Do You 'Have a Dream'?

I was driving home Sunday night with the radio on and excerpts of of Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech came over the airwaves. Though I thought I knew the speech well, I heard it with different ears this time. It was amazing to me how clear and emphatic he was about something that must have seemed impossible at the time: that black and white children should be able to play together, that men should be judged by their character and not by the color of their skin. He spoke with such conviction, it was as if he was experiencing his dream as already true, as needing to be true. In his mind and heart this was the only way it should be.

I wonder how many of the greatest achievements in life start with this clarity of conviction, with the ability to put our minds in the place of already having accomplished the goal, seeing it done, and living in that new reality. Rosa Parks sat on that bus without asking whether or not she should be allowed to. All over the world, people fighting for new ways of being have had to step into them before they were given permission to do so. Slowly, over time, the walls came down.

What is your dream for how you'll feel in and toward your body in the coming months and years? What would you like to be different than it is now? As we enter a new year, take some time to write out for yourself what you'd like to be different about how you relate to and feel in your body. Would you like to be more connected? To trust it more? To be able to listen and have compassion for what it needs?

We can't get to the future we most want by continuing to believe in the reality we feel stuck in now. Give yourself a handhold into something new. What will it feel like when you feel great in your body? How will you be seeing and experiencing the world differently? What will be different about your breathing, your movement, what it feels like to look in the mirror or walk down the street? Let that dream permeate you until it feels as real as possible, as if it's already here. Let yourself not only have the dream but live it as if it were true.

This is what Martin Luther King did for all of us, and it's what we need to learn to do for ourselves whenever we step into something new, something that we deeply want but can't yet see. Take a moment to make a list of the qualities--the pieces of your 'dream'--you'd like to bring to your body relationship this year: hope, trust, kindness, cooperation, love. Then feel in your body what it's like to let each of those qualities be a part of how you relate to your body now. What does trust feel like or look like? Being loving or gentle? No great dream exists in the abstract. We need to will it into being now.

Surely there are obstacles to any dream we have--things to overcome, to negotiate, to fight for. But sitting in the car hearing Martin Luther King's voice, I was also amazed at how many of his dreams have come true. Speak and write the dreams you have for the body relationship you most want. Feel how your body responds. Stay committed to that vision. Notice how you can keep it present for yourself, even when times get tough and part of you could slip into criticism or being at war with yourself. Remember how it feels in your body to be connected, alive and loving.

You can do this. You have a dream. That means much more than you think.

'Tis The Season To Be Jolly?

What is it about the holidays? Parties, shopping, family--and a heightened expectation that we all be filled with good holiday cheer--can lead to an intense array of feelings and reactions. More often than not, the pressure to be on our best holiday behavior can actually bring out the worst and not the best in us.

In an interview I did recently for a radio show on caregiving during the holidays, the host and I wondered why it is that holidays are such a hard time for taking care of ourselves. Many times we put our healthy routines and habits on hold to be with our families, complete holiday tasks and socialize. But along the way our bodies and our sense of self can deteriorate.

There seems to be a direct connection in my experience between the abandonment of self-care, the putting on of a 'happy face' and the ability to overindulge, feel bad about ourselves and disconnect from our bodies. The more we give ourselves away, the easier it is to abandon our bodies and our health. Almost as a way of compensating, we grab for the 'treats' that may make us feel worse in the end--alcohol, sugar, chocolate--without really listening to what we need. Since these treats may be the only form of (albeit false) self-care we get, we cling to them even more during the holidays than we might at other times.

So what keeps us connected during the holidays to our health and ourselves? This year, as you move into the holiday frenzy and toward food, family and friends, pay attention to the way you interact with your body and see if there's a way to stay connected. Notice if there's a way to fit in a moment for yourself amid the hustle--one that allows you to take a few deep breaths and pay attention to how your body is doing, what it might actually want or need. Use your body relationship as a way of actually checking in with yourself: are you tired? Sad? In need of some time to yourself? Your body often holds a host of messages that are available to you as soon as you check in.

Our bodies don't lie. As we listen, they require us to be authentic about our feelings and our needs. And as with any relationship, our bodies prefer connection over disconnection, even in small doses. Checking in at all--even in a moment--to your body's needs begins to rebuild trust in the relationship.

