You've really let yourself go

Ironically (or perhaps just on point), I wrote a lot of this post while eating chocolate cake. Scroll to the end for a bonus recording of a Meditate Your Face Off class on this same subject. Above is a guided meditation to help you appreciate your body for the miracle that it is. Below is me reading the essay that follows:

I used to exercise every day. I’d run five or seven miles, stretch, and do a 20 minute ab workout. I also did things like run marathons, thru hike the hundred-mile wilderness, and ride my bike across the country. I could tell myself I was taking care of my body, that it was all a part of being a healthy, well-rounded person, but really, I just hated myself.

Exercise can be a wonderful thing. It feels good, keeps us healthy in body and mind, and breaks harmful addictive habits. But we can also use exercise as a way to avoid our feelings. I’d much rather get high on adrenaline than feel the deep shame and anxiety I’d have to feel if I just hung out with myself. So, I’ll run away from my feelings. Literally.

Mindfulness calls on us to pay attention to our bodies, and allow our bodies to be exactly as they are. For me, this ended up forcing me to look at the ways I was trying to beat my body into submission. I was trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to force fat to become muscle, sucking my belly in, scrutinizing my body in the mirror. I was also aware that my awakening was connected to loving my body, but I didn’t know exactly how to get there.

I started by letting my belly expand a little bit on the cushion, and then later in public. It took a lot of courage to do this, especially since my belly really likes to stick out. Someone even asked me if I was pregnant (I wasn’t). Big belly practice bumped me up against a lot of the shame and fear I was avoiding by doing exercise and controlling what I ate. But then Lyme disease made the choice for me. I felt so terrible that I had to stop exercising altogether. Naturally, this was terrifying for me. But not only did I get a chance to really see the feelings motivating my exercise routine, I got to tune in way more deeply to my body’s actual needs.

Our bodies are so much more than the box of societally imposed perfection that we try to stuff them into. There are countless complex systems at play that we can hardly fathom— did you know there are neurons in your gut? And now that I’m a mom, now that my body has performed the astounding magic trick of bringing life into this world, I find it tragic that we view belly fat as ugly. My belly wants to be squishy and big, and is often serving as a comfy pillow for a little person. And the more I let it hang out, the freer I feel.

My body had been yearning to be loved and appreciated for all it was constantly doing to keep me alive and safe, or at the very least, to be left alone. And all I was doing was judging it and trying to control it. And that’s really what all of this boils down to: having a body is out of control. Bodies are highly sensitive. They are at the mercy of the innumerable unpredictable forces that govern life on this planet, and all the willpower in the world can’t prevent us from getting sick and dying. The brain, too, is out of our control. Our brains are governed by the animal instinct to stay alive, and if we think we can use our minds to crush our bodies, something inevitably rebels and we end up covered in Cheeto dust, feeling defeated.

Illness taught me what willpower couldn’t. And for each of us, nature will win over willpower. But the lesson that nature teaches us is that surrendering to the truth and power of nature is better than fighting a losing battle for our whole lives. It’s often the case that the things that befall us— illness, injury, and dying— are the best, most effective ways to free the mind. If we choose to stop fighting and pay attention.

So, what to do? You don’t have to throw out your whole exercise routine. I started by pausing or meditating before and after I felt the urge to exercise, before deciding what exercise would really feel good that day. And some days I would replace exercise with meditation, just to see what I’d have to sit with. And it’s ok to not change your routine, but just to focus on how it’s making you feel. And then, at some point, you may find yourself wanting to do more of what feels good, and choosing that over what you think you should be doing.

Inhabiting your body more and more means feeling all the feelings: the pleasant ones and the unpleasant ones. The more you turn towards unpleasant feelings, the more you’ll see that it can be ok to just feel them and not act. Soon, you’ll find yourself patiently listening to all of what your body is saying. Then, you can act from a place of love rather than a place of fear.

Aside from noticing what feels bad, you can also focus on what feels good. Instead of scrutinizing your body in the mirror after a shower or while you brush your teeth, close your eyes or look out a window, and lovingly appreciate all the things your body does for you. It turns out you’ve had the most loyal friend keeping you company through thick and thin, for your whole life.

I don’t work out anymore. At least not intentionally. I do the unplanned exercises of getting up from the floor while holding a 22 lb baby, and a steady flow of housework and yard work. Who knows, maybe going for a mindful ten minute walk is more effective for maintaining good health than running ten miles in a state of self-hatred. I like to think so. And maybe I’ll feel like exercising again one day, but for now, being constantly clambered over by two young children is quite enough physicality for me.

I keep listening to what my body wants and needs, and I try my best to honor it. I still eat way more chocolate than my body wants to be eating, and I definitely don’t get enough sleep, do enough stretching, or drink enough water. But I love my body so much more than I ever have, and am grateful every day for what it does and has done for me, for the way it always tells me how things are going physically and emotionally, how it lets me pick up and hug the people I love and be hugged back, and for the simple fact that, at least for this brief time on earth, I have the privilege of inhabiting it.

The Buddha famously said that this fathom-long body has everything you need to wake up. He didn’t say that sexy bodies get to wake up. He meant your body, exactly as it is.

Online Classes

This post was the theme of a Meditate Your Face Off drop-in class this past week. I offer these drop-in classes several times a month. They’re a great way to connect with your practice, a group, and with me; and they’re free to join. Below is an audio recording of that class, which also happened to be our 100th Meditate Your Face Off class(!!). It starts with a short talk, followed by a meditation, then a portion of the q&a that followed.

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More on exercise, body image, and awakening:

If this topic interests you, I talked about it with Michael Easter, author of the New York Times bestseller The Comfort Crisis, in a chapter of an Audible Original called Embrace Discomfort.

I also talked about it with Dan Harris in an episode of the Ten Percent Happier Podcast called Can You Get Fit Without Hating Yourself:

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