I've broken the rule.
I've done the thing I’ve been taught not to do.
People will probably be uncomfortable. Maybe even angry. Certainly, there will be judgement.
But I don't care because I’ve FALLEN IN LOVE WITH MY BODY.
In love. With my body.
Unapologetically smitten. Unabashedly adoring. Big, wild, fierce love that feels less like a creation and more like a return.
Which validates what I’ve always hoped – that this gem has been within me all along. That love was the nucleus of my being the whole time.
Even when I rejected myself. Even when body hate was my everyday state. Even when I acted like a dictator, inflicting harm with a cruel, indiscriminate hand.
An enduring love was still my steady center, waiting within to be discovered. A light that cannot be snuffed. An ancient treasure awaiting excavation.
What Body Love Feels Like
The other night I heard this very faint beeping sound near the kitchen. I moved this way and that trying to locate it but every time I moved, it moved too. It’s coming from the pantry. No, the living room.
Maybe someone was playing a trick on me like that time my daughter hid a fake chirping cricket under the couch cushion?
Nope. It was the dishwasher, giving off a pale, intermittent whine.
This is how body love started for me – a distant, unfamiliar feeling of uncertain origin.
There it was again. What was that? It feels good but I can’t trust this unknown. Who am I to feel this way about myself? How arrogant. How self-involved. How delusional.
It was what I wanted, what I’d been working toward, but when I experienced it, I was entirely unsure. Resistance rushed in and spooked it.
Curiosity helped tear a hole in the resistance.
What if I get to decide how I feel about myself?
What if I can grow this feeling?
What if I didn’t need anyone else’s approval or permission to feel this way about myself?
What if I don’t have to lose weight to love my body?
I noticed new, kinder thoughts sprouting up, random appreciation for my body. I caught a glimpse of my reflection and feel an unexpected warmth toward myself. I went for a walk and found myself wholly unconcerned with heart rate and calories and was instead simply enjoying moving my body.
I tore the hole bigger, courted this feeling.
It grew - imperfectly and inconsistently. For perhaps the first time, I let that be enough.
It grew into body acceptance, body permission and body celebration. The trifecta of body love.
I love my body with cellulite, with wrinkles, with bags under my eyes, with skin flopping under my tricep. I've started getting used to my face without makeup and my hair undone, starting to love my unadorned self.
Body love is not about having the perfect body. It is not even about loving our bodies 100% of the time.
Body love is a mindset, a kindness, a way of being.
Loving my body is a commitment to how I meet all my moments, both the empowered ones or those steeped in shame and unworthiness. Love is the compass that brings me back to my truth – that my body is allowed as it is, that I deserve my own love and regard, that I don’t owe anyone anything in regards to my physical form (or otherwise).
Body love feels like a glow of light directed from me to me. It feels sacred, whole and profoundly right.
It feels like coming home.
Tips for Loving Your Body
I’m not an expert on anyone’s journey but my own. I don’t know if what works for me will work for you. I can tell you what has helped me in my process but only you know yourself.
Trust yourself. Follow what feels good and right to you.
Here is an incomplete list of how to learn to love your body:
1. Do something that makes your body feel good every day. For me this is yoga, breathwork and time in nature. This isn’t about checklists or what you’ve heard is good for you but about experiencing your joy in your body.
2. Transfer love. Body love might feel a galaxy away from where you are. That’s okay. Think of how you feel toward a person or animal you deeply love. Feel in your body what that love feels like. Then take baby steps toward casting that feeling toward yourself.
3. Intuitive Eating – I could talk about this for hours. Oh, right I already did. See the post!
4. Consciously change your self-talk. This can feel daunting but it comes down to awareness, choice and repetition. As often as possible, choose your self-talk. Shape it how you want. Speak kindly and supportively. Practice, practice, practice and strengthen that new neural circuitry.
5. Getting angry at the programming around women’s bodies. Anger has helped me see the insidiousness of cultural messaging and slowly divest from it. This is a constructive, empowered use of anger, the emotion that tells us someone has crossed our boundaries. Body shame separates us from the rich goodness of true self. Fury is appropriate and healthy.
6. Trauma healing. This is highly individualized but has been an essential counterpart to loving my body. There was so much pain, shame and fear stored in my body tissues that needed to be released. And self-abandonment and body rejection were part of how I survived trauma. I could not have done only surface work to connect with my innate body love. Deep healing of old wounds was a vital, pivotal part of the process. (I highly recommend EMDR.)
7. Practice self-pleasure. I highly recommend Erika Alsborn as a guide.
8. Create body-loving space inside your friendships. Rather than bonding over diets and body dissatisfaction, surround yourself with others who are seeking body love. This may require new friends. It’s worth it.
