My body.

My grandma** says “you do so much yoga, why aren’t you losing any weight?”

I feel my body has changed drastically. What a change that is, to actually feel my body, I feel it. I feel the curves of it and feel what I carry. I feel the sexy, graceful, womanly parts of my body. This feeling came over time and effort. It took a lot of pain and hard work to heal for me to feel beautiful. It is one thing to feel your body form the outside in. The surface of it only going inside for pain. It is another thing to feel it from the inside out. The deepest energetic center(s) of your body. Tuning into the bones and muscles and organs. The processes. All of those things working together to create embodiment.  Illness is manifested with awareness. Disease becomes just that dis-ease of the flow of your body. It’s a different way of looking at things.

So I say to her “Gram, this is my body. This is the way it is. I am built muscular, wide, low to the ground.” No, I haven’t really lost weight, but anyone who has known me over the years can see change, I think? Do I even care what they think, I FEEL change.

I go on to say “I have a fatty lower belly. It’s one of my telling parts; I hold the moon in it.”

I could sense that comment made her nervous, she said intensely, “you have to lose it!.”

That just seems silly. Why would I want to lose something so important to me? Maybe tune into it deeper. Tone it. But it’s not something I want to burn or cut away or lose.

She said, “if you ever get pregnant it will hang to the floor.”

ouch. I always pictured myself and adorable pregnant woman, because im already kinda shaped like i am pregnant. I have actually been mistaken for pregnant a couple times, i have skinnier legs and arms, and a fuller torso. I never feel offended when it happens. The person that asks me is always mortified. I never pictured being pregnant the way my grandma did and in that moment, it hurt.

I asked her, “What is that? That need to look a certain way.”

She told me stories of how when she was a young woman her male gynecologist used to give her diet pills. Basically crack.

I said, “They had no idea.”

She said “they had every idea. It was money for them.”

She told me about the different colors and which ones you were supposed to take throughout the day. She told me “it worked, but I was scrubbing walls at 2 a.m.”

She told me that my grandmother on my grandfather’s side was as tall as she was wide. And on my Filipino side, we are not known for our height or length. So why would I ever think I should look long and thin and “model-like?” I told her I wondered what her mother looked like, she was adopted so none of us know. She said somebody was short, her twin brother was only 5’6″. All things add up to short and wide 🙂

But as I have grown into a woman, I have seen her and my mother hate their bodies, their goddess-given bodies.

As a human race, we needed to experience the darkness in order to experience the light.  The darkness makes space for the light. We are truly evolving. I had to watch my grandmother and generations of women hurt and hate in order to learn to love and accept. As I heal myself, I heal the same pain they felt. And younger women are going to see me and hopefully know another existence (one of true love and appreciation for embodiment) is possible.

There are men out there, and women (ex. Maria Kang), who require a woman’s body to look a certain way in order to be considered “worthy” or “healthy”.  They consider any bit of extra as laziness and over-consumption. (I think they over consume the gym, like I over-consume dairy free ice cream).

Those people make it hard for 95% of the female population to exist, freely. The socially created ideal is fading as we keep fighting for freedom within our own bodies. This ideal of what you are supposed to look like is just used to control you. It was implanted in you through media and marketing, it’s nonsense and truly counter-productive to your wellness. The hate you feel for yourself is profit-driven. Someone wise once said something like “Imagine how many companies would go out of business of women just decided they loved their bodies.”

Health is relative. People are like trees. Some are tall, some are short. Some are wide some are narrow. Some are dark some are light. Some have bumpy bark and others are smooth. Some live long, some die soon. Some have a ton of leaves others have none. Some are dark colored, some are light colored.

We do not choose which tree produces the oxygen we breathe. We rely on ALL trees. The same goes for love and people. We do not choose the people that love us, or the people we love; yet we rely on love to sustain us.

Hug all trees. Hug all people. Embodiment needs to be celebrated, not hated. 

Fall_Forest_II_by_Yamata_Orochi

**I love my grandmother and would never hate her for the way she judges my body.