David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Cultivation: Learning to Love Yourself Through Your Body
by Ewa Schwartz, OnlineCounseling.org
January 31, 2011
Last week I was doing an exercise to explore any unloving thoughts that I might have. With all the work that I have done I have learned about how not to judge others, to see everyone's innocence, and to love equally, but I was curious as to where I was really at within myself. What I found was remarkably revealing.
If you were to ask me: what is your perception of yourself, do you love yourself you would have gotten a resounding yes, of course, what is there not to love! But there were a few clues that perhaps this was not really true if I dug a little deeper.
The way in which I unearthed any unloving thoughts was to first think about those quick little moments in which I wished that a part of me was different. For me it was around my physical body, but for you it could also be around any aspect of yourself.
I started to look at the automatic thoughts that I periodically had and added them all up, I was horrified to see the extent to which I really did not love and appreciate my body. It really was a thing that I used for a means to an end, somehow separate from me. Starting with the top of my head my assessment went like this:
Oh I wish my hair wasn't oily and same for my nose. Gosh my ears are big. My nose could be just a little bigger. Oh look at those wrinkles on my neck. Not another blemish! Why doesn't my face tan evenly? Hmmm, my eyebrows are thin...is my hair doing that too? Look at how dark my hair is getting as I get older...is that happening to my lips too? On and on this inventory went.
And this is just the periodic thoughts I have had just from the head up! I don't need to give you the rest of the sordid details. It was so shocking when I realized that all these occasional thoughts added up to what was really so much self criticism.
We all have to look for how we unknowingly do this to ourselves. When we have thoughts like this, we are subconsciously devaluing ourselves. We are rejecting parts of ourselves without even realizing that we are doing this. This is a form of self attack. You will feel neither safe nor happy in your own skin if you do this.
As I completed the exercise about the unloving thoughts I realized how truly unimportant they were in the larger scheme of things, of self love. From this perspective it was easy to choose to love myself by simply not entertaining these thoughts anymore, that these thoughts do not at all reflect who I really am. That is all it takes. Those types of thoughts are not you at all.
Now skip forward to my yoga class that I finally did yesterday. If you have read my January 21 entry, you will know that I had started the journey then to understand my body better, or differently than I did before. This is the related update for it.
I tried a number of things to resolve the pain that I was experiencing back then. I tried this, that, and the other. I did and I did. What I didn't do was to just be. I tried so hard to do the "right thing", that I managed to make things progressively worse on a day to day basis! I even went to a chiropractor and to a massage therapist.
Through them I learned some very valuable information. In my initial efforts I had so deeply overworked (through various means) the knotted muscles that I ended up increasing my own pain. That I needed to stop doing, to stop trying so hard, and to just listen to and gently care for my body, whose voice I do not obviously hear.
When I stopped trying to make things happen, my body relaxed and started to heal itself. Even just changing my pillow decreased my neck pain. I finally went to my yoga class, understanding that I needed to start to pay attention to what my body was telling me it needed, wanted, and was capable of doing in every moment.
For anyone who has ever tried this, it is difficult to be in touch with our bodies at all, since we are trained to "do", to try even harder to get to where we want to get to or to be who we want to be. But what we really need is to allow our bodies to help guide us in this journey, to be aware of and trust in our bodies wisdom. To become more aware of your own physical body.
In the course of the class, while focusing on the breathing and gently trying to listen to my body, I experienced a very unique sensation, only for about a minute or two, but in that time I knew that I "got it". It was a flowing feeling of self love. It flowed through me and around me and guided me in my movements. I had never felt that before. It was wonderful.
In that moment I wasn't trying, I was just being. Fully integrated in being who I am from the perspective of the body. Our journey is about integrating body, mind, and soul, even though the focus has been on healing the mind in what I teach you here.
Now I know how important it is to have that balance of not just self awareness of the mind, but also of the body. That there is a completely new set of learning and understanding to develop in terms of who we really are.
