Getting Off the Diet Bandwagon

I have several friends who are always trying out the latest fad diet. I can count on them to give me a report on their progress--wildly enthusiastic at first, and then, eventually, disappointed and mute. What happens?

My usual response is to support anyone's effort toward positive change, but I realized recently that I might do more for my friends. I can begin to ask them what it is they really want, and how they imagine they'd feel when they get to the other side of this 'new' diet. What is it that they believe being thinner will give them, and how can they have more of that quality in their lives now?

Diets usually don't work because they require unrealistic deprivation and result in an eventual explosion of acting out behavior and sabotage. But thinking about what it is we imagine it will feel like to live in the body we most want is creative thinking. It means we have to fantasize and feel in our bodymind where we're going; we have to connect physically to the goal and not just abstractly, with our mind alone.

Unfortunately, so many of us have lost touch with that. The drive to be 'thinner' has become a goal so ingrained in our culture that it's not always even associated with things like feeling better, healthier, more connected to our bodies. If it's just another mechanistic goal, something to check off a checklist, it lacks the passion and aliveness we need to have to feel really connected to it. Our bodies have become mute objects to be silenced as we subject them to diets, rather than being encouraged to be participants and have an actual voice in the process.

Intuitively, we know what feels good to our bodies. And we can begin, if we're willing to listen, to use that sense to guide us to better health and choices. When I'm willing to ask a friend how it would feel to accomplish whatever weight goal they want, I look for real physical, visceral descriptions like 'I'll feel lighter,' 'I'll feel freer and more able to move,' or 'I'll have more energy.' When I hear things like, 'I want to fit into my old pants,' or 'I don't know, I just want to be thinner,' I worry more that the external goal hasn't been connected yet with the body's possibility.

If you're thinking about going on yet another diet, consult with your body and see if it is excited about what lies ahead. Does the diet feel like a plan that supports you both in developing a more intuitive, connected relationship, or does it require you to ignore your body's needs and force it to jump through hoops? Are you looking at weight loss as a task to accomplish, or have you really connected to it as something you and your body both want, something that will bring you greater health and aliveness?

It's not that I think diets are always wrong, but it's too easy to jump on the diet bandwagon for the wrong reasons, without connecting with the wisdom of our bodies. After too many fad diets, you can lose your ability to sense basic signals your body tries to send: are you hungry? What would feel good to eat right now? Cycles of mistrust begin to develop that don't ever bring you closer to your real body, no matter how much weight you lose.

Encourage yourself and your friends to think about what it will feel like when you lose the weight you want, not just what it will look like, and make sure that the way you're getting there includes your body's voice. Have fun, move with a vision you and your body can both get onboard with, one that still allows sensuality, play and flavor. On the most basic level, our bodies already know what they need to be healthy. But in our fad diet culture, are we taking the time to listen?

After Sexual Violation: Getting A Healthy Body Relationship Back

One issue I haven't talked about much here, but which I see all the time in my practice, is the connection between sexual abuse and body issues. There are so many feelings that go along with having our boundaries violated sexually: shame, self-blame, helplessness. When we take on too much responsibility for someone else's physical transgression, even if it's a kiss, a gesture or a comment, our body relationship also suffers. It might be hard to stay in the body with feelings of attraction or sensuality because they now feel risky or unsafe.

Sometimes reconnecting to the body means forgiving what has happened in the past and moving forward together. I'll often ask survivors of sexual abuse in my practice if they are still harboring any feelings of blame or guilt for something that was out of their control. Then I ask if those feelings are being lodged somewhere in the body relationship, consciously or unconsciously, by shutting down or off to vital parts of themselves, their sensations and their desires.

The responses to surviving sexual abuse are as varied as people are: some survivors become very protective of their sexuality, wearing bulky clothes or putting on weight to discourage sexual attention, burying themselves in food or numbness. Others become hypersexual, actively engaging in sexual activity that doesn't always feel good, as if they have to redo what happened to them. Self-care and boundaries can go out the window.

The body feels the consequences of both of these responses, and from a relationship perspective it is impacted by our growing distance. As if waiting to regain some hidden or lost part of ourselves, our body wants to reconnect to safe sensuality, to feeling good, vital and alive. Once we begin to look at our bodies as half of a necessary and constant relationship, we have to become responsible for our part in shutting down and turning away from all that our bodies offer us. How do we reclaim that?

One way is to begin to make your new intention known. If you've hidden or not taken care of yourself or your body as the result of a sexual boundary violation, let your body know you're sorry and you want to do it differently. Write a letter or meditate with your body on a new intention or a new way of being you'd like to create. Also, consider the person or people who violated your boundaries and write them a letter, saying that you and your body no longer take responsibility for what happened and are now choosing to be free from that person's tyranny and carelessness.

