I invite you to take a moment and think about these two words.
When I heard a Yoga teacher use this phrase recently it pretty much threw me instantly off my Warrior pose, my practice took a momentary tumble out of balance and into deep inquiry.
Our family recently expanded to include a new kitten called Gatsby, I feel a kindred spirit with his ever curious mind, his fascination with just about everything is relentless, his balance is frequently misjudged however, he falls, a lot. And then he gets straight back up and finds something else more interesting to explore.
Many of you will know my kitten mind and I are spending this year studying Fascial Anatomy with http://www.naturalbodies.co.uk there’s nothing like being surrounded by informed, interesting and interested people to challenge both body & brain. instead of being guided through the body as if its a sightseeing tour, to your right is The (right) Body (insert Elle McPherson here) to your left is well, me (definitely not Ms McPherson) As we’ve toured through the inner landscape of the body the most profound realisation is that our bodies are truly wondrous and more importantly just as uniquely different inside as they are on the outside, our eyes are not just windows to the soul but also a beautiful design to invite others to know we are someone to be trusted, even the lines have a purpose.
Our faces and bodies are designed to move, uniquely and joyfully. Somewhere along the journey we learnt the art of comparison and that our worth depended on someone else’s arbitrary comparative system, and lets not forgot those who set the system are usually making a lot of money from it and us. Our bodies are not just a collection of easily replaced parts or components, sculptured and reinvented or worse disregarded as unnecessary https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxuIpelh9Grrn1g-x3_JGKMsNUIS9oDJuo, ( a brief clip from the genius that is Gil Hedley) your thoughts however, those you can sculpt away from the influence of comparison, your thoughts are not you, they are just thoughts, they come and they go, invite the ones you want to stay and evict the rest. This is a daily discipline beyond the gym, beyond the Pilates or Yoga mat. There is no perfect Beach Body or Yoga Body or any body. There is a body gifted to you that you can make a choice to look after with regular movement, exercise (do what you love) food in all its rainbow colours (lettuce and Juice are not the answer, they never were) & hydration, sleep is not a luxury to be savoured only on vacation, stress management (see all previous choices)
All these things are daily practices that can bring you away from despair and into empowerment of yourself but maybe you have to accept that your Body is already the right body, not a war zone to be conquered.
We have the choice to take care of ourselves or not, you already know how to do this, your body was born knowing how to do this. Your mind has been under a relentless attrition of comparison most likely since you developed a sense of the world around you. Maybe we all need to see the world through the eyes of a kitten, fearless, expansive and wondrous but also a world we can fall and fail frequently in and occasionally just choose rest when exploring gets a little too much.
But then you already knew all of this.
Namaste
Suzy & Gatsby
