Following is the continuation of last week’s post, From Hating to Appreciating: Attempting To Love Your Body.

I’ve written before about how much I love the start of a new year. I imagine it was the high energy and positivity a new year brings that contributed to my second attempt at appreciating my body. January 17 was a bitter cold, dreary Sunday more than two months after my first attempt at completing A Course in Weight Loss‘ Lesson 7. The promise of snow lingered in the air and calm permeated my home like the scent of simmering soup. The weekend had been healthy and productive, my favorite kind. I had no further obligations and the clean sanctuary of my home office beckoned. The timing was perfect for ending an abusive relationship with my body and beginning an honorable one.

Preparation

I started with a long, steamy shower and concentrated on becoming more aware of my body as I prepared for the ritual before me. I sloughed my body of the dry skin that seemed to cover every inch of me, then slowly shaved my legs. This wasn’t my usual five minute shower, but more like the kind I take when I anticipate intimacy; giving of my body to someone else to enjoy. This time I prepared my body for intimacy with myself.

I concentrated as I slowly dried my skin, paying attention to each limb and joint. The silky material of my favorite robe felt pleasant against my skin. My awareness of my body increased as I sought to repair my relationship with the container of my soul.

Inside my office, I lit candles and incense upon my altar and played meditative music. I laid a towel on the floor directly before my altar and bowed to the Buddha before slipping off my robe. Standing naked and exposed, I battled embarrassment, shame and the urge to reach for cover. I stood tall, my hands in a prayer position at my heart. Snow started its slow and sporadic fall just outside the windows directly in front of me. I strived to summon the grace, strength, power and beauty of ancient kings and queens who regularly performed similar rituals.

Acknowledgement of Abuse

I reached for the oil. As the book instructed, I started with my feet. My cracked and calloused heels felt rough in my hands and guzzled the oil like desert dirt gulps rainwater. I apologized to my heels for giving them so much weight to bear.

Next, I lovingly smoothed the oil into the skin of my ankles and legs. I examined the scars and beginnings of varicose veins bright against the paleness of my flesh. So many scars… from accidents, bug bites, a tomboyish youth, all coupled with a horrible habit of scab picking. And then the pencil thin scars on the insides of my thighs. Not the stretch marks that are plentiful I assure you, but the marks I made myself many years ago. My eyes filled as the sight of those scars brought me back to my teenage bedroom. The sadness, loneliness and anger I felt then coursed through me. I cried for that teenage girl who felt so scared, so hurt, so lonely that she dragged razor blades across her flesh in order to feel something, anything other than what she was feeling.

I rubbed my thumbs gently over those scars lovingly as a parent might rub a smudge of dirt off a toddlers pudgy cheek. “I’m so sorry,” I sobbed over and over as I allowed myself to grieve, not just for my body, but for myself and the young girl I used to be. “I’m trying. I swear to you I’m trying so hard.”

I wrapped my arms around myself and hung naked in a sort of forward fold as my body wracked with sobs. My skin absorbed oil mixed with tears. When I was ready, I once again summoned the power of those ancient queens and stood tall once more.

Coincidence is indeed God’s way of remaining anonymous. Just yesterday I read these words spoken by Chris Cleave’s character, Little Bee in the book Little Bee:

“I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”

I ask you all now to join with me in Little Bee’s pact. Let us all see scars as beauty. Okay?

Gratitude

I continued my upward journey as I thanked my skin for its ability to expand and apologized for making it have to. My belly. My belly is something I hardly ever look at in a mirror except to ensure it’s properly covered. It’s the palest part of my body, as white as the snow that fell just outside my window. I rubbed oil into it with both hands in a circular motion and apologized for hating it so much. I had rejected and detested my stomach, my core, the very center of me. In order to heal myself I now understand that I must make peace with my core and allow love to permeate the center of me.

