Learn to See Yourself with Compassion

January 8, 2014

Looking Ourselves in the Eye

lookup3 One of my favourite moments of every day is getting to click on the #beyourownbeloved hashtag and see what new photos are up. Even between sessions (there is a class starting soon) there are lots of alumni, folks responding to prompts on my blog or newsletter or folks who just resonate with the #beyourownbeloved message sharing their self-portraits.

Its bliss to me, getting to look them in the eye and cheer them on.

The other day I decided to do a bit of an experiment and click on the general #selfie hashtag as truth be told, I’m so content in the bubble of the self-portraiture that I get to see when I check the #beyourownbeloved hashtag as well as on my Instagram feed from my peers…it inspires me to no end.

But I realized I’m not as aware as I could be about what the pop culture of self-portraits is these days. I don’t follow Kim Kardashian or Myeli Cyrus on my Instagram and have no clue what kind of selfies people, teenagers, celebrities…everyone outside of my blissful bubble of self-loving selfie takers…what do they do?

So indeed, I clicked on the hashtag #selfie on Instagram and poured through the images there. Some were definitely what I expected but lots of them amazed me, as I really feel like this culture of self-portraits isn’t all about vanity. Sure, many of them may have been taken from that place and I understand why people see self-portraiture in some cases as vanity.

Yet I didn’t want to get distracted by those and miss out on all of the people out there who are using it as a way to get to know ourselves, redefine ourselves, reclaim our relationship to what we are ‘supposed’ to look like. I saw a lot of that too.

There was one type of self-portrait that particularly intruiged me, like the one I took as an example of below. Folks taking a mirror self-portrait and looking at the phone.

lookup2

I saw this type of self-portrait so often and it honestly isn’t something that I’ve done in a long time so I gave it a try (you can’t know unless you try, right)!

It felt comfortable, it felt normal…but something was missing. Part of the experience of self-portraits that is so important to me wasn’t there. It felt a bit disconnected to me.

It was then I realized what it was that was missing, eye contact, and I remembered why it feels so important to me to make eye contact with myself in a self-portrait.

It might be looking at ourselves in the mirror, eye to eye.
Or looking at the lens of the iPhone or camera, looking the camera in the eye.

I especially love that last one as when we look at the picture, we get to look ourselves in the eyes!

Now, if you click on the hashtag #beyourownbeloved in Instagram you’ll see we make a lot of eye contact in the class…and oh my…they are my favourite prompts and there are some powerful reasons why we make so much eye contact. I’m going to keep those prompts saved for you to experience Be Your Own Beloved (the new session starts soon…and I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise for you)!

But I wondered if you’d join me in exploring eye-contact in a self-portrait today?

Eye-contact in our self-portraits feels important to me because:

It invites us to check in with ourselves in that moment
It feels engaged and invites me to take a moment to really settle into my body
It allows me to look back at these photos and look myself in the eye

Sure, there are plenty of times when I don’t make eye contact and there is nothing wrong with our photo if we don’t…but it feels like a really important piece of the puzzle in seeing ourselves with love in our photos…..being able to look back at ourselves, in the eye, with love.

Will you join me today in taking an eye-contact self-portrait?

You might:

Take a mirror self-portrait and either look yourself in the eye or look into the lens of the camera
If you are using a camera or iPhone that has a front facing camera, look yourself in the eye in your phone!
Or take an arms length self-portrait with your camera or phone…just reach up and aim it back at yourself and look into the lens!

Of course, please do come share it with us if you are on Instagram or Facebook using the hashtag #beyourownbeloved

January 2, 2014

I Broke My Scale

scale600

Confession.

Earlier this year, I broke my scale.

Nope, not as in stomp on it until it broke as a revolutionary act of self-love…(though that sounds awesome).

But as in…I stepped on it, just as I regularly did and it smashed to pieces below me.

For a quick moment I thought ‘I should take a photo of this, it might make a great blog post tale some day’ but that thought was quickly replaced by a wave of shame that I had somehow broken my scale into tiny little pieces on the bathroom floor.

Plus, there was a tiny cat wandering curiously nearby and these tiny pieces could damage her paws so I swiftly cleaned it up.

I wondered if it might be a gift that the scale broke, but shame quieted that thought in the moment. I knew logically that it was just a crappy scale and that it wasn’t that the scale couldn’t handle my weight. Or that I did something wrong. But shame has a way of ignoring our logic, doesn’t it.

I cleaned it up and went on with my days, scale-free.

I didn’t grow up having a scale in the house which was a smart move on my Mom’s part, not wanting us to get obsessed with our weight. Over the years as an adult, I ended up with one and stepped on it once in a while.

I knew that as someone who believes that our body weight doesn’t define our worth and that we are worth loving ourselves exactly as we are …that those numbers on the scale didn’t define me.

At the same time, I couldn’t help but notice my reaction to the number, making me think I was doing something ‘wrong’ if the numbers went up, rather than listening to my body. I felt like it cultivated the old diet mentality in me with the “I’ll do better tomorrow” thought process. Of course, I knew it wasn’t nourishing me to have a scale in the house, but somehow it just became a habit…a daily check in outside of my own intuition on how I was ‘doing’ and whether I was good enough that day according to the scale.

The days following the scale incident?

I’ve gotta confess they’ve felt like a sweet relief.

Freeing. Familiar. With Ease.

