Loving and Accepting Your Body: The Block in the Way

Do you ever worry about how other people see you, my love?

Do you duck out of photos, or find a really convenient reason to be the one holding the camera?📸 Is it hard to look in the mirror and love what you see, or to feel ok in your own skin for more than about five minutes at a time?

😣"I'll get in the photo next time. When I look better."

I feel you, my love😅 That camera-holding trick's practically an Olympic sport for sensitive Souls, and so many of us have a gold medal in it😂

If loving and accepting your body feels like a mountain you can't climb, you're SO far from alone. All of these are signs of one particular block sitting in your energy field, and there's very often a second question hiding underneath it: whose voice is that, anyway?

Let's look at both together, coz once you can see them, you can start to set them down🤗

Comparison is the block in the way

Did you know that the block that most often stops you loving and accepting your body is comparison? You're measuring yourself against other people, and against earlier versions of yourself, to work out how you need to look to be accepted.

And when comparison's running the show, you're trying to shape yourself around something that might have nothing to do with your True Essence, or with how your body's actually designed to be.

It's exhausting, coz it's a game with no finish line. Every time you get close, the target moves🥴

You might notice it most in the little moments:

• 💫 Scrolling past someone's holiday photos and feeling your stomach sink
• 💫 Catching your reflection in a shop window and looking away fast
• 💫 Getting dressed for an event and changing three times (and still not feeling right)
• 💫 Standing at the back of the group photo, half behind someone's shoulder
• 💫 Hearing a compliment and batting it straight back before it can land

Each of those moments is comparison doing its job, trying to keep you safe from judgement by making you smaller first.

Whose voice is that, really?

Next time you hear that voice commenting on your body, stop and ask, "Whose voice is that?"

Alot of it came from somewhere else. Family dinners, magazines, the playground, a comment from a teacher, the way the grown-ups around you spoke about their own bodies… You soaked it all up long before you could choose, and you've been carrying it around ever since as if it were your own.

You can't change a belief that was never yours by working harder on yourself. You can recognise it though, thank it for trying to keep you safe, and let it head back to wherever it came from. What's left is your own voice, and it's usually SO much kinder than you'd expect🤗

How does body image get tangled up with comparison?

Body image is the picture you hold of your body and how you feel about it. When comparison's in charge, that picture gets built out of everyone else's bodies and everyone else's opinions, so it can never quite feel like yours.

Comparing yourself to others creates a moving target, coz you're each on completely different paths. Every one of us is guided by our own Soul's desire to grow and express itself through our own human form, so every body's telling its own story.

The person you're comparing yourself to has a different history, a different body, a different Soul journey and different things they came here to do. Your body's telling yours, my love.

Why does comparing yourself to your younger self hurt so much?

That earlier version of you has grown into the person you are now, and we're all designed to evolve. Trying to stay the same is trying to stop something that's meant to keep moving, and that's a VERY tiring thing to try and do😩

When you can accept that, you can put down the goal of staying a certain way and start getting to know the body you're in right now, as the person you've become.

And my love, the person you've become has lived through SO much.

Your body has its own story and timing

Your body responds to how you are with it, and it also has its own story, its own history and its own timing. Health, age, illness, hormones and the different seasons of your life all shape your body in ways that have nothing to do with how hard you've tried.

So instead of judging it for what it isn't, try getting curious about what it's been through. What has your body carried you through, even on the days you couldn't love it?

All the things it does for you without being asked (your heartbeat, your breath, the way it heals a cut on your finger without you lifting a finger😂) deserve your recognition and your gratitude. Appreciation's often the doorway, and love can follow in its own time.

(And for any physical concerns, always check in with your doctor too💖)