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This months theme is Connection. It's not the first time that I have mentioned this topic as regular readers will know (see this post and the 30 Day Connection Challenge that I created) but I felt like I needed to come back to it this month. Noticing that I was disconnected from my body and myself was a huge penny drop moment for me and trying to find that connection again is ongoing process. I find it particularly useful when I am having a difficult time with my body image and this month has been a treat.
At the moment I am really struggling. The emergence from lockdown means that for the first time, in a long time, my body is going to be in the presence of other people for a prolonged period of time. People will see the changes that have happened to my body which makes me feel like my body will be judged and as a direct result, I will be judged. On top of this, I have been wedding planning and I am being bombarded with images of people, usually thin and white, looking their very best (due to excellent makeup and photography but my brain forgets that!). I am also the comparison queen and lots of the people in my life found exercise in lockdown really helped them get through it and that they enjoyed it. I was not one of those people and I feel a lot of shame around that when I see them.
This is all triggering all sorts of old thought patterns and behaviours. I know that my body is not for other people's approval. I know that there is no right way to look in a wedding dress and that if my partner doesn't want to marry me because I don't look fit on our wedding day then we probably shouldn't be getting married in the first place. I know that my body found lots of other ways of getting me through a global pandemic, that my movement levels have been up and down and that food and cooking was a glorious meditative joy during it all. I know all of those things but still, most days right now, I am feeling like a sack of shit.
So what do I do?
Well, the first thing is that I am trying to follow up each negative thought with a second thought that is more soothing - more like what your best friend would say to you if they heard your negative thought out loud. However, when I feel like this, forcing myself to reconnect with my body is probably the most important thing to do. When I am in this mode, I am not seeing my body as it actually is so I need to physically remind myself of what my body looks like.
Body scans before bed and really concentrating in the shower on the feel of the water on my skin are proving useful for this as well as lot of the tasks from the 30 day challenge. I have also started to dip back into yoga. I'm not sure why I stopped practicing everyday but I am back doing that and it's so good for allowing me to notice how my body actually feels in the world. I also did a brilliant voice exercise with the awesome Jake Hassam recently which involved a bit of work around your body as a 3D object in space and I found it so useful. Honestly, voice exercises have such profound effects on you that I think they are not just a useful for actors but that most people would benefit from them.
These have been really useful first steps for keeping me from crumbling completely and this connection work has also offered up an unexpected benefit - feeling thirsty. And not the sexy instagram kind but the old fashioned feeling of being thirsty for water. Since I can remember I have hated drinking water. I hated the taste of it. When I drank loads of it I felt bloated and ill. Instead, I filled my body with copious amounts of tea and alcohol essentially pickling myself.
However, working on the connection with my body and tuning into myself I have noticed how disgusting my mouth feels and tired my legs feel if I haven't had a glass of water. When I drink it, I don't really focus on the water itself but how my body feels after drinking it. If I still feel rough then I'll keep drinking. I think my poor pickled body can't believe her luck and is soaking up all the H2O goodness that she's been missing out on all these years as I am getting through about 5 pints and 3 herbal teas a day (as well as two cups of caffeinated tea - Lyons for Life!). It feels very odd especially when you've sort of defined yourself as a person who doesn't drink water in your head and now I'm one of those people sipping water on zoom while forgetting to unmute so everyone else has to hear each glug. I also have a water accountability buddy who sends me random messages telling me to drink water (Yes a 33 year old woman shouldn't need this but let's move past that shall we) and it's felt quite good to be like "Already on my 3rd pint mate!"
I'm not really sure how long these feelings of negativity will stick around for. I am always shocked when they return especially as I feel like I have been working on all of this for soooooo long but those are the joys of deciding to change negative cycles in a world that isn't on the same page yet. However, in the mean time I will be venturing out into the world smug as feck that I am emerging from lockdown as a person who drinks water.