Most importantly, it feels like it is getting me in touch with how I feel in my body again. Whether it was a good day holistically and intuitively, not numerically.

It was around that time that I read this post by the wonderful Rachel Cole called The Weightless Year.

It was then that I really realized that it really was a gift that the scale broke.

As Rachel says: “The scale takes you away from yourself. Giving it up brings you home”.

Being scale-free got me back in touch with my internal scale & sense of self, rather than an outside source…one that somehow, despite all the work I’ve been doing over the years, was a regular voice in my life of what I was doing wrong or right.

I’m so grateful in the big picture that I’ve spent much of my life without a scale in the house (thanks Mom) and especially these days it just feels really right as a way to strengthen that internal voice that is learning to love myself just as I am and not by a number on a scale.

I’m not really big on ‘Resolutions’ and never plan them, but some years one just shouts at me to listen and take part. The rather dramatic smashing of the scale a few months back felt like it made space for me to join in on Rachel’s idea of the Weightless Year and give it a try this year.

Plus, this is my year of ‘Worthiness‘ and what a better way to clearly establish that I get to define my own worthiness than this!

I’m also loving this series over on The Militant Baker called The Smash the Scale Revolution…and while I don’t have a scale to smash (cause I already did just that) I’m in for the challenge.

In the end it really has been a gift to break my scale. With it, I feel like it broke a pattern, a daily way in which I put the voice of others ahead of my own.

What would going without a scale look like for you? For a week or a month or even a year? Or maybe you decided to ditch your scale a long time ago! I’d love to hear your thoughts & experiences around this?

December 30, 2013

My Body Acceptance & Self-Love Realizations of the Past Year

bodyacc

I think some of my favourite posts here on the blog this year were the steps I made in my own self-acceptance & self-love path….what I loved about each of these were that they happened when I most needed them to (and least expected them to) but all of them felt like really big progress on my own path of self-acceptance and seeing myself with kindness.

This was also the year that my teaching about self-portraiture really shifted from being artistically focused to being all about using self-portraiture as a powerful and transformative tool for seeing ourselves with compassion. Be Your own Beloved was born. Doing the class myself 4 times this year (and participating in them as much as possible) feels like a big part of these realizations. These activities can be might transformative and doing them again and again this year I realized how many deeper layers of learning about self-love unfolded.

The clearest way I can share with you how things have changed in my relationship to my own inner critic is that things just feel quieter, gentler, simpler. After having your inner critic shouting at you for most of your life, you can’t help but notice when bits of quiet arise.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what happens when we find ‘self-love’ and make progress on our path. Like with most goals, I feel like we might expect bells & whistles and self-love that feels ecstatic. But quite honestly, I’m discovering that as I’m healing some of my own pain, it just feels really quiet and gentle. No bells & whistles…just a feeling of respite and release from my own inner critic.

These moments were ones I won’t forget because they were just simple yet powerful moments on ever evolving path of self-love in this lifetime.

I wanted to share a few of the posts with you from this past year that have been awakenings on my self-love path & I hope they might resonate with you on your path too!

[ezcol_1half]

Because of, Not in Spite of

[/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end]

Little Bike and a Lesson in Confidence

[/ezcol_1half_end]

[ezcol_1half]

Shrinking Body Shame (and how Running Tights helped me realize that)

[/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end]

Our Changing Body Stories (and my Long Legs)

[/ezcol_1half_end]

[ezcol_1half]

Before & After: Revisioned

[/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end]

Worthy: My Word of the Year for 2014

[/ezcol_1half_end]

Did you have some self-love or body acceptance realizations this year? I’d love to hear about it so don’t hesitate to leave a link to your blog post or share your experience with me!

December 29, 2013

The Rebel’s Guide to Falling in Love with Photography

The Rebel’s Guide to Falling in Love with Photography is about to begin. This class is a rare class for me that isn’t focused on self-portraiture but it is focused on something super close to my heart: Playfulness.

For most of my life I had no interest in photography because it seemed mathematical, complicated and overwhelming. It seemed like there was so much to know before I even began and that stopped me from trying at all.

Until…a time in my life appeared when I really just needed a creative tool to help me find my way back to feeling joy again. I realized photography didn’t need to be technical or complicated. In fact it could be playful & light.

So this class is derived from all of my favourite tricks that helped me fall head over heels in love with photography. One of my past students Johanna Harness said that:

Vivienne took all the rules that have been holding me back and replaced them with playfulness. Worlds of possibility opened up for me.

That is my hope with this class too. That all the rules or expectations that might be holding you back from falling in love with photography….well…we are going to break them and instead approach photography with a spirit of playfulness. This class is perfect for total beginners and will also re-spark your love affair with photography that might have already begun but is feeling at a plateau.

So, I hope you’ll come join me for this powerful yet playful class. Class starts in a week!

But first, for reals….I should tell you about some of the things that might happen in this class…don’t say you haven’t been warned!

Class starts next week, January 6th.

Grab your spot and join us for the class!

December 27, 2013

Tips & Tricks from the Past Year!

Photo by Andrea Scher

While it is really important to me that the classes I teach are more focused on self-love through self-portraiture than learning the technical side of taking self-portraits (though I’m available to help you work through technical issues or questions during the class).

This is partially because there is already a lot of information about it out there and not enough information about how to find self-love & healing thorugh self-portraiture. As well, it is because the technical side of photography can sometime get in our way of exploring it in an experiential and playful way!

BUT

On the other hand, I