Body Image Issue - What Is True; What Is Not?

When you stand in front of a mirror: which one do you think are you? Which one do you feel are you? (Not intellectually but experientially)

We go thru our day feeling our body more than perceiving it. We feel body-image issues only when we overlay our experience of the body (i.e. how we feel it) with an image of what we think it should be like. This creates judgment of ourselves based on something that is not our most accurate experience. We can do something if we don't like how we feel our body!

Transcript

Let's close our eyes. Today I want to talk about something that I've not heard many people talk about or even conceptualize in this way. It may be true, It may not be true, But I'm just trying to conceptualize what I have found to be true in this exploration. Our life is dictated, Or the quality of our life is dictated by how we feel, By how we feel about what is happening, What has happened. So our feeling about our life becomes the quality of our life. It doesn't matter what the reality of our life is, What the description of our life is, But what controls is the feeling. It's how we feel about our life. So at a macro level, We all know about successful people, Rich and famous, That are unfulfilled, That are sad, That don't feel accomplished, Or they are in fear of this accomplishment or success being taken away from them. So at a macro level, It can be easily verified that the description of life, Having a lot of money, A lot of fame, Does not translate to how successful you feel in your life, How fulfilled you feel in your life, How happy you feel in your life. But then at a micro level, And that's where I want to focus more of today on, Micro level, This is even more pronounced in our own lives, Not in someone else's life. Whenever this story is spoken about, About rich and successful people being miserable, Although you understand it, There is still a desire to become rich and famous. You want to find out for yourself, Maybe there is a denial at some deep level that yeah, Sure, Maybe it is true, But wouldn't it be nice to know it, To find out, To be rich, And whatever rich means, And to be famous and whatever famous means. But the micro level is true for us. And what I mean by micro level is, On a daily basis, How do you feel about your life? I remember my teacher giving his example in France when he was at a high technical post in French government. He was married, He had two kids, He had a house, Two cars in his driveway, And he said he was miserable. He felt miserable in his life. But if he were to describe his life to someone, Like I just did, What's the reason to be miserable? You have a picture perfect life. So many times we feel something is not right, Or that on a daily basis, We are not at peace. And we all know what it means, What it feels like to be at peace. There is some kind of a restlessness. But let's say you meet your friend over the weekend, How was your week, You go on describing your week and depending on what kind of personality you are, You will only talk about what were the good points, Or you will complain about things. And we all know of people all they do is complain. Sometimes we overemphasize the negativity, But yet, It was not so bad. But most of the times, Like this is an example, Like every day I call my mom, She's in India, And I ask her how was her day. And they are 10 and a half hours ahead of us. So in time zones. So every day she says, Oh, Today was great. So I asked her, What was great. And then she starts enlisting everything that was bad. And so I have to nudge her into asking, Okay, So what was the good thing that happened that made your day good? So she had to be nudged into noticing. But either way, The description of reality and how we feel are not necessarily in sync most of the times, On a continuous basis, Not in an intermittent way. And the point I want to emphasize is how we feel dictates the quality of our life. Do we feel free at work? And this word free doesn't need any qualification. Free to do is not what free I'm talking about. Free means just feeling free. Like you're walking on a beach on a perfect 80 degree sunny day, No one on the beach, Or not many people on the beach and you're just walking unconcerned about anything else just walking freely. That's free. That is the closest analogy that I can think of in order to describe the word free. I don't want to define it. I want to invoke that experience of free using my words. This exploration today is about feeling, Not about description and definitions. So do you feel free at work, At home, With your friends? And this free encompasses everything. You can wear anything, You can say anything, You can not say anything, You can do whatever you want on that beach, And that's free. No justification for anyone. No justifying why you're doing what you're doing, Or why you're not doing what you're not doing. And think about how you describe about your work to other people on a weekly basis. Are they congruent or is there a discrepancy? I'm not saying one is right and the other is wrong. No. The only thing I'm saying is how we feel dictates whether we are fulfilled, We are happy, We are content or not. Another example would be body image. And I've been a chubby kid all my life. Growing up chubby in India was rough. So I always had this issue with with how I saw my body in the mirror. And at that time I wasn't aware to juxtapose it with how I feel. And even when I came to America, I got a little chubbier, Probably by 70-80 pounds. And every time I went shopping for clothes, There was shame, Intense shame with what I saw in the mirror. Somehow, Due to some epiphany, I saw a movie and it transformed my life. And I started this weight loss journey and I ended up losing 70-80 pounds. I lost a lot of unhappiness. I relinquished a lot of unhappiness with the weight, And I've kept it off. But I've been chubby way longer than I have been fit. And one of the things I used to do at that time was, Was listen to my instructors' podcasts or YouTube videos at the time. And these were trainers who had 8-pack and extremely