It also helps when we stay honest: if you do find yourself overindulging, see if you can stay connected to your body and apologize rather than feeling guilty, shutting down and (probably) perpetuating the cycle. Ask your body what it needs, and recommit to doing the best you can to listen. Reconnecting to your body and what it needs slows things down and takes you out of concepts of whether you've done something 'right' or 'wrong.' Stay light about your humanness and your ability to make mistakes. Allow yourself to be exactly where you are, doing the best you can.

Maybe this is what's so hard about the holidays. For many of us, our identities are shifting to take in old family relationships, traditions and expectations of meaning and kindness. It gets harder to stay in touch with our authentic selves rather than a put-on a--sometimes fake-- holiday face. And yet if we're not fully present to our experiences, something is lost--we can feel ourselves going through the motions. The same is true of our bodies--and there's no truer proof of this than the extra five or ten pounds so commonly associated with the holidays.

If you can't yet be totally authentic with the family, see if there's a way to be authentic with your body. Listen to its messages and see what it might be like to respond. Even if things can't look the way they usually do with your regular routines of diet and exercise, see if you can do little things that keep you connected: breathing, listening, even stretching or going for a walk. You don't have to be perfect, you just have to show up. Take the pressure off you and your body and let yourselves be exactly as you are, showing up with whatever you truly need. The fa la la la la can wait.

JOIN US FOR A FREE HOLIDAY TELECLASS: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19TH at 9:30amPST.
Over the Streudel and Through the Nog:
The Body Reunion Solution to Avoiding Holiday Overeating

Tune in before you go off to do your holiday shopping!

We'll explore how to:
*Steer Clear of Negative Holiday Eating Habits
*Avoid the Guilt of Overdoing It
*Develop a Better Relationship to Your Body Through the Holidays
*Gain Tools to Make Healthier Choices, Now and Into the New Year

This one-hour class is ideal for anyone struggling with their body and food, compulsive overeating or exercise or a feeling of discomfort with how they look and feel in their bodies.

CALL-IN NUMBER: (218) 339 2500
Access Code: 594697#

There will be a chance to ask questions and participate as much or as little as you want!
I wish you all a Happy and Healthy Holiday...

All my best,
Anna

The Gratitude Attitude

We all know how easy it is to take our bodies for granted--atleast until they let us down. Then we're sure to let them know, whether conscious of it or not, how frustrated, disappointed or disgusted we are. We can't get well fast enough, lose weight fast enough or get in shape fast enough. We're tough critics of our own bodies most of the time.

A woman I worked with recently who was diagnosed with cancer admitted that before cancer she pretty much just told her body what to do and assumed it would listen. Like her, most of us make our bodies our servants, meaning that they pretty much have to do what we want and don't get a lot of praise for it. How do you think they feel?

Because we demand so much of our lives, asking that we constantly do and be more, it's easy to neglect and become a task master to our bodies just as we are with ourselves. But we need to ask ourselves how it feels when someone else does that to us. A client of mine who works long days for a reputable company said recently that if no one acknowledged him for what he did, "I'd just say, 'screw this!'" The acknowledgement is what keeps him going. And yet how many of us do that to our bodies? We ask and ask and ask of them without pausing to thank or to give back.

With Thanksgiving just a day away, I'm thinking about the effect of gratitude and appreciation on the relationships I have in my life. Many of my friends have reached out this year to say how grateful they are to have me in their lives, and I have been so moved by this that I too am reaching out to tell those I care about the same. The effect--on both sides of gratitude--is uplifting. As both the recipient and the giver of gratitude, I feel lighter, energized and more alive. I wonder if our bodies, when we pause to appreciate them and acknowledge all they do for us, might also feel the same?

Consider the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto, featured in the recent movie, 'What the Bleep Do We Know?' If you saw the movie, you might remember the remarkable effect that certain words like 'thank-you' and 'I love you' seemed to have. In his research on the effect of words and thoughts, Dr. Emoto found that frozen water contained very different kinds of crystals depending on what thoughts were directed toward it: "Water from clear springs and water that has been exposed to loving words shows brilliant, complex, and colorful snowflake patterns. In contrast, polluted water, or water exposed to negative thoughts, forms incomplete, asymmetrical patterns with dull colors." (http://www.whatthebleep.com/crystals/)

If our bodies are more than 60% water, it becomes even more urgent to consider what effect loving thoughts of gratitude have on our physical selves, vs. thoughts of fear, loathing or frustration. We owe it to ourselves and our bodies to remember and communicate all that we appreciate. Our bodies won't leave us until we die, but--as with any partner that feels unseen or unappreciated--they can become distant and resentful. Over time, their resistance may manifest as disease, discomfort, or perhaps--if you take seriously this research on water crystals--a deep and essential disorder.

