The KEY to Body Acceptance
I want to share with you what I believe is the single most important thing you need to know if you want to stop fighting your body and start accepting it.
Here it is: we are not our mind.
What the heck do I mean by that?
Let’s look at an example.
Imagine you are standing in front of a mirror and you start criticizing your body. You say things to yourself like “ugh, I look so ugly, I really need to lose 20 pounds, I’d look much better if I did. I don’t want to go to that wedding next weekend looking like this. Everyone is going to judge me. I really need to do something about this. Maybe I just won’t go, I can’t handle anyone seeing me like this.”
Now, the question is - was that you having those thoughts?
Your reply is most likely “well of course it was! Who else would be having them?
The next question is - how can it be you having those thoughts if you are the one noticing the thoughts?
It’s like looking at a poster on a wall - are you the poster, or are you the one looking at the poster? Of course you are the one looking at the poster.
The same goes for our mind. We are the ones noticing the mind (which creates our thinking), we are NOT our mind!
This is really good news because it means that we can do something about all those thoughts that are being created by the mind, we have a CHOICE. We are not stuck thinking critical thoughts about our bodies. It’s not “us” who are having these thoughts - our mind is.
The mind is like a computer, it stores data. It holds all the beliefs and information we’ve been taught, along with our own interpretation of past experiences. A computer can only run the programming it was loaded with, it cannot think anything new. Our mind operates the same way.
So in order to have a more peaceful and harmonious relationship with our bodies, we first need to extricate ourselves from our mind. We need to recognize that we are not our thoughts, but that we are having thoughts that have been programmed into the mind.
All those thoughts you may think like “skinny is more beautiful” or “I have to lose weight to feel ok” or “I need to be thin to get a partner” or “fat is ugly” etc. are thoughts that have been programmed into our mind, usually through watching television, social media, family, our institutions etc.
If we are 100% absorbed in our thinking we don’t realize we’re having thoughts, we’re just thinking them. When that's happening we’re going to believe everything we think even if it’s making us feel like crap, even if the thoughts are not true (and most of them aren't!)
We need to be able to create separation between ourselves and our thoughts. This is where meditation comes in.
Meditation is a practice that helps us to create distance between ourselves and our thinking. It’s like cars driving on a highway, when we are caught in our thinking we’re in the car, but when we’re watching our thoughts, we’re standing on the side of the road watching the cars.
The more we can become aware of our thoughts and realize they are nothing more than beliefs and ideas our mind has been programmed with, we become empowered with the ability to decide if we actually want to listen to those thoughts.
If the thoughts going through our mind make us feel bad about ourselves and disempower us (like body-critical thoughts do), do we really want to keep listening to them?
The more we become aware of our thinking, the less those negative body thoughts will run our life, and we’ll have a much better relationship with our body.
If you’re interested in taking a deeper dive into this subject, I highly recommend reading the book The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer.
And if you are interested in starting a meditation practice, Headspace’s “Guide to Meditation” on Netflix is a nice place to start.