The weight of it all
Beauty and the beach photo by Sandra Butel
I am Sandra Butel and this is my beautywalk.
beautywalk represents all the motions and e-motions that are moving in and out of our experiences as human beings living our daily lives. beautywalk is an invitation towards finding the beauty in what is and in who we truly are in the deepest sense of our being.
A Human in a Body
I spent the day yesterday at the beach on the Adriatic Coast of Italy. As I was thinking about writing this piece about the politics and pressures of being a human in a body I noticed all sorts of bodies around me and all sorts of ways of being in them. I noticed that the judge in me got very excited about this task as she had a lot to say about others' bodies and about how mine compared, either favourably or not. As I put those saboteur lies aside and prepared the flight pattern of this piece for its upcoming landing, I asked myself these questions:
When considering the weight of it all, what am I carrying around that is not serving me?
How can I learn to put this down?
How can I continue to grow in my body awareness and acceptance?
How can I share my learning with others so they too can make peace with, and find joy in, their bodies?
I am clearly aware that I can only speak to my specific experience as a cis white 55 year old English speaking woman of varied cultural background (French, Polish, Bohemian, Ukrainian to name a few) and hope that some of what I say can be related to by all sorts of different bodies and the wonderful varied souls and minds within them. Whether or not this resonates with you I would love to hear about your experiences as well of being a human spirit and mind in a body, whatever its shape, size, hue or abilities.
All colours and shapes and sizes by Sandra Butel
Body as Commodity
I have spent many moments in agony and shame about my body as it was, whether it was that I was too tall (as the tallest girl in Grade 5) or too flat (the girls in my school called me Dolly Parton as I was a late bloomer), or too boyish (I flushed with shame whenever a shopkeeper called me a boy or when recently a man in Jamaica called me handsome) or that I had too much fat around my belly (this one has followed me for a long time and I remember this being an issue that my Mom carried around too).
Quite recently my socials’ feed has been filled up with advertising for products to deal with the shameful menopausal belly that most women are weighed down with starting in their late 40s (or earlier). These ads that are reflecting my current reality of the extra pounds collected from my belly button down ironically do not make me feel seen but rather have me falling into red faced shame at my failure to do the “right” thing and avoid what nature has deemed is needed by my aging body. When I pause to reflect on this burning in my cheeks I realize that this is not the first time I have felt this and that this shame at my body and my belly most particularly has been with me for most of my life, starting back in high school when the messages started coming that I was not enough and my body was the culprit.
When I look back at photos from previous years I am struck now by complete surprise that the body I see there is lovely and that the belly I was so ashamed of is rather cute and not really that noticeable. I know some of this has to do with the size of it now, but mostly this reflection tells me that the size of my belly is not what this is all about. If I had managed to get my belly down to size I would still have had something else to obsess about; as proof that I was failing to be perfect; as proof of my lack of worthiness.
Love-saver by Sandra Butel
Obsession with Body
It is clear to me that this obsession with our bodies is not new and has been the raison d’etre for the huge diet and beauty industry that has been directed relentlessly, and with barely contained disdain, at women for many years. I recently came across an insightful and inspiring book Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth that delves into this obsession with food and explores what might be at the heart of it all.
A quick hint: it is not about the body (or food) at all.
Roth puts forward so much of value in this book and her words helped me to delve deeper into my own journey of making peace with my body. She posits that our obsession with the body is just another way to avoid what we are truly running from: our sense that we are not enough and/or our fear that feeling our deepest emotions will kill us. We have been taught in our society to be so afraid of feeling anything painful that we have found so many ways to numb ourselves and to put the focus on something other than just being with what is in the moment. Food is one way we do this as we obsess with getting it right and with beating ourselves up when we don’t get it right (as we know that 95% of diets inevitably fail we will most likely fail too).
A few quotes that I loved from her book:
“Our relationship with food is an exact microcosm of our relationship to life itself. If we are interested in finding out what we actually believe - not what we think, not what we say, but what our souls are convinced is the bottom line truth about life and afterlife - we need go no further than the food on our plates.” (Roth, 10)
“Women turn to food when they are not hungry because they are hungry for something they can’t name: a connection to what is beyond the concerns of daily life. “ (Roth, 44)
This is not meant to be a full review of her book, nor is it meant to suggest that I know something about losing weight, I just wanted to share some of her insights and to invite you to read the full book if it sounds interesting to you.
Celebration photo Sandra Butel
Body as GIFT not as ENEMY
As part of my beautywalk of the last few years I have been focusing attention on shifting my view of the body as enemy; or cause for shame; or thing to be controlled, towards holding my body in gratitude as a gift; as a conduit; as a tool for presence and as a way to access my deeper self. I have begun to see my body as a doorway to my very salvation. I was helped in this process by delving into the work from such luminaries as Roth and Sonya Renee Taylor, whose book The Body is Not an Apology was such a bright light in my own journey towards an appreciation and celebration of my body, just as it is.
The traditions of yoga and meditation see the body as a powerful tool to finding balance and peace in ourselves. By focusing on our breath and the position of the body and the direct experiences that are gifted to us through our 5 senses, these practices urge us to spend as much time as we can IN our bodies.
The Positive Intelligence program that I have been exploring and sharing with clients over the last 8 months, also uses the body as the focus for its mental fitness exercises. PQ reps, as they are called, are short pauses in our day where we focus on our breath, or on the sensation of two fingers rubbing together with such attention that we can feel the fingertip ridges on both fingers, or to all the fingertips on one hand being rubbed against the fingertips of the other hand, to moments spent feeling the earth beneath our feet, or focusing our exquisite attention on the sensation of sound in our ears.
The focused practices outlined in yoga, meditation and the Positive Intelligence program alike allow us to connect with the right side of our brains, where our deeper wisdom resides. Here we can access what Positive Intelligence calls the sage powers: empathy, explore, innovate, navigate and activate and make choices that come from love and not from fear.
Flying high by Sandra Butel
Bodily Sensations
As I write this I am sitting in a blue leather seat on a fast moving train through the Italian countryside. There are trees all around me and cream coloured and light yellow houses complete with clay tiled roofs. I can feel the motion of the train as a vibration in my legs and can feel a breeze that is softly touching down on my arms. There is the occasional sound of the tracks getting louder as we turn a corner or as the train switches speeds and now and then the world gets dark as we enter a tunnel. I am grateful for the sensations in my body and for them calling me to my deeper self and to my purpose on the earth; which is to live with authenticity and love and empathy as I learn to be okay with whatever is right now.
The Body as Story
I wanted to give the final words to Jeanette Winterson whose words of homage and love about the body of a lover have stayed with me like a warm soft whisper against my neck since I read them in her book WRITTEN ON THE BODY over 30 years ago.
“Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there.” (Winterson, 89)
Wishes
May we all find the right quality of light to be able to decode the lessons of our own bodies.
May we learn to celebrate and honour all that our bodies have to teach us as we spend time in deep communion with this vehicle of our deepest salvation.
I am Sandra Butel and this is my beautywalk. What’s yours?
If any of my beautywalk resonates with you and you want to delve into a deeper relationship with your body, mind and soul reach out to me to schedule a free beautywalk session
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