You'd be surprised how much getting to know your body better can make it so much easier to love.ĭancing-intentionally, by yourself-can be a powerful way to reconnect with your body. What parts of your body is it connecting with? What are your feet doing right now? What about the inside of your cheek? This is how you tune into your body." And so on and so forth all the way down to your feet.ĭarnell's suggestion: "Right now, where are you, what are you sitting on? Notice how it feels.hard, soft, cold, warm, damp, sticky, etc. What sensations are you feeling up there? Any tension? Tingles? Pain? After a few moments, move down to your face and do the same. Breathe slowly in and out, close your eyes, and then focus your attention totally on the top of your head. One particularly powerful way of getting embodied is through doing a mindfulness exercise called a body scan. Or you might consider trying a form of exercise or movement that requires a lot of control of the body-belly dancing, weightlifting, or even yoga. Consider trying something like a menstrual cup to manage your periods, since the process of inserting and removing a cup requires you to feel out your cervix with your fingers, see and feel your menstrual blood, and generally get intimate with your body. For example, if you've got a uterus, try tracking your menstrual cycle in more detail. There are so many ways to get to know your body on a deeper level. Slowing down to hear your body's messages is how you develop compassion-which is a type of love." "Once you are familiar with your body's language (not body language), you are better able to know what it's trying to tell you. "The body is the physical expression of emotions, and this has nothing to do with how it looks or how old it is," Darnell explains. To love your body, you must first know your body. Do they make you feel empowered? Delete and add new accounts as necessary because what you surround yourself with influences you, no matter how immune you may think you are to those images." Sexologist Megan Stubbs, Ed.D., recommends curating your social media feed: "Look at the accounts you are following. "I get to choose which messages that I internalize, and I get to create boundaries around the people, places, and things that take me out of my body." "It's my job to make sure I'm filtering those things and that I'm being very mindful and proactive and putting up boundaries around myself," sexuality doula and sex educator Ev'Yan Whitney tells mbg. Take control of what images and messages you allow into your brain. Those super-skinny, shiny, glamorous-looking celebrities and reality TV contestants you follow on Instagram? You might think they're harmless to scroll by, but research shows us time and time again that exposure to media featuring unrealistic body types is linked to lower body image. I will no longer entertain people or messages that tell me otherwise. Try repeating this to yourself: I deserve to be loved and accepted in this exact body. Is your body the problem, or are the ideals the problem? Instead of continuing to try to fit into a system that pits you against your own body, what if you adopted a new way of thinking that designates you as valuable exactly the way you are? What if you stopped trying to appease others at your own expense? But bending over backward to meet their impossible ideals will not help you feel better about yourself. This isn't to say that size discrimination, racism, and ableism aren't real-yes, unfortunately, these physical factors do affect how people treat us. Peace and happiness have to come from inside." "The more you can really internalize this idea, the less attached you will be to meeting certain conventional beauty norms because you will understand that they will never deliver what you want. "Even Beyoncé got cheated on! Human life involves beauty and suffering for everyone," Loewentheil explains. Look at all the literal fashion models with drug addictions and eating disorders!"īefore you can learn to love your body, you need to relinquish the idea that you wouldn't feel sad, lonely, or rejected if you looked different. Looking a certain way will not make you happy. "We are sold this idea that looking a certain way will bring us approval, affection, love, respect, value, etc.," Kara Loewentheil, J.D., a former women's rights lawyer who now coaches women dealing with insecurity, tells mbg. Most likely, it's because you want other people to like you, and you believe looking a certain way will make you more loved and accepted. Ask yourself this: Why do you want to look different?
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