Body Image

Let’s talk :: B O D Y I M A G E ::

This photo was taken at a magnificent waterfall in Costa Rica, which was my ideal image of Costa Rica, and what drew me there in the first place. But something was off. I felt kinda bleh all day. Something wasn’t living up to my expectations. I felt separate even though I was in a group. But I hadn’t been able to put words to it yet, just a bleghh feeling. A guttural sound. I didn’t realize what I was feeling or why was until dinner time: I had been self conscious about my body all day!! I was in PARADISE and my mind was still in a loop of comparing and judging.

I was surrounded by beautiful women and I was comparing my body to theirs.

I brought this up during our dinner when I realized it. Our retreat leader, Camille, asked the group who has ever felt self conscious about their body. And it looked like that scene from Mean Girls when they were asked to “raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimized by Regina George.” Every. single. hand went up. One of them shared with me, “it’s all internal. Even though I know I look good, I usually don’t feel it.”

This is all coming up for me today and being tied together with the body shame that’s rampant in the Chinese culture (and many other cultures too). From my earliest memories to around 13 years old, I was told, what seemed like on a daily basis, that I was too skinny. Then one day, it was like a switch flipped and I was told I was fat. I was also criticized for things about my body that were outside of my control such as the color of my skin, the size of my eyes, the length of my eyelashes, and the size of the hands and feet.

It’s taken me years to feel good about myself and my body on most days, but all it takes is one comment to send me back into that negative spiral.

So here’s to you, my fellow human, who has probably also experienced body shame:

You are beautiful. You are loved. You are perfectly imperfect. You are enough.

Say it again and again, make it a mantra, until you believe it.

I am beautiful. I am loved. I am perfectly imperfect. I am enough. ✨

How Do You Want to FEEL?

How do you want to feel?

What will you do to feel the way you want to feel?

I ask myself these questions almost every day as a way of checking in with myself. Three answers always come up- Peace, Joy, and Love. Yeah, it's all rainbows and butterflies, but it's so much more. 

Peace

For me, peace means living with ease, being well rested, quiet, zen, safety, security, care-free, freedom to be myself. It's a quiet feeling, where I can fully relax, breathe, and know that all is well. 

Joy

For me, joy means feeling alive, looking at the world with awe, feeling inspired, excited, happy, motivated, freedom to explore, learn, and grow. It's expansive, big, like I can do anything, running through the fields with arms wide open kind of feeling. 

Love

For me, love feels like belonging, being fully accepted, being seen and heard, gratitude, giving, serving, connection. 

Connection

I keep coming back to connection. What does connection mean to me?

It means being first and foremost connected with myself- in body, mind and spirit. I do this through self-care practices of yoga, meditation, journaling, oracle cards, dance, food, therapy, learning, sleep, being in nature, in solitude.

When I have fulfilled my basic needs and am feeling centered and clear, I can move outside of my own body into my physical surroundings and connect with others- my relationships, my home, my work space, and more nature.

When I feel connected to the people in my life and my surroundings, I can give even more and I ask what can I offer the world? What am I naturally talented at? What do I love doing? How can I combine those and serve my community?

It starts within and moves outwards, expanding infinitely with love. 💖🦋✨🌈☀️🌴🌱💚

Waking Up From Winter

I can breathe again.

Daylight saving time began. Spring is on its way. 

This winter was one of the hardest I’ve had in years. Seasonal affective disorder is no joke. The depression feels like a deep ache in the core of my being, a permeating sadness regardless of how good life is. 

I tried to do everything that the articles recommended. Mindfulness, yoga, vitamin D, sun lamp, good diet, exercise, therapy, socialization, gratitude. I didn’t fall back on my usual vices of shopping and sugar to distract or numb. I even went to Costa Rica and had one of the most blissful weeks of my life! But all it took to send me back into depression was a single gust of cold Chicago wind one evening. I tried everything short of taking medication and permanently moving to a sunny locale. All of this effort was just to feel OK. Some days, all I could do after work was get on my mat and cry, exhausted from a day of holding myself together. 
This winter taught me two things:

This depression lives in my body. I am an advocate for mental health but all of those practices were just to feel okay. Next year, I will treat this as a disorder in my body and not just my mind. I will no longer deny the way I feel. I will no longer deny that I NEED sun and warmth every day to feel okay. I do not need to just “grow thicker skin” or toughen up. I will trust the way I feel. It is okay to be having a different experience of winter and lack of sunlight than most people around me. 

I learned that one of the most important things to me is to feel like I BELONG.

The difference between belonging and fitting in: Belonging is being accepted exactly as you are. Fitting in often requires changing who you are or aspects about yourself in order to blend in or be accepted. Fitting in is conditional acceptance. This winter, I was in a workplace that had so much negativity and judgment flying around that I shrunk into myself and disconnected myself from my coworkers in efforts to protect myself. I felt out of place. I refused to attempt to fit in and connect through negativity. Fortunately, I was able to renew my contract with Walgreens and return to a place that feels like home. Where I belong. ❤

Jungle Goddess

My time in Costa Rica on the Jungle Goddess retreat was more amazing than I imagined it could be. I experienced love and connection at a whole new level. It was a week of love, connection, loving words, feeling like I belonged, feeling accepted, feeling safe and held and cared for. I ate food created with love and did not have to think about my meals for the entire week, which allowed me more capacity to focus on healing, connecting, and growing. With all the space that was held for me to feel safe, I was able to courageously explore.