Whatever we ask of our bodies, we ultimately ask of ourselves. The tireless and relentless criticism and pushing harm both of us. Ask yourself what it would take to shift to an attitude of gratitude--today, tomorrow, or any day--rather than constantly asking more of yourself with no return. What would it take to acknowledge all your body does for you and to express your gratitude toward it on this day of almost-Thanksgiving? As you think about doing that, how does the energy in your body shift, change and open? How do you feel different?

You just might find as you make this shift that the pieces seem to fall together, that you already feel the energy and lightness of having received what you wanted all along. An attitude of gratitude not only acknowledges what we have, but it makes us more open to everything that's possible around us. What if all you have asked of yourself you already have: a table full of blessings laid out before you, ready to be tasted?

Have You Lost That Lovin' Feeling?

Out this month, the crazy comedy Couples Retreat (starring Jason Bateman, Vince Vaughn and others) tells the story of four couples who agree to go to a remote island to--they hope--have fun, catch some sun and overindulge. Instead, they're roped into confrontational therapy sessions, trust exercises and yoga classes that bring out the best and worst in all of them. Three of the four couples have gone thinking they're 'fine' and are there to support friends on the brink of divorcing. In the end, they all find out that they each have plenty of issues that need addressing.

I think this is more typical than any of us like to admit. We're in our lives, we're more or less happy and--unless someone asks us to--we're probably not going to change anything or put any additional effort into our relationships and ourselves. But a whole level of awareness, connection and growth is waiting in the wings, ready for us to push to another level, commit to more in our lives and really show up for who we are and want to be.

I wondered watching the movie on vacation in Hawaii--where my husband and I got some much needed time away--how many of us are just in 'okay' relationships with our bodies, accepting that we're kind-of disconnected, a little overweight, struggling with some health issue. Years go by like this; we figure we're too busy and there's too much going on to really do anything. We'll figure that all out and get more connected when we have time.

But our relationships suffer over time from this avoidance, and our relationship to our bodies is no exception. Slowly over time we stop forgetting to check in, stop forgetting how we really feel and what makes us most alive in and appreciative of our physical selves. Tasks take over, we shovel food in on the run, we don't get to exercise. We forget our bodies and ourselves. Like the couples in the movie, we figure we haven't hit a crisis yet and we're doing 'okay,' so we keep going. Like the couples in the movie, sooner or later it catches up with us.

We lose 'that lovin' feeling,' for lack of a better phrase--but who could say it better really? It just feels like it's too much effort to look the subtle malaise in the face. We settle for getting by instead of thriving.

The thing is, in our body relationships as in our relationships with others, it doesn't take something grand to reunite. We don't have to go to an island in the Bahamas and meditate for ten years. But we can make a choice to stop avoiding. We can decide that we're willing to reconnect, to take responsibility for the kind of life and body relationship we want to create. And we can start showing up in the moment with an intention to be present, to be willing to feel, to acknowledge when something is off and do what it takes to make it better.

This is accountability in relationships, and it happens in the moment much more than it happens in big gestures or grand schemes. No relationship on the rocks is truly saved by a trip to a tropical island as much as it's saved by the little sacrifices, the commitment to being in touch with how we feel, the little love note on a pillow. What are the little ways that you can start showing up for the relationship with your body right now rather than ignoring it? What might be different if you committed to really feeling great in your body rather than just 'okay'?

Many of us live for years just like the couples in the movie, putting up with an okay relationship and losing touch with how great it really can feel. If this sounds familiar, ask yourself what you might do differently right now, even if nothing about your life can radically change. You still have to go to work, eat dinner on the run, get up early with the kids. But if all it really takes is a moment, ask yourself: what would romancing your body again look like right now?

Can you decide to listen to it, to hear it when it needs to move, needs to sleep or needs to stop eating? There's nothing sexier than a partner who listens and adores us. What does your body need from you right now that would rekindle the passion in your relationship? Think about it. This is the foundation of the Body Reunion Process and the beginning of a whole new way of being in your body. It doesn't take much more than a shift of acknowledgment and a moment of remembering. You just might move past the seven year itch and into a second honeymoon.

