The body trap

All of us are obsessed with our bodies in one way or another. Some of us are constantly on the go at the gym, some are on diets, some are always complaining about how they are not the size they want to be, some grumble about the aches and pains they suffer, some are worried about contacting some dreadful disease, some about not having the perfect skin or the perfect figure or getting cancer or diabetes just because their parents had it. On an average people have thought about their bodies in a negative way at least one hundred times even before they have even had their breakfast. It seems like the whole world revolves around our bodies and they way they look; even the way we feel seems to depend upon how we look.

People are always wanting to alter their bodies, they want to undergo Botox treatments, silicone implants, build or lose muscle, gain or lose weight, change the color of their hair, skin tone, bleach their skin, get a tan, use colored lenses in their eyes, whatever. Nobody seems happy with the way they were born. Most young girls start obsessing about their weight, their teeth, their skin, and whatever else even before they are teenagers. Boys too get on that track sooner or later.

Many blame the way they look for not having the relationships they want; they feel they are too fat, too thin, too old, too dark, too tall, too short or whatever else they can find to complain about.

It is really quite impossible not to think of our bodies, we do live in them after all and they do go with us everywhere we go, they seem to be our most faithful companion. You can leave your faithful pet behind sometimes, but your body, never, unless of course you die or choose to have an out of body experience.  

The way we feel about our bodies says a lot about our self esteem. How comfortable are you with your own body? Do you feel relaxed in your body or are you constantly judging yourself and the way you look every moment of the day? For example you could be waiting at the bus-stop, you spot a young lady and wonder “now why don’t I have a figure like that?” and you instantly suck your tummy in an attempt to look a little compact round the abdomen. Or men might feel depressed about how they are balding, or how their belly just won’t stay the size it was when they were young.

It is no wonder then that half the time we do not breathe deeply and properly, so busy are we trying to make ourselves thin. Did you know that breathing right can help you lose weight? There are many different ways in which to breathe so that different parts of the body are stimulated. Most yoga teachers advocate ‘pranayam’ or breath control in addition to yoga exercises. Very often if you have not been breathing right and practise ‘breath control’ for the first time, you will find it does leave you feeling tired at first and you revert back to your old habits of shallow breathing.

In this ‘wanting to be so thin’ or so beautiful, you start to program your mind into believing that you do not deserve to occupy space. Every time you eat something you start to feel guilty and you feel every bit of what you ate was converted straight to fat. We just let our bodies control all our actions emotions and thoughts.

Now let us see if we can change that. Let us take a moment to think of things other than our bodies. Look up at the sky and observe the sky, see if can think of another place where you saw the exact same blue, or look at any plant or tree, observe its leaves or flowers if it has any. The tree is quite happy to be just the way it is. I’m sure it never gave a thought to how fat or thin its leaves were or how tall or short the tree is. Why can we not just be like that and allow ourselves to be the way we are just for a moment? It is all very well to want to be beautiful or well built and slender, but let me tell you that as long as you feel ‘bad’ inside, you will never acknowledge how beautiful you are on the outside. The converse is also very true, unless you feel beautiful, you will never ‘look’ beautiful.

It is like the gurus all say, feel beautiful as you are in this instant and your world will change instantly.

Don’t let your body and the way it looks trap you into feeling bad or sad. Your body looks the way it does because of the way you feel. If you can feel happy despite the way your body looks or feels, you are free of the body trap. Then you can manipulate your body to be the way you want it to be, but as long as you let your body control you, you are in ‘the body trap’ and will get nowhere.