Emotions continued their flash flood as I massaged my breasts with oil. Each was heavy in my hand. I have always disliked my breasts. They don’t make me feel sexy; they make me feel fat. More often than not, they are a nuisance. I have resented being told I should be grateful for them because men love large breasts. Excuse me if I don’t think that is a valid enough reason to graciously accept the many drawbacks of having large breasts.

But as I cupped my breasts in my hands I thought of my mother as she laid in her hospital bed post-mastectomy and placed her hand where her breast used to be and grieved the loss of her womanhood. And so I apologized to my breasts for disliking them. I apologized for not keeping them sacred and sharing them with far too many people who didn’t deserve access to my body so freely. I thanked them for not being cancerous.

The oil felt good against my skin and my body relaxed, responding to my touch, opening up to me, welcoming me. I began to feel more comfortable in my own skin and no longer felt the urge to cover up.

As I rubbed the oil into my back as best as I could, I apologized to my back for not being able to scratch and lotion it properly because I’m so wide. I apologized for the weakness of my core and shoulders that result in my poor posture, straining my back. I apologized that I’m so insecure at times I tend to huddle into myself, adding further stress to my back. Despite all this, my back truly has “my back,” so I thanked it for doing its job so amazingly well and praised it for its strength.

New Beginning

I covered the remainder of my body – my face, my ears, my neck. The sheen on my skin glistened in the flickering candlelight. I ran my hands slowly over my slippery surface, satisfied I hadn’t missed a spot. I sat on my towel in order to meditate on what I was feeling. Sitting cross-legged naked was so unfamiliar that I laughed out loud. “Here I am,” I thought. This was me in my purest state, nothing to hide behind. I looked down at my thighs, breast and belly and the way they all rested on one another unsupported by clothing. I sat up straight and lowered my eyes.

It’s true. I’ve fed my body excessive food, but too little love and care. It’s time to reunite my inner and outer self. I thanked my body for the way it moves despite everything I’ve done to it; for the miraculous way it heals; for the physical pain it endures and the resilience it demonstrates. I thanked it for the endless ways it supports me and for its power. Our skin is our biggest organ and I apologized for everything I exposed it to, environmentally, chemically, physically, all undeservedly. I thanked my skin for containing every single part of me.

Although I didn’t protect my body, it has protected me. I took advantage of my body and was in an abusive relationship with it. It took performing this ritual to understand all that. I am so grateful to have marked the beginning of an honorable relationship with my body. That was the goal of Lesson 7: to repair and restore the relationship between me and my physical self.

Like the oil, I think it’s safe to say it was absorbed.

P.S. Although I completed this ritual nearly seven months ago, I hadn’t wanted to write about it until now. It took me all these months to integrate the process and formulate my thoughts surrounding it. Now that I have, I feel the full benefits of the Lesson. If you’re working through A Course in Weight Loss, a similar book, a process of your own or simply wondering why I have been working through the same book for well over a year, please remember that change takes time, patience and space. 

The last time I wrote about A Course in Weight Loss, it was on lesson #3. I had described my altar as my safe place and what creating your safe place entails. Since then, my altar has become crowded, but in a good way. Over the weekend I completed lesson #6, so as part of my commitment to doing all the work entailed in the book and reporting back to you here, I will use this post to recap lessons #4-6. Before I do so, however, I want to report that somewhere around lesson #5, a shift finally occurred in my relationship with food. For the first time in a very long time, I feel that I have a modicum of control over food and not the other way around. This is in thanks to the tools I am learning and the work I am doing.

Again, I remind you that these lessons do not only apply to weight loss, but to all unwanted areas of life: addiction, unhappiness, etc. Also, these are only recaps. If you want to do the work in this wonderful book, please do pick it up and read it for yourself so you get all the information.

Lesson #4 is titled, “Invoke the Real You” and is about facing down the fears that feed our compulsions, and realizing that our bodies at their healthiest, happiest, and most creative already exist and dwell in divine possibility. Marianne Williamson writes that our healthier figures are not just vague hopes dangling out in the universe somewhere– rather, they are divine imprints gestating within us. “The same God who created roses created you,” she writes. “Nothing you have ever done and nothing that anyone has ever done to you could make imperfect what God created perfect.” 

