Think about the ever-changing beauty standard. Wild, right? Duh though. We all know it’s bullshit, it makes so many of us feel bad. It is so rarely fun to compare ourselves to others and figure out how to do the work to make our bodies, our faces, look a certain way. Thinking about ourselves from the outside-in is more common than feeling ourselves from the inside-out. And it is a crazy abstract thing we do, how we think about our bodies in pieces or groups of pieces. How we can hone in on a hip, a leg, a part of the skin, a nose. Our minds break apart our bodies, our eyes look down at ourselves or in the mirror and the mind starts to organize and label things. Most of the labels come from external sources. Value judgements begin. We are sold things to change our opinion of the judgement. The people selling the things help us create new places to look, new insecurities. We are sold the solutions to new insecurities.
The power behind this is how changeable and abstract it is. And how we buy into someone else’s random construction of what our bodies should be. Our minds begin to look at ratios and textures and the words and images installed in our minds from the outside form opinions. That’s pretty powerful, though. What if we picked our own words, our own values? When you’re obsessed with your nose, you become a nose, when you are obsessed with your cellulite, you become your cellulite. The mind enlarges the “problem area” and multiplies it. The perception is distorted. But if cellulite became the new and celebrated skin texture, the “beauty area” would be increased. The social conditioning is intense. But it is no way to live.
My practice is abstracting the body from the inside-out. With my own language, my own labels, my own decisions. I hone in and breathe into pain areas, pleasure areas, neutral areas. I notice when I have a headache that I become a head. And I try to remember: I have a foot that is feeling neutral. I am a whole being. That doesn’t make the pain go away but it does remind me that I am more than my pain. When the virus of judgement plagues my eyes and I feel terrible about my skin or something—-I notice it. Is this my value? Whose value is this? I start to break apart the thoughts and conceive of the body more abstractly. How are my feet interacting with the ground? What can my skin feel? How does it feel to have a beating heart?
I’ve done Somatic Experiencing Therapy and Somatic Descent Meditation. I’ve also taught Embodied and Movement Meditation and Embodied Voice. I’ve learned and practiced Alexander Technique for a long time. I’ve thought a lot about what the body holds, what the mind projects and how useless it is to think about the body from the outside-in. We ignore so much when we don’t know how things feel on the inside. Starting from the inside is important, sensitizing the actual physical feeling apparatus of the body has to happen before we project from the outside.
I remember being a kid and hating the feel of jeans. “They’re too hard!” I remember telling my mom. But I wasn’t allowed to wear sweatpants to school for some social approval reason I didn’t understand. The jeans never fully got comfortable, I just got used to living in discomfort in jeans. “That’s what people do.” and “That’s just the way it is.” because internalized to the extent that I wasn’t even sensitive to my own skin. I feel the same way about many garments. I don’t wear jeans as an adult, I wear only what feels right. I go from the inside out. I care for my skin before I care for other peoples’ assumed judgements. The byproduct is being more comfortable in my own skin and physical body, the byproduct is moving through the world with ease. The byproduct is that people who would judge me over something stupid are likely deterred.
Doing what feels right from the inside out, from the body’s needs, often results in better personal style. It results in choices being made from comfort and joy. Colors that please us, textures that please us, things we can move in. The personal stamp exists in every choice, in every purchase. Formal and casual looks can be found in every physical comfort zone. And being more at ease in your body is always the best accessory. Starting from a foundation of physical pleasure—-whether it is tied up and laced together or loose and soft—always creates authenticity in personal style. You can tell when someone is trying to replicate a look they saw with their eyes onto a body that is disagreeing with the garments.
I think the way our clothes interact with our bodies inform how we interact with our environments and other people. Something is touching our skin all day. Something is keeping us together or keeping us at ease or keeping us protected or allowing us to communicate ourselves with others. Covering up and revealing both have their own powers. It just depends: what do you need to be doing? And when? Knowing yourself from the inside out is always going to help you choose what is best for your body. Projections from the outside are irrelevant.
My practices with abstract movement include remembering the stories I associate with my body: the story of many bones broken in my foot, the story of what people have said about different body parts, the story of the way I sit and how my hips feel pinched. The conceptual stories are important to examine. What is a story and what is the physical reality of the body part in the moment? Am I moving my body based on a previous experience or am I really here now? Here’s the pain of the headache again—-but this headache is a new headache, a new circumstance exists outside of me—-and I may have learned many things from my memories and stories around My Headaches. How many of them apply here? Where’s the information I need to be noticing this time?
Sometimes we can perform activities based on the last time we did the activity instead of understanding our internal and external circumstances are different than last time. The new information needs to be included. I am here now. If I’m playing guitar—-of course all of the other times I’ve played are with me, the skills I’ve learned, the things I remember—-but I am also different today than I’ve ever been. Where am I at? Where am I internally? And what is the environment like? The lesson of How to Play Guitar is a map, not a territory. The territory is the present circumstances internally and externally.
Ok that’s all I’m writing right now.
