Loving Your Body in a World of Shame.
Loving Your Body in a World of Shame
“Love your body” - These words have become somewhat of a cliche in a world that is more than ever saturated with body shame.
What is love? Imagine you were in a relationship with someone who told you they loved you but asked you to change and be more attractive, never listened to you, never honed your needs, and always remind you that you’re not quite good enough - would you believe them? Would you stay in that relationship? Hopefully, the answer is no. Hopefully you would leave that relationship and hold out for the partner who would love you for exactly who you are.
Unfortunately most of us treat our bodies like that abusive partner. We claim we love them while wishing them to be different - better. Love is not simply acceptance - it is embracing and celebrating every part of ourselves.
“Radical self-love summons us to be our most expansive selves, knowing that the more unflinchingly powerful we allow ourselves to be, the more unflinchingly powerful others feel capable of being. Our unapologetic embrace of our bodies gives others permission to unapologetically embrace theirs.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love
Since we were young we have been fed toxic messages from society. From an early age we have been shown a very narrow standard of the ideal body, and which bodies are better than others.
How did we get here? Why does our culture want to erase the diversity and complexity of real people by prescribing such narrow standards for our bodies?
How did we get here?
Why does our culture want to erase the diversity and complexity of real people by prescribing such narrow standards for our bodies?
In the capitalist economy, the invention body hierarchy is a genius choice for a booming industry. We all have a body and just like nature our bodies are all different, they move through cycles, they change, stretch, they will age, get sick, become injured, and one day they will die. Left to their own devices our bodies cannot become or stay the young, thin, toned, blemish-free versions that we are told are the standard for worthiness.
This means that we will spend most of our teenage to adult lives spending our precious time, energy, and money to try to climb our way up the ladder. We will never be perfect because nature is not perfect - it’s alive - always changing and rearranging. If we ascribe to the unreachable standard we will stay in a perpetual state of consumerism to try and attain that perfection. This is why the beauty industry spends over half a trillion dollars a year in advertising to inundate us with messaging that keeps us believing that as you are - you are not enough.
Here is a staggering number based on polls of women in the US in 2014: 95% of women are dissatisfied with their bodies. That’s almost 160 million women in the US alone who are willing to spend their money to try and make themselves feel worthy.
What if we stopped believing the myth that there is one kind of beauty?
What if we chose to love, not accept, but LOVE our bodies exactly as they are? Can you imagine that for a moment? Can you close your eyes and notice how it feels to love your body exactly as it is?
“You do not win by struggling to the top of a caste system, you win by refusing to be trapped within one at all.” - Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth
So long as we dismiss, suppress, ignore, and control the needs of the body we will always feel as though we are at war with ourselves. In this divided state we are cut off from our natural wholeness. It isn’t possible to live a wholehearted life if we are at war against the very basis of human life - the body.
What steps can we take to move away from the story of body shame, reclaim our bodies and move towards a world of radical self-love?
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Practice Mindfulness. With even a very short practice of mindfulness each day you cultivate the ability to notice your thoughts. When you notice thoughts of body shame - comparison and judgment with yourself and/or others - know that these thoughts are not yours. We have all received so much messaging over the course of our lives to perceive certain bodies as “good” and others as “bad”. It takes awareness, patience, and so much compassion to unlearn these messages.
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Choose your messaging. Don’t purchase beauty magazines. Set clear boundaries with friends or family who speak in the language of body shame. Unfollow people on social media who are speaking the language of body shame and promoting a very narrow and unrealistic definition of beauty. Follow people who have bodies similar AND different to yours. As many different types of bodies as you can find so that your brain begins to recognize a wide range of bodies as “normal”.
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Listen to your body and find your “Why”. When you choose movement and food, can you pause and ask yourself WHY you are choosing what you choose? Is it based on knowing your true wants and needs? Or are you choosing from conditioning based on body shame. Is your body craving gentle movement, exercise, or rest? Is your body craving a snack, a meal, a treat? Can you choose from love and joy rather than fear and shame?
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Be in Community. Find the ones who don’t speak the language of body shame. Who love and accept you exactly as you are. Who love their own bodies. Find the ones who believe in a world where every-body feels not only safe and seen, but loved. Hold onto them dearly.
About the author:
Anisha fell in love with yoga in 2006, when she took her first class and understood this was an intimate language of movement that her body understood. Yoga became her personal medicine and practice of coming home to herself and her body. She took her first Yoga Teacher Training in 2015 and has been sharing the gift of Yoga throughout Asia since.
Her teachings draw on her background in Classical Hatha Yoga, Yoga Therapy, Somatic Vinyasa, Biodynamic Yin, Yoga Nidra and Meditation, and Self-Inquiry. She compassionately encourages students to remember who they are and experience the bliss of awakening and falling in Love with oneself.
Originally born in Canada, but fascinated with the wisdom traditions of the Eastern world, her travels eventually landed her in Bali, which she now calls home. You can contact anisha in here: anisha.rajguru@gmail.com .
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