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?

Sensing Into Our Senses

This week I want to get out of my head and truly into the body. I encourage you to do the same. Everywhere, all around you, spring is beginning to poke its head. Here in California, of course, things are beginning to bloom and there are smells in the air at night of jasmine and orange blossom. Today I went for a hike in the mountains and the hills radiated all shades of green: tall dark trees, bushy shrubs and moss.

Our senses long to be brought more fully into our lives, and slowing down enough to listen to the body helps us experience the world around us in a different way. Take some moments this week to step into that kind of slowed down sensuality. Try doing something you usually do but with greater attention to all of the details and to your own body. If you put lotion on every morning after you shower, try slowing it down just enough to really experience the touch and the feeling of it on your body.

Take five minutes to look out the window at the sky, or better yet, sit outside and let the air move against your skin as you take in everything around you. (I once went on a retreat and was amazed at my ability to stare at a tree for over a half hour, fascinated by the way its leaves moved in the wind.)

Similarly, when you eat, slow down enough to really taste the food, feeling it in your mouth and noticing when you start to get full. What does fullness feel like? Hunger? What's it like to be really satisfied by something you're eating? How often do you not even notice?

Our senses are our body's language of the world: they are how the body experiences everything around us. As we engage with them more fully, we're more connected not only to our bodies but to our lives. Too often we sacrifice this kind of connection for multi-tasking and doing, forgetting to really experience what it's like to 'be' fully in our own skin.

Try picking one moment in your day each day this week to become attuned to the senses, even if just for a moment. Check in with how your body feels, its muscles and movements. Listen to music. Get a massage.

It doesn't matter so much what we do as how we do it. Moving in our lives with attention and the intention to connect with and honor our bodies changes us. It allows us to receive our own lives in a more present way.

You don't have to go out of your way to find those moments, you just have to slow down with some consciousness to experience what's really happening right now. As you do, notice how your body responds to your awakening and listening in this way. You may feel it soften, open, relax. It may feel heard or valued in a different way simply by this shift in your awareness.

Opening to our senses allows our bodies to feel like they matter in our lives. Our senses are part of the body's gift to us, and they have tremendous value if we take them in. Despite our belief, we cannot live our lives completely from our heads. In order for life to catch up with us, we need to let it simmer and stir in our senses, in the quiet moments, and in the step into conscious awareness.

In what ways have you been depriving yourself of your senses and what does that do to the way your relate to your body? What would happen if you let your senses speak more fully in your life, guiding you to greater openness and joy?

NOW 2011 Love Your Body Poster Contest Winners

Just wanted to share with you all this inspiring and artful contest sponsored by the National Organization of Women--

Check it out!

xo,

Anna

NOW Foundation announces winners of 2011 Love Your Body poster contest

http://loveyourbody.nowfoundation.org/posters/contest-2011/index.html

The Choice For Love

Why is it often so terrifying to choose a better relationship with our bodies over one based on fear, criticism and judgment? So often, the idea of bringing connection, compassion and dialogue to the relationship we have with our bodies creates resistance and reaction. Some common questions:

1)But if I love my body now, how will it ever change?

2) I have to hate myself to feel motivated to do something different.

3) I have to do penance until I accomplish whatever external goal I have for myself.

Sound familiar?

And yet when we look at the body as something we're in relationship with, some interesting truths unfold. We all know what it's like to relate to other people, and we all know that negativity, constant nagging or criticism and a sense of never being able to please the other person make us, invariably, feel hopeless, shut down and--yes--less motivated to change. Usually there's a feeling of paralysis and despondency instead of inspiration. We feel that we'll never be enough. Why even bother?

It's interesting to consider if your body doesn't have the same response to a constant cycle of 'not-enoughness,' blame and disgust from you. If you checked in right now, you might be able to feel the difference in its physical response to words of kindness of encouragement versus words of disparagement and criticism.

As we learn more and more about how our words and thoughts create our world, it behooves us to apply the same insights to our thinking and speaking to our bodies. Does our negativity really accomplish--for us or our bodies--what we think it does? Why not dare to choose love instead?

Relationship experts tell us that change doesn't happen with nagging and criticism but more often through empathy, partnership and appreciation. When those qualities are present in a relationship, positive change is the end product of healthy collaboration, with each side having the other's best interests at heart.

What if it's possible that the old way of creating change hasn't actually been working for you at all? Would you be willing to give it up?

In the weeks and months ahead, consider what it might be like to practice being the best possible partner to your body right now. Think about these questions:

1)Even if you don't think you're satisfied, what CAN you appreciate about your body and all it does for you already?

2)If you stop blaming everything on your body, what can you begin to take responsibility for as an equal partner in the relationship?

3)How can you begin to think about the changes you want to create as a goal you share with your body, rather than one it's defying you by not accomplishing? And how does the process of working on the goal together teach you both and encourage you to grow?

Much like with our relationships, challenges can be met with stuckness and blame or with a cooperative team spirit, using them to teach both of us. Ask yourself if your first instinct is to be against your body rather than with it and whether or not this is the best stance for creating positive change. Our bodies are alive and waiting to work with us, rather than against us. They are containers for our thinking, waiting for us to choose love.

Fantasy or Reality? Food & the Body Relationship

Remember when you were a kid and the best treat in the world was an ice-cream cone, or maybe a candy bar or even a Lifesaver? Sweets were often a reward for something. I remember a trip to the soda fountain following a particularly unpleasant trip to the doctor's office that involved a needle being stuck into my arm.

Those associations don't go away so easily. Tonight it's getting late, I'm home alone and I've spent the day catching up on things. I'm contemplating a trip to get some frozen yogurt.

