Honoring Your Body

My journey to self-discovery and self-love

Jean Edelman: Great to be with you this week. This week, I want to talk about being friends with our body. Oh, maybe you’re rolling your eyes. But you know what? I feel like at times we kind of separate. We’re all in our heads and we separate, and we’re at odds with our bodies. And I have talked about connecting the dots with how our food and our environment and our movement affect our body. And I’ve talked about our self-talk, remembering that we’re enough and to stop our negative personal chatter and also remembering that life comes from us and life is for us.

But I want to dive a little deeper and I want to ask the question: What happened and why are we feeling this way about our body? It’s so easy to stay busy and just brush everything aside and just keep moving, moving, moving. But it’s time to dive deeper. And it’s time to really think about this and start the healing. I have spent a lot of time learning different healing modalities. And so again, I just want to share a bit more and I want to dive a bit deeper. And you know what I want to share? I want to share my situation.

I didn’t know it at the time, but in my teens I had developed endometriosis. And for those who don’t know what endometriosis is, it’s a shedding of the endometrial tissue, which is our monthly cycle. When someone has endometriosis that endometrial tissue, it can go everywhere. It’s not just on our ovaries, it can get in our lungs, it can be in our intestines, our it’s just all over our inner cavity. And so for me, every month was very painful. But what happened in my early 20s was that I had this cyst and when it was removed, that’s when I discovered I had endometriosis. And then after two additional years of very painful cycles, I chose health and I chose to have a hysterectomy because 40 years ago, it’s hard to believe 40 years ago there were very, very little option to deal with endometriosis.

It is still quite amazing that 40 years later they have not figured out what causes it and or really to come up with something to help with this. But anyway, to fast forward, I chose health. I had the hysterectomy; I was pain free. That was my goal. But 40 years ago, I was not thinking of the societal and the emotional issues that were coming my way. I just wanted to feel good and I wanted a pain free life. But as the other pieces came in of the emotional piece and society looked at me in a different way.

40 years ago, I stopped paying attention to this part of my body. I thought choosing health was all I really needed to do, but there were emotional issues that I thought I was facing, but I wasn’t. And because here I am 40 years later, I’m really just understanding what it means to be friends with my body.

Over these 40 years, I have been working hard to understand my digestive issues, and I have learned that the emotional and energetic work is also important. And so just big picture, understanding that when we make these decisions, there’s other pieces and maybe some of these decisions disconnect us from our body.

So for me, in my journey and my sharing, I just was doing a lot of personal work. But I want to talk about our torso and I want to talk about something that I learned, which was about our chakra systems because I love yoga and a part of yoga is learning about our chakra systems.

Our torso is the basis of our chakra systems. Our chakras are energy centers of our body, and each chakra moves in a spinning motion that filters the energy of the environment around us and disperses it. And we have seven of these. And so in my learning and my healing and in my befriending my body, I want to share and talk about three of these chakras because this was very relevant to my healing and my focus.

So our first chakra is our root chakra. It is located at the base of our spine, and the focus is our connection to the earth and our fundamental needs for survival, sustenance, shelter and the health of our physical body and feeling safe. And when this chakra is blocked, our connection to the world is weakened. And so, as I have been learning and healing, I’ve been working a lot to ignite and engage with this root chakra.

Moving to our second chakra located in our lower abdomen. This focuses on change and creativity. And this chakra is where we manifest our vitality and our passion and our approach for life. And so as I made this life changing decision in my 20s, this has been a big piece of my healing too. To connect with this and to reengage and ignite this passion and have a new approach for living.

And then on to the third chakra, which is located in our solar plexus. This focuses on our personal power, our sense of our place in the world, our confidence in ourselves and our self-esteem. When in balance, we are confident in our actions, our abilities, and we have courage and strength. And so imagine 40 years ago, you know, you were just defined by getting married, having children and creating a family. And here I was, as always, going against the grain. And so this third chakra was just blown out of the water.

And so I’ve been taking 40 years, which is why we need to remember that life is a journey and we are constantly changing and growing and evolving. This third chakra of confidence and courage and having that inner strength, this is something that, again, that I’ve been working with. And so this surgery disturbed the basis of my being. And again, it’s taken 40 years to learn about these chakras and this energy and the healing and processing these emotions and not letting others take my power, take my personal power. And it’s taking these 40 years to begin to become friends with my body again, to learn how to keep my chakras clear and open and moving. This is so important.

And so again, life is a beautiful journey and we don’t want to be stuck in these places of wherever these moments are. Our trauma is we’ve got to move on and we’ve got to connect in our body. And I encourage you, if you’re not feeling connected to your body, go learn and read about our chakra systems and go take some yoga classes. This is my journey. This was my life. And one decision can take us a lifetime to figure this out. 40 years, 40 years and going, I don’t know if I’ll ever have it figured out, but I thought I was fixing one problem only to open doors and creating others.

But again, it’s about learning. It’s not becoming what our trauma and our life. It’s about the learning and moving forward. So here I am. I’m sharing with you, and I hope that you can take some pieces with you.

So my action item for the week is what part of us do we need to become friends with? Have we had health issues or trauma? Has it been easier to not think about it? Has it been easier just to throw it into the middle of our body and just keep ignoring it? Well, you know what? It’s time to open up those doors. It’s time to find a quiet spot and to focus. How about we try this? How about when we wake up in the morning and we say hello to our beautiful body and we check in? What do we need if we dive deeper? What part of our body needs love and attention? And what have we been ignoring?

Because it’s time. It’s time to start healing. It’s time to fully accept our beautiful bodies just as we are. I do think that the world is easier now. It’s a lot more accepting to not having children. We don’t have to have children to be the most beautiful, best person that we need to be. And I think it’s because the world is more accepting that I’ve been able to begin this personal work and to begin this befriending. And so I encourage you, it’s not easy. It’s not easy. It can be difficult.

And if it’s hard, find a professional to help you walk through it because we want to get to the other side of this. And so can you guess my word of the week? It’s Body.

The B is for Beautiful because we are here on this earth at this time for a reason. We all have wonderful gifts. Our smile, our kindness. Let them shine.

The O is for Options because we have choices at every crossroad in our life. Look at all the alternatives and don’t look back. Our choices make us who we are. And this is beautiful and empowering.

And the D is for Dawn the beginning of something. Because we get to make choices and we get to start new each day. 40 years ago, I chose health and the beginning of a life I could enjoy and not be consumed by endometriosis. Today I’m still connecting the dots of that decision to be fuller, to be a more whole version of myself.

The Y is for Yes, because we can change. We can move in that direction of health. Yes, we can love ourselves. Yes, we are wonderful and beautiful and we all have what we need and we are enough. You know what? Maybe, maybe if we’re more loving, accepting, and kinder to ourselves, maybe we can be kinder and more understanding to others. Maybe loving ourselves more will help us have healthier boundaries. Love you. Love ourselves. Have a wonderful week, everyone.