Self-Touch is Love

Today's beautiful post is by my twitter friend, Bridget Pilloud. She talks to animals, and she writes some lovely stuff for people. I asked her to contribute something for my self-love theme in February. She was good about getting it to me; I was lax in getting it posted.

But self- love is always relevent, yes? Enjoy.

“You need to get in your body. You need to stop directing it from your head.” 

I saw a little me in my head pulling levers, moving this arm and then that arm, picking up this leg, walking. 

This was a message from my morning meditation.  It was, unfortunately, not a new message.  I had been outside my body for years. 

When you are outside your body, life can be difficult.  You feel spacey, ungrounded. You feel sensitive to the world around you.

Your body reacts as well. It puts on weight in an attempt to ground you. The disconnect widens as you feel like your body has betrayed you. You avoid it, ignore it. It’s a vicious cycle.

The Big Question

The big question, at that moment, was “How do I get back in?”

I tried a bunch of ideas for getting back into my body. I made better choices in my diet. I tried acupuncture, yoga, exercise.

These all helped, but I still felt outside it.

I didn’t have an easy grace. I didn’t feel grounded. I felt out there.

Then, one day, a friend said, “What if you just touch your body? What if you just spend 5 minutes touching your feet?  Start with your feet.  And while you touch your body, tell your body how much you appreciate it.”

That seemed, well, silly. Touch my body?  My feet?  Tell my body how much I love it?

I set the timer, settled into a bubble bath and touched my feet. I noticed how my little toes turn out. I felt the tendons on my arches. I told my feet that I love them. I thanked them for being there, for putting up with pointy shoes.  I loved my feet for five minutes each, every part of them.

It was cool. It was weird. My feet felt appreciated.  My feet loved me back. It’s hard to explain it better than that.

It’s just, I realized that my feet are like willing friends. They never say no to my journey.  They felt so much better because I touched them.

It went beyond getting the soreness out. It went all the way into my feet feeling appreciated for being my feet.

I thought of all the ways that touch can mean love. 

My mother would help us fall asleep by rubbing our cheeks and smoothing our hair over our ears.  My sweetheart reaches his fingers over to mine, and puts my hand on his heart.  My kids sneak up behind me to hug me. 

Over the next few months, I went on to love and appreciate every part of my body.  It’s changed how I view my time in this temple. It’s changed how I view what I look like and who I am.  I feel much more present and mindful and it’s much easier to love myself.  All this from touching my feet. Crazy.

Touch means love.  And self-touch is some of the most important love of all.

Bridget Pilloud is an intuitive guidance counselor. She works with people and she also works with pets. You can find her at http://www.bridgetpilloud.com and http://www.petsaretalking.com and on twitter at @intuitivebridge .

Where We Call Home

Last month, the blog posts here dealt mostly with the theme of self-love.

It's such a huge topic that I'd like to continue with it this month, specifically dealing with our feelings toward our bodies.

I was reading an article** in my latest bodyworker's magazine, in which the author, massage therapist Lee Ronald, describes her first professional contact with real bodies:

"Therefore when I was confronted with my first bodies for massage practice, I did so with an awareness that these were both bags of skin and profound receptacles of a lifetime of being human."

"Profound receptacles of a lifetime of being human."

Does that not conjure up a deeper sense of respect for this bag o'bones that we so take for granted, and sometimes treat with feelings of ambivalence, or even disdain?

Ronald was using this metaphor as a reminder to bodyworkers of the wonder of the human body, and that what we do is an honor and a gift, and an opportunity to see and feel past the societal standards of beauty, to embrace the life stories in the form of flesh that we are presented with daily.

I believe, as Ronald does, that as bodyworkers, we are capable of bringing this awareness of inherent beauty to our clients, beginning first with holding this awareness in ourselves while we lay our hands on them. Her lamentation, and the point of the article, was that this perspective was not taught in massage school, but instead a stance of 'objective' detachment.

But while detachment may be necessary to a degree on a professional level, with it, she observed, came judgment for the 'less-than-perfect' bodies, and how could this really help the people we were trying to serve, as well as continue to stoke our own passion for chosen profession?

The human body is truly a thing of beauty to behold... both the external appearance and the astonishing inner workings.

I intend to explore this theme in the coming weeks, proving the case made in the previous statement, and I hope you will offer your thoughts and contributions as well.

** The article mentioned above, "Honoring the Body", by Lee Ronald, appears in the March/April 2009 issue of Massage and Bodywork magazine. This article will be available online (http://abmp.com) in the coming weeks.

Truth Heals

No doubt attracted by my intention to write about self-love this month, a book came across my path that seemed to speak to some of what I was trying to express in terms of how speaking your truth is a powerful act of loving yourself.

Click to buy from Amazon!Thinking that it might be along the lines of expressing one's feelings ... sharing resentments and such in real-time and all that, I found that author Deborah King addresses the "big" lies many of us are carrying around.. namely childhood abuses and traumas.

Her own, for example, involves an incestuous relationship with her father up to the age of 12 .. and one that she kept secret throughout her tumultuous adolescence and young adulthood, until being diagnosed with cancer when she was 25.

Heavy stuff.

I have no doubt about the mind/body connection... that what remains unexpressed in our lives, no matter how well of a job we think we're doing, will always, ALWAYS manifest in physical form. King does a wonderful job of walking the reader through each of the seven chakras... describing the physical and psychological dysfunctions of each one and how they are affected by trauma in our lives.