I walked barefoot through the jungle alongside my sisters.

I walked alone through the jungle.

I swam in Caribbean Sea with my sisters.

I swam alone.

I climbed into a cove past sea urchins to see the most magnificent natural archway I have ever laid eyes on.

It took my breath away.

I climbed slippery rocks and trees.

I released everything and ran naked into the ocean. 

I connected with my Self. 

The yoga classes were filled with loving words and affirmations that held me and empowered me. The DANCEmandala classes were beyond what I expected. They were a movement and stillness meditation. I felt it all in my body. They took me through the entire gamut of my emotions. By the end of the week, my mind was quiet enough and I had released all the stress, negativity, and anxiety from my day to day life, that I was able to hear my heart's whisper. I could hear my intuition and my truth. The message of trusting myself, my intuition, and the Universe kept coming to me over and over and over again and I felt it, I heard it, and then one of the healers said it, just to affirm all of it and tie it up with a pretty bow. As I laid my head down at night, what played through my mind was the loving words and images from the day. I could see and hear Camille saying "You are a Goddess."

I connected with my Tribe.

It amazes me how deeply we are able to connect with each other when we let our walls down. The women I spent this week with are my sisters, my mirrors, my soulmates. I held space and simply listened. The same was returned for me. I was able to freely express my love for them. I could say "I love you" after knowing them for less than 24 hours. We blessed each other with the waterfall of Aloha and we received that love for ourselves each time. I belong here.

I connected with Mother Nature.

I hugged trees. I felt mud squish between my toes. For my entire life, I've been called to surfing and I finally got to get on a board for the first time! I felt it all: the waves, the water, the tide. I felt mother ocean pull me and push me. My surf instructor told me again and again to relaaaax (boy, I've never heard that before). I started to find my balance and center on the board. I felt what it was like to be literally on top of a wave, and for it to bring me to shore.

Relaxing is trusting. I stopped the need to get it right, to get it perfect every time. I just trusted and knew that each time I started to paddle and stand up, that it was practice.

And that's all this life is.

Practice.

What Does Love Mean To You?

For years, I had taken someone else's belief about love as my own truth. "Love is when you care about someone so much that you would sacrifice anything for them." Sounds poetic. But upon further investigation, I realized something deeply disturbing about this belief. It's incredibly exclusive. With this belief, I couldn't love very many people. There were few people that I was willing to sacrifice anything for. It exposed me to manipulation. It became a game and a power trip. He used this definition of love to boast about how much he had sacrificed for me as a way of showing me how much he loved me. If I wasn't sacrificing enough, then I wasn't really proving that I loved him enough. "If you loved me, you would..." I did everything he wanted in order to try and prove my love. In the end, it wasn't enough. It was never enough and it would never be enough. 

How is it possible to love yourself with this belief?

I was so desperate and hungry for love I that took anything that sounded romantic and ran with it. 

I've spent the past few years learning how to love myself, becoming comfortable with telling my best friends that I love them, becoming comfortable with being more free and open with my love. I read the following quote yesterday and it is now one of my many NEW definitions of love. 

Love is gratitude to someone for the grace of their presence on this Earth, without expecting anything in return.
-Camille, This American Girl

I love you. Yes, you. ✨💛

Relief from Trauma

Deep and low.

Gritty.

The notes wrapped around me.

Tension moved from my shoulders into my heart space.

I placed my hands there and let the melody carry me.

The memories intensified.

Tears welled.

Breath caught in my throat.

Then...

sweet release.

I let myself feel.

I knew they were tears of joy, of gratitude for where I am now. Those descriptors weren't quite accurate but I just let myself feel. My hands drew the pain of the past from my heart, from my body, and into the ether to be carried away with the music. 

I now realize the main feeling was relief.

Relief that the past is behind me and that I no longer have to carry it with me.

Relief that the present and future are brighter and filled with more love than I knew possible.

Relief that my reality is no longer filled with fear.

Relief and gratitude for the people in my life that have been along for this same ride of healing from trauma. Who have walked through fire and come out the other side with hearts even more open, understanding, accepting, and compassionate. 

