CAPITALISM AND OUR BODIES + BODY LIBERATION MEDITATION

I am loving Virgie Tovar's essay in the 2018 vol 1 Many Moon's Workbook, Your Body is a Metaphor for the Cosmos! She also includes a meditation which is seriously amazing.

One of the more frequent conversations I have with my clients is around body image, worthiness, value, and desirability.

Challenging and subverting the pervasive ageist, racist, sizeist, sexist, ableist, show-your-strength-through-dieting-and-restriction, definition of desirability is not easy. We've internalized these messages our entire lives, and deconstructing and understanding this for each of us individually takes time. 

Misogynistic diet culture's promise to bring happiness with weight loss fuels a power dynamic in which food becomes our enemy, our greatest temptation, the thing keeping us from living our lives. It's up to us to prioritize body liberation in our lives and to fight the oppressive narrative we live in.

This is an unfair burden, and it can be tiring and can feel sad to do this type of work. It requires strength and stamina, but we absolutely can reclaim our bodies and our experience of beauty. We ask ourselves, “who is making money from this self-critical thought?” Let's support each other in this fight! 

Here is Virgie’s meditation:

“There’s a mindfulness/grounding practice I love that reconnects us to our body through touch and gratitude. You’ll need anywhere from 5 – 30 minutes, your favorite oil (I recommend rose oil for its heart-healing properties), and a quiet place. You can sit down or lie down for this practice, and I recommend either being naked or wearing only underwear. Cover your hands in oil. You can start anywhere on your body that you’d like or—if you prefer direction—start at your head. Try to touch every part of yourself: face, neck, shoulders, arms, chest, belly, thighs, calves, and feet. Say a small gratitude to each part. (“Thank you, feet, for carrying me. Thank you, hands, for letting me write letters to my favorite humans.”) Pay special attention to the parts of yourself you have a difficult time loving or accepting. When you reach those emotional spots on your body, spend extra time touching and massaging that part of you. In addition to offering a small gratitude, repeat to yourself: “This part of me is beautiful. This part of me makes me whole.” Familiarize yourself with the terrain of your skin, scars, lumps, bumps, treasured nooks, and even well-tread territory. Let yourself feel whatever comes up—delight, grief, wonder, anger. Our bodies hold all of this, and some parts of us hold more memories than others.

End with five deep breaths. As you breathe in and out, revel in the alchemical duality of your body as both something vast and infinitesimal. Revel in the fact that the elements that comprise your body are the same elements that comprise the planet and the worlds beyond.”