Filed Under: Body Acceptance
17 March 2015 | Written by Xenia Ayiotis
Feeling unhappy with our bodies is like a dark cloud looming over every part of our lives. The negative feelings we may have towards our bodies can profoundly impact many of our experiences.
Body dissatisfaction often triggers mental health issues like low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression, and can even lead to the development of eating disorders.
And this dissatisfaction doesn’t just stay within us; it affects our relationships, work, and productivity, while also pushing us towards unhelpful behaviors.
Ultimately, being unhappy with our bodies and constantly wishing to change our bodies diminishes our overall quality of life. And if we want to change our relationship with food and end the struggle, it’s crucial to start shifting the way we view our bodies.
It’s okay if we can’t find it in us to love our bodies. What we CAN do is to learn how to befriend our bodies.
“The body too has it’s rights, and it will have them: they cannot be trampled on without peril. The body ought to be the soul’s best friend. Many good men however have neglected to make it such: so it has become a fiend and has plagued them.”
– Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1826 –
We often think about our ideal home and our ideal relationships. We imagine what it would be like and how we would like our partner to treat us and talk to us. How we would treat our partner, what we would do together. We can spend hours imagining what this could look like, but let’s take a moment to reflect on an ideal relationship with our bodies. After all, we live in our bodies – they carry us through life.
What would your ideal relationship with your body look like? How would you ideally treat your body on a daily basis?
Here are some ideas that inspire me…
- To treat our bodies in a way that leaves us feeling nourished and nurtured every day.
- To be on the same side as our bodies.
- To befriend and have a very close and intimate relationship with our bodies.
- To listen to our bodies and hear their subtle messages (the body whispers but the mind shouts loudly!)
- To stop the negative self-talk, criticism and body bashing.
- To stop comparing our bodies look and ability to others and not to be affected by the “perfect” airbrushed images in the media.
- Ideally, to feed our bodies both for nourishment and pleasure and to feel relaxed around all types of food.
- To eat and move in a way where eating is pure pleasure and moving is a delight and that is non-judgemental and free from guilt.
- To speak to our bodies in a calm, kind and gentle way and not bully them into extremes.
- To establish healthy, caring life long habits not because we should but because it actually feels good in body, mind and spirit.
- To trust and be patient with our bodies.
- To be forgiving when we don’t eat mindfully or when we are critical.
- To create a relationship with our bodies that is based on kindness, acceptance and unconditional love, almost the way our pets love us.
- Ultimately to foster a connection to our bodies where we listen to what they are saying and having a commitment to loving our bodies as they are and the courage to accept them despite their imperfections and limitations.
- To keep our promises to our bodies.
May you learn to treat your precious body with love.
May you learn to look after your body with joy.
May you learn to respect and accept your body with kindness.
Wishing you well,
Xen
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