freedom in this body!

My relationship to my body is a long and complex one, as I'm sure it is for so many.

I was a slim and healthy child while traveling the world with my mother, but once I returned to the states with her and started spending loads of time with my grandparents and around kids eating the standard american diet (pure crap like cheese balls and McDs!) I became a slightly pudgy kid.  I was intensely aware of this at an alarmingly early age. I can recall a road trip with my grandparents and my uncle when I was only about 8 or 9, wherein the jeans that fit me when we left didn't within days and I began to cry in a feverish panick, dropping to the ground to exercise rather adamantly in the hopes I could reverse it immediately while my well meaning family laughed. They still tell that story and find it terribly amusing. To this day it makes me want to cry and scream.  From there, I went through overeating, bulimia on and off for 10 years, obsessive dieting and calorie counting, obsessive exercising (though some was very joyful for me too) and alternated between being very fit and lean or about 30 pounds overweight for the rest of my life. 

My relationship to exercise wasn't completely unhealthy, I really enjoyed it and learned to love soreness and enjoy that lactic acid burn, and of course to relish the results when they came. But I was sometimes rather unbalanced in my physical endeavors; pushing myself too hard too suddenly when I felt I'd let myself slide for too long, inevitably leading to injury or disappointment, even exhaustion. Sometimes I'd punish myself for not being what I wanted physically, even hitting myself sometimes when I couldn't make changes fast enough and hated what I saw in the mirror. It's been a very strange journey for me and my body.

Now I feel a lot of love for her, though I feel I could easily lose 30 pounds again and be incredibly happy in that lightness...and I know it's coming...with fruitarianism and a new calling I feel from deep down inside.  Where I was once a Jane Fonda addict, even starting and teaching an aerobics club in high school, and a sporadic runner, gym rat and all around home video workout fanatic...I feel a different compulsion now, a much more freeing one. Perhaps it's because of the fruity shift. Perhaps it's just divine timing that I crave both, but I now feel no call towards weight training, step aerobics, treadmills, running, or any of that sort of work I once loved and pushed onto myself alternately.  No, now what I crave are things that feel like playtime to me; expressions of myself in this beautiful body like ecstatic freedance, yoga, even eventually taking trapeze so I can experience the feelings of flight and exploring my body playfully through acrobatics I have never attempted before.  That always seemed to be for the skinny people, the dancers...even when I WAS slim and fit I never felt I could let go that way.  Now, it's all I think of when it comes to exercise and breaking a good sweat; yoga, trance dance and trapeze.  The feeling of exploring the body and healing from a cellular level via movement, vibration, breath and intention now seems to me like the only road my body wants to travel...and because she has endured so much, because she loves me unconditionally when I was unable to return in kind, because she is my hero...I will take this journey with her and let her lead me down the path that makes my body SMILE.  I feel it when I'm in triangle pose, camel pose, Kundalini Lotus, downward facing dog. It's literally this full body smile that finally spreads across my face and I feel liberated and connected to her at the same time.  And when I allow myself to move spontaneous and freely with music, eyes closed and really allowing the moves to guide me into a state of intoxicated bliss...it's beyond words.

Maybe someday I will feel called to return to some of the old "workouts" I loved so much...maybe not?  This is like a 40 year marriage finally coming into a place of exploring tantra with a partner, seeing them as your beloved; worshipping at the altar of that love with honesty, purity and freedom.

I love this beautiful body of mine...and look forward to exploring this incredible world of ours through her with lightness of being and total trust. ;)