Compassionate Kind Relationship With My Body

Aging is complex and involves our history in our body, our predictions, the place of elders in our culture, and our fear of not knowing what our experiences will be as we age. What is your sense of your health in your physical body? We look to see how our experience in this moment is made more uncomfortable or scarier by the thoughts in the mind and the projections that we're making.

It's hard to be in our body, especially when there's something going on that's not what we prefer and we are scared our health might get worse. It can help to look at our relationship with what's going on. We might be angry or fighting against accepting it. It’s not fair. What did I do to deserve this? I’ve worked so hard and now I can’t enjoy my life. Good health is high stakes and important to our quality of life. Let yourself feel the warmth of your own compassion, especially if you are struggling and afraid. We are dealing with something difficult and we could let go of shaming ourselves for the way we’re handling it. Open some space for kindness.

How comfortable am I with my body size? What's my history with it? Can I accept my body as it is? Am I disgusted by it? Am I feeling compassionate about my body or could I come into a kinder relationship with my body size? Has my relationship with my body changed from when I was a teen and now? We might look at our body or touch the parts we’ve exiled. We might feel sad that we felt disgusted for our bodies. It's difficult when we feel judged and shamed for our body size. This is an inquiry we can make many times as we soften into a kinder connection with our body just as it is.

Before puberty, did you feel at home in your body in the gender you were assigned at birth? Were you called a tomboy or a sissy? “When I was eight years old, I felt really comfortable being identified as a girl." Or "When I was eight years old, I knew I was a boy, even though everyone treated me as a girl.” Maybe you didn't think about gender because it fit okay. Gender identity is highly conditioned in our culture with roles and characteristics assigned to each that may not align with our personal experience and sense of who we are.

We have our own personal experience of sexuality. Sexual pleasure is affected by gender conditioning and roles, sexual trauma, shaming, and exploitation. Connecting with ourselves sexually is difficult for many of us. If you can do these inquiries around sexual pleasure while you stay present in the safety of this moment, it can be healing. Practice allowing yourself to be exactly as you are and offer yourself some kindness. We can feel a lot of pressure around our sexuality and stress, relationship issues, health, and time all affect our experience. We could give ourselves permission to enjoy our bodies in a variety of ways, some of which are sexual and some of which are not. Sexual pleasure may open up as we heal, and that looks different for all of us.

“I am willing to be more conscious and kinder to my body. My body is always trying to do the best it can.” The decisions we’ve made about how we care for our bodies are highly influenced by our culture and by hypervigilance in our nervous system. We might look back and wish we had taken different actions. We see our body has a harder time because of stress, overwork, or the ways we’ve coped, like alcohol, food, or catastrophic thinking. “Can I bring all of my complexity into my own heart and let myself have some space to hold myself in kindness?” Let your breath deepen, your muscles soften, and open into a fresh start with your body.

Do you have enough strength and resilience in your body to manage your daily life? We're looking into the frustration and despair we often feel when our body is not operating as it used to, and that we can't do what we used to do and need to do. We have a lot of feelings when our body lets us down. “My body is letting me down. I'm exhausted all the time.” What does exhaustion feel like in your body? What can you change to accommodate your new reality? What beliefs do you have about your value if you’re not productive and can’t help like you used to? Offer yourself compassion for the difficulties you’re having right now. We can offer ourselves kindness as we make changes to accommodate our less able body.

We’ve explored our relationship with our body and now we’re integrating all of our insights into building the strength and resilience we need in life. Nervous system regulation is the key to being able to be compassionate and kind and accept the reality of life in this moment. We have a body that's hypervigilant. We have beliefs about how things should be and we're struggling with accepting change. When we are regulated, we feel like our minds are working. We don't have as much fear, and our body relaxes. We're engaged with life and with the people around us. We have access to wisdom, intuition, kindness, and compassion. We get to know ourselves, let go of things that are causing suffering, and welcome ourselves in the kindness of an open heart.