Learning To Love Your Body – 3 Powerful Exercises To Self-Acceptance

How To Fall Back In Love With Your Physical Body

Learning to love your body and build a loving relationship with all parts of your physical self is essential if you want to feel good in your own skin.

After all, we live in and through our physical body, from the day we were born until the day we die. It is our home, it keeps us alive and allows us to experience the world around us.

But very often our relationship with our body is quite acrimonious. We tend to be very critical, demanding and, honestly, pretty ungrateful. 

This harsh way we treat our bodies is not our fault. We learned it in the course of our upbringing, from our parents and grandparents, and above all, from the society and culture we live in.  We’ve been marinated in this negativity for years. 

Although it is not our fault, it is our responsibility to make the choice whether we want to continue to treat our body in this disrespectful way or not.

We can keep setting unrealistic standards and absurd expectations for our bodies, or we can look through and beyond all the negative patterns and make a conscious choice to build a different kind of relationship with our precious body.

A relationship that is loving, supportive and kind. Especially, if we want to stay healthy and build true and authentic self-confidence.

I want to show you how you can easily start building this loving and supportive relationship with your body.

The 3 exercises described below will allow you to make a big shift in how you experience your body and will bring much more kindness and compassion to how you relate to it on an everyday basis. 

Learning To Love Your Body Starts With How You ‘Experience’ It Day To Day

Exercise #1 – Instead of being focused on appearance – fall in love with what your body can do for you.

We live in an appearance-obsessed culture. Every day we are bombarded with set definitions of what we should look like in order to be ‘attractive’, ‘sexy’ or ‘beautiful’. 

Every movie, tv-show, ad on social media or magazine is promoting certain standards (often quite absurd, to be honest) of what is beautiful and what isn’t. And what’s even worse they also promote the concept that meeting these standards is absolutely necessary for us to feel successful, happy and to be loved. 

So, your first exercise is to forget for a moment about what your body looks like and focus on what it does for you. 

Your body is a true miracle. It consists of trillions of cells, which are all alive and working hard to keep you well. Each of these cells pulsates with life and communicates with other cells sending intricate signals through chemical, electrical, hormonal pathways.  Your heart beats and pumps blood without you even thinking about it. Your breath keeps its rhythm even when you’re asleep. Think about all the bones, muscles, joints, ligaments that work together so that you can move- walk, run, jump. They say it takes around 100 muscles to say’ hello’.

We take all this for granted. Totally oblivious to the miracle happening inside us all the time. We pay no notice to all this, instead, we focus on the fact that our breasts are too small, our belly is too big or our thighs are too thick. 

So, I would like to invite you to focus on and list as many things as you can that your body does for you (especially those which you like a lot): 

• Feel the sunshine on your skin
• Smell the sea or roses
• Hug your loved ones
• Make love
• Walk barefoot on the sandy beach
• Taste your favorite food 
• Smell and taste your coffee
• Feel the texture of your favorite blanket
• See the beauty of nature around
• Make music/listen to music
• draw/paint/knit 

And then take a bit of time to fully experience as many of these things as you can during the next few days – keeping in mind that it is only through your physical body and that you can enjoy them.

Shifting Your Perspective To Look Inward – The Best Exercise For Learning To Love Your Body

Exercise #2 – Instead of looking at your body from the outside perspective, start living from the inside

At the first sight, it seems quite obvious, we all live from the inside, right?

But unfortunately, from a very early age, we are taught by our parents, teachers, ads & social media to look at ourselves (and often judge ourselves) through the eyes of other people.

It is such a huge part of our culture that it often becomes our default position. 

Will I look fat in this dress? Will they notice I gained weight?  Will they think I let myself go?

Have you realized that we are so concerned about extra centimeters around our waist – mostly because of others around us? We would often say that we ‘don’t feel well with this extra weight’ or we ‘don’t feel like ourselves any longer’ – but check well with yourself what it really means to you – and how big is the part others play is this ‘feeling’.

We are so afraid of being judged. Of not being approved of.

