In the softness of your heart
Venus Her loving embrace Invites an opening An awakening of your truth Who are you When Venus expresses herself through you
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In many of my blog posts, I’ve written about our relationship with our bodies and body image. For me, this topic comes naturally having lived in the body image world since the day when I was twelve years old and noticed that my girlfriend’s knees were bony and mine were, let’s say, not bony.
I notice these kinds of things and question them which can sometimes get me into trouble. In this case, it’s not that it got me into trouble exactly, but rather it put me onto a path of noticing body types and deciding which ones I preferred and wanted to have. Because this attachment around body image has been with me for so long, I know how it feels to want what we naturally don’t have. To crave so intensely a body that is not mine. It’s painful and all encompassing. And that gets me wondering… According to the Labyrinth Society, labyrinths have been around for roughly 4000 years. Using sacred geometry, a labyrinth creates a resonance that brings us into a harmonic state with nature and life.
Personally, I hadn’t paid too much attention to them until several years ago when I was on a summer solstice retreat in Hawaii. On the retreat site outside of Hilo, was a huge seven circuit labyrinth with lines made from a series of volcanic and white beach rocks. At each line end was a statue of an angel and in the center was an altar of crystals placed by walkers from all around the globe. Placed upside down next to the altar was a green plastic chair and there was a volcanic fissure that either led into or out of the labyrinth, I'm not sure which. I loved this labyrinth and as we got to know each other, it offered me an experience I've never forgotten. I stand in front of the mirror, naked, looking at myself.
Who is this woman with the mounds of flesh that cover her bones? Where are the hip bones that once protruded, a marker that defined success? Where is that svelte body with the long, tanned legs that drew the eye upward to those protruding hip bones and flat stomach? How well do you know your body? I have to admit that for forty years, I didn’t know my body at all. I totally dismissed what my body wanted as I tried to control it so I could be thin. If I felt hunger pangs, I’d ignore them. Actually, I was a bit meaner than that and told my body I didn't trust it because if I fed it, it would just go and get fat.
I was so stressed about food and controlling myself to be thin for so many years, I had sort of turned into a tightly wound person, someone who was totally focused on what I looked like. But let’s face it, trying to be something we’re not is a lot of work. It’s takes a lot of energy and quite frankly, it can make for a very ego-centric person. Fortunately, the opportunity to learn about dieting and body image showed up in my life and I was able to see the mess I had created. What’s your definition of abundance? Do you see yourself living in abundance now and in the future? If not, why not?
This was a question I posed in an earlier post. If you didn’t have a chance to read it, you can find it here. Many of us initially think of abundance as an overflowing of something, such as the abundance of rain we’ve had in the northeast or having so much money we could swim in it. But if we allow our perspective to shift a bit, we can see that having abundance means having what you need when you need it. A few weeks ago, before I went on a short break (which was lovely), I left you with some reflection questions. To recap, they were:
I know for myself, there have been times when I’ve seen my future-self doing something that I feel really passionate about, but it doesn’t seem possible. I only see obstacles such as I’d have to go back to school to learn more, can I afford it, who am I to think so big? If you can think it, you can do it. I used to think I wanted to live to be 102, but a few years ago I changed that to 120. By saying that I want to live to be 120, I mean with robust health, of course. :)
Living a robust healthy life at 120 doesn’t start when I’m 100, I’ve had to come to terms with not waiting or putting off what I can start today because what I do today informs my tomorrow and the next day and the next. Starting with today, can I create habits, or continue habits, that will provide optimum health and well-being over the next five to ten years and then the next bunch of years? I received the results of my fasting glucose and A1C tests the other day. Prior to receiving the results, I had been listening to Dr. Mark Hyman’s podcast the Doctor’s Farmacy where he was interviewing Jessie Inchauspé, a French biochemist and author of Glucose Revolution and The Glucose Goddess Method.
One of the things that Jessie and Mark talked about was how even though the medical standard for our fasting glucose levels might be 65-99mg/dL, 99 is way too high to be a norm. They both agreed that 85 or lower was a better marker and Mark Hyman was more comfortable with the numbers at around 50(ish)! It saddens me to see so many drugs on the market to assist with weight loss. Some of these drugs are FDA approved, but does that mean we should take them?
Weight loss drugs have a storied past for sure. In the 50’s and 60’s the weight loss drug of choice was amphetamines. According to an article written by Jacques Peretti in the Guardian, they were banned in the 70’s due to being highly addictive and causing heart attacks and strokes. The door had been opened however and the pharmaceutical companies could not resist the opportunity to sell to women (and men) who were desperate to lose weight. |
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