What Reality Do You Create With Your Body?

We live in a world where more and more people are acknowledging that our thoughts can create our reality. New age thinkers urge us to pay attention to the power of our minds to create or uncreate happiness, peace and even wealth. And yet there's one untapped area where thoughts run rampant, where we may not even check ourselves or pay attention: the thoughts we are constantly having about our bodies.

Pay attention to this for a moment, even throughout your day. When you look in the mirror, when your pants don't fit as loosely as they did last week, when you get symptoms of a chronic illness coming back, grapple with a physical limitation or sore back, or even when you notice a wrinkle--what kinds of thoughts are you having toward your body in these moments, if you could turn up the volume on your inner dialogue? The results might surprise you.

'Oh gross.'
'God, I can't stand this.'
'God you can't do anything.'
'Could this pain just go away already?'

There are a couple of reasons why it's important to start paying attention to the inner dialogue. First, because if we take on that your body is something you're in relationship with all the time, this kind of attentiveness to the messages you send it gives you a chance to clean up your act. How do you think your body feels about the kinds of things it's hearing? How would you feel if you were on the other side of these thoughts and feelings?

Second, it's important because if your thoughts do create your reality, you're creating a negative loop you won't get out of. I don't believe that positive change and transformation can ever come from criticism, judgment and blame. We have to change our attitude within the relationship before anything can shift on the outside. In other words, there's no 'there' there. You can't get to the perfect body by constantly abusing and criticizing yourself. You have to take a radical stance to choose love and acceptance now.

This isn't always easy, but it's the work that the Body Reunion Solution advocates. It asks you to become the best person you can in relating to your body--because your body is also you. All the negative messages, the abuse and the criticism also land in the recesses of your heart and soul and create a landscape of blame and conflict inside you that affects--and creates--your life.

Think about it. Really. No pun intended. What reality do you want to be creating for yourself and your body, and what thoughts create that reality? Are you kinder? More at peace? More forgiving? Do you hold the sensations or symptoms in your body as the enemy or as something to work with together and seek to understand? Which stance brings your reality closer to the one you most want?

You'll feel the difference right away in how it feels to be in your body. A kind and supportive voice softens and opens the body, so that your reality literally does change right in front of you. Negative messages often create tightness, shallowness of breath and constriction. As you become aware of the effect your thoughts have on your body, you'll notice immediately--through your body--the effect they have on you.

So see if you can start choosing a different kind of thought. Change, 'Oh my God, gross,' when your jeans don't fit to, 'Hey, I know you're doing the best you can here. Let's work together to keep getting you to a healthy weight.' As you become aware of your thoughts toward your body throughout the day, see if you can change them into more positive and loving ones. Consider, at the end of the day, thanking your body for all it's done for you and see how it responds. Your body lets you know right away what kind of reality you're creating. What reality will you choose to live in today?

Is Your Body Seen But Not Heard?

(photo by Lauren Greenfield Alli, Annie, Hannah, and Berit, All 13, before the First Big Party of the Seventh Grade, Edina, Minnesota, 1998. Restricted gift of Anstiss and Ronald Krueck in honor of Renée Harrison Drake, with love and admiration.)

I was sitting around today with a group of wise woman, exploring the relationship we've each had with our bodies. They are therapists, initiated into the worlds of insight and reflection, able to reach back into their experiences and make meaning. Today we talked about the relationship we've had with our bodies as women, how it's changed and what may have changed it.

I've explored this topic repeatedly in my weight loss groups--the messages we receive, the events we move through that change how we relate to our bodies. But today, Kim and Susan talked about that difficult, uncomfortable time we all know as adolescence. Prior to our bodies changing shape before our very eyes, we admitted, we were each aware of them as useful friends, beings that were functional, that allowed us to run and move and experience the world. When puberty hit, they admitted, they began to get a lot of attention. Suddenly they were looked at, examined, seen in a way that they had never been before.

Kim noticed the same thing recently, she said, when she sat in on a high school class and watched the vast differences between two twelve year old girls: one skinny, flat-chested and awkward, and the other tall, curvacious and beautiful. The way they held themselves was different, she noted. The taller, more developed girl was already getting a kind of attention that required her to interact differently in the world, to sense into her boundaries, to make sense of being seen. The other girl was practically invisible. All because of the shape of their bodies.

