How much time in your life have you spent worrying about your body? How much money have you spent on fashion magazines, looking at air-brushed models, feeling a creeping sense of inadequacy sneaking up on you? How many minutes, hours, days, obsessing about not having an ideal body? How much time have you wasted comparing yourself to another woman’s body and not measuring up? I’ve literally given up years of my life to this agonizing pursuit, and what do I have to show for it? Nothing. In fact, each moment I spent hating myself and wishing my body was different is a moment I could have spent laughing with friends, watching a sunset with my sweetie, rubbing my dog’s belly with my toes, writing a letter to my congressperson, or watering my parched houseplants. My poor houseplants have been through some rather difficult periods.
What would I do with all that time if I could get it back? Become a championship sky diver... write the sequel to Casablanca… end world hunger? It’s hard to even let my mind go there… too many regrets. What I can do is say, “Never again.” Never again will I let my valuable life energy get sucked up by the endless vacuum of body-hatred. Barring the sudden invention of cheap wormhole travel, I can’t do anything about the time already lost. But the time in front of me is wide open: a chance to transform the energy I once used to criticize and demean myself into energy that supports my dreams and fuels the life I really want to live.
Imagine it. Take all the energy you spend doubting yourself, disliking your body, punishing your body, comparing yourself to abstract ideals of perfection and never measuring up, and pour it into a barrel. Wring out every last dribble. Fill it to the top. Maybe a barrel isn’t big enough. Maybe you need a grain silo. Or an airplane hangar. Or a steep valley-- or an ocean. Stand back and have a look at that energy. Maybe it has lightning bolts crackling over it. Perhaps it glows like a supernova, or maybe lava bubbles burst and spew molten fire. Maybe Kali, the goddess of eternal change, is dancing over it, her tongue lolling out, and her necklace of skulls thrashing wildly. Whatever you picture in your mind’s eye, recognize that energy as raw energy, powerful energy, potentially destructive, but also immensely creative. It’s your power-- the power you formerly used against yourself. Wow.
Now you have an awesome choice. You’re not using this power against yourself anymore, so what are you going to do with it? How are you going to direct and channel it? What dream have you held back from that you can now step into with this huge reservoir of power at your fingertips? What are you going to do now?
This is the vision the Love Your Body book holds for you. How to transform your relationship with your body into something that fuels you rather than depletes you. That energizes and supports your dreams rather than undermines you. You can access a vast supply of energy to manifest your dreams, power that is already within you… simply by redirecting the energy you’ve misused against yourself and directing it into the world. For too long we’ve been like kids burning up ants with a magnifying glass. It’s time to turn the power of the magnifying glass to our journey of self-discovery.
The Love Your Body book is meant to be a guidebook, offering you the tools and practices my students and I have successfully used to transform our own relationship to our bodies, and to inspire your own journey. “Start from the highest,” my teacher Carlos Pomeda always says. Hold the highest vision of yourself able to transform negative energy around your body into energy that supports love and creativity in your life as you step onto this path with me.