fit. And they used to share their struggle about feeling fat. They have these days when they feel fat. And I always used to wonder, How can you feel fat? But today, As this thing was brewing in me over the, Over the weekend, I realized that there is a discrepancy, Incongruence between what we see and how we feel. So no matter this trainer who saw 8-pack in the mirror felt fat, Even though I've lost a lot of my weight, I still feel fat certain days. Now I can conceptualize it or I can really zoom in to what this feeling is. And this is an experiment I would highly encourage all of you to do it when you open your eyes and go about your day. One aspect of our, Of our perception, We're just seeing, We see, We see our reflection in the, Our body's reflection in the mirror. And that tells us whether we respect our body or we are unkind by calling it different names, Like I've been doing, Feeling fat, Etc. And the reason I'm doing it is to articulate how unkind we are to ourselves, Especially, Although this unkindness is, Is misplaced. What I mean by that is the way our body looks and the way we feel our body are two different things, Just like what our life looks in description and how our life feels while living it are two different things. But that's a very abstract thing. Life is a very abstract concept. But this, This body image I feel is a, Is a very relevant thing, At least for me, It's a very tangible thing. So now I pay attention to how I feel my body more than what I see in the mirror. There are days when I finish my workout and I feel strong, I feel light, I feel athletic. And what I see in the mirror is different, Probably. But it doesn't matter because my focus is on how I feel my body. Like a quick experiment to distinguish between what I'm trying to say here, Between the perception of the body and the feeling of the body would be to go in front of the mirror. It's better to do it in your mind. Otherwise, People around you might not get what you're trying to do. And when you look at your reflection, At your body's reflection in the mirror, Ask yourself, Which one is you? My experience has been for most of my life, I've thought that the reflection is me. The reflection doesn't have a feeling. I have the feeling. I'm seeing only the reflection. And it's a mirror reflection. It's not even a true reflection. So that one quick experiment is which one is me, That will greatly separate our experience of what is real and what is not real, What is important and what is not important, What is true and what is not true. Once you realize that the reflection is not you, Turn away from the mirror and notice how you feel your body. Now that you don't have a reflection, You can't see your full body, You will realize that most of the day you spend feeling how you feel your body, Not the perception of your body, But how you feel your body. Like right now, Your eyes are closed. You have no perception of your body. Even the sensation of your body is moving. But we can't say you don't have a body because you are feeling your body. Now, If you can resist the temptation of overlaying the image, The memory of your body on your current experience of your body, Let me repeat that. If you can resist the temptation of overlaying the image of your body with the current experience of your body, Everything that you think is true about your body becomes untrue. The contours, The sharp contours are gone from your experience. Your current experience of the body is just a series of sensations, Bodily sensations that you're feeling. Sometimes you're feeling your knees, Sometimes your throat, Sometimes your butt, Sometimes your back, Sometimes your tongue. But if you were to open your eyes and look at your body in the mirror, You would see the whole torso or your whole body. And this manipulated experience of overlaying things is what triggers the body issue, Body image issue as well. Because when we are looking at our reflection in the mirror, Right then we are overlaying the image of what a perfect body should be like. And hence, I don't like what I see because it's not congruent with what I've seen a perfect body, An eight-pack muscular body looks like. And that's what I experience at times. For you, It might be different things. But the concept, The mechanism is still the same. The mechanism of overlaying images and thinking them to be true. So our experience, Most of our days, Most of our weeks, Months, Years, And therefore life happens in how we feel our body. And unless we are in pain, We are going, Doing things about our day without much interference from our body. But when we go in front of that mirror, Something magical happens and magical in a not so good way. We find everything that's wrong. I'm not saying there might not be any insight into what you see. You can definitely want to make your body fitter, Feel stronger, Feel more athletic, Feel healthier. Yes, Definitely. But the operating word being feel, Not look. Because looks are deceptive. It's an overlaying mechanism on a true experience. So the first thing I want you to experiment with, To verify whether this entire rant that I had is true or not, Is see if your life is dictated by how you feel versus how things are. Secondly, At least with the experiment of looking at yourself in the mirror, Find out what is true, What is not true. And what you'll realize that whether you see the reflection of your body, Or whether you see part of your body from your chest down, Only the front part of your body, Chest down, It's only a perception. It's only an image. And when you start feeling, I don't feel good about my body. Notice if you're overlaying it with an image of perfect body. So the overlaying is the issue. If we can resist overlaying, We can see what is true. We can see true as it is true. Like it's just a perception. And then lastly, Notice how you feel in your body. Because that's that's the real wisdom. If I feel good, I want to continue what I'm doing. If I want to feel better, I want to try doing something else. But the body image issue is a body image issue. It's not a body issue. And the image is optional. Thank you