
Her statement was interesting to me because what she was really speaking to or addressing was the judgment and invalidation of her body she had experienced from other people all her life.
It was a classic example of how much negativity we are constantly responding to and running through our space in the form of thoughts, emotions and pictures or images – much of which we are unconscious to.
Take a moment and think about how often a thought goes through your head of how you could have done something better; that you shouldn’t have acted like that; how you are not as attractive as that person you just passed, you are not as intelligent or well-read as your neighbor, co-worker or assistant; that you just managed to put your foot in your mouth once again!
Over time these negative thoughts and voices build up, weighing heavier and heavier until it becomes a challenge to greet each new day with any semblance of joy or enthusiasm.
None of us are perfect! The human body is an incredibly intricate, sensitive and magnificent machine, and yet it’s as imperfect as it is perfect – vulnerable to fluctuations in energy, environmental and cultural vibrations, emotional tides, planetary shifts, continually growing and changing, at times messy and hard to control……
It is those idiosyncrasies and imperfections of ours that make us unique, give us character and set us apart from everyone else – and yet this in itself presents a quandary because, as human beings, we are naturally drawn to belong, to fit in…
Over the many years I have been healing and counseling, it has become more and more clear to me how practicing acceptance of who we are is essential to our overall health and wellness across the board – physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally.
This includes acknowledging and accepting those warts!
When we look below the surface of that unattractive wart, or image, we can begin to find the root or source of that negativity – most often a concept given to us by someone else.
Recognizing that those warts in fact belong to someone else – why else would they stand out so? – helps us begin the process of separating from those concepts, ridding ourselves of those perceived blights and accepting our imperfections as part of the beauty of growing and learning in a human body.
This, in turn, also allows us to more readily accept the uniqueness – those idiosyncrasies and imperfections – of each human being on this planet. So often, that which we resist or dislike about other people, reflects what we do not wish to see or own about ourselves.
Each of us has our own unique “story”!
If you would like to begin the journey towards loving yourself, warts and all, consider joining a beginning meditation class at Intuitive Way, or making an appointment for an Intuitive Touch Healing at one of my twice-monthly clinics, with one of my healing staff or myself.
The urge to “fit in”, to belong will subside – the comfort you feel in your own skin will increase!