When your obsession with your body

keeps your partner from getting laid

Hate is intense. It’s passionate. Not just a dislike but a PASSIONATE dislike. When we hate our bodies, that energy creates a thought loop that repeats and builds in our heads.

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

The feelings towards our bodies drive thoughts that repeat over and over again and we get stuck in our heads. When we are stuck in our heads we are cut off from our bodies. (Maybe you are saying, “good!” But separate your opinion of the body for a moment…) We are cut off from the skin and the muscles and the bones that walk us around, keep our heart beating and our immune system running... When we get stuck in our heads it is almost like we are little more than a brain floating around. No sense of the sensations in ourselves- the sensations of reaching for something or of laying down when exhausted or of digesting or of being out of breath. Imagine if you never felt any of those things. Depending upon how cut off you are from your body, you may not notice much of your bodily experience already.

After decades of eating to numb her emotions, Donna had the first experience since childhood of feeling food go down after she swallowed, due to recovering from a surgery for which she’d not eaten the day before. The different (and probably painful) sensations from the surgery brought more awareness to her physical experience. Digestion began for the first time after a break and it brought Donna’s attention to the fact that she can actually feel her body digest. “I can feel the food go from my throat down into my stomach! It’s really weird!” she said. A lifetime of cutting herself off from physical and emotional sensations made noticing things that happen in her body a brand new experience.

“Getting into your body” is a concept that may be uncomfortable or even undesirable at first. And yet, even if it is a little wonky at first, embodiment is on the path to relief as you discover fully accepting yourself physically.

“You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.” – Dale Carnegie

So how do I get into my body?

Perhaps your job keeps you in your head most of the day. Nearly any task where you are dealing with words or numbers on a computer requires you to be almost exclusively in your head. Can you sometimes go hours without getting up? Your bodily sensations (thirst/need to stretch/desire to move) have slowed down so that your brain work takes precedence.

This is important because we have to focus. (Imagine if Donna’s surgeon felt like stretching her legs and going to get a La Croix 20 minutes in to her procedure… thankfully, she stayed in her head and expertly completed Donna’s surgery!) We need to be in our heads sometimes. And, if we stay stuck in our heads beyond when it is necessary, we miss out on a lot.

Being able to get out of your head and into your body when you want to will make your overall sense of well-being increase, especially when you make a habit of it. Don’t worry- there are lots of entry points for embodiment.

Breath work and Guided Meditation

Before you skip this section because you think you don’t have an extra hour each day to meditate, please realize that this can be a 4-minute thing. Taking just a few moments to let thoughts float away while you experience being inside your body: as it breathes, with whatever aches or tightness or energy or weight each part of your body has. Seriously- bringing yourself away from thinking, thinking, thinking into just experiencing your breath for a few moments can help you get centered and re-focus, even in the middle of a workday.