I just read a passage from a book I am reading slowly and with purpose called {“Women who runs with the Wolves”} by Author Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and it reminded me of the information Author Ann Pai {"My Other Body"} shared with us on last Friday about learning to re-frame the way we think of and about our bodies.
The passage goes. . .
“. . . the wildish woman can inquire into the spirituality of her own body and understand it not as a dumbbell that she is sentenced to carry for life, nor as a beast of burden pampered or otherwise, who carries us around for life. But a series of doors and dreams and poems through which she can learn and know all manner of things. . .
Our bodies are our gateway to a wealth of knowledge, feelings, happenings, emotions, beauty, sexuality, spiritualness, aromas, enlightenments and truths.
I think we take our precious covering for granted because it was formed before we came aboard (or into) it, so it is a given for us. We treat is like a piece of furniture that does not really matter or exist until we damage it in some way, or it becomes ill or somehow less usable.
We punish it, we hate it, we dread it. We pinch it and pull it, decorate it and put holes in it. We cut it, rearrange it, redo it. We damn it, and forsake it, harm it and mistreat it. But the thing we rarely do, is accept it. Even with all the hard work our bodies do for us, all the pleasures it brings to us, all the stimulation it allows us, all the protection it garners us- we have little respect for it.
Think deeply on this question, and answer honestly. . . would you really, if given the opportunity, trade your body for anyone elses?
I think this goes back to the old adage of. . .if we all threw our problems in a pile and was able to retrieve any other problem- we would most likely retrieve back our own.
So how about we begin to act as if we would never give up this old body, no matter how awful, or painful, or unfit we believe it to be, because it is ours and it actually fits us so very well.
No one else has the right to tell us how our bodies should be shaped or formed or what level of health or fitness we should try to achieve for it. All these things are our own decisions to make. If we strive to make our bodies comfortable for us to be in- nothing more- nothing less, then we will have achieved the ultimate goal of life.
Just to be comfortable in our own skin. 