Through spiritual practice we can find our way back to our real selves: through prayer, meditation, forgiveness, and compassion. So in lesson #4 we meditate on removing any fear we have of being who we really are. No one is holding us back except ourselves. “You are cruel to you,” Williamson writes. “You are withholding from you. You are harming you.”

Embracing the power of positive thought and the law of attraction, ideas I already believe in, lesson #4 teaches us that the more we embrace the image of a beautiful body and emotionally permit ourselves to desire one, the more our subconscious minds will make one manifest. Therefore, rather than comparing and contrasting our bodies with those in magazines, which usually leads to a seesaw of alternating motivation and despair, we will project our real selves into the world, creating a new image for ourselves rather than the ones that have always existed with our flabby stomachs and double chins.

I was with Williamson until she suggested self-imposing my head onto images of beautiful bodies. I thought this was pretty ridiculous, to be honest and I felt embarrassed. In fact, it took me a couple weeks to be convinced that I should. Since my beauty apparently already exists, the more I claim it as already existing, the more quickly it will materialize. Supposedly.

So I did it. I tore out four photos from my favorite catalog, Athleta, and cut my head off photos and taped them over the models, fully prepared to blame the book should anyone decide to have me committed for this strange act. I placed the four images on my altar. And you know what? I love looking at them. The very next morning when my alarm clock went off at the dreadful hour of 5:00 am, I hit the snooze button. Then I thought of those images of myself with the body I dream of, and I got my ass up and to the gym. Envisioning your face on the body you desire really is a helpful tool.

As an overweight person, you have given birth to the body of your suffering; it’s time now to give birth to the body of your joy. – M. Williamson

Lessons #4-6 all represented on my altar.

Lesson #5 is titled “Start a Love Affair with Food” but I prefer to call it, “Let’s Go Shopping!” First of all, Williamson acknowledges that many of us are at home thinking “Ummm, shouldn’t we be ending our love affair with food?” and I love her response.

What you’ve had up to this point has been an obsessive relationship. THERE IS NO LOVE THERE. Pain and compulsion and self-hate are not love.”

So to begin this love affair, in summary we need to learn to eat mindfully and appreciate our food for how it contributes to our health. “The eating patterns of an overeater are chaotic, fearful, furtive, and out of control.” This lesson is a plan for “dissolving your hysteria and filling your emptiness by replacing it with love.” We can attain healthy neutrality toward food by learning to love it, and the only food we can really love is food that loves us back. Sundaes may give us a momentary high, but so can crystal meth. Things full of sugar and processed chemicals bring us lots of things, but you will not find love amongst the higher cholesterol and increased cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and food allergy risks, not to mention the weight gain. Foods that love you contribute to your well-being.  

So in lesson #5, we learn to build a new ritual: the ritual of healthy, wise, non-secretive, and loving eating. And we get to go shopping! Because this ritual involves a new beautiful napkin, new beautiful plate, new beautiful placemat, new beautiful glass, and new beautiful knife, fork and spoon. (I threw in the new beautiful bowl by choice.) These things must be new because we can’t build new rituals using the tools that represent the old.

If that word “ritual” still brings up negative connotations for you, I suggest you read my post “Demystifying the Ritual” or remembering that secretive and excessive eating is also a form of ritual so please don’t try to argue that ritual isn’t for you.

These items must be beautiful because beauty is sacred. Also, nothing need be expensive. My entire place setting pictured below cost less than $20, but it is beautiful and I love it! I washed everything and set it up on my altar, as the book instructs, to beckon the real you… the healthy person who has not quite arrived yet. This place setting can be used whenever I feel like it. I guarantee you that I will not be loading my plate and bowl up with junk. Eating off of these items will be an act of love and mindfulness.

