The Icing On the Cake

Remember that trip I wrote about in the last blog, to see friends in Denver? I'm back and still have a warm feeling in my heart for one girlfriend who's found a beautiful house in an adorable neighborhood, where she lives with her funny and insightful partner. When in Los Angeles, she struggled to find the right pace for her life, often feeling stressed out and overworked. In Denver, she's like another person: settled into her house, finding the time and space to cook meals at home almost every day, and creatively blossoming into her work and her life.

She explained it to me as feeling so content that the rest of her life--whatever happens from here on out with her career, with her income, with the decision to have or not have kids--is 'icing on the cake.' There's no pressure really. She's already arrived where she wanted to go. Whatever happens from here is just fine.

It occurred to me as I went for a hike today that the same can be true of the home we have in our bodies. I take for granted now the ability to be in my body without judgment, to enjoy its company, to feel content and at ease in my own skin. Years ago if you had asked me if this would be true, I would never have guessed I could get here. But I have. And after all that struggle, feeling peace with my body gives me a similar sense of 'arrival.' Everything else from here--the way I experience and move forward with my life--is 'icing on the cake.'

In fact, when a feeling of contentment and peace can permeate the way we feel in our bodies--as it did today with the buttery sun starting to go down and the green hills lit up and basking in its glow--all IS well. When there's no war going on with our bodies, our senses get to take in everything else that's there. We receive that extra bit of blessing. We're able to be open to life in a different and more present way.

I suppose you could say that icing, per the expression, is the extra stuff. A cake would still be a cake without it. But icing also fills the layers, adds sweetness, makes a cake complete. It's okay to want our lives to have it, and to create a solid enough foundation of peace and goodness that we can let the extra stuff, the sweet and luxurious stuff, show up.

If you're struggling with your body, I encourage you to get the help that ends that war and lets you feel the safety and home you can feel in your own skin. Join a support group. Read a book that helps you reconnect. Join my ongoing teleclass for support--a weekly group to help you find your best relationship with your body. (Go to http://www.bodymindguide.com or http://www.annastookey.com and click on 'Love Your Body Teleclass' to find out more.)

Life is too short to be mired in the struggle. I guess I would say that even though we think of what comes after the struggle as the 'icing on the cake' we also deserve to have that 'icing' be an essential part of our lives. It's amazing how peaceful and complete you can feel once you have an ally in your body instead of one more challenge. Walking that trail today I was just one step closer to feeling the sunlight penetrate my being. I can still feel the way my cells light up in the presence of that beauty and my own movement. I'd like you to feel that too.

The Spoken Secret of Weight

So I'm about to board a plane tomorrow for Denver to see a couple of college friends I haven't seen in awhile. One of them was at my wedding almost three years ago when I was at my skinniest by accident--wedding planning, excitement and constant activity had me practically forgetting to eat. The other knew me at a time in my life when I was eating pints of ice-cream just to prove I could, abandoning nutrition and any rules I'd ever made myself follow so that I could just stop being afraid of food all the time. I was puffy-faced and heavier, but working something important through.

As I think about my relationships with them--and how many phases of dieting and body size they've seen me through--I realize how much history I carry of different ways of seeing and being with my body. I have been afraid of it and in awe of it, disgusted by it and open to its soft rhythms. Sometimes I've weighed more and sometimes I've weighed less.

When we have friends over the years, family, loved ones, they see the fluctuations we wear. In fact, one thing about our bodies is that they broadcast to the world, whether we like it or not, a lot of what we're experiencing or going through on the inside. It can be humbling.

One friend I know almost decided not to go to a recent reunion of some of his army buddies because of his recent weight gain--he was afraid of what people would think, especially since they had known him as a free-wheeling, buff guy twenty years ago. He pushed himself to go anyway and had a great time. What would he have missed if he hadn't gone?

I wonder what we think our weight will say about us, and how we interpret it when we feel exposed to others in our lives. Does weight equal failure? Loss of control? Depression? Sometimes it also exposes our humanness, the crazy pace of our lives. For me, it often just means I'm going through a period where it's harder to listen and slow down. Eventually, a sense of heaviness and weight tells me I need to change what I'm doing and start attending to myself and my body more.

I guess if we're really in alignment with our bodies, that what they would say about how we are wouldn't be so different from the same truths we hold inside. What's so bad about that? The problem is when we split off, wish they said something different than they do, wish we could lie. Those who really care about us see what our bodies say, even if we'd rather pretend that everything is fine. But also, sometimes our bodies look 'fine' on the outside and don't reveal the part of us that is vulnerable, the part that is clutching desperately to a more controlled diet so that we don't have to feel feelings of fear or overwhelm.

What do you think your body says about you right now, and how do you feel about the world getting that message? Is your outside consistent with your insides, your feelings about your life? If not, why? Is there anything you're trying to hide that your body is saying for you instead?