Watch how it feels to make a new commitment to your body as a survivor, one who gets to live fully in her body rather than abandoning it or numbing it. As you make this commitment, you may feel a rush of feelings--from sadness to relief to anger. Give yourself the time and the space to get the additional support you need. It's never too late to heal.

It may also be helpful to write new affirmations for the body relationship and life you want and see if any resistances come up as you do so. Can you affirm that you deserve to be happy sexually, fully connected to your body? Can you affirm that you are safe and know how to care for youself and your body, from this moment forward? If you notice a lot of emotional baggage standing in the way, contact a caring professional who can take you through this piece and out the other side.

I affirm for you that your body relationship can be something of joy, wonder and sensuality, something that opens you up to the world rather than making you run from it. Ask yourself which one you're doing with your body, and if you're taking responsibility for someone else's mistake, something that doesn't belong to you. The ultimate in our healing journey is taking back the fullness of feeling we had before we were ever violated, now with greater consciousness, compassion and love. Your body is waiting for you with open arms.

The Seasons of the Body

The blahs this week. Darker skies at night and I am tired in my bones, even with enough sleep. My body is tired and restless at the same time, in anticipation of some shift of the seasons.

I resist its knowing: the way it would feel to crawl into bed early with a book, to feel my tiredness held and soothed. Instead, I push with the activity of a summer that is leaving; it will be replaced by decaying autumn. Eventually I succumb.

Our bodies know the seasons and live them; I feel mine slowing down, looking around, wanting more contemplation, stillness and rest. My body is a part of the natural world, knows its way through the rhythms and ebbs of energy, of light and dark.

How does the season of the fall live in our bodies, take us as physical selves into the point of passage from one stage to the next? Fall is harvest too: the reaping of lessons, the gathering of what we've sown. Our arms can be open to receive.

My body is pliant, soft and open and tired, restful, vulnerable.

What does your body right now teach you about the season of fall? What wisdom of the seasons does it bring to you to contemplate or to live, slowing down for long enough to let it in?

The Spirituality of the Body

How do you know when you are in the presence of something greater than yourself--something holy, divine, inspiring? Religious philosophers have called it the 'numinous,' the 'mystery.' Its presence can feel like a moment of clarity or calm or like a flush of heat, a quickening of the pulse. Mystics have been deeply stilled by it or pulled into spasms of energy or chanting. Whatever it is, it is a powerful place when we feel it.

But this is my point exactly: we feel it. As physical beings, even the holy moves through us in grounded and physical ways that we experience in our bodies. A feeling of bliss can still be catalogued as a change in our breath, a sense of lightness, an expansion in the chest.

So often we have separated the spiritual from the physical, believing they exist in two separate realms. But actually, they are necessarily intertwined, just as they are in us as human beings. When a spiritual or mystical experience of the divine comes to us, it also must move through the nuances and languages of the body.

I think the two worlds are becoming more connected--spirituality and the body--in terms of how we conceive of and articulate what it means to live a spiritual life. Today, practices like mindfulness and yoga that seek to understand and listen to the wisdom of the body are gaining in popularity. Even centering prayer, out of the Catholic tradition, borrows much of its technique from meditation practices involving the breath and the following of sensation. It may be that our body, separated for so long from the world of spirituality, is in fact our greatest guide into it.

Often I will ask clients to trace their feelings or discomfort inward toward the body, particularly when an issue is coming up strongly or feeling unresolved for them. As we move into those depths of sensation--a tightness here or a feeling of energy there--feelings and awarenesses get accessed. 'What do you feel when you stay with that constriction in your chest?' I might ask. And out of that might come a fear or anxiety the client had been unaware of in their conscious life, the knowing of which releases her to look at it and heal it so it no longer stands in her way.

If we could learn to look at the pains, sensations and constrictions in our body as spiritual teachers, we might hold our relationship to our body in a totally different light. Instead of trying to escape unwanted body sensations or issues or tame them in order to 'get to' our spiritual work, we might instead see our bodies as the very place where that deep spiritual work can happen. What would change in your relationship with your body if you trusted that listening to its language might bring some of your truest learning and surrender?

Too often we see the issues with our bodies--whether its weight, pain or injury--as inconveniences to be subdued and erased. But this other way of thinking about the body asks us to assume they have a lesson for us, something kind and knowing that's trying to be said. We might ask: what spiritual lesson does this issue with my body force me to face? What might I have to learn about myself if I chose to listen and surrender rather than resisting it?

Just this day, try on this way of thinking and ask if there's anything going on with your body that calls you into a spiritual lesson or practice. Chronic pain, for example, can be one of the greatest teachers of how to live in the present moment; there may be no other way through it. Overweight may move us to making choices around self-care or even to sitting with the pain caused by our attachment to the thoughts and opinions of others. What is your lesson?

