If You Want To Love Your Body, Start Here

In 2017, I attended a 3.5 day personal development course that would shift my relationship with my body. Through this course, I learned that we each have a tendency to construct stories around the things that happen to us. More often than not, the stories we create are deeply disempowering and disconnected from reality. As a result, they have a negative impact on how we view ourselves and how we show up in the world. A large focus of this course was recognizing the narratives you’ve been trapped in, letting them go, and getting “complete.”

My shift occurred the moment I stepped on stage and shared my story with 100 other people. I chose to share an apology letter that I’d written to my body. For a long time, I harbored anger and resentment towards my body due to health circumstances. In this letter, I asked my body to forgive my destructive energy. I apologized for being its worst enemy through my hateful thoughts and words. Through this letter, I brought to light the untrue beliefs I held onto for so long. I expressed love and gratitude for the wonderful things my body allows me to do, from the complex tasks to the most mundane. The experience itself was raw and cathartic, because it allowed me to channel two important qualities: forgiveness and gratitude.

If you want to grow your love for yourself and your body, then forgiveness and gratitude will be essential. The disempowering stories we live through are a lot like weeds. They spread quickly through our lives, killing off every bit of beauty and livelihood. In order to grow a beautiful garden, these weeds must be removed.

Through forgiveness, we release our grievance story and restore our sense of peace. We reclaim our power by taking responsibility and showing compassion for ourselves and our circumstances. Forgiveness is the act of uprooting these weeds. It creates space for us to plant seeds of positivity and empowerment.

Sowing seeds of gratitude will help us move forward towards a life of love, joy, prosperity, compassion, abundance, etc. Through gratitude, we practice appreciating the big and little blessings in life. When watered, seeds of gratitude will grow and fill that space. You’ll start to pay more attention to what you have versus what you don’t. When the seeds of gratitude blossom, they’ll breathe life into you. Over time, what you have (and who you are) will be enough.

So if you’re not sure where to begin, start with apology and appreciation and be present to the shift in your energy.