Category Archives: Be Yourself

Limitless Love

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Tonight the golden light drew me out of my house, camera in hand to stroll a few blocks around the neighbourhood and I found my way to stand and soak in that light. I always bring my camera but there is no pressure to try to get ‘the shot’ anymore. I just let intuition guide me towards the story that needs to be told that night through the camera.

This night, in an alley I love to pause in the quiet and take photos in, I lifted up my camera to take a photo, arm’s length style.

Then another, and another. The clicking rhythmic, pulsing.

Until a voice, an old one, rose up in my thoughts and said “Isn’t that enough?”

It didn’t stop there. “If people were watching they’d think you were your own personal paparazzi, wouldn’t they?”

Before I even had a second to realize that old inner dialogue was happening another voice in me rose up. This one, my own personal inner mama-bear.

It fiercely said this:

No.

There is no limit.

You can take as many as you need to. For as long as you need to.

Every day for the rest of your life, if that’s what it takes. 

You can take as many photos as it takes to heal. 

There is no limit.

I found myself shocked at the words I just heard in my own head, fierce and true. I got choked up at this play between my inner critic and my inner protector.

My inner critic trying, as it usually does, to keep me playing small, even or perhaps especially in healing my relationship to worthiness, to enoughness, to how I see myself.

My inner protector the opposite. Claiming expansiveness.

That my inner protector, like a mama (or auntie) to a child saying “I love you to the moon and back”. It felt like that tonight. That the room I am willing to give myself in this time to heal and find my way back through the layers of learning I still have to do about worthiness, of being lovable, of letting myself be loved by myself and by others, of seeing myself and my body with deep abiding love.

There is no limit to my love that voice said and I will let you keep finding your way back to it. 

We may have different tools to find our way to that love. Somehow, 9 years ago I found my way to the camera and realized it was the tool that would lead me home. Yours might be on the yoga mat. Or through pen to paper. Whatever brings you that respite, let there be no limit to when you’re ‘supposed to have it all figured out’. Let in expansiveness, limitless to our self-love, of how many times you might need to meet yourself in child’s pose or put that pen to paper. Let it not be a task, but a doorway to that love, one you look forward to meeting with.

Or maybe the camera could be a tool for you too?

That voice, that inner protector. Hearing it today choked me up because in so many ways, this is what I’ve been working so hard to hear. Sometimes it’s hard for me to explain the work we do in the Be Your Own Beloved class, the work that I do every night on these photo walks year after year…is about taking our own photo, but it’s about so much more.

It’s about turning the camera on ourselves and yes, knowing that inner critic is probably going to rise up. But we don’t stop there. We cultivate our own voice, choosing to not listen to our inner critic when it tries to make us stop and put away the camera in shame. We take another photo. We reclaim that voice and our personal power back. It’s a conscious choice to choose self-compassion over self-critique again and again until it our critic isn’t our go-to response.

Just like tonight, it’s not about our inner critics never rising up again. We can’t control that.

But it’s about building that self-compassion up so that when it does, we have the words to find our way back to ourselves. Sometimes, the words we didn’t even know we needed to hear.

I hope you hear those words today too, from my inner protector to yours.

There is no limit.

Take as many selfies, write as many poems, spill as many journal entries, meet yourself on the yoga mat as many times as you need to…there is no timeline you need to ‘achieve’ as we find our way to healing how we feel about our bodies, ourselves.

There is no timeline, no one path, no one roadmap.

You can take as long as you need to.

Let your love be limitless.

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Beyond Arms Reach

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Beyond arm’s reach there is so much more awaiting us than taking a face selfie at that angle we’ve perfected.

Beyond arm’s reach are our hands, free to move their own way, not held in position by holding the camera.

Beyond arms reach is that which we don’t know: the ways we could heal old stories, the potential for taking a of ourselves we really love.

Beyond arm’s reach is outside of the norm of what a selfie is perceived at, with a different perspective (potentially a kind one) awaiting us.

Beyond arm’s reach is that we can’t clutch onto, hold tightly to in fear. It’s letting go and trusting yourself as you open the door to seeing yourself with kind eyes (and trust that indeed, you will).

Beyond arm’s reach is that place beyond that wall we’ve been hitting with selfies, where we get bored or aren’t sure how to see something different day after day.

Beyond arm’s reach is outside of our comfort zone, where change happens.

