EveryBODY is beautiful! 🧘🏽♂️
The strange ways we objectify our bodies, over sexualize our bodies, abuse our bodies, when we only get one body astounds me.
Having learned that the body is the one that always tells us truth and never lies was a lesson I wish I had learned much younger.
Hiding in my body and gaining fat as a soft armour from abuse has had a big toll. It has also been a saving grace and a kinder way to respond to extreme stress and trauma than other options.
SomeBODIES in my life have built up hard physical armour and used it to intimidate which only prevented forming them into real connection.
SomeBODIES in my life, mine included in my younger years, over sexualized their bodies as a way of feeling some power, connection and control (which was a false perception), but also as a miscommunication of their deep desire for unconditional love.
Just this past few months as I started renovating my temple, I have realized how patient and resilient, strong and loving my body has been to me as I grow, learn, experiment and heal in my life.
As a young girl I chose singing, dancing and acting as my creative outlet.
The vibration of sound in my body and the joy of collective sounds have been natural healers and have allowed me to return to joy in my life.
I started dancing in preschool and it has kept me safe.
Dance carried my body through abuse as I learned a full range of movement, muscle memory, grace, rhythm, poise and flow.
It informed me that my body could bring me strength and joy as well as protection amongst unwanted and self destructive physical and emotional attention.
Theatre taught me human nature and communication with self and others.
It gave me a safe place to explore what my true being was.
It gave me a skilled understanding of communication and that it is more than words.
It taught me the value of body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, energy, timing, action, responding and listening.
It also taught me how to play and explore my body and other’s body’s safely and respectfully and what we all share in common or in archetypal ways.
Today I realized how my practice of yoga has been a literal life line and life saver for me. I became very ill as I started my yoga teacher training.
I was lucky that I had been practicing yoga of some sort since I was a baby with my mom.
It kept me flexible, and aligned, balanced and able to respond with alertness and safety.
Yoga has taught me how to listen to my body, how to work with my body, how to grow with my body, and how to heal my body all on my own.
Minutes on the mat can now inform me of my own immediate truths of body, mind and spirit.
Learning to connect my breath awareness to my body, while quieting my mind has helped me find faith, safety, and self regulation too.
One of my greatest teachers along my life path has been Nadia Robichaud.
We met in high school through dance and musical theatre.
We both moved into fitness and aerobics and taught separately for years.
After over a decade of adulting we ended up in the same small town of Buckingham Quebec where Nadia opened a yoga studio Lotus.
I took my teacher training with her after being a student.
I moved away and came back and have been at her studio religiously since.
Weekly I take yoga tune up classes with her where we all learn so much about our health, anatomy, and systems in our body. There is a core group of us who have passed through the multiple phases of menopause together.
Nadia’s teachings on menopause, women’s health, how to care for the body through self lymphatic drainage and that yoga is for everyBODY has helped me so much.
Nadia is so knowledgeable, and she is also an excellent teacher and those two things are not exclusive.
She is also a truly decent, mindful beautiful human being.
She is nonjudgmental and very thorough in how she teaches us to grow and heal using our bodies.
Nadia creates safe spaces for us to push ourselves to safe limits many of us would never dare approach if it wasn’t for her.
Her space is clean, environmentally sound, safe, comfortable and welcoming.
Every week I feel like she designed the class just for my current need. lol.
If you live near Buckingham or want to book her for a personal or private event I highly recommend her.
You will be sure to receive a very professional and valuable embodied experience.
If you come to the Wednesday morning class I’ll see you there.
I’ve being going religiously for years and plan to continue as long as she is teaching.
If we all learned how to listen to our body and our breath we would live in a more honest, healthier and kinder world.
The breath is our spark of life and that which connects us all to all.
We can be brain dead but not have life without breath.
The body is our temple. It is sacred and yoga helps us know how important having reverence for our form is essential to a healthy and informed life.
Time spent on the mat is a tool and practice to learn how to walk each minute of each day we have on this beautiful earth mindfully and healthily.
May we all learn to love and care for our bodies and to move them joyfully and creatively.
May we all learn to be supple, balanced, strong and calm.
Maybe we are aware that we only have this brief experience here on this earth of time and form.
May we learn how to collectively and individually move through life in a healthy, playful, creative and respectful way from here forward.
Photo credit goes to Stéphane Ippersiel