Get curious about unpacking and deconstructing the stories that you, your body, and those around you might tell about you--are they consistent? If not, how might you make them more so, listening and catching up with your body's wisdom and feeling less shame about what it has to reveal? What are you hiding that your body and those close to you already know?

Reparenting Your Body

Oftentimes, we treat our bodies the way we ourselves were treated in our families. We might, for example, tell them to be quiet, criticize or disparage them,care about how they perform rather than how they feel, or put them last on our list after everything else gets done. In our body relationships, we are often reenacting old familiar patterns of how we were taken care of or not taken care of as children. In fact, it might give you some compassion for yourself to consider that you may not have been taught any other way to be with your body than the ways you yourself grew up with!

When you were sad did you get held and heard or did you feel like your feelings were inconvenient? When you did something really great, did you get rewarded or simply feel like that's what was expected? One client shared the insight with me that growing up in her family there were simply certain unspoken goals, a certain level of perfection she was expected to achieve. Before she knew what had happened, she had applied that same thinking to her own body, making her a stern and unloving parent to her body's needs and feelings, always expecting more from it without really listening to it moment to moment.

This is one reason why the work of reconnecting with and learning to listen to our bodies can feel so deeply healing and corrective. We are literally reparenting ourselves, learning to listen to our most basic needs and feelings in ways we may never have experienced before in any other relationship, probably from early on in our lives. As we learn to do that for ourselves, of course, our other relationships change as well. We begin to expect and elicit a certain amount of care, attention and compassion from those around us as we learn to give it to ourselves.

Think about the kinds of relationship patterns you may be reenacting with your body. Are you capable of really listening to it? Caring for it? What old patterns might you be breaking within your own family in order to do that? Does that feel scary? Possible?

When we choose a different way of being with ourselves, we drop the conditioning we grew up with. Often, the clients I work with grew up in households that valued how they looked or performed over how they felt or what they needed. The work of reconnecting to their bodies is being willing to give up just judging their bodies by how they look and also beginning to consider how they feel, what they need. Learning when and how your body actually communicates hunger can be a huge step if you're used to ignoring it. Noticing where feelings get felt in your body and finding ways to be loving toward them is also huge.

What can you do today to care for yourself and your body as a good and loving parent? Forgive your parents for doing the best they could and truly consider whether or not you can break the spell of old relationship habits and make new ones in the way you will treat and be with your body. Choose one different behavior to work toward every day with your body: is it being more verbally appreciative and loving? Listening more closely to what it wants or needs? Spending time with it in kinder and more connected ways?

What would the little child inside of you have loved to get from her parents that you can now bring to this relationship with your body, healing the old longing? As you find ways to fill those needs with your body, you may watch the world change around you as well, into a place of greater openness, wonder and joy: a place where anything is possible, where YOU are possible.

Finding Our Inner Sexiness

I read an interesting article the other day in an old Psychology Today (Elton, June 2010). The topic? How women's sex lives are affected by their relationship to their bodies. It was educational and sobering at the same time.

One of the points it made? That problems with low sexual desire or arousal in women often have to do with our not being in touch with our bodies. "We are socialized to not pay attention..." one expert in the article says (Meston, pg. 77). When we are out of touch with our bodies, it's hard for us to give attention to our own arousal, thereby allowing it to grow. Instead, we're numbed out and disconnected.

Another issue? Our poor body self-esteem. Although many women put the emphasis on how their partner perceives them, apparently it's just as important that we have a healthy perception of our own bodies. When we don't feel sexy and alive, it's hard for us to go there. "Women have this sexual relationship with themselves that's integral to their sexual relationships, period," argues one expert (Meana, pg. 76)

We may put the blame on a non-sexy partner or say we need to be loved in a certain way in order to be aroused--and these are both important factors. But it's also interesting to consider how the way we're relating to our own bodies might be getting in the way. Are we capable of finding them sexy, feeling the sensations they bring us, noticing what we are aroused by?

It's true that as women we've often been told to tame this aspect of ourselves. Stereotypically men are supposed to be more interested in sex than we are. But when you look at the stereotype through the lens of body disconnection it becomes more interesting. What if we become less interested in sex because the objectification of our own bodies has made us less interested and connected to our own sexual response?

Part of taking back our bodies as our own and developing a healthier relationship with them is also empowering ourselves to feel our sexiness and beauty, regardless of whether or not we match some outside version of reality. It's sad to think that we might depriving ourselves of a rich sex life because we don't think we measure up, or because we're too disconnected from our physical cues to even experience them.

What would it take for you to let the feeling of sexiness back into your life right now? One of the exercises I often do with clients is to let them imagine the qualities they'd like to feel in their body no matter what their current shape or size. Try this on--how would you walk if you truly allowed yourself to feel sexy? What would you wear? How would you feel inside?

If you stopped waiting for things to fit some perfect picture on the outside, how might you allow yourself your own inner sexiness, your own intimate and respectful relationship to your own body right now? What if the future of your sex life depends on it?