Let your body arrive without trying to posture it in any way,
Without apology,
Without judgment.
This moment belongs to you.
So,
Allow yourself to soften on the outside and let the air touch you from the inside.
Simply pause and know that this is a quiet space and I'm speaking to the part of you that feels exposed in your own skin,
The part that checks,
Adjusts,
Evaluates.
And know that you don't have to do that here,
Not now.
And stay with me for a moment as I share a story with you.
Not one you were taught,
But one that is achingly human.
It involves a caterpillar.
A caterpillar lives close to the ground.
Its body feels dense,
Visible,
Exposed.
And it moves forward because that's what it knows how to do.
It doesn't stand back and evaluate its shape.
It doesn't wonder how it looks while it's moving.
It just moves.
And somewhere along the way,
Many of us stop doing that.
Somewhere,
Our body became something we watched instead of inhabited.
And quietly,
Can you feel where that happened for you?
That moment when awareness turned into inspection and when living turned into monitoring.
One day,
The caterpillar's body changes its mind.
It stops moving,
Reaching,
Striving.
And its body asks for stillness instead,
Waiting.
Doing nothing that looks impressive.
And from the outside,
It looks like stagnation.
From the inside,
It feels vulnerable.
And this is where dysmorphia tightens the lens,
Where the image begins to feel permanent.
But the caterpillar never sees wings while it's still reorganizing.
And just between us,
When your body resists your plans for improvement,
Where does the critic live?
Notice the tightening,
The demand to fix.
And just once,
Let that urge pass and remain.
Inside the cocoon,
Everything softens.
The familiar structure dissolves.
And the shape that once made sense disappears.
If the caterpillar could see itself now,
It would feel unrecognizable and unsettled.
Because nothing looks the way it used to.
And this is where we tend to turn on ourselves.
So gently notice,
Where have you called your body wrong?
Simply because it doesn't resemble an earlier version.
That voice,
That voice belongs to an older moment.
It doesn't have to run to this one.
So there's no need to obey it.
Now place a hand on your body.
Not as comfort,
As contact.
And stay close.
Because the hardest part of the middle is not knowing the end and choosing not to abandon yourself.
No more story now.
Only this.
The caterpillar does not become worthy when it emerges,
As it was never unworthy in the first place.
Let that softly land.
Just breath.
Just sensation.
Trust,
But quiet.
When you're ready,
Let your breath deepen.
Begin to return and take this with you.
You are not stuck.
You are not broken.
You are not behind.
You are not meant to see the wings from the work in progress.
And you don't need the end to honor the middle.
For yours is not a finished body.
It's a faithful one.
Not becoming something else while you become.
May your mind,
Body,
And spirit be abundant with peace,
Presence,
And compassion today and every day.
Until we meet again,
My friend,
Namaste.