Lesson #5 and #6. A lotus flower is etched into the glass!

Lesson #6 is titled “Build a Relationship with Good Food.” In Lesson #5 we start the love affair, but lesson #6 will help us when that love affair begins to lose its excitement, like when a salad every day no longer does it for you. Contrary to what you may assume, I am a very healthy eater. I cook and eat “real” food. My issue is over-indulgence and emotional binge-eating.

So when lesson #6 instructed me to go buy a piece of fruit, any piece of fruit, I wanted something I have never had before because me and fruit are already in love. I wanted to meet fruit’s exotic cousin.

Is there anything man has created that can begin to compare with the majesty of a mountain? Is there anything man has created that can begin to compare with the beauty of a flower? Is there anything man has created that can begin to compare with the power of a river or the force of a rainstorm? Then why is it that when it comes to food, people have developed this ridiculous notion that we’ve somehow improved on God? That chemically processed food is somehow preferable to what nature has to offer?

– M. Williamson

Enter sexy, mysterious dragonfruit! Rawr!  I placed the dragonfruit on my altar for a day then the next morning (after googling how to cut it – it looks way more intimidating than it is), I cut it up and placed it in my beautiful new bowl on my altar and performed the meditation in the book. It was an exercise in mindful eating and an act of love. After a few bites, I decided it would be better as a smoothie so I blended it with banana and beet and almond milk, but I don’t think it minded.

Lesson #6. Dragonfruit whole, diced, smoothied.

A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever is changing my dysfunctional relationship with food. That relationship has been a source of my suffering so this weight loss journey is running parallel with my journey to be a more compassionate person. The work is going hand in hand, two lines that weave along together in the same direction toward the same destination: happiness.

Where is your safe place? Meaning, where do you go when you’ve had enough for one day or when you’re depressed, hurt, broken-hearted, angry, or just need a break? For many people, it’s home, but where in your home? Do you have a place where you can shut out the world and be left alone?

Mine was always my bed. For as long as I can remember I have retreated to my bed to eat, hide, cry, scream into my pillow, and most of all… sleep. I can slip into bed at 6:00 pm on a terrible day and not wake up for over twelve hours. I have always been able to do this. Sleeping has been my secret weapon for hiding from people, passing the time when I was young and bored and waiting for a boy or friend to call, mending my broken heart after break-ups, or forcing my brain into an off position to stop relentless thoughts.

Despite all that rest, I have grown weary of sleeping my life away. I don’t want a place to hide, but instead a place to heal. I want a true safe place, one where I can go not to pass time or shut down, but to calm down.

For many people another comforting place, albeit very temporary, is the kitchen. That’s where the food is. Perhaps this is why A Course in Weight Loss calls for creating a safe place in Lesson 3. At times of struggle, our deepest desire isn’t really for food, “but for the experience of home,” Marianne Williamson writes. “Your deepest desire is not for food, but for love.” According to her, unconscious eating stems from a starvation of healthy self-love and the struggle to find it elsewhere.

If fear’s headquarters are our beds, kitchens, bars, etc., where are love’s headquarters?

Love’s headquarters exist at our altars, so it is important we create a place in our homes that remind us that love is the true power in our lives. This will provide us with a safe place to go when we are feeling afraid, sad, angry or ready to give up.

To create an altar in your home, consider what area of your home is best – a spare bedroom, a corner in the basement? It should be a place where you can have privacy, set up an altar, and sit comfortably. I am fortunate to have a home office, a room all my own.

Your altar should celebrate and support your willingness to love yourself and be healthy. Try not to get hung up on the word altar. By “altar” I mean only a table or flat-topped surface, such as an end table or board set on books, used as a place of focus for a ritual. And by ritual, anything goes: reflection, meditation, prayer, journal writing, reading…. any acts of love you perform for yourself. For example, my Happiness Jar sits on my altar. It is part of my ritual to write down my happiest moment from every day on a piece of paper, fold it up, and drop it into my jar.

