Thursday, December 09, 2010Getting old is good for you (yes, really!)
I look in the mirror. Disappointment immediately sets in: my stomach has more rolls than the Pillsbury Dough Boy and my butt is so droopy it could touch the floor. My shoulders sag. A knot forms in my gut. I hate my body so much. I hate myself so much.
This was the way I felt every day for most of my life. Every day, I would get on the scale, look in the mirror, or try on my tight jeans to find a way to think of my body as"good-enough". On the rare occasions that the scale showed me a "good-enough" number, or that my stomach was "flat-enough", or my jeans fit, I would feel happy, good about myself, and confident. Most often, though, my body got nowhere near my "good-enough" standards, and I'd feel hopeless, insecure, and self-hating. Today, I perceive my body completely differently. Why the change? Part of it is due to the years of work I've done using the Body Beloved system that I created, which teaches us to love our body from the inside-out. The other reason I am changing? I'm getting old and I am so darned grateful for that as it is FORCING me to focus on something else than how hot or thin I am!!! Getting older is showing me how often things can go wrong with the body and how incredibly lucky I am when my body works well. For example,I have learned: how valuable my wrist is after I broke it a few years ago; how lucky I am to have working kidneys after enduring the pain of kidney stones; the gift of peeing pain-free after my bladder stopped working after the birth of one of my children; the miracle of a strong digestive system, after struggling with years of eating disorders and digestive issue; the wonder of disease-free cells, after supporting one of my best friends through cancer... These days, I rarely look in the mirror. Instead, when that impulse arises, I focus my gaze instead to the inside of my body and connect to gratitude for the millions of miracles it performs for me on a daily basis. There is nothing like it to fill me with unending joy and love. It is a gift that keeps on giving. Following are a few practices to shift your perception from the outside-in to the inside-out: When you pee, thank your kidneys and your bladder When you eat, thank your digestive system When you exercise (or any time), thank you heart ! When you move any part of your body, thank your bones, your muscles, your tendons or your ligaments when you are stopped at a red light, thank some part of your body that you generally shame and criticize (stomach anyone?!) Every time you shift from criticism to gratitude, you are rewiring your brain and moving towards more happiness and fulfillment. I promise you it will be worth your time and your practice! I'd love to know what you think! Warmly, Isabelle 303-817-6912 Friday, December 03, 2010Healing the Post-Thanksgiving eating blues
I'm sitting down at the Thanksgiving table, having eaten way more than my body needs, feeling full, uncomfortable, in pain. The following dialogue immediately starts up in my head.
My Inner Critic or, as I like to call her, my Authoritarian Bitch pipes up: "You are disgusting. You have absolutely no self-control. I've told you again and again that you are weak and lazy and undisciplined, and you've just proving me right once again." Panic rises inside of me. I feel my gut and my jaw clenching. Anxiety rises all the way to my throat. These uncomfortable feelings threaten to burst to the surface. I feel scared, as though as I fighting for my very own survival, and I don't understand why. My Good Girl replies: "I am so sorry! I know that you are right! I promise to do better next time! Please don't be mad at me! I want to be good. I want to have control. I don't know what happens to me..." As panic and hopelessness threatens to overtake me, my Good Girl finds a solution: "I'm going to go to the gym every day this week! I will stay on the treadmill at least an hour! I will only eat Lean Cuisines for lunch and dinner. I will deprive myself until I can get rid of my sin of gluttony." My fight-or-flight response suddenly lessens. I can breathe again. My muscles relax. My heart slows down. I exhale. All is well with the world once again. If you struggle with food in any way, I am sure that this dialogue is familiar to you. You overeat (whether one extra cracker or thousands of calories); your Critic slams you; you feel panicked and overwhelmed; your Good Girl desperately tries to make it up through deprivation; you temporarily feel better; you eventually overeat again because deprivation can't work long-term; and the whole cycle starts all over again. How do you heal this inner hell? Do you try to get rid of the Critic? After all, she seems to be at the root of so much of our suffering. She is the one who incites hopelessness, low self-esteem, deprivation, and shame. Let's burn her down!!! I spent