What happens inside us, we wondered, when the world begins to see our bodies differently--maybe before we even really know them ourselves? What decisions do we begin to make about what our body is or does or can do for us? What we each grieved as we talked further was the shift that happened away from seeing our bodies as useful, functional allies we could do things with to--as the rest of the world reflected--objects that were seen and evaluated.

It's no surprise, when we consider that this experience happens to almost every woman as she begins to develop, that the sense of ourselves and our bodies from the inside out begins to evaporate. You may not even have seen it happen. You just found yourself attending to the body from the outside in: wanting to dress it better, do the right kind of exercise, get to the right weight. A relationship that privileged how you felt in your body slowly begins to give way to one that cares about how your body looks or performs.

This is why reconnecting to our bodies and the relationships with them is not just a healing practice but a radical, revolutionary stance. It says 'no' to a cultural norm that asks us as women to collude with viewing ourselves from the outside. As we choose to look at ourselves through the relationship we have with our bodies, how it feels to be in it, we take back our power. We choose whether or not our body is acceptable to us, not based on what it looks like but instead on whether or not we are in loving relationship with it.

Ask yourself if you've abandoned your body to look at it from the outside and see what it's like to try revisiting a relationship with it instead. Notice what it feels like, what it might be saying to you, what it needs right now. Can you see your body from the inside out? Can you still remember what that feels like?

Think about a time when you were a child, before the awkwardness of puberty hit and remember the things you loved to do and experience with your body. Do you still do any of them now? And if you can't do them, what steps could you take in your life to bring back the qualities of that earlier relationship with your body--one centered on your senses, your body's aliveness and a spirit of exploration? Have a chat with that earlier body and ask it if there's anything it needs from you now that you may have left behind with childhood. Make a list of some ways you might revisit that earlier body and remember a time when your body was heard, and not just seen.

The secret behind 'The Secret': Using Your Body to Create the Life You Want

So what is the secret behind 'The Secret'--the best-seller that tells us we can create the lives we want with our own minds? I think one of the biggest keys to envisioning what we want is being able to EMBODY it. That is, being able to feel and sense it in our bodies as if it's already happened.

When I work with counseling clients, I'll often have them imagine the state they'd like to be feeling once a problem is solved, a relationship healed, peace of mind achieved. There is always a physical component, if you break it down: a body sense of what that state of mind actually feels like. I'll ask: what does your breathing feel like in that new state? Do you feel lighter, clearer? How does your chest feel, your neck, your head, your back?

Once a state of mind can be created through the body, you can return to it again and again by recreating it through these physical components: softening the breath, feeling your chest open and light, imagining your head clear. In a matter of seconds, the state that you most want to achieve is with you. As you practice, the result you most want is being created for you--from the most basic, physical level out into your life.

I had an amazing experience using this technique several years ago. I was in a relationship that was on and off, and struggled with wanting to know where it would go and how it would all turn out. I asked myself what state I most wanted to be feeling at the end of it all, and I realized that no matter how it turned out, what I wanted most was to be at peace.

So I practiced peace: I imagined what peace felt like in my breathing, my thinking, my stomach, my heart. I called in all the physical qualities of peace and began to create them. And whenever my head got crazy with emotion, fear, or wanting to figure it all out--when there was no clear cut answer--I would simply breathe my way back to what peace felt like, affirming that this state was what I wanted to get to. I had no idea how, I just kept creating it in my body.

It was a difficult time. But weeks and months--and a lot of inner and outer work--later, I found myself with the man who would become my husband, feeling exactly the state I had conjured up through my body. I remember it exactly: lying on the couch and realizing that the physical components I had created were just what I was feeling, and that the state I most wanted had found me. Peace now lived in me, just as I had felt it before.

I believe this is possible for all of us, and another way in which our connection to our bodies can change our lives. If you're going through a difficult time, ask yourself what state you'd like to experience on the other side and let yourself create it through your body: what would that state feel like, how would you breathe if you felt it? What would it be like to walk around in that state? Put yourself there, piece by physical piece. And keep creating it whenever other feelings of fear or worry get in the way.

See what happens. With your body as an ally and a co-creator, you just may breathe and feel your way into the life you've always wanted!