Radical Body Love
Your body is a temple. How many times have you heard that, experiencing it in different ways?
Just like most spiritual phrases containing truth at the core, we can conceptually turn this one against ourselves. Do you fall into the trap of feeling spiritual only if you are drinking green juice and your skin glows because of lemon water and enough sleep and healthy movement? Do you look at instagram yogis with physical attributes that are socially celebrated and feel inferior? Do you source from outside affirmation from the opposite sex? Do you have a complicated relationship with wanting to appear desirable but also wanting to be safe from predatory energy? It can be a whole thing.
Most of us are familiar with pushing our bodies. Some of you have practiced tremendous amounts of discipline in your physical endeavors. There is a place for this and it is strong and powerful to push through. A lot of us are waking up to relaxation and the power of deep rest. An increasing number are awakening to movement that sources from deeper within.
One of my proudest moments lately came while I was leading a Diwali ceremony. One of the graduates of my yoga teacher training was attending, and as soon as I began leading the movement portion of the evening, she turned her attention inward and felt completely free to disregard my cues and move the way she felt like moving.
It brought tears to my eyes because if there’s anything I want to impart as a leader of movement, it is this: learn to awaken your inner aliveness and follow it into genuine movement that releases what has been trapped (trauma) and beckons to what wants to emerge (more life force).
It’s just like 10th grader Sam said a decade ago when I asked him what he was taking away from a semester of learning yoga with me. He said, “I don’t care as much about what other people think. I can do what I feel.”
I wish that teaching something actually meant you were an expert at the thing. Any teacher will tell you the truth: we teach what we need to learn. Ram Dass began teaching heart practices as an antidote to his aloofness and anger. I teach self acceptance because I have a many-headed hydra of an inner critic.
Self acceptance means to lean into the ugly and unloveable. Dance it. Meditate with it. Don’t push away the flaws and feeling that you don’t measure up. Embody all of it. As you do so, the resistance melts, and the opposite, beauty, rushes in. Those softened edges become rivers transporting what you most desire to you.
What I know about this type of shadow work is that it takes a tremendous amount of gentleness, patience, and support. That’s why I am focusing on body love and offering personal intuitive sessions to help you nudge through barriers to worth and receiving what you deserve.