Her website includes a brief 20-question 'truth heals quiz', "designed to show you ways in which you may be lying to yourself".(Take the quiz below!)

Upon taking this myself, I was ranked as "one truthful dude". I suppose I feel assured by that, and yet, I don't think that this quiz, or even the scope of her book addresses the way dishonesty and inauthenticity can still operate in our present lives, even if we have faced and outed the bigger truths of a screwy childhood. Telling the truth is an ongoing process, and it is my belief that a commitment to honesty, even about 'the small stuff' is vital to maintaining health, presence and connection to self and others.

But it's a good place to start. Deborah's practice draws in a great many people suffering with chronic and acute physical issues ... some terminal. For those that are willing to accept the connection between their symptoms and the unspoken 'stories' that are eating them up from the inside, there is hope for their healing.

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Have I Told Me Lately That I Love Me?

"I love myself."

Can you say that? Can you say those words without feeling, like, a little uncomfortable?

Can you look at yourself in the mirror, say to your reflection, "I love you", without a trace of falseness, weirdness, Stuart Smalley-ish-ness, or other, 'oh-jeez-this-feels-really-dumb'-ness?

Nah, me neither.

And, why is that? (And if you can, why is that? 'Cause I'd like to know your secret..)

It could just be a silly exercise, and have nothing whatsoever to do with your ability to feel genuine love for yourself.

So, let's ask some other questions.

What sorts of things come to mind when you think of the words, 'I feel love for myself'?

Or more accurately, what sort of feelings do you notice? Is there a connection, a resonance, like, yeah, I really do feel love for who I am..? Or do the words feel hollow, with little meaning. Maybe it's like, well, I like myself well enough, but I wish my thighs were thinner.

Or perhaps, it's 'what kind of hippy-dippy New Age bull s*** is this?' Who cares if I freakin' love myself?

Alright. Calm down.

Why do I bring this up? Well, as with most things I write, it's all about what I'm going through. (And therefore I assume there may be at least one other human out there going through it, too).

It's been this nagging feeling of not quite being in the center of my own life for a good many years. A fruitless search for that feeling of rightness outside myself, mostly through other people. An unpleasant sensation of feeling 'less than..' anyone else I was with.

And a whole bunch of other little and not so little things.

Then, there was that uncanny way the universe has of sending me little thwaps on the head to tell me it had to do with that self-love thing. But I had no idea what that really meant.

Alright, said the universe. Here's some more restating of the obvious. You know how when someone asks you if you have a preference for something, and you really do, but you say you don't? Why don't you start there?

Oh, here's another one. You know when you find yourself getting irrationally angry about something, and you either stuff it down, or obsess over convincing yourself that you are actually rationally angry, and then you still stuff it down?

In other words, my dear, (says the universe) you don't really know who you are. What you are putting out there for the world to like and smile upon and accept, is liked and smiled upon and accepted. But it doesn't feel all that fulfilling because you know it's not the real you that's being accepted and it feels like a lie. The darker parts -- the opinionated, silly, ugly, selfish parts --  the really interesting, juicy, honest parts are kept hidden. You learned not to love them, you assume no one else will either. How about experimenting with that? See if that's true?

(Hence the, um, unorthodox nature of this supposed shiatsu blog post.)

Just for good measure, (speaking as me again) I'll tie it into health. I believe that lying about who you are, and cutting off vital parts of yourself will eventually kill you. And I have a book on order from Amazon that I believe says pretty much the same thing. I'll let you know after I read it.

Anyway, those dark, juicy parts have been trying to get my attention for a long time. Screaming, "loooooooove meeeeeee", or at least, "Hey, look at me. And if you don't, I'll keep sabotaging everything you try to do in your life, and keep you from ever feeling whole. Because we are part of you. Let's be friends, 'K?"

Is this more than you ever wanted to know about your friendly neighborhood shiatsu practitioner?

Well, I think it's important to give some indication that I know what I'm talking about before I go doling out advice willy-nilly. And to prove that "Step Into Your Power" is more than just a catchy tagline. It's my own personal project as well.

I have some things I've found to help me make friends with my ugliness, some tools to help me dig deep to the roots of these negative beliefs. I'm willing to share them. With you. For free.

So, stay tuned. I'll try to relate it to shiatsu, I promise.

I Celebrate Myself - A Guest Post

I celebrate myself, and sing myself. ~Walt Whitman

Today's guest post is by Phil Bolsta, author of the blog: "Triumph of the Spirit: Finding Peace and Purpose in a Chaotic World", and the book, "Sixty Seconds: One Moment Changes Everything".

Phil weighs in with his thoughts about this month's theme of self-love:

A life of service is a noble goal, but devoting every moment to serving others is neither advisable nor possible. You must choose love for yourself as well as others by engaging in enlightened self-care—proper diet, exercise, sleep, and other healthful activities.

If you do not care for your own body, mind, and spirit, you will not be capable of authentically caring for others. Worse, you may be co-creating an environment in which others expect your service and take you for granted.

If you lean more toward self-loathing than self-love, consider how you feel about your friends. You love them even though, like you, they are imperfect, have hurt others, and regret past actions.

If you can unconditionally love your friends despite their flaws, you can learn to extend the same kindness toward yourself.

Ultimately, loving yourself allows you to love others, God, and life itself in ways that someone with low self-esteem cannot begin to comprehend.

Thank you, Phil... and please, readers, stop by his blog and check out his other posts...great stuff!

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