Start to learn how to love your body and to allow it it to be an active part of your life. You only have one body. It is an integral part of your journey to find that balance within. Start to become aware of how you can love and listen to your body so that you can can further that goal of finding peace and balance within you.
by Ewa Schwartz, OnlineCounseling.org
January 31, 2011
Last week I was doing an exercise to explore any unloving thoughts that I might have. With all the work that I have done I have learned about how not to judge others, to see everyone's innocence, and to love equally, but I was curious as to where I was really at within myself. What I found was remarkably revealing.
If you were to ask me: what is your perception of yourself, do you love yourself you would have gotten a resounding yes, of course, what is there not to love! But there were a few clues that perhaps this was not really true if I dug a little deeper.
The way in which I unearthed any unloving thoughts was to first think about those quick little moments in which I wished that a part of me was different. For me it was around my physical body, but for you it could also be around any aspect of yourself.
I started to look at the automatic thoughts that I periodically had and added them all up, I was horrified to see the extent to which I really did not love and appreciate my body. It really was a thing that I used for a means to an end, somehow separate from me. Starting with the top of my head my assessment went like this:
Oh I wish my hair wasn't oily and same for my nose. Gosh my ears are big. My nose could be just a little bigger. Oh look at those wrinkles on my neck. Not another blemish! Why doesn't my face tan evenly? Hmmm, my eyebrows are thin...is my hair doing that too? Look at how dark my hair is getting as I get older...is that happening to my lips too? On and on this inventory went.
And this is just the periodic thoughts I have had just from the head up! I don't need to give you the rest of the sordid details. It was so shocking when I realized that all these occasional thoughts added up to what was really so much self criticism.
We all have to look for how we unknowingly do this to ourselves. When we have thoughts like this, we are subconsciously devaluing ourselves. We are rejecting parts of ourselves without even realizing that we are doing this. This is a form of self attack. You will feel neither safe nor happy in your own skin if you do this.
As I completed the exercise about the unloving thoughts I realized how truly unimportant they were in the larger scheme of things, of self love. From this perspective it was easy to choose to love myself by simply not entertaining these thoughts anymore, that these thoughts do not at all reflect who I really am. That is all it takes. Those types of thoughts are not you at all.
Now skip forward to my yoga class that I finally did yesterday. If you have read my January 21 entry, you will know that I had started the journey then to understand my body better, or differently than I did before. This is the related update for it.
I tried a number of things to resolve the pain that I was experiencing back then. I tried this, that, and the other. I did and I did. What I didn't do was to just be. I tried so hard to do the "right thing", that I managed to make things progressively worse on a day to day basis! I even went to a chiropractor and to a massage therapist.
Through them I learned some very valuable information. In my initial efforts I had so deeply overworked (through various means) the knotted muscles that I ended up increasing my own pain. That I needed to stop doing, to stop trying so hard, and to just listen to and gently care for my body, whose voice I do not obviously hear.
When I stopped trying to make things happen, my body relaxed and started to heal itself. Even just changing my pillow decreased my neck pain. I finally went to my yoga class, understanding that I needed to start to pay attention to what my body was telling me it needed, wanted, and was capable of doing in every moment.
For anyone who has ever tried this, it is difficult to be in touch with our bodies at all, since we are trained to "do", to try even harder to get to where we want to get to or to be who we want to be. But what we really need is to allow our bodies to help guide us in this journey, to be aware of and trust in our bodies wisdom. To become more aware of your own physical body.
In the course of the class, while focusing on the breathing and gently trying to listen to my body, I experienced a very unique sensation, only for about a minute or two, but in that time I knew that I "got it". It was a flowing feeling of self love. It flowed through me and around me and guided me in my movements. I had never felt that before. It was wonderful.
In that moment I wasn't trying, I was just being. Fully integrated in being who I am from the perspective of the body. Our journey is about integrating body, mind, and soul, even though the focus has been on healing the mind in what I teach you here.
Now I know how important it is to have that balance of not just self awareness of the mind, but also of the body. That there is a completely new set of learning and understanding to develop in terms of who we really are.
Start to learn how to love your body and to allow it it to be an active part of your life. You only have one body. It is an integral part of your journey to find that balance within. Start to become aware of how you can love and listen to your body so that you can can further that goal of finding peace and balance within you.
