Loving Your Body Well

If you take the time to listen to your body, you might be surprised to learn how much it knows.

Every creature knows exactly what it needs to heal and thrive and be safe. Wild animals seek medicinal herbs when they’re ill. They can sense when a tsunami is coming and will head to higher ground well before it hits.

---

Your body has the same ability. It can tell you what it needs to heal, to thrive, to be safe. Perhaps you’ve experienced this when you get a craving for some food that when you eat it, you feel totally satisfied; or when you are saved by a hesitation to step into that intersection where a moment later a car runs the red light.

Did you also know your body knows everything about you? After all, it’s been your constant companion since birth. It has witnessed and recorded everything you experienced. It remembers everything whether you do or not. All your thoughts, feelings, and emotions are stored in the tissues of your body, affecting your state of health for better or worse.

How is it we are not so tuned in like the wild creature? How is it that we are not aware much of the time what we are really feeling?

Many of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions are not pleasant, and certainly pain isn’t either. Human beings tend to judge pain as bad and something to be avoided, unlike the wild creature who perceives pain as purely information. So we turn off the pain through distractions and/or drugs and cut ourselves off from valuable information we need to heal.

Some of us are taught to be ashamed of our bodies, or at least certain parts; that somehow physicality is ungodly and to be avoided, that the body is the devil’s workshop. Certain emotions are believed to be negative and thus are to be denied when they arise. So we learn to suppress our sexual instincts and negative emotions instead of learning to harness and transmute them.

We human beings are taught to judge our bodies constantly. We are taught there is a desirable way to look. We judge how well our bodies perform in sports and dance, so we can’t just enjoy the game or the dance.

Judgment creates separation. When we judge we separate ourselves from who or what we are judging, even from our own selves, our own bodies.

Can you imagine an animal or a small child judging how it’s playing, or how it looks? It just enjoys the play. It just enjoys being. That is natural for us until we are taught to judge.
How can a body be happy when being judged and suppressed so much – even hated?

If you have found that you relate to a lot of this, you are not alone. This is the sad reality of the average human being.

I got cancer being so cut off from my body. I did not love my body. I feared its attractiveness. The cancer was a wake up call that got me paying attention to my precious body. I started to tune into it because I knew it knew what it needed to do to survive. I based my choices for healing on what my body was telling me. It told me what it needed physically, and it also told me what I needed to heal emotionally. I got clear what it likes to eat, and changed to a more agreeable diet. I embraced and healed buried dark emotions. It changed my life. And as I continue to heal my relationship with my body, my life keeps getting better.

I invite you to take some time to be with your body. Settle into a quiet place, and listen to the breath and the heartbeat. Appreciate the miracle of life coursing through your body. Scan your body; visit each part working from the feet up. Give it some love. You may be drawn to spend time with one part. You may ask if it has anything to say to you. Yes, start up a conversation.

Find out what your body has been wanting you to know. Find out from it what it needs to be happy and healthy. Does it need to dance, or go to the beach? Does it need to cry? Would it like a massage? Discover as you love your body more how much more it can support you in creating a richer life.

---

Lately I’ve become aware how much I’ve neglected and abused my body. Feeling a need to make up for it I’ve started to do the Hawaiian practice of healing and forgiveness called Ho’oponopono with my body. It’s changing my relationship with my body like nothing else has.

I’m using this very simple version of it:

                    I’m sorry.
                           Forgive me.
                                          I love you.
                                                         Thank you.

This practice is powerfully healing. Do it with your body, with yourself, and when you are having difficulty with another person. Simply repeat it until you feel a shift. Please feel free to share about your experience!

Love and blessings,
Rita