Once you have identified a place in your home and selected your altar, place upon it beautiful and meaningful objects that remind you of the love you hope to bring to yourself and your spirit. Pictures, prayer books, statues, prayer beads, books, fresh flowers, your journal… anything that expresses your devotion to love and a more beautiful life. Nothing negative. You don’t want a picture of your ex-boyfriend here even if you still love him tremendously. This is a place for your most favorite things.

This is my altar and its contents:

My altar is an antique traveling trunk, a gift from my mother when I was a teenager. I store my sentimental items inside it. Atop the altar are scented candles: one was a gift from my brother and sister-in-law, purchased in Morocco, and it reminds me of them whom I love dearly, but also of adventure and travel; one represents love and smells of lemongrass; one is orange, representative of the sacral chakra where I carry the majority of my stress; the salt votive holder on the right is also for aiding my sacral chakra and is on (permanent?) loan from my dear friend, Kathy.

In front are two incense holders carved out of stone into elephants. The holders accommodate cones and sticks and I always burn it when I meditate/pray or spend any time before my altar. (Aromatherapy does wonderful things for the body and the scent of burning incense calms me immediately.) I adore elephants and consider them exceptional creatures. I also identify with them as my spirit animal so they are important to me. One was a gift from a dear friend whom I love very much, and the other I purchased for myself on a wonderful day, so it is associated with a lovely memory.

On the left is a water globe from my husband, which contains orange-hued trees and when you shake it, orange leaves swirl all around. I love autumn; the scents, the imagery, the weather, the foods, and this globe encapsulates all those sensations for me. It is also orange, which again is good for opening my sacral chakra.

In the center is a seated Buddha and to the right is a crying Buddha. The seated Buddha inspires me to be calm and still and to empty my mind, and also to respect the place I have created for myself. As for the crying Buddha, there are several legends and symbols. Common symbolism is that the Buddha weeps for all humankind, suffering from all the troubles in the world so that we do not have to. For me though it is also a reminder that someone even as strong and poised as the Buddha suffers, and it is okay to feel pain and to cry for this world we live in. Life is hard. In front of the crying Buddha is a small little novelty laughing Buddha. It makes me smile. No matter how still or calm I can become, I always want to cry into my hands… but also to laugh deep inside my belly. I also have a piece of rose quartz to trace over my face in times of need. It is said to help nurture and also to inspire love in one’s self and others. At the very least, it is calming. There is also a little angel stone that reminds me of my mother.

Behind the seated Buddha is my Happiness Jar, a collaged and decoupaged pickle jar that contains my happiest moment from every day. My mala (prayer beads) rests to the right of it on a small wooden carved elephant given to me by an employee I managed over twelve years ago. I do not remember her name, but I have kept it all this time. On the far left is my Buddha Board. You write on it in water and the words evaporate so what you write literally fades away, a visual that assists in letting go.

This is what those words looked like after less than a minute:

Although this altar has existed in my home half a year now, I am not in the habit of going to it when I am upset. In fact, I have avoided it at times of distress for fear of contaminating the space I have so lovingly created for myself. I realize only now this is ridiculous. It’s like buying a fancy car and only driving it when you’re dressed up. This space is magical for me and has everything I need to calm me and reinforce love in my life. With the help of Lesson 3 I see now that this is the safe place I have been lacking despite it being right in my home.

Marianne Williamson writes:

On any given day when you feel triggered, when you are deeply drawn to the ritualistic dance of self-hatred that is overeating [or drinking, smoking, etc.], you will have more power to resist if on that day you already experienced the power of your altar.

And if you haven’t already experienced its power, then go to it and allow it to fill you with love.

Also, please consider a donation to Save the Elephants and help save these majestic creatures.

Friday night I performed the release ritual I referenced in the post Brick by Brick: Tearing Down Your Emotional Wall, and it was incredible. I had a genuine spiritual experience and I feel… different. I feel lighter, happier, and most of all (and hardest to describe) I feel love, like I received a shot of warmth straight to my heart. Now I fully understand the importance of creating our own rituals to heal ourselves.

