Stop for a moment & ponder the amazingness of your body.
Think about the miracle of each breath that enters into your lungs, effortlessly, without uncertainty. Think about all of your senses: you are tasting, feeling, smelling, hearing, seeing incessantly; these sensations enrich your life & make it gorgeous, vibrant, liveable.
Think about the uniqueness of your fingerprint, your eye color, your skin tone, your hair texture. Think about the beauty of your mind, how it houses memories, thoughts, beliefs, concepts, & signals, & how all of these things help you function, create, & interact with other humans.
Think about the body’s spectacular natural rhythms: it sleeps every night & wakes every morning; it enables you to eat & digest food, & expel waste; it allows you to experience divine pleasure in the form of orgasms.
Think about your heartbeat, & how it has never, ever failed you.
All of this is extraordinary.
But we do not focus on these marvelous things.
Instead, we focus on how we need to lose ten pounds. How many grey hairs are peeking through our scalps. How the outside world perceives us (when they’re probably not even paying attention to us). How small our breasts are. How much we hate our noses. How hairless our bodies should be. How insignificant we are. How perfect we should be at all times.
How irrelevant, when something so phenomenal is happening within our bodies at the moment.
There are billions of tiny cells within us, working for our bodies in harmony & without complaint. They are completely devoted to us; they practically worship us. These cells keep us alive, strong, & healthy even while we’re fretting about the cellulite on our thighs or our “unsightly” smile lines. They feel the vibration of your negative thoughts & these vibrations will even kill some of them… yet, they keep working. Diligently.
This is remarkable.
So much time would be saved, so many cells would go on living, if we ceased in worrying about our appearance. We would find so much joy in the incredible abilities our body is capable of. We would smile in spite of the imperfections; we would celebrate them, we would fall in love with them.
We would make peace with the fact our bodies are beautiful precisely the way they are right now, because they are healthy, they are living, they are breathing. We have the ability to walk towards the direction of our dreams, to use our hands to write, to use our arms to embrace, to use our mouths to devour delicious meals, to use our voices to spread significant messages in the world.
These are all miracles & precious gifts.
This is my message to you:
Do not upset yourself with thoughts of inadequacy. Do not get riled up at the number you see on a scale. Do not reject your body. Do your best to steer clear from self-judgment & critical thoughts. Realize that you are doing your body & all of those loyal cells an unkindness with your self-destructive mantras.
Instead, be grateful of every breath, every step, every minute you are alive & blinking in this moment.
Realize that beauty is just a concept. Keep it in perspective. Meditate on the miraculousness of your body, the cohesiveness of your insides. Those are the things that truly matter.
Your body is beautiful, perfect, outstanding the way it is.
(PS: I would really appreciate it if you helped me spread this message. More people need to realize the utter magnificence of their bodies.)
This is beautiful! I’ve been thinking about this lately…about appreciating how intricate and beautiful each of us is. I’ll happily spread the word :)
I’ve been thinking about this too – but in a much different light. I have a lot of self-image problems, and I my self-hate erodes pretty much every aspect of my existence. I don’t really know how to work on it… but I’m working on it. :o
So this post is a stark contrast to where my thoughts have been basically my whole life.
You nailed it! Well done!
I have learned, through illness and hard times, to regularly acknowledge my wonder, awe & appreciation for my body. Thanks for emphasizing the importance of that practice!
I’d also like to add to this post a pretty astounding fact:
The clitoris is the only part of the body whose function is to give pleasure & nothing else.
It contains 8,000 nerve-endings within it, & interacts with 15,000 nerve-endings around the pelvis area.
When I wrap my head around *that* tidbit of information, I am speechless.
The body — my body, your body — is a beautiful.
never considered it, but LOVE it!
Another useful tidbit about the clitoris: it’s nerve-wired to your breasts. So you can stimulate either through the other. (Just thought I’d share!)
That is an even *better* tidbit of information, one that I did not know. Thanks for sharing, Ellie!
YES! AMEN! Sharing this with my Fierce Love for Every Body peeps on facebook! (http://www.facebook.com/FierceLoveEveryBody)
In undergrad, I organized the first ever Love Your Body Week on campus. (Three years later, I am happy to say the movement is going strong!)
If you haven’t read Courtney Martin’s book “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters” or Terri Russ’s book “Bitchin’ Bodies,” those are two great places to start studying body image. Martin, in particular, makes the point that women spend so much time and energy obsessing over how we look — think of all we could do if we channeled that time and energy elsewhere.
Love this post! It is sad that we are conditioned to “not see” these incredible miracles and accept them as normal. The human body is every inch a miracle and we should marvel at it every day.
Very eloquently put. Media for so long has convinced us that we need to maintain a certain image. To look a certain way, act a certain way, be a certain way.
We can choose to be ourselves instead. Natural beauty is the most beautiful thing.
I’m hoping this is going into the book you’re beavering away on (see what I did there?). It immediately made me think of one of my favourite quasi-affirmations about the awesomeness of our bodies:
“There are billions of cells in my body doing amazing things every day, and I’m worried about some extra fat cells?”
