Welcome to the New Year tradition of feeling not-good-enough about your body!
Your first gut-response: At this moment do you love your body or hate your body? Do you have one or two parts you just love...or...one or two parts you just hate? Here's a simple way to move away from hatred into love. Read on...
Here's the scary question: How many times a day do you fall into "hate" against your body? How many times a day do you fall into "hate" against the body of others through judgment and criticism?
Test yourself two ways: Get a full-body mirror and look at your whole body at least morning and night. Also, take a trip to any mall and monitor the critical voice in your head when you pass someone larger (or otherwise different) than yourself.
These are not practices designed to make you uncomfortable or guilty--just to awaken yourself to what you're already doing. Time spent in "hate" is time spent in torture, rage, anxiety, blame and decay. Time spent in "love" is time spent in growth, nurturance, compassion, giving, joy & peace. Pick where you'd like to spend more time and I"ll teach you a simple trick to spend more time there easily. Got one? Let's presume you chose love.
Every time you find yourself even momentarily in "hate" (even though we KNOW you didn't mean it!) just agree in your mind to love yourself and whatever/whoever you just judged by 5% more starting now.
Here's the formula once more: Judge/condemn...then notice, then agree to love them & you + 5% more starting this instant. It's an amazing formula that can transform any/all aspects of yourself that are out of harmony.
Another quick tip: LOOK at bodies you pass. LOOK at your own body. LOOK at "wild & exotic" bodies. LOOK at damaged & disfigured bodies. LOOK, LOOK, LOOK and you'll find that soon you'll be able to actually SEE what's there that you convinced yourself was ugly/not right/weird, etc. When you SEE what's there you let go of your story about it. SEE the body of God (whatever you choose to call him/her/it) in every single body you can see.
And yet another quick tip because this is so important: If you have trouble LOOKING at people and SEEING what's there you can start the easy way. LOOK at babies, puppies, kittens...they are easy to be in love with immediately and hold in higher esteem. Work your way up to people, if you need to, but please persist. We need more folks in the world who are able to SEE us without judgment, holding us in the eyes of love.
Much love,
Rudy Hunter