Once you sense it, see how it would feel in your body if that issue were cleared away and get a sense of walking in your body in that new feeling. Thank it for giving you the message about what needed to be changed within and ask it if it might join you in releasing the lesson and moving into a new future. Our bodies are willing partners in our transformation; its as if they too are waiting for us to discover it in order to open them more fully to life.

Finding Peace Through the Body

How does it feel in your body when you are open, surrendered, relaxed? How do you know you're in that state? What's your breathing like? Your posture? The feeling around your head, neck, shoulders? Your vision?

The reason why I ask is I'm starting to think more and more about the choice we have over how we walk in the world day-to-day. Do we want to be stressed out, tight and reactive; or would we prefer kindness, openness and breath? We mostly don't think we have a choice. When we're reactive, we believe our thoughts are real, and they--consequently--create our physical state. We're angry at someone and our body becomes congested by shallow breathing, tightness and a low-level of pain. Or we're stressed about something at work and our thinking sends messages to our body that there's never enough time, we'll never get it done. Our bodies take in the energy of the thoughts and go into 'fight or flight' mode, ramping up for battle.

But the truth is, we can flip this scenario by focusing on the body first. Anytime we want, we can check in to see how it feels to be in our bodies. Right now: do I feel relaxed, open and content? If the answer is no, we can ask: what would it take for me to change that state in my body to the one I'd rather be in? Leave the mind out of it, ask it to step inside, and make a choice on the body level for a kinder state of being. Begin to create the reality you want through breath, posture, perhaps a stretch.

If it's hard to get there right away, use a memory of when you feel relaxed and open. Maybe it's an image of you lying in the sun, getting a massage, taking a nap with a pet. If you catalog the series of sensations connected to that feeling of relaxation, you can begin to recreate them by going there with your mind and body the next time you're stressed. What's it like when your body feels relieved, relaxed, unbound? Again: what is your breath like, the feeling in your chest, a sense of lightness, an openness?

Now come back to the present moment, take a deep breath and build that state again through your body. Feel the breath the way it feels there, then the expansion through the chest. Take a few breaths. Now bring in other senses: the melting feeling of being in the sun or the surrendered softness of being touched. Watch what happens as your body goes into this remembered state. After a few breaths here, notice if the situation you'd created as stressful in your mind has the same impact.

Our bodies remember, and they tell us--by being keepers of sensation--when we're stressed or out of alignment with how we want to feel. But they can also be the doorways for how we get back. To allow them to be that, we just need to be willing to disengage from believing in the story about what's stressing us out and create and experience peace and openness through our bodies now instead. It just takes practice.

If it helps, find a word that you can say that brings you back to that relaxed and peaceful state and series of sensations you imagined earlier. It might be 'peace' or 'contentment' or 'love.' Say it to yourself when you visualize that moment of relaxation, and then practice saying it throughout the day and repeatedly calling up the state you associate with the word. What's your breathing like? Your level of openness? The sense of relief in your body? See if you can feel that state getting more easily accessible as you practice saying the word.

The power of this remembering is to see that we have more of a choice over the state we're living in than we think, all the time. Through the simple physical cues of the body we can practice and recreate what we most want to be feeling in our lives, or notice when we're in some other state and change it.

I encourage you to stay open to the possibility that you have more of a choice over the state you're living in than you think. Practice some of these awarenesses with your body. Then watch your life change on the outside to meet the kinder, more peaceful state of being you've learned to create from the inside out. Thank-you body!

Getting Rid of the Skeletons in the Closet: Other People's Voices About Your Body

Do you remember what kinds of things other people said about your body when you were younger? Ways they treated you that made you feel bad about your body? One step of the process I do with clients to reconnect them with their bodies is to do an inventory of the beliefs they took on about their body over the years. Like a couple reviewing the history of their relationship, we look at how you got to a place of negatively relating to your body. What happened in the past that brought you here?

One of the ways we take on beliefs about our bodies is through actual physical experiences: illnesses or injuries that make us feel like we're not sure we can trust our physical selves. But another way we can take on beliefs is through the way our body is treated or talked about by others. It's important to also take a look at the impact of those forces, because we may want to undo the beliefs we once took on--especially now, as we want a better relationship with our bodies moving into the future.

Looking back on the messages we got about our bodies, it's not hard to see where we may have abandoned a loving relationship with our bodies for someone else's criticism or judgment. One client I worked with was constantly 'scanned' by her mother and analyzed for how much she weighed. It was easy for her to lose a deeper connection with her body because it was always being examined from the outside, and her worth was associated with it. The belief she took on was something like, "My body is only worth something to me if it pleases my mother."