years trying to get rid of my Critic but it never worked because...I was now using a new Critic to get rid of my old Critic!!!!! I now had even more war and aggression inside of me!!! This certainly didn't help me become more loving and peaceful in any way. One day, I decided to ask my Critic what she wanted from me. The answer stunned me. My Critic told me that she wanted me to be happy! She wanted me to be loved. And she truly, deeply believed that the way to be happy and loved was through being thin. She had smartly and beautifully learned that truth from her environment (media, friends, family...), and she now spent every waking hour making sure that I became and stayed thin. When she saw me doing anything to move away from that, she literally felt as though I was threatening my very survival, as a human being's survival is so closely related to being loved, to not being alone, to being happy. This is why I felt such panic when I overate: my Critic believed that I was putting myself in mortal danger and it sent my body into full fight-or-flight mode to warn me against continuing what I was doing! Isn't she amazing?! When I understood this, I felt so much love and gratitude for my Critic. My Critic was literally trying to protect me from perceived danger the best way she knew how. I realized that I didn't want to get rid of her: I wanted and needed her protection, but I needed to re-educate about WHAT she needed to protect me from. Since then, I have spent much time teaching my Critic that my survival does not depend on being thin enough. My "survival", my ability to love and be loved, to be happy, depends on my being authentic, on being kind, on my being true to who I am. I've asked my Critic to tell me when I'm not being that authentic Self, but to do it kindly and lovingly, not with shame and criticism. My Critic now still has a job to do, which keeps her very happy, but her job is now self-constructive rather than self-destructive. She gets an A+! This month, practice the following steps: 1. Ask your Inner Critic what she/he really wants for you 2. If the answer is that she wants you to be happy, ask her what she thinks will make you happy. 3. If the answer is an external reason (make lots of money, be thin enough...), thank her for her hard work and teach her that your happiness will come from internal reasons, not external ones. 4. Re-educate her again and again, asking her to let you know when you are deviating from true, internal happiness, rather than temporary, external happiness. 5. Soon, you will have the greatest ally you have ever had working for you 24/7! Have fun! I'd love to know what you think! Warmly, Isabelle 303-817-6912 Tuesday, September 28, 2010I'm so sick of too much "stuff"! Are you?
I walk into my closet and it is bursting with clothes as new as a month-old and as old as 20 years-old. I open a kitchen cabinet and it is stuffed with half-eaten boxes of crackers or cookies whose expiration date I can't even guess. I venture into my garage and just want to cry at the insane array of furniture and crap just carried over from all of our moves.
I AM SO SICK OF LIVING WITH TOO MUCH STUFF!!! My overhwelm doesn't end with objects. Sometimes, I eat more than my body needs. I drink more than my brain prefers. I spend more than my budget allows. I fight more than my heart desires. Too much, too much, too much. This seems to be the disease of our times, a disease generated by the deep fear from past generations that we won't have enough. Underneath my over-eating, my over-spending, and my over-anything is the unconscious terror that I will run out of stuff that I (falsely) think makes me feel good. But it doesn't!!! As I sit here, surveying my life, it becomes increasingly clear to me that this lifestyle has long ago stopped making me feel good. On the contrary, it has obscured what is truly important, living simply, living kindly, living peacefully. I want to stop working 60 hours a week just to pay the mortgage. I want to stop having more clothes than I'll ever need or eat more food than can ever nourish me. I want to spend time with my family, my friends, and myself. As I close, I do want to express gratitude for the fact that I am lucky enough to have "too much". It is hard not to feel shame when so much of the world doesn't have enough. I can only hope that my choosing to live more simply will in some way help balance out some of this inequality. It is truly my deepest wish. I'd love to know where you resonate with my sentiments! Warmly, Isabelle 303-817-6912 Tuesday, September 21, 2010How the heck can I love my body?
"You have to feel your body in order to love your body." A yoga teacher in Maui uttered this sentence last week, while I was on vacation. I have been sitting with that sentence ever since, knowing that it was life-changing and important, but not knowing quite how to fully comprehend it.
