Moving Me : movement and embodiment

Movement is the rhythm of my life, it unlocks pleasure, vitality, and true presence. 

For years, despite a lifetime of movement practices, I held myself back from adopting the identity of an active embodied woman who prioritizes her physical well-being because my body didn’t fit the standard fitness mold. I dismissed deep physical embodiment as shallow, selfish, also believing my shape and skills weren't enough. 

Looking back at my life, for 15 years, I treated physical movement as a luxury to be earned rather than a non-negotiable need. I was constantly battling my own body, fueled by shame and control. Deep down, I knew that being active and rooted in my body was my highest priority, yet I treated it like a guilty pleasure, a reward I could only earn after exhausting myself with obligations, after all the “shoulds” were done. I was consumed by a quiet shame, shrinking myself to fit into spaces that were far too small for me. 

The tragedy was the constant, exhausting surveillance. I was trapped in a perpetual loop of monitoring how my body looked and how others perceived it. Without boundaries, I absorbed societal judgment, advice, compliment and rejection. This hyper-vigilance translated into physical unease, dimmed my presence, and blocked me from authentically connecting with the world around me. Altering my posture, my self-expression and my ability to receive. It ultimately severed and trapped the natural, uninhibited conversation my body is always having with the world around.

 

In 2015, when I was 23, at a time when I was working on three different jobs and was quite lost and insecure, on a whim, I decided to participate in a retreat on transformation and self-growth. It was held by a woman I respected, she is Russian, a pilates instructor and a witch.

On an early November morning I arrived at the retreat center: an old brick building with a high ceiling and many tall windows surrounded by a big lawn with trees at the periphery.  

Inside the building there wasn't much furniture at all, only a big rectangular table and chairs around it.

Quietly, we greeted each other and sat around the table.

The teacher was dressed in white and began sharing the content of the first workshop we were about to attend. We first were asked to write down in our notebook 15 or more desires we wished to realize in our life. 

Once we finished writing our wishes the woman guided us through a meditation that led to a place where we sort of “met” our consciousness and could ask her/ourselves which of the desires we wrote were not ours.

Entering in that meditative state was a challenge but once I managed I was deep in it. I remember imagining this big circular room, feeling a presence in the middle of it and asking which of my desires were not mine.

The number 7 came up. I don’t know why but in that moment I decided to trust and not question myself too much.

As the meditation ended, I opened my notebook, eager to see which wish sat at number seven.

“7. I want to be skinny. I want to have a skinny body”

I smiled and took a long liberating exhale. 

Among all the desires that I wrote that day, the one I had carried for so long and thought was always mine, was not. I almost couldn’t believe that I loved my body.

I learnt to perform the hate and the dislike of my physicality so well that I believed that was my truth.

I used to think my body image issues were personal, but I now know they were societal survival. My distrust in my body and myself was a survival mechanism. Trusting and loving myself would have made me an outcast. In a culture where women are expected to be at war with their bodies, loving mine felt like an act of defiance. Hating my body was simply the price of admission to belong, or at least, to be left alone, in peace. 

That realization, among many others, began a journey of peeling off all the layers of conditioning to find, embody and trust myself. It took so many years of stumbling back to old patterns, returning to my center, needing to belong, shrinking and expanding. 

Like many other people, I clearly wasn’t immune to the multi-billion-dollar beauty and wellness industry, which actively profits from body insecurity and self-doubt in women. When we are taught to distrust and hate our own bodies, we ultimately surrender our personal sovereignty and power.

Continually asking myself whether or not I am acceptable physically, engaging in a war with my body, made me experience a constant erosion of energy. 

This constant doubting, distrust, undernourishing, overriding our body has an immense cost that many are oblivious to throughout our lifetime. All of this shaming and fighting with the only home we’re ever granted cost us time, attention, breeds decision fatigue, lack of vitality and loss of opportunities and power. It’s an insidious force that manipulates our way to interact with ourselves and the world, to be loyal consumers, perpetually seeking outside ourselves acceptance and selflove. 

Looking back, I see that my distrust in my body and myself was just a survival mechanism not the ultimate truth. 

For me it was very liberating to deeply realize that this desire to fit in a specific body shape was not mine to pursue and that I liked my body. 

That meant re-learning to trust myself, to inquire how I wanted to inhabit myself, what felt good and what didn’t, to let go of the noise that would tell me to shrink and hate myself.

It took me literally more than a decade to truly trust my body. I know now that for me it’s important to allow myself to train and move and nourish myself the way I want, to explore the different levels of activation that my body goes through when doing hard things and cultivate strength and vitality. To continually come home to myself.

All of these years of de-conditioning, stumbling, searching, unlearning and learning made me realize that the body is the foundation of true prosperity, it’s the compass, the temple, the house of our own life force: when I’m not battling with myself, I have more resources to be part of and with the rest of nature.

More than a year ago I realized that prioritizing moving my body, having daily movement practice is not a gift or a reward but it’s necessary to function, to contribute, to be sovereign. It’s a duty. It’s not something I have to negotiate to take up the space and the time to do it and enjoy it. It’s my birth right. As long as I have a body I need to move and dance and run and stretch and strengthen and rest and nourish myself. 

For me there’s nothing more pleasurable than living in my body, it’s the most pleasurable space I can ever be in.