And of course, this refers not only to our body image – it is equally true about other choices, decisions and actions we take. We subconsciously observe ourselves (and often judge as well ) from the ‘outside’ perspective.

And this habit is not only the source of plenty of criticism, nastiness or even bullying we instill in our own body but also the source of deep and painful disconnection. 

If you do not inhabit your body fully, you are living in your head mostly – overthinking, overanalyzing, judging and comparing, often feeling confused, lost, and trapped. All this because you are not in touch with essential information and guidance that is constantly sent by your body to help you navigate your way through life and relationships. 

So, here comes your second exercise.

Start experimenting with experiencing your life from the INSIDE. 

Again, It’s just a shift in perspective. 
Whenever you catch yourself thinking: 

‘How do I look’, ‘What are they thinking about me? , “What will they say?”

bring your attention back.

Inside.

Home to yourself.

Notice the sensations in your body, notice the emotions flowing through. Put your hand on the place in your body that is calling for your attention – with gentleness and kindness. Listen to what your body wants to tell you. 

Do this especially in the moments when you catch yourself going into the ‘judgment mode’ and being harsh on your body – appearance, aches, and pains, or even the illness or disease – soften your energy and bring your attention inside and take some time to focus on how you experience your body here and now with as much kindness and compassion as you can find in your heart.  

This requires a bit of practice, but once you learn how to understand the subtle language your body talks to your all the time, you will never ever be so harsh on it as you used to.

Fall In Love With The Experience Your Body Is Having & Releasing The Outcome

Exercise #3 – Instead of pushing for results, fall in love with enjoying the experience

We are deeply conditioned to stay task-oriented, efficient and productive as often as possible. We want to get things done, create results and achieve goals. 

But unfortunately, very often we lose ‘here and now’ experience in the process. And then… it feels like life is slipping through our fingers.

We use the same approach towards our body – we are never satisfied with what it looks like or how it ‘performs’. And so, we try to push it to change, to be ‘better’, to do ‘better’, to meet our (are they really ours?) standards and expectations. 

But when our relationship with our own body becomes superficial, one-sided, and goal-oriented, it creates more harm than good. 

As a result, we tend to overeat or under-eat. We starve and then we binge. We smoke cigarettes, abuse wine or chocolate, exercise compulsively, or deny ourselves water. We forget to rest. We relate to our bodies as a series of things that need to be improved upon or fixed. 

This never works.  And keeps us trapped in the loop of:

• being unhappy with our body 
• pushing hard to ‘fix  the problem
• failing 
• feeling disappointed and powerless  (often guilty and ashamed as well)
• and … starting the same cycle again. 

The secret is, we need to start with accepting our body just the way it is.

We need to start with building a relationship that (just as any healthy relationship) needs to be two-way, reciprocal. And whatever we want to change – we need to change with respect and love. Pushing for change out of dissatisfaction, disapproval, disgust or even hate never works (that’s why so many diets fail).

So, instead of pushing for results, focus on pleasure and playfulness.

Loving Your Body Fully Comes From Experiencing Life With All Of Your Senses

Our feminine body is created to experience sensual pleasure – and it can come in so many different forms and shapes.  

• Surround yourself with beauty.  
• Eat and drink what really awakens your taste buds and take time to notice the color, texture, smell of food. 
• If you do your exercises – notice how your body is feeling, how good it feels to be able to move it. 
• See the beauty of the world around you – and feel how it awakens your senses.
• Try to dance and move your body in the most sensual way, and enjoy the flow of sexual energy (our sexual energy flows whether you have a sexual partner or are sexually active).
• Breathe, breathe and breathe -fully and consciously. 
• And use the power of touch.

All this will make you feel more alive, more present, more connected to yourself and your physical body. It also will allow you to soften and become more self-compassionate and self-loving. 

This is the best path to feeling truly at home with your body – grounded, confident and attractive.

Because all you ever wanted from life – starts with SELF-LOVE.

Book your free discovery session and let’s create your own unique roadmap to BODY LOVE & CONFIDENCE.