How Learning Anatomy Helps Me Love My Body
In my last post, I talked about how we judge ourselves mentally through our internal dialog and emotions. This time I want to share my personal journey to examine how we sometimes judge our physical bodies and how learning anatomy filled a major gap and changed my perspective forever. Like many people, I have had a love/hate relationship with my body for decades. I’m happy to say that I’ve grown to love it and appreciate it more than ever over the last decade. So how did that happen? Fair warning, this isn’t a short post so get comfy for a few minutes.
First, let me be clear that this post is not intended to be a “how-to” article. People suffer from body image issues for a multitude of reasons. I am not a medical professional, nor am I an expert in the field. However, I am a human who has struggled at times, and I’m sharing my story in hopes of opening up the dialog with my clients and readers and being honest about my experience.
As a child, my parents called me “the carbohydrate kid.” I could and would eat anything that wasn’t nailed down! I could easily match my 6’4” father in plates of pasta or pieces of french toast consumed. It didn’t hurt that my parents were amazing cooks, and I never lacked tasty food. That said, I was also known to devour a couple of cheeseburgers, fries, and chocolate shakes before band or theater practice or tons of pizza and soda with friends on the weekends. Thanks to my youth, race-horse-like metabolism, and being very active, I was incredibly skinny. Until MTV and Atari came along, my generation didn’t spend a ton of time watching TV or playing video games. We were outside playing with friends until dark or participating in school sports or activities.
Then, in college, of course, I gained some weight. I spent more time with the books than running around and eating a lot more fast food than ever, not to mention the occasional beer! It didn’t bother me though, almost everyone gains weight in college, and I was sure that just like my siblings, I’d lose it in no time after graduation. NOPE!
The next twenty years consisted of very stressful jobs, long commutes, stress-eating, drinking, and enjoying my 20s by going out often. I also decided going to grad school at night would be a great idea too! Needless to say, the only physical activity I got regularly was walking to the bus or train and going out dancing on weekends. And, of course, I kept eating like I did when I was a kid. I ate when I was happy, and I ate when I was sad. I would get sad because I was mad at my body for not magically going back to skinny, and I’d be mad because my friends were skinny doing the same things I did. What was wrong with me? I’d eat to ease the pain. Of course, I tried several times to lose weight and get in shape, but I’d gain and lose just like so many of us do. Cue the vicious cycle.
My fairy godmother finally and oddly enough appeared in the form of my doctor diagnosing me with autoimmune thyroid disease (Hashimoto’s) when I was 40. It turns out I’d likely had it for almost ten years and never known it, but it explained so much and was the first step towards me loving my body. Our thyroids are like our body’s regulation center, and when they aren’t functioning at their best, the effects can be profound. At a very high-level, this disease consists of my body attacking my thyroid and decreasing its function. This can lead to lack of energy, weight gain, difficulty losing weight, hair loss, and many other not-so-fun symptoms.
Learning this was like literally having a weight lifted from my shoulders. The weight that I gained and struggled to lose wasn’t ALL my fault! The reason I was completely exhausted and falling asleep at 7:30 pm wasn’t just because I didn’t exercise enough! Instead of hating my body and my disease, I used it as an opportunity to love myself and my body and to work on reclaiming my health. I knew I had a choice; I could get sicker or work toward being healthy while having an auto-immune disease. The choice was easy.
I worked with my doctor to stay on top of my bloodwork and get the right medicine, changed my diet, and started exercising regularly. Over the course of a few years, I lost about 60 pounds and have kept it off (I still fluctuate a bit, but that’s ok). My bloodwork improved dramatically, and I felt so much better! Am I super-skinny? Not by a longshot, but that’s not how I measure myself anymore. This body can do more at 50 than it could ever do at 30! Because I love my body, I don’t punish it for lack of “perfection,” and I don’t deprive it. I spoil it with various good foods and even some treats, regular exercise, and meditation. I don’t focus less on what it can’t do. I celebrate what it can!
However, there was one place where I still fell short in honoring my body and my accomplishments. I am a super competitive person. A bit with other people, but more so with myself. With increased fitness, I encouraged myself to keep improving and work harder. In HIIT class, I wanted to lift more; in dance, I wanted to kick higher; in yoga, I wanted to stretch further. Now there is nothing wrong with improving and setting new goals, but it can be harmful if you push yourself beyond your physical limits in an unsafe way or judge yourself against what another person can do. I learned this the hard way through an unpleasant leg injury that ended up being a gift. My injury forced me to slow down. It forced me to start listening to what my body was telling me and stop ignoring the clues it was sharing.
During my recovery, I embraced yoga more than I had in the past. I was humbled by how much it challenged me physically and emotionally, but it rewarded me one-hundred-fold. I decided I wanted to share the gift of yoga with others, so I dove into teacher training with a vengeance! What I hadn’t anticipated was that I would fall in love with anatomy.
Many of my peers detested that section, but I couldn’t get enough. I was fascinated by learning how the body works. I extended my studies beyond the curriculum and read as much as possible, and if my Amazon wish list is any indication, I’ll be studying anatomy for many years! My huge A-HA moment came learning about the skeleton, especially our hips, spine, and shoulders. I know it seems obvious, but we are all unique! Our bodies are all different! The length, shape, size of our bones varies. The depth of our hip sockets varies; the range of motion in our shoulders varies not just because of flexibility but because of our bones! And while we can work on flexibility, we can’t change our bones.
So why was this such a big moment for me? Because the one thing I’d been hanging onto and still judging my body for was that no matter how long I worked on a certain pose or exercise, sometimes my body just didn’t want to cooperate, or it would hurt, and I would get so frustrated. Learning anatomy helped me understand my body and realize that because of how I’m built, not everything will be accessible and, more importantly, safe for me to do! Now I can approach my practice with intention and understanding and support my body to challenge it safely instead of punishing it and myself for something it was never meant to do. And as a teacher, I feel stronger knowing that I can support and encourage my students to honor their bodies and work with their bodies, not against them!
I am committed to continuing learning and applying my knowledge in my teaching, so my students are confident that I will teach them how to do yoga to honor their uniqueness and empowers them to enjoy the journey.
If any of this resonated with you, please let me know by leaving a comment or sending me a message!
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