How's Your Body Image Doing?

3 quick questions & you're done! (+ free body image lesson recording)

A lot of us are reeling from current events. Body image is part of your overall mental health. So, if your mental health isn’t doing great, it’s normal for your body image to also take a hit. Don’t worry! There are things you can do to support yourself: don’t make big decisions when you’re having a rough body image moment, make sure to take time to rest, take breaks from social media, down-regulate your nervous system with tea or comfort shows, and create some self-soothing statements you can tell yourself.

Checking in weekly with your body image can help you feel less overwhelmed and may even help you spot positive or negative patterns. Let’s do this!

No matter how you answered, kudos for taking the time to notice how you feel. Next question…

Having a small, easy action item helps you learn to take care of yourself and your body image. Ready for your last check-in question?

This week, notice if checking in with your body image helped you feel more empowered.

Since life is just too shitty right now, please enjoy free access to this week’s body image lesson:

Hit play to do a quick relaxation & breathing prompt with me and listen to this week’s body image lesson:

I pulled 4 cards from the Sea Soul Journey Oracle Cards deck for the month of February. The themes are: awe, play, allow, and faith. This week, let’s apply the theme of ALLOWING to our body image work.

"Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news".

- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (p.s. this quote is on the little white board on my refrigerator right now!)

We are, undoubtedly, in a time of global and domestic chaos. It can feel scary. However, I’d like to remind you that - if you’re here - you know chaos.

Diet culture is chaos.

Diet culture shares all the same ingredients with what we’re seeing unfold right now: lies, manipulation, exploitation, misogyny, racism, and brutal attacks on the mental and physical well-being of humans in the name of profit and an ill-begotten notion of morality. We’ve lived with this chaos everyday of our conscious lives!

How do we bring the idea of ALLOWING into this moment? To begin with, allowing isn’t about passivity. It’s about being realistic about what’s in your control and what isn’t.

When I think about what I can do in the face of all the chaos I’m seeing, I know I can offer mutual aid, I can signal boost resources, I can call friends to see how they are, I can learn my rights and the rights of others, I can attend townhall meetings, and call legislators. I cannot, however, create a world where we have a different president. I can’t end the manosphere. I can’t change the mind of every voter who thinks the price of eggs is more important than human rights. If I am unable or unwilling to accept that I can’t control every outcome, I will become overwhelmed with guilt, failure and shame.

Likewise, in order to make peace with our body, we have to learn - and allow for - what we can and can’t control.

Our culture has taught us that we have 100% control over our body size. Our culture also teaches us that body size = health = long-lasting, high-quality life. The truth is that we can’t control those things long-term, and when we do try to control them we end up with guilt, failure and shame, which manifest in disordered eating/eating disorders, body image disturbances, etc.

Choosing to try to accept or love your body in the midst of that chaos is an example of allowing; it’s a way of saying: “I cannot end diet culture, but I can choose to try to protect myself from it. I can choose to critique it. I can choose to explore the idea that maybe my body is fine just the way it is. I can choose to imagine that my body - and I - are enough.”

xo,