Most of us live our lives completely detached from our bodies. We live in our minds, prisoners of distorted beliefs and feelings that we've gathered throughout the years from various environments. These thougths and feelings often have NOTHING to do with who our body really is. They are just projections that creates much suffering and violence. To love our body, we have to know it. We have to descend from the illusion of the ego-mind into the wonders of the body's feelings and sensations. This can only happen in the present. How does my body FEEL now? and now? and now? I have become a yoga fanatic over the last year. Yoga's biggest gift for me is that it invites me again and again to drop into my body and feel it. Feel the good, the bad, and the ugly. The days where my body feels open, flexible, and blissful. The days where everything hurts. The days where I am so tight I can't even touch my toes. And just like the yoga teacher said, feeling my body has been the only way into loving my body. I am getting to know it on a deep and intimate level and I am stunned every day by its wisdom, brilliance, and loving presence. My love has nothing to do with how my body looks or how much it weighs. It just springs forth from this knowing, this intimacy. I invite you all to spend some time every day feeling your body. I promise you that every minute spent doing so will be rewarded exponentially by an experience of love that does not come close to anything you ever imagined. Let me know how it goes! Have a wonderful, body-loving day! Isabelle Tuesday, June 29, 2010Letting go of the scale!Monday, June 28, 2010When are we getting "too old" for our clothes???Monday, May 17, 2010Letting go of the scale!
I overate at a party on last night. No big surprise there, as I have a tendency to overeat when there is lots of yummy food prepared by someone else! Today, I see myself desperately wanting to get on the scale. I want it to tell me how I should eat and exercise. If the scale shows me I have gained weight, I will eat only Lean Cuisines and take a long run. If I haven't, I will take an exercise break and eat normally.
How crazy is that? Why should I let a SCALE tell me how I should take care of myself??? Why can't I trust my body to tell me, since my body is who I'm talking about??? My body knows what food it needs today. It knows how much exercise it can handle. So I take a deep breath, walk away from the scale, and take a few minutes to listen to my body. I check in with my hunger level, using a scale of 1 to 10. I discover that RIGHT NOW, I am not hungry at all. I then check in with my energy level and realize that I am exhausted, as I got about 5 hours of sleep. My body doesn't want to take a long run. It wants to rest. So I keep checking in with my body as the day progresses, every hour or two, checking IN THE MOMENT on my hunger and energy level. I get hungry midday and eat a nourishing meal and end up not working out because my body just doesn't want it. By the end of the day, I feel so grateful because I've been kind rather than punishing to my body; I've been practicing living in the moment and not in my crazy, distorted thoughts; and I have learned once again that my body is a beloved and trustworthy partner who has all the answers that I ever need about its self-care. Have a wonderful, body-loving day! Warmly, Isabelle 303-817-6912 This welcome email was sent to {!email Letting go of the scale!
I overate at a party on last night. No big surprise there, as I have a tendency to overeat when there is lots of yummy food prepared by someone else! Today, I see myself desperately wanting to get on the scale. I want it to tell me how I should eat and exercise. If the scale shows me I have gained weight, I will eat only Lean Cuisines and take a long run. If I haven't, I will take an exercise break and eat normally.
How crazy is that? Why should I let a SCALE tell me how I should take care of myself??? Why can't I trust my body to tell me, since my body is who I'm talking about??? My body knows what food it needs today. It knows how much exercise it can handle. So I take a deep breath, walk away from the scale, and take a few minutes to listen to my body. I check in with my hunger level, using a scale of 1 to 10. I discover that RIGHT NOW, I am not hungry at all. I then check in with my energy level and realize that I am exhausted, as I got about 5 hours of sleep. My body doesn't want to take a long run. It wants to rest. So I keep checking in with my body as the day progresses, every hour or two, checking IN THE MOMENT on my hunger and energy level. I get hungry midday and eat a nourishing meal and end up not working out because my body just doesn't want it. By the end of the day, I feel so grateful because I've been kind rather than punishing to my body; I've been practicing living in the moment and not in my crazy, distorted thoughts; and I have learned once again that my body is a beloved and trustworthy partner who has all the answers that I ever need about its self-care. Have a wonderful, body-loving day! Warmly, Isabelle 303-817-6912 Archives - Previous Posts
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