That’s a paraphrase, but you get the idea. Bodies are incredible! Appreciation of them is deeply important, if only for the fact that they’re carrying you around so wonderfully so you can enjoy this world.
Thank you for this–fabulous!
i have a meditation i do – i thank my body. i thank my belly which puts up with me upsetting it so much, i thank my legs that keep walking even when hurting, i thank my toenails and my arm that knows how to heal scratches without any input from me. i thank my eyes that see and also know when to turn away, my fingers that know how to type these words. i thank the whole of me. my body/me/i. amazing.
That is absolutely beautiful, Debi. More people need to meditate on the awesomeness of their body.
Thank you for sharing this Debbie, I’m going to add this to my meditation practice! And thank you Ev’Yan for sharing this beautiful post of yours. It is so true that our bodies are amazing. Absolutely amazing. When I even begin to think of all of the things they do for us, everything they do right when so much could go wrong, I feel a sense of wonder and deep awe and appreciation. I can’t say that I have always been as kind to my body as it deserves, but I have made developing self-compassion my new number one goal.
(also, I shared this post on my blog – it’s new so I don’t have many readers, but I will certainly spread your message in as many other ways as I can as I try to embrace it myself!)
What a fab post – thanks Ev’yan. Just discovered your site and so happy to have arrived here! I’m with you on the “Freedom through Self-Discovery” front. Going to dive into your archives now to see what your site is all about.
Great to meet you.
Anel
Pleased to meet you, Anel! And thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoy what you see.
:]
I shared your post on my blog http://mommamaven.blogspot.com/2011/06/do-you-hate-your-body.html
Everybody needs to remember just how amazing our bodies really are at least every once in a while, thanks for your wonderful post.
Great post. You never cease to amaze me with your honesty and insight.
P.S. I read the manifesto from your upcoming book…..I am in awe of your talents. I can’t wait to read it when its published. =)
This is so inspiring. I think society plays a huge role in the way we feel about our looks and our bodies. It is so awful. My grandpa is very sick and I have been visiting him in the hospital every night. He is a 94 year old man who has so much life in him and so many great memories. No one cares what he looked like growing up, how handsome he was, they want to hear his stories and his passions. Our bodies are miraculous…. no doubt about it.
There are no words to express how much I love your blog. It was truly instrumental in motivating me to take my own journey in self-discovery which has opened a whole new world of pleasure in self, life, and the simple things. And your writing style is beautiful, your sentences create perfect pictures in my brain! A well-written piece is like a mental orgasm! Keep discovering and sharing your lessons with others.
I know how lucky I am to have my body as it hasn’t let me down let.And yet we are dishearted by what we see in the mirror? We need to embrace ourselves for who and what we are. Our bodies inside and out. Our ‘imperfections’ make us special, beautiful and unique. Embrace yourself for who you are!!
Love you Ev’Yan
This is beautiful. Thank you for reminding me the greatness that is my body!
Love and blessings to you!
Tears down my face as i think how i have mistreated you and cursed you and vowed to change you by hook or crook. I openly go into huge detail to anyone with ears and eyes how i despise you and wish u really would stop punishing me with how you look and how you look back at me and refuse to change.
But apart from God..you are the love of my life. You actually know all my secrets and you are the 1 who keeps them..every pain i felt with you (no complaints from you), every joy..but do i ever share those joys with you? You live for me..you catch all my breathes. You have never failed me. Me? I love you..from now on i will take care of you and rightly defend you. For once i will return the favour. My love, i have your back always, as you have mine. Love your best friend…ME.
Beautiful, thank you so much for this post … I found you via Camilla’s website. Blessings x
ps: will do a post hopefully this week, linking to this!
Just wanted to let you know that I shared this on my own blog because I liked it so much! Here’s a link: http://poeticaperture.com/2011/06/08/stop-and-ponder-the-amazingness/
Jesus, this is amazing. Breathtaking. A firm grasp on what counts, what matters, Ev’Yan, I needed to hear this. Thank you.
I really needed to read this as I was really upset earlier this week because the scale number went up. Oh, was I a mess. I never thought of my body as a work of art and really stopped to appreciate all that it does. I may not remember this all the time but for now I am not going to be so hard on myself.
Thanks for sharing your genius.
Thanks for this inspiring article!
I often think about this when I want to criticize my body. When I hurt because of premenstrual cramps, instead of getting mad at my body I try to make myself see what an amazing thing it is doing all on its own. And, when I look in the mirror and want to think something negative about my legs or other body part I correct myself and think about all the good things my legs can do like walk, run, dance, jump…
This was just what i needed to hear, so i send to you a deep, heart felt thank you.
This post left me speechless. Never have I thought of my body as such a fantastic and wonderful thing. Thank you!
In a very odd way…this sort of ties back to religion.
In a Christian world, we are to live “good” lives in gratitude for the gift of salvation we are given.
This post inspires me to take care of this amazing body instead of lamenting how well it works (holding on to excessive calories in case of famine) :)
Thank you for this reminder to be grateful in the moment for all of our gifts of life.
LOVE this post!!!!!! your 30days and this post…have impacted my life FOREVER!!!!!