How Self-Compassion And Learning To Love My Body Changed My Life

If you are learning to love yourself and your body, I celebrate you. I’ve experienced the challenges and triumphs of the humbling and healing journey you are on. I hope to affirm and inspire you as you keep moving forward, moment by moment, breath by breath.

When I reflect on my relationship with my body, I immediately feel a tenderness, an ache, a softening in my heart. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. It’s much easier now for me to understand why I struggled for so long to love my body, and in turn, myself.

Loving my body used to seem impossible. Due to my life experiences and trauma, I realize now that I began to experience my body as my enemy, to experience being in my body as unsafe. My body became the perpetrator of my trauma, instead of a survivor of it. 

Physical sensations and emotions began to feel unwelcome and unsafe. I began to stuff down feelings of sadness, anger, fear, and discomfort. Since it didn’t feel safe to experience these emotions, I rarely expressed them. Holding on to my feelings created tremendous tension, unease, and resentment within me, reinforcing my beliefs that my emotions and body weren’t safe to feel and express.

Now I know, and more importantly, feel, that the difficult experiences I’ve had within my body are not my body. They are not my body’s fault. My body is not to blame. My body and the negative experiences I’ve had within it, are two different things, though they are very much intertwined. 

Becoming curious and radically honest about my relationship with my body allowed me to expand my capacity to offer myself deep compassion. 

Compassion for what I’ve been through.

Compassion for how I’ve dishonored and disrespected my body.

Compassion for how hard I’ve been on myself. 

Being able to offer myself compassion has changed my life in many ways. It created space for me to cultivate a deep reverence for my body, which was the gateway for me to begin healing from my trauma. This has allowed me to begin loving, honoring, and respecting myself for the first time in my life. 

 I was introduced to this poem by Becca Lee that perfectly captured the transformational shift that changed how I was in relationship with my body:

And some days I forget
what it is to be gentle with myself-
how to look at myself with kind eyes
and speak to myself with soft words.
Forget that I am my home
and a temple worthy of worship.

I began to realize the self-love journey I’d been on for so many years was not about learning new ways of being, or of changing myself into someone or something else. It was a homecoming. A journey of remembrance, a reunion with my true essence. 

I was remembering that my body, the body I had been so cold, judgemental, and unkind to, was my home, my protection, my temple. Beginning to view my body as a temple worthy of worship, as a sacred sanctuary was heart opening and life changing.

Since this remembrance, I have become mindful of the words I speak over my myself, learning to explore and reframe my limiting beliefs and shame.

I’ve begun to view my body as my wise and intuitive guide that uses its language of thoughts, emotions, sensations, and energies to reveal to me what needs my compassion and attention. I’ve rediscovered that my body is filled with so much love for me, and that opening to receive its love has allowed me to offer it love in return.

Offering my body compassion allowed me to come home to myself, to feel safe and divine in my body temple. I began to seek out new ways of worshiping my body through meditation, movement, nature, creativity, physical touch, adornment, and ritual. It all became a sacred practice of self-love, self-empowerment, and healing. 

I’ve learned that by loving and honoring my body, I am able to love and honor the entirety of my being. My deepest wish is that you rediscover how to offer yourself compassion, so you can love your body and yourself more and more each day. 

If you would like support in offering yourself compassion, embracing your sensitivity, or deeply connecting with your body, I would love to work with you in my 1:1 coaching container, Embodied Empath.