Hello ….how are you today?

The ones who live in the northern hemisphere have started to feel the rise in temperature and with it the need to take off our clothes and show our bodies.

Regardless of whether you show your body or not, what do you feel when you look at your body in the mirror? I’m not only referring to our curves or lack of them. I’m also referring to our aging faces and hair. This is a sensitive issue shared by my male and female clients alike.

You can listen to the podcast with this player, or if you prefer reading you have a written version below. Enjoy it!

I understand this perfectly because I was overwhelmed by my body image for many years. There are many fronts to tackle when talking about this topic. On the one hand, we have to delve into our upbringing and education and how authority figures made us feel about our bodies. On the other hand, media shows us forever young and lean people who do not reflect real men and women. Added to this, there is the pressure of social networks, where many influencers show off their eternal youth and unhealthy weight. Unfortunately, this pushes many people to compare themselves with those people obsessively. Perfectionism and self-criticism also contribute to the idea that our body is never up to standard. This topic is so vast that we should devote several articles to it but this brief introduction is enough to understand why our self-esteem sometimes ends up plummeting.

As I’ve told you, I suffered a lot about this when I was little because my mother, may she rest in peace, feared that I had inherited her genes and that I’d become “chubby” as she perceived herself to be. My mother was a gorgeous woman but she didn't see it. She lived on diets and exercise because she couldn't bear having some extra weight. In her youth, someone told my mother how a very popular guy had mentioned in a group she was beautiful and had a lovely body shape but that it was easy to tell how she’d become overweight once married and with children. Imagine the impact that verbal attack had on my young mother. Until then she had been very relaxed about her body. Nevertheless, these influential guy’s words started to obsess her. Once she married my father, her insecurities increased because he has always associated beauty with skinny bodies. To cut a long story short, my mum and I were stuck in a vicious circle where we only ate dietetic food, exercised a lot, and talked obsessively about body image. Mother used to tell me, "my darling, you have to be thin before puberty or you will live on a diet like me". She had the best intentions for me but her words made me feel terrified of gaining weight, not being liked, not pleasing others, and even being bullied as it had happened to her. Around my teenage years, I completely lost my confidence on the body front and I began to seek other people’s approval. I kept asking my friends and family whether I looked good because I had no idea that the answer was within me.

I look at myself smiling in a picture a long time ago and I wonder why I disliked myself so much. People would say something nice to me and I’d come up with a “it's just because you love me… you can't speak to me objectively… how can you think so?… what's going on with you?” I looked at myself in the mirror and I always found something that I rejected. I wove my day-to-day life with love towards those who made up the fabric of my personal and professional life, but I failed to value myself enough. I didn't know it then but I covered my physical insecurities with academic and professional achievements. I was always busy, always going after my next target. On the outside, I had the image of a strong woman but I was suffering in silence. In reality, I was sharing the experience of many other women and men trapped in a perverse culture that enhances an image of beauty that is far from authentic people and even further from self-knowledge and holistic well-being (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual). Over the years, I understood that behind public figures there are personal trainers, strict diets, surgeries, and a lot of Photoshop. Little by little, I began to contact my values, my needs, and to love and accept myself entirely. When I look at myself in old photographs, I always think, "I was so beautiful, I’m so sorry I was so hard on myself", "there was so much love in my eyes, why wasn’t I compassionate with myself as I was with others?". I think I was so obsessed with the outside world that I stopped looking at myself. I perfectly remember one day in my contemporary dance classes that I discovered myself moving to the sound of music and feeling ecstatic. My body was no longer something to dissect and reject, my body was I with all my passion, my desires, my shadows, and my light.

“What did I learn from so many years of self-rejection?”

1. That I needed to wake up and feel one with the world.

2. That I needed to learn to meditate to be able to tread the path of spiritual awakening.

3. That it was necessary to be mindful of my inner world and to tend to my wounds with love.

4. To be able to discern real beauty from the empty and superficial idea that media sells us.

5. That I feel beautiful for everything that I am - mind, body, and spirit,

6. That it is crucial to love myself and feel comfortable in my own skin. If someone judges and criticizes my body, they don’t play in my team.

7. That it was necessary to go beyond my construction of what I needed to look like and feel more relaxed in general.

8. That I want to align with the people I find beautiful for their courage, their empathy, their intelligence, and their ability to help others reclaim their power.

9. That I have gained the insights necessary to hold hands with others who are going through what I went through.

Remember that we are a soul with a human body. We obviously need to nurture and take good care of ourselves but our "container" needs our love.

I hope this article has relieved you and has helped you reflect on this topic. If you know someone who needs this today, forward it to them and invite them to subscribe. Thank you for being there and remember to recommend and evaluate us on any of the platforms you are listening to us. That gives us the motivation to continue offering this free material week after week.

A big hug ❤