As a reminder, I have been working my way through lesson #1 in Marianne Williamson’s A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever. I wrote in a notebook all the things that I feel resentful, guilty, ashamed and angry about; my fears and burdens, reasons I feel inferior; 18 emotions in all in an effort to rid myself of excess emotional waste. Once everything was written down, the book provides a prayer and visualization to surrender it to God (or a higher being). The release ritual was all my idea. I wanted something more involved, something a little more noteworthy and deserving of so much emotional shit. I wanted it to be an event. I’m a planner and I like things to be elaborate.

What is a ritual?

My husband teased me, referring to my ritual as voodoo and offered to bring me home some chicken bones. There’s something about the word “ritual” that makes people think of sacrificial offerings or dancing naked around a fire. Although rituals are often rooted in religion, they are solemn ceremonies or behaviors consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order. Rituals maintain tradition and offer closure; their formality is comforting. Sunday Mass and funerals are well-known rituals. To some degree so is surrounding someone with a cake in front of them and singing Happy Birthday.

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in Eat, Pray, Love that we do spiritual ceremonies “in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down.” That was precisely my plan with this release ritual. This is why people lovingly design intricate scrapbooks to contain their precious memories, or burn photos in an effort to move on after heartbreak.

My release ritual

The morning of the ritual I thought I would awaken excited, but I felt agitated all day, apprehensive, not unlike a child who has done something wrong
and is equal parts defensive, ashamed, and afraid of punishment. I had been hiding from God for a while and I was nervous to speak to Him.

Later that night I sent my husband out so I could have total privacy. I lit candles and incense on my altar and settled in with my notebook seated on my zabuton and zafu (Japanese cushions used in meditation). I turned off the lights.

After a nervous and awkward start, I was soon spilling open aloud to God, sharing every negative action, thought, and memory. I sobbed and excused myself to blow my nose as if seated across from Him in a therapy session. Things began to make sense in a way they hadn’t when I wrote them down. After every emotion I felt a calm. Before turning the page, I would say: “Dear God, I surrender my (insert emotion here) to you. Please take it from me. Amen.”

When I was finished with all 18 emotions the book says to visualize a brick wall comprised of all the suffering and pain I had been carrying around, then ask God to help me break it down, brick by brick. I settled in to a calm meditation. It took some time to form a mental image of the Big Man, but when I did, He resembled a mix of Albus Dumbledore, Father Time, and Jesus Christ.

I won’t share all the details, but let me just say we had fun breaking down that wall together, karate chop noises and all. Afterward, we stood over the ashes of the obliterated brick and talked. It was the easiest conversation I ever had. Afterward, I recited a prayer from the book.

Next in my ritual I had planned to write each of the 18 emotions on my Buddha Board as one last visualization of watching them fade away (you write in water and as it evaporates, the words literally disappear), but I suppose God had other plans for me. I wrote something else, which I think I’d like to keep to myself (sorry!). I’m not sure if the words were His to me, mine to Him or mine to myself… I think perhaps all three. But they were the most perfect words.

Lastly in my ritual I ripped out the 18 pages from my notebook and headed outside with some lavender and a box of matches. I set the pages onto the fire pit, and sprinkled lavender on top. I thought those words would burn quickly, but I was wrong. The emotions, pain and suffering did not surrender easily. Rather each page seared and burned slowly from the corner back, one at a time as I repeated: “Dear God, I surrender these emotions to you. Please take them from me. Amen.”

I looked up, and was surprised by the number of stars burning over me. I did not head back inside until every ember burned out below me, concluding the ritual.

Marianne Williamson writes that “to spiritually surrender something is to surrender our thoughts about it. What we put on the altar is then altered.”

I literally placed my pain and suffering on the altar. I am now altered thanks to feeling empowered to create my own ritual.

 

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