As a collective, I think we’re all in some level of pain and suffering around body image.
This pain once consumed my life, and even now – it’s still something I have to constantly remind myself of the truth when I fall into the familiar territory of self-rejection.
Before offering you one of the best ways to heal from poor body image, let’s spend some time in understanding the problem.
Where does it even come from? What is it exactly?
A simple definition of body image is: how you imagine your body.
You see your body as you see your body, and others see your body as they see it.
But what you see — is conditioned by your parents, society, and culture.
This is important. Because we have this image of our bodies from a young age. Do you remember the first time you looked in the mirror and saw your own reflection? Whether you remember it or not, that was a powerful moment.
As children, we’re all sponges at a young age – absorbing everything from our environment and learning very quickly what was necessary for survival, while discarding or suppressing parts of ourselves that was not acceptable in the community we’re a part of.
If you sensed that one or both of your parents was very critical of their body, or you heard them being judgemental towards certain shapes or sizes, you downloaded that into your own mind.
On the other hand, if you sensed that your parents didn’t have any strong feelings towards their bodies, or you noticed them taking care of themselves or treating themselves with compassion – you also take that in as your own.
How we imagine our bodies is actually more like: How we think our bodies should look like or be treated like in order to be approved of by our parents and society.
Read that again. Ponder it for a moment.
So – if your image of our body actually has more to do with being approved of and accepted by others, than your own opinion of it…
…then this usually means that if we don’t believe we “fit” that image, we might reject our bodies to some extent and/or try to change it. Maybe we call this “negative body image”.
But the funny thing is – even if you do fit that ideal image, you still don’t necessarily feel at peace. You might fear losing it, you might feel uncomfortable to actually own it, or you might move the goal post further away so that you’re never actually able to enjoy the feeling of “I’m enough, I’m accepted, I’m okay.”
Whenever you reject some aspect of yourself (feeling ‘less than’, or ‘too much’), shame is involved. This is perhaps one of the most difficult emotions to hold in your body, and paradoxically also really difficult to let go of. But you’ll see below how this can be healed and integrated.
Here’s a clue: healing body image, or a negative opinion of your body, has nothing to do with meeting external standard of beauty and approval, or your own internalized version of images and “should be’s”. All of these can change on a whim and be subject to fickle trends.
It’s also not about blaming your parents or society for impressing these images and ideals on you, both consciously or unconsciously.
Healing body image is actually about recognizing that your imagination of your body is a set of external standards imprinted on you – but they’re not yours.
And in order for you to truly feel at home with yourself – you have to (re)connect with what IS yours: Your Body.
Not yours or other people’s opinions of your body. You gotta connect to the real thing, which incidentally helps to dissolve and consciously integrate the shame and mental baggage around it.
I call it: embodiment. Learning to live in your body (instead of in your head).
Embodiment looks like: feeling grounded in your body, leaning in to the feelings that arise in your body without fear or judgement. And being IN it, aware and responsive to her needs and desires. Not – thinking about it as if you’re standing outside of it.
Another important quality: Embodiment means living in your body NOW. In the present moment.
Not “later” – when your opinion of your body changes, or when your body is the shape and size you think you want.
Now all the esoteric talk aside…
In practice what this looks like is: You doing the things that you LOVE to do in your body.
The things that light you up, the things that when you think about it, you get more energy from it and feel excited about.
They’re not the things that you think you “should” be doing because it’s “good for you”.
They’re not the things you feel you have an obligation to do.
They’re not the things you do in order to achieve some ulterior goal later.
They are things you love to do – simply because you love them. You don’t need an explanation or a list of pros and cons to justify why you should do it. It’s just love.
Examples include:
- dancing
- walking
- running
- biking
- skating
- yoga
- swimming
- surfing
- playing at a park
- martial arts
- workouts you actually enjoy doing
- walking on squishy sand at the beach
- playing an instrument
- sunbathing
- foraging in the woods
…and on and on. What comes to your mind? Write down a list of activities that bring you joy. Not for the results they give you, but those things that activates the joy inside you as you do them? (thinking back to your childhood will help get this started)
Believe it or not, doing these things is actually more important than what you’ve been conditioned to believe is “more productive”.
You see, the Universe doesn’t work with conditions and the concept of ‘later’. It works with Now, and the energy you bring to everything you’re doing now.
When you enjoying what you’re doing, you’re vibrating at a high frequency, which the Universe will match – and it will bring you more of the joy, more of the pleasure, more fulfillment, and more fun.
Your body starts to live in that frequency and all of a sudden you’re out of the conditioning that you are this or that and the other thing. You lose track of time and this opens you up to completely new possibilities and new insights coming through, including a new relationship with your body.
On the other hand, when you show up to do something and you really don’t want to but believe you “have to” – the energy of resistance and heaviness you carry will be matched by your environment and other people around you. This doesn’t feel good, and so you’ll begin to justify, rationalize, and go through the suite of mental gymnastics to “get you through”.
You literally check out of your body and hide in your head, in order to block out all the cues your body is sending you that you’re out of alignment. And then, when you get home, you wonder why you feel so stressed and need to reach for something for comfort and de-stressing.
When you’re not living in your body, you also become more vulnerable to ways of thinking that are designed to further separate you from yourself.
Ideas like:
- once you lose this weight, THEN you’ll feel good about yourself
- if you have this surgery, THEN you’ll be able to lose weight
- when you have the perfect body, THEN you’ll like yourself and others will approve of you
The promise of “something better” is always in the future. The carrot in front of you only ever leads to another carrot, but you never manage to actually have the carrot in your hand, now.
This conditionality is so deeply programmed into our collective consciousness from a young age, and embedded into the fabric of society through commercial forces and structures.
We’ve all been trained to chase the next new shiny object and feel pressured into keeping up with the trend of the moment, it’s no wonder most people don’t even know how to sit with themselves for 30 seconds. Which is why most people are not in touch with what they REALLY NEED. Because in order to know that, you have to be connected to Your Body. Not the ideas and opinions in your head.
Even though this idea of “when this condition is met, then I’ll be happy” is so prevalent and reinforced everywhere, how well has it really worked in your life?
Be honest.
Did you get what you were hoping for? Did you feel at peace once you met that imaginary condition in your mind? What were your results from following this belief system?
Now that you know there IS ANOTHER WAY of doing things, why not try it out?
Enjoyment — first. Fulfillment — first. Bring yourself back into Your Body — first…
…then you can do all the other things, if you still want to do them.
Not the other way around. Not – “once I feel more comfortable in my body, then I’ll swim.”
No. Swim NOW — if that’s what activates the joy in you, right now.
Moving in a way you enjoy completely brings you back into your body. You feel at peace (even if it’s only for 2 seconds at first). And about 99% of the time, you’ll feel a deep sense that everything’s okay. And You’re okay.
The more you do this, the more you’ll feel connected to yourself, and the less pressure you’ll feel to conform to the whims of the world.
This is how you heal your relationship with your body.
Connect with what truly is Yours.
Start living IN Your Body, and enjoy the process NOW.
Paradoxically, this is how you get to the “something better later”. This is how you have such an authentic relationship with Your Body that it renders the concept of body image completely irrelevant. Pretty powerful, right?