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?

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.