Another client lived through constant sexual harrassment by a stepfather who made lewd comments about her appearance and her attractiveness to boys--something she grew to be both desirous and afraid of. Her stepfather's voice made her feel that her body was something she couldn't control, that brought her unwanted attention. The belief she took on was something like, "I can't trust or control my body and the attention it brings; it's forcing me to experience things I don't want."

I urge many of my clients--and you too--to look closely at the actual beliefs you may have taken on about your body as a result of the observations and actions of others. Then ask yourself if you still want those beliefs. Sometimes we need to literally review our history in order to mine out the moments and patterns that created what are now beliefs we don't question. But we can begin to question them, to apologize for taking them on, and even to undo them.

One powerful exercise can be to write a letter now, from the desire to have a better relationship with your body, to anyone who treated or spoke about your body in a way that demeaned it, belittled it, or caused you to take on a negative belief about it. In that letter, you can say that you no longer accept (if you ever did) their behavior or their truth about your body and that you are now forging your own way with a body relationship that includes trust, respect and compassion.

Tell this person or group of people that you are learning to love your body no matter what, and that they no longer get to be right about how to treat or think about your own body. Sign the letter and date it, and make a note to yourself that from this moment on you're no longer living with other people's baggage about the way you relate to your body.

It's amazing how powerful this can be. You begin to realize that ultimately no one has the final word on your body and how it feels to be in it. And you begin to recognize and let go of the beliefs that may have accumulated over the years that take you out of a better relationship with your body. Realizing they never belonged to you and choosing to no longer carry them around makes you and your body both breathe a sigh of relief.

Take the skeletons out of the closet. Tell them you no longer need them.

Then when you're done with that letter, look at those old beliefs you may have taken on from others and see if you might reword them into new and beautiful ones, ones that make you and your body sing with delight and a deeper place of peace and self-love. It's your choice now, and no one else's.

The Body As A Bodyguard to Intimacy

Have you ever wanted to get close to someone and then realized that your body won't let you do it? You get a weird feeling, feel sick or shut down. You like everything you see and hear but your body doesn't go there with you. Something else is calling you away from the person in front of you.

Of course, for the most part it's good to listen to these instincts. When we learn to listen, our bodies can show us truths we might not want to hear with our conscious mind. But what if your body is simply defending itself based on old patterns and beliefs? What if the body is putting up its defenses and you don't need or want it to anymore?

This often happens when we've been through past traumatic events or if something makes it hard for us to get close to people. A client recently admitted that although consciously he says he's thrilled to be in relationship with his current partner, his body's repeated inability to sustain an erection seems to be saying something else. As we move into exploring the body's message for him, we realize that his past history--and a particularly damaging and abusive former relationship--means part of him may feel he needs protection every time he lets his guard down. As he begins to open up emotionally, his body has put up a different kind of road block for him.

From the standpoint of the body relationship, what do we do if our conscious mind and our body don't seem to be on the same page? We get curious. As Joe and I work with his experience, we realize that he needs to let his body know somehow that it's safe for him to be vulnerable and aroused; that he's now capable of taking care of himself emotionally and that he chooses to be present and open in his current relationship, even if that openness was unwarranted in the past.

I suggest that perhaps Joe write a letter to his body, letting it know how he feels and that it's okay to take away the sexual obstacles to intimacy. (Of course I also suggest that Joe get a medical check-up to see if there's anything else going on!) He's mature enough to handle what's happening and he appreciates the body's attempts to keep him safe by avoiding sexual intimacy. I then suggest that Joe let his body know how he'd like to be experiencing sex and create a vision of himself being able to have sex with his partner and enjoy it, fully embracing both the power and vulnerability of that act, giving his body a map of what he'd prefer to be experiencing instead.

The same process is important for any disconnect we go through with our bodies, but I think it's particularly poignant with sexual issues. Our body is the boundary with which we meet the world, and it is possible for it to react to protect us if it doesn't know it's okay not to. Even if we think we're 'over' something and ready to handle the intensity of sexual intimacy, our body may be holding on, not believing us, thinking it needs to take charge.

Ask yourself if this is true for you anywhere in your sexual experience. Are there places where your body holds back that you might let it know that it's okay to trust instead? On the other hand, are there any truths your body is trying to tell you that you ignore, but that keep showing up in sexual side effects or shut down? What would happen if you listened instead and tried to discern what's being said?

I'm always amazed at how little most of us use our body as a resource or move through physical challenges without dialogue. If you are struggling with blocks in your body around sexual intimacy, ask yourself if there's anything your body might need to know from you in order to let down its guard. How could you kindly thank it for doing what it thought it needed to do and let it know it can stop and move toward greater openness and receptivity?