Beyond arm’s reach is truly a whole other world of selfies we can take, when we step away from that small range of perspectives that our arm’s can reach to.

So how do we go beyond arm’s reach? It’s all about putting down our camera or phone on a bench or the ground or a tripod and stepping into the frame. Or perhaps putting it on a shelf just beyond arm’s reach and taking an arms length style selfie without having to hold onto the camera.

For me and often for participants in the Be Your Own Beloved class, this is the place where we step outside the threshold of our comfort zone of arm’s length selfies and into the empowering world of seeing yourself with a deeper kindness through your camera letting go of the limitation of only being able to see ourselves from that one perspective. For me, its where a deeper level of body image and self-love healing truly began.

Want to try it? I dare you! 

Indeed, you need to find your timer, right? iPhone users, you should have a timer built into the camera on your phone, but it only takes one photo at a time. I recommend the Gorillacam app as a tool to take LOTS of photos (it allows you to take bursts of 5/15/30 photos at a time) and Android users you have a built in timer that is great and all other cameras likely have a burst mode with your timer included in your phone. Look around the outside of your camera for a symbol that looks like a clock or check your menu for the self-timer!

Go beyond arm’s reach! There is even a brand new Be Your Own Beloved class focused specifically on the potential of going beyond arm’s length and exploring how it can help us see our body with compassion…starting November 1st. Come join us and explore going beyong arm’s reach!

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Change the Story

Re-write the St

Seeing ourselves with compassion through our cameras isn’t about taking one image of ourselves that solves it all. It is a conversation.

One that we need to choose to begin.

It is a dialogue between ourselves, our old stories and the new ones that await us.

It is inviting ourselves into (and not avoiding) moments when we get to choose the new story, even when that is vulnerable and we might come face to face with those old stories of critique. It is there that we choose compassion.

You can change the story of how you see yourself.

Because we are the narrators of our own story. While it might not feel good to realize this…we choose our stories of critique. I know, I wanted to blame it on everyone else and it kind of stung to realize how much control I had over my own critique. But the good thing is that it means we can choose a different one.

Before I started taking self-portraits I had no idea how I was going to re-write that story. How, on a daily basis was I going to be able to remind myself of that love I wanted to choose to see.

That is at the core of what the Be Your Own Beloved class will help you do. Through these playful activities (yup, changing the story can even be fun) we commit to not hiding our love away from ourselves.  This class can be your guide to changing those stories.

I’m SO excited about this session of Be Your Own Beloved as I’ve got a whole new addition to the class. I’ve been working behind the scenes on creating a collection of extra resources to help you on the journey. Articles (if you’ve been wondering why I’m blogging less lately it’s cause I’ve been saving the content for the participants) as well as videos to answer your questions. Of course, as always, I am also available during class to answer technical or creative questions!

If you’re wondering if Be Your Own Beloved might be a fit for you, don’t hesitate to click that Contact button on the menu above and send me a message!

So…I have one more question for you? Are you ready to change the story of how you see yourself? 

Making Peace with our Smiles: Day 3

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So far we’ve gone wild taking a whole lot of smile selfies, haven’t we! I’m super proud of y’all for just going for it!

How was that for you? Did you see some you loved? Did some feel more vulnerable for you?

For me, the candid ones feel like they feel much more vulnerable in two ways: the physical aspect and the ME-ness that comes through with them.  It’s that second part that I wondered if y’all would be into digging deeper into today with me.

What is it about our candid or natural smile that can feel so vulnerable?

I’ve been pondering this and this is what keeps coming to mind for me.

Keeping my smile small and is a way of keeping me composed, feeling in control of my self image…without that smile I feel unmasked, exposed, vulnerable, too happy, too much.

The more I keep my guarded posed smile up, the more I keep my boundaries up and choose the story I want to tell in the photo. There is indeed something empowering about that and it is a vital part of reclaiming our self-image to feel in control of the story we tell when for so many of us, we’ve believed stories from outside ourselves for so long.

Yet the more I let that unguardeness go, the walls drop and you can see the emotion on my face and in my smile.  That feels terrifying some days and I just want to keep it all private.

But at the same time I don’t want to keep myself small. I don’t want you only to know or to see the curated version of me.  And I don’t only want to know the curated version of you.

I want to unmask the smile.

Unclench my jaw.

Unlock the guarded boundaries my smile holds back.