The past 6 weeks have been intense and full of beautiful, life-changing, and new experiences, as well as the gunk of the painful past coming up to be healed. I went on first dates. I went camping for the first time. I let myself be dirty. I assisted a yoga class in front of a hundred people. I danced my heart out. I'm learning to love myself in a way that I didn't know was possible. I am receiving love in ways that I've never experienced before. I went to Italy. I watched one of my best friends get married in front of awe-inspiring mountains. I jumped off a cliff into the sea. I lost all the photos I had taken this summer when my phone was stolen. I confronted my fear of confrontation. I said goodbye to people. I said no to things that did not feel right for me. I recognized the deep feeling of emptiness and unworthiness that was unconsciously dictating my actions and creating unhealthy habits. Each experience comes with its own set of lessons. 
I disconnected from social media when I left for the beach yoga camping retreat at the beginning of August and expected myself to return to a regular posting schedule when I returned but I have not been able to get the words out so I've let myself live and experience without needing to write or share. Stay tuned. I'm now feeling inspired to write about these lessons in the coming weeks and months.

Peace is Inside

I used to be all externally focused.

A serious case of wanderlust, worrying about other people and their problems as a way to avoid my own, constantly being busy so that I wouldn't be with my own thoughts for too long, and only concerned with how my body looked with no awareness of how it felt.

I've started to find a balance. I still want to travel but so that I can observe other cultures and learn about them rather than for an escape from my reality.

I don't worry about what other people are doing.

I have acceptance of different points of views.

I've found peace in being at home and being comfortable with the quiet moments.

I stopped saying yes to every opportunity that came my way and thought about whether it's something I truly want to do or if it is out of guilt or a feeling of obligation.

I've found love for my body, awareness of how certain foods make me feel in both my digestion and my mood, how those foods affect my skin.

I've found appreciation for my thick thighs and wide shoulders and all the natural strength that comes with them.

The peace was inside of me all along, I had to peel back the layers, shed limiting beliefs, and live by my own truth to find it. 

What Yoga Taught Me About Self-Love

What is self-love?

First, how do we show others that we love them? Accept them exactly as they are, listen, protect, show affection, and so much more. Self-love is applying this same level of love to ourselves. My journey towards deeper self-love has taken years of making tiny changes, lots of mistakes, and many shifts in mindset shifts. When I made yoga a part of my daily life two years ago, it cultivated my loving body awareness.

I accept myself.

You are enough, I am enough. There will always be a more challenging pose to master. My practice began with trying to attain the next pose in the Ashtanga Yoga sequence and putting it into my “Bank of Poses.” Being able to do a perfect handstand doesn't make someone a better person. Although working towards a goal and improving are wonderful things, it can stir a great amount of discontent when our minds are only goal oriented, forward looking. I'll be happy when... I can do a handstand. I'll be happy when... I get that raise. I'll be happy when… There is an implication that you are not good enough and you need to be better. YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH. You are enough, I am enough. Right now, at this very moment. Acceptance and improvement are not mutually exclusive. We can love and accept ourselves and improve. I learned to accept by cultivating gratitude. I have big strong legs to hold me in Warrior I. My strong core protects my organs and my willpower. I have a soft heart that is capable of giving and receiving love. I have arms that help lift others up! By acknowledging the gifts in my life and my body, I am able to create space to invite bountiful positivity and growth.

I listen to my body.

How do we listen to our bodies? They change from day to day. A pose that I could do yesterday may not happen today, but might happen tomorrow! Some days I can do a split, other days, no way! By cultivating awareness in my body through my yoga practice, I became more attune to the subtle changes that food would have on my digestion and my state mind. Some days, I just want some soup and salad. Other days, I need a big juicy burger with a side of mashed potatoes and I enjoy every bite of it without guilt. Our bodies are affected by the changing of the seasons, and I adjust my food and my exercise to accommodate. Beyond my body, I learned how to listen by distinguishing what aligned with my authentic self and let go of what didn't without guilt. I act with intention and purpose. MY purpose. Not my mom's, best friend's or boyfriend's. My own. I act with my values of peace, joy, love, abundance and authenticity. When it doesn't align, I am able to say "no" with ease. Loving ourselves is being true to ourselves, and this begins with listening.

I protect my body and show it affection.

For 2 years, I set the intention to wake up early for yoga every day. Some days it happened, some it didn't. It was inconsistent. I had an expectation for how the practice should look: 1.5 hours of sweaty Ashtanga yoga. That's extremely challenging for me to do every single day, work a full time job and have a social life. Eventually, I let go of the expectations and decided that some movement was better than no movement. I created a flexible morning routine that means waking up at the same time and doing yoga but the style and length of time that I practice fluctuates with how I'm feeling that day. Slowly and over time, I added meditation to this morning routine by shortening my practice just 5 or 10 minutes. My flexible morning routine protects my body, and shows it affection. 

Thank you, yoga.

Yoga has helped me find acceptance, listen and protect my body, and show myself loving affection. By cultivating body awareness, I was able to translate the metaphors that were occurring in my physical practice to bring them off the mat and into my life. Yoga inspires me every day. If you are searching for a more loving connection with your body, try stepping onto the yoga mat and find a style that works for your lifestyle, body and mind. Love shows up in different forms for everyone. Other ways of showing ourselves love could be lifting weights, reading a book, taking a walk around the block, going fishing, taking a bath, or taking pleasure in the food that we eat and not feeling guilty about it. All with purpose and intention.