Can You See Your Body Through Different Eyes?

Have you ever taken the time to think about how you view your body?

Many of us run on autopilot with the stories we tell ourselves. There might be a running loop in your mind of hating your stomach, or knowing life will be “just perfect” when you finally lose those 15 pounds. Maybe you are frustrated by your body’s inability to digest gluten, or your skin’s tinges of broken blood vessels. Maybe you feel it’s impossible to heal from your autoimmune disorder; maybe you feel broken from cancer’s byproduct of hair loss.

It can be hard to love our body fully when it feels like the enemy.

But beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

It’s something that we determine through subjective experience. In other words, beauty is never objective. Which means you can change its meaning at any point in time.

Another Approach

One of the first things I started doing when I was working on loving my body more was to sit partially or fully nude in front of the mirror and let my eyes cloud over.

This act helped me to get out of my own way and no longer see my body through my eyes. I then re-focused, looking at different body parts, and I began to marvel in their beauty.

The rolls.

The stretch marks.

The veins.

Now, I didn’t suddenly love every single part of my body and think it was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. But this exercise did help me to see beauty where before I only saw “bad.” I started to think about my body as a lover would – appreciating it for the fact that it existed.

Imagine

Can you imagine yourself laying with a lover, letting them caress you gently, feeling them kissing your round or painful parts, listening to them tell you the things you dislike about yourself are the things they absolutely adore the most?

It was a couple of years after I started doing this experiment that I fell madly in love with a man who did just that. Although that is not the purpose of this exercise, it sure didn’t hurt to have him “seal in” what I had already created.

I credit this exercise with completely shifting the way I view my body.

Transform

No matter what is currently happening with your body, this process can be a transformative experience. Again, it’s not as simple as a one-time view and suddenly it’s all roses, but stick with it. Start to feel your unique beauty in your bones.

Because every single one of us has our own beauty.

That no one else holds.

That no one else can match.

That is our perfect incarnation in this lifetime.