Unearth my  ‘too muchness’.

To value my urge to smile over my worry about how it will be seen by others.

Yet I can’t help but also recognize how the physical elements of taking such a vulnerable kind of selfie bring up feelings of ‘not enoughness’ too.  We are pushed and pulled by these two different strong emotions of not enough and too much!

Does the not enough & too much-ness sound familiar to any of you?  I have a feeling it might.  So many of us as women hold back, play small, keep contained for the sake of other people and that ‘not enoughness’ indeed keeps us in that place of smallness.

I want us to reclaim that today.  Want to join me?

What would happen if we let ourselves be TOO MUCH in our smiles today?

What are we afraid of?

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The ‘Too Much’ Smile!

Let’s embrace being ‘too much’ today! Let’s not hold back, let’s not be composed, let’s not try to be ‘perfect’.  Let’s embrace being our big, bold, vibrant, too much selves!

Let’s claim space.

Let’s not play small with our smiles.

Let’s take up space!

You might:

  • Put on lipstick! Especially if that isn’t in your comfort zone!
  • Get in close to the camera and make your lips and smile the focus of the photo.
  • Let your biggest grin out and not try to keep it small in any way!
  • What are the ways you feel like you compose or curate your smile?  How could you go wild in the other direction?  Don’t hold back your sexiness, your uniqueness, your vibrancy. Your YOU-ness!

I encourage you to start taking these photos without putting pressure on yourself to share them.  Take them for YOU. That way we can probably let even more worry of our shoulders about being ‘too much’.  Then after you take them, see if there is indeed one you want to share after all…but take them for yourself first!

If you do choose to share them today, tag them with #beyourownbeloved so we can cheer you on and leave a comment or add your link to the list below!

You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit in.

-Mandy Hale

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Why I Dance in my Selfies

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I put the camera down

Press the timer

And I move.

At first I had to invite myself to.  It was a way for me to shake off nervousness and get grounded in my body to take that photo.

These days it happens automatically.  I set the timer & the playfulness begins.

99% of the time when I go out on a photo walk, I don’t have a specific goal in mind. Sure I might have something in mind but truth be told, the photo walk seems to always have its own direction it wants to take me in, always embracing the unpredictable. That 1% of course is when I need a super specific photo for a class!

All of these photos you see on the website are taken as I’m living what I’m teaching here, as I’m trying out activities or just trying to shift my own energy of that day.

In so many of my photos, I’m dancing.

It’s been that way for years and I think from the outside I bet it looks playful, joyful and even like a woman who feels at home in her body.  While it wasn’t at first, it has led me there and I wanted to share a bit about why I dance in photos.

At times I have this voice in my head as I’m just about to press ‘Post’ on Instagram and share another movement photo that says “Is this really accessible for people, all these dancing photos?”  “Do you really want to post another one”.

But here’s the truth.

I don’t take or show them for any purpose of showing off.

I take & share them because this is where the deepest healing of my self-image has happened.

When I move.

Someday I’ll share my full story of the depths of where I began with my negative self-image (its spilling into my manuscript) but a big part of my journey before taking self-portraits had me feeling like I needed to contain myself.  To sit on my hands.  To stop moving.  To control how I existed in the world.  To be contained & still.

And for whatever reason it may have manifested in our lives, I have a feeling I’m not alone in having felt deeply disconnected from my own body for much of my life.  Is that familiar to you at all?

So when I realized that taking self-portraits was a place where I could relearn how to be in my own body, it was all about the movement.

It is the one sacred place where I’ve found I can reclaim that sense of autonomy of how I move in the world, where I have found a freedom that has allowed me to feel more at home in my body. It may look like fun, and indeed it is.  But it has a deeper purpose for me than one viewing the photo might think.  That can be such a powerful piece of taking selfies, the place where they can embody powerful stories of healing for us, even if the viewer sees something different.

Interestingly enough, photographs only capture that one second of the movement and package it into stillness again in a way, but somehow it doesn’t diminish the freedom that I felt in the moment. Because the experience of the freedom & healing that happens is in the lived experience of it, not just the outcome.  The photographs are an invitation to return back there.

To keep moving.

To revisit that place of healing we can create when we make space to move our own way.

So this….this is why I dance.

Have you explored moving as you take a selfie just for fun or even as a tool for healing disconnection from our bodies?

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