Body Acceptance: finding peace with our imperfect bodies

When a friend asked me along to one of Lifetime’s Body Positivity Workshops I hoped it would help my relationship with my sister, who has struggled with anorexia for 20 years. It did, but not in the way I expected.

Arriving at Lifetime Therapy on Truro’s Lemon Street is a very comfortable experience. That may sound like slight praise, but anyone who has lived in mental discomfort will understand that comfortable is just what’s required. No receptionist asking challenging questions or waiting room to creep through on your way to see one of the counsellors, just welcoming, uncluttered spaces and decent coffee (or delicious Pukka teas) made without fuss by the counsellors themselves.

Malachy, the founder of Lifetime, was a landscape gardener before he trained as a therapist and his passion for plants is evident in every room. “Plants and people,” he tells me, “need the right conditions to thrive.” At Lifetime he aims to provide those conditions for both, and judging by the health of the aloes and ferns that enliven every available windowsill and bookshelf, he’s doing a pretty good job.

In his spare time, Malachy frames pictures and lifts weights. The generous Regency proportions of Lifetime’s building lend themselves to art exhibitions and he is currently working on frames for Lifetime’s second exhibition, a collaborative showcase of the work produced during the Spring Life-drawing evening sessions at Lifetime. The framed artworks will be on sale this month to raise money for Counselling for Social Change. The kettlebell weights are just door stops, but they serve as a reminder of why we are here today: to talk about our bodies and our efforts to bend them to our wills.

Body Positive Cornwall

The first session of the day is led by the founder of Body Positive Cornwall, personal trainer Mel Williams. Mel tells us she has learned to accept her rower’s calves and mummy tummy and recently wore a bikini on the beach for the first time, posting a picture on the Body Positive Facebook page. Later, I discover that Mel doesn’t just “do a bit of rowing”; she is a world champion pilot gig-rower. Mel’s making an important point but it’s striking how dismissive we can be of our achievements in the face of our perceived physical imperfections.

Mel asks us to list the things we dislike about our bodies. The lists are long and make no distinction between the complaints doctors would recognise and treat: polycystic ovaries, fibrosis and short-sightedness and those they would not: cellulite, height and grey hairs. Hearing these lists is sobering and sad. As we consider the cultural and social contexts that have fostered our ubiquitous body dysmorphia - the pressure we feel to be slim but not too slim, tanned, but not too tanned, muscular but not too muscular and so on and on - it begins to feel like a wonder that we’ve survived at all. I think of my sister and the heap of fashion and lifestyle magazines in her bathroom and ache.

Assuming that the next step will be to write a list of the things we do like about our bodies, I take a breath and start considering my untangle-able hair and slender fingers, waking up from my day-dream to discover that Mel is reading her first list at another woman in the room: “Your hair’s a mess,” she begins, looking the woman in the eyes, “your skin’s all loose and flabby and your legs are disgusting.” I can’t look but I can’t look away. Eventually, I realise it’s staged and the other woman is a friend but this doesn’t really help. “No one’s ever going to want to sleep with you.” Mel concludes. The room is beyond silent. We’re horrified. But these are the things we tell ourselves every day, our private mantras of cruelty.

Chalked up Nutrition

It turns out that Mel’s friend is Mel Garside, a nutritionist and weightlifting coach who specialises in intuitive eating. Mel talks us through the principles of intuitive eating and it’s a revelation. Eating when we are hungry sounds so simple, yet none of us seem to quite trust our bodies to take care of this basic function. After years, decades even, of yo-yo diets and marketing messages, many of our bodies are as confused as our minds.

Intuitive eating takes an evidence-based, non-diet approach and Mel encourages us to begin by making peace with all foods, and to allow ourselves to eat without guilt or shame. Over time, she assures us, we can tune in to internal hunger and satiety cues, improving our physical and mental well being.

Not everyone in the room is here because they struggle to be the “right” weight. Body Positivity embraces all bodies and for some of the women here being “big” means tall, worse in their view than being “fat” because they can’t do anything about it. For one man, the problem is not being too “big”, but too “small”. It would be funny if it wasn’t so deeply sad. Actually, we do manage to laugh, and it’s such a relief that we do it again and find we are shedding our insecurities, forgetting our judgements and making friendships.

Amanda Brown Yoga

Our day ends with a beautiful yoga session. Having studied, practised and taught yoga for many years, Amanda’s yoga has evolved with her. She is interested in the nuances of our movements and our experience of yoga, rather than in the shapes we may or may not be able to make with our bodies. For me, this approach is a challenge to the ego. I’m used to Pilates and yoga sessions in which I measure my success by how far, high or perfectly I am able to reach and bend. I can tell from some twitching around me that I am not the only one struggling with this new mindset.

Amanda has attended a workshop at Lifetime before though, and knows what we have been through today. It isn’t easy to point out your perceived flaws in public, perhaps it’s even harder to receive messages of support and be open to the possibility of a different way of thinking. It has been a very emotional few hours. Gentle, safe and sometimes very funny, but emotional nonetheless.

Amanda has decided that what we need is pleasure. She has brought “not much kit”, though I’d love to see her studio as her abbreviated haul includes a gong the size of a tractor tyre, eye cushions, pillows, blocks, soft larger balls and harder smaller ones and some readings from thoughtfully chosen texts. We work slowly through each part of the body, noticing sensations and enjoying having permission just to be and to feel. The gong creates a soundscape that immerses us for the final few minutes and lying on my mat with the wheat bag heavy on my eyelids I nearly fall asleep, entirely comfortable in the presence of 15 people I didn’t know this morning.

. . .

On the way home, I notice my posture and my breathing. I notice I am hungry and stop to eat and begin to wonder how I can get my sister to agree to attend a workshop like today’s. Then I realise that for decades I’ve been trying to “help” and to fix her, when in fact I just need to accept her as she is, flaws and all, like the rest of us.

. . .

The next day I’m on Facebook and my notification button is going berserk. It felt as if the workshop had gone well but the reflective mood at the end of the day made it difficult to tell what the lasting impact would be. But here in my feed are images of #womeneatingfood without any shame; photos of newly purchased shorts on legs that haven’t seen sunshine in years; and people on the beach showing skin and looking as if it’s the easiest, most natural thing in the world. If I hadn’t met these people the day before, it would all be rather mundane - who cares if you’re wearing shorts or dressed appropriately for the beach? But I have met them so I know what a monumental shift has occurred within these human beings. They’re coming out and they don’t care who knows it.

. . .

Lifetime Therapy events, workshops and counselling sessions aim to cultivate growth, change and self-acceptance. If that sounds good to you, get in touch or join our free Facebook community @lifetimetherapy today.