9. Remind yourself that your body is a piece of nature. We are literal animals whose physicality is shaped and informed by natural cycles and rhythms. Our bodies are wise far beyond our comprehension just as the larger natural world is. Nature knows how to exist in perfect harmony and so do our bodies. Impose less; witness more.
10. Foster unconditionality. Your body does not need to meet any conditions to be loved. You are not required to be a different size or adhere to a particular eating or exercise plan to be worthy of your own love. No matter what.
Changing your weight will not make you love your body. I promise this is true. I’ve been heavy and I’ve been thin. Thinness never, ever equated body love.
11. Connecting to impermanence. Knowing I’m only going to be in this body for a limited time has made me appreciate it more. This has also helped me make peace with aging. My body is highly changeable and designed to be so.
12. Appreciating body diversity. Look around and, without judgement, just note how many different sizes, shapes and colors of the human body there are. The notion that there is one “right way” to be in a body is such absolute bullshit.
13. Adopt a new mindset. I’m partial to:
My body is for me, not for anyone else.
I’m not here to please other people.
Take me or leave me.
My body is none of your business.
14. Do a closet cleanse. Give yourself the gift of clothes that fit. Let go of the “someday” clothes that make you feel bad about yourself.
15. Feel the way your body feels internally rather than how it looks externally. There are far more important things about you than your appearance. When we inflate the importance of our body shape/size/appearance, we neglect the parts of us that make us feel joyful, passionate and fulfilled. The only happiness smooth skin and a flat belly can give you is the false security of aligning with socialized beauty standards.
16. Maximize moments you feel positive about your body. Mine are when I’m moving – in joyful, free ways, not punitive, controlled ways. And definitely not when the goal is to “torch fat” or “burn calories.” These moments could be slow, mindful eating, feeling the sun on your face or wind in your hair or cozying in under a blanket.
17. Practice gratitude for your body. Appreciate your body for all its intricacies, processes and systems, for all it does for you every moment of every day. Look up wonderous facts about the body and marvel at its magic.
18. Examine your lens. Our body image is formed largely by what we’ve been taught and exposed to. I often remind myself that if I was born in the Rubenesque era, my body would be idealized. Social standards are fickle and arbitrary. Put no more stock in them than you would the current (and temporary) fashion trend. Gazing at your naked body in the mirror while thinking loving, appreciative thoughts about it, can help retrain your eyes to see beauty in your body shape and type exactly as it is.
19. Gut your social media. Unfollow accounts that are triggering, that make you feel like your body is wrong. Minimizing external pressures and comparisons will help you stay in your lane.
20. Eat food you love. Food has become such a battleground for women. Part of body love is stepping out of the paradigm of good/bad foods and diet mentality. Let yourself enjoy the food you eat. Choose things you love. Eat slowly and allow yourself the pleasure that comes from eating. Each time we eat we have an opportunity to practice reverence for our bodies. Take your time. Chew it and fully taste it. Welcome it in. Let is nourish you. Eating is one of the most pleasurable, regular activities we partake in. Allow yourself this joy.
(Those with eating disorders, please be extra patient and kind to yourself. If food is a big trigger, please see Intuitive Eating.)
21. Let it be a process. You saw this coming, right? It bears repeating. This is what that looks like for me: I feel an unexpected wave of love for my body, the smallest of openings. I’m stunned and delighted. In the next second I compare myself to someone else, see an “unflattering” picture of myself or feel too full after a meal and I’m thrown right back into judgement and shame.
How you respond here is what matters. Love yourself even more during “setbacks.” Know this is just a trained response and it will take time to weaken the automaticity of it. It takes practice. Gift yourself the space to learn a new way of being. We don’t arrive at full body love. We build it moment by moment by how we love ourselves when we feel unlovable, and how we hold ourselves in compassion when we feel shame.
How to Love Your Body
It's tempting to want to wait until we feel our bodies are good enough to love them. But first, when you've been internalized body rejection, there is no such thing as good enough.
And second, there is something powerful about the subversiveness of choosing to love your body just as it is right now.
Give yourself permission to love the skin you're in. Give yourself permission to start, to struggle, to eff it up, to try again. Love yourself enough to commit to this change.
Give yourself permission to honor your body, to stop wishing for a different body. You were given this body and it was made for you. Own it. Bless it. Learn about it. Be curious about its sensations and functions and endless capacity for aliveness.
You cannot be alive without your body. It gives you life each and every day. You deserve to live in harmony and joy with it.
There are thousands of reasons most of us don’t love our bodies. None of them are true or valid.
Loving our bodies is our natural, instinctual state. It is our birthright.
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