Am I hungry? Not particularly. In fact, I'd say that my hunger on a scale of 1-10 is about a 1.5. But in my mind, the colors and flavors of that frozen yogurt seem bright and enticing. The whole thing seems to imply an escape, a trip somewhere, a sense of freedom--just like it did when I was a kid.

Recently I spoke with a colleague who also works with eating disorders about her love of the texture and warmth of oatmeal, how it says home to her and makes her feel like everything is going to be okay. She remembers her own mother serving it to her as a child. Now she sits in the kitchen in the morning, savoring a daily bowl of the gooey stuff, filled with oats and raisins and a bit of cinnamon, the steel cut oats thick and syrupy with heat.

Talking with her and reflecting on this tonight, I think about how much we imbue food with energy, with fantasy, with projection. It becomes so many things to us. It becomes whatever we want it to be, whatever we need it to be.

The problem, of course, comes when the fantasy food actually prevents us from facing what's happening in our lives; when the escape it provides means we're not listening to some inner stirring, restlessness or feeling trying to poke through into consciousness. A message from our bodies gets lost in translation: we're literally distracted from it by the compelling story we've created by food.

I wonder how our bodies feel about this: when food gets used to fill a need other than hunger, when the intellect or a knee-jerk need to flee from the present becomes the reason for a swirled cold cone or a piece of candy? My body probably tolerates it a bit, like any good partner would, the feeling of being ignored. But as this becomes habit, what happens next? Does the body shut down on us, feeling unheard? Does it scream louder, hoping we'll hear?

Perhaps this is what weight becomes: a message from our physical selves that our bodies are feeling ignored, that food is not being used to listen to and fuel our lives but to run away from them. Our bodies respond in kind with their own kind of distance: layers of flesh and softness that make us feel less alive in our own skin.

The next time you grab for that fantasy food, try checking in with the body and asking how it feels about going along for the ride. Is it willing to come? And if it's not, are you willing to put away the fantasy you believe that food will give you and sit with whatever feelings are really there right now, felt in your physical and emotional self?

Tonight for me there's a feeling of loneliness and quiet inside, the sense of wanting a break and a moment to breathe without pushing myself so hard. Sometimes for me that's the very function of the imagined food: it gives me a chance to slow down, to be out of my head and in my body. I have to ask myself, as we all do, if there are other ways to get there that still attend to what's happening in this moment, that don't ask my body to take on something it doesn't want.

That being said, there's a bath in the other room; there's a sky full of stars outside. There's music on the radio that might be calling us to dance. If you listened to your body and not your fantasy, what would might you reach for instead?

The One Diet Tip No One Ever Talks About: Healing The Body Relationship

Welcome to 2011! As promised, a blog to help you stay connected to your best vision of your body in the new year...

Most of us go through our lives constantly trying to lose weight, get healthier, make changes. At times it’s frustrating and feels like nothing’s working. We keep getting disappointed by ourselves and our bodies and repeat the vicious cycle of trying and failing.

We all know that any time we set goals, it’s hard—if not impossible-- to accomplish them through criticism, judgment and hopelessness. And yet, that’s often the state of mind we slip into with our bodies. We judge ourselves constantly and forever push ourselves to be something else.

What if we tried something different—something radical that asked us to think of our bodies more as partners and less as enemies or objects to be controlled? What if we tried befriending our bodies and letting ourselves work with our bodies instead of against them? The six steps listed below are some prime examples of how to do just that.

1) Listen.

Most of us have completely forgotten how to listen to our bodies, but if we did they’d have a whole lot to say. If we’re honest, we know the difference in our bodies between being hungry and being sad, tired or lonely. If we really listen to our bodies, we get clues about what we actually need. Instead of a pint of ice-cream, we might actually want to reach out to a friend, listen to music or take a nap. Reconnecting to our bodies means we owe them—like any friend—a good listen. It no longer serves us to ignore what they have to say.

2) Remember the good times.

Maybe it seems far away now, but there was probably a time when you felt great in your body—even if it’s just a moment. Think about what it felt like to be in your body in that moment and how you can bring more of that quality into your life now. That’s how you want to feel more of the time, and as you bring up that feeling you’ll find yourself making different choices right now from a place of connection rather than frustration.

3) Watch your language.

We can be our bodies’ harshest critics, constantly slamming them with negative judgments or frowning at them in the mirror for not being what we want. Think for a minute about the impact of this on your body and how it might feel about being in this relationship with you. Is this helpful or supportive? Think about ways that you can begin to talk to and appreciate your body for what it does do for you and think about working together rather than at odds with each other. You’ll notice a change almost immediately.

4) Forgive yourself.

Stepping into a healthier relationship means letting go of thoughts and behaviors in the past that may have held you back so that you can move into the future. If you have been judging and resenting your body, see if you can forgive it and forgive yourself and show up fresh, with a new willingness to have a positive, healthy relationship. You might even write a letter of declaration or forgiveness to your body as you commit to a new way of being together.

5) Enjoy each other.

Once you befriend your body, you can start thinking about ways you’d like to spend time together instead of dreading the ‘checklist’ of exercise or health goals. Maybe you’d like to spend more time outside? Put some music on and dance? As you think about it feeling good in your body rather than at odds with it, your choices start to change.

6) Create dreams together.

True friends help each other work toward their goals. Think about what it would feel like to be in your best possible body relationship and use that vision to motivate both you and your body toward greater health. When you feel like you could be sidetracked by an unhealthy choice or a distraction, go back to the vision of what you most want and see if that changes things. Holding a dream of your best, healthiest self and working with your body to accomplish it gives you the greatest chance of achieving your goals.

UPDATE: Want more inspiration for working with the body relationship? Listen to my interview with Eric Dye on EHealth Radio. The transcript is included too--

http://healthpodcast.podbean.com/2011/01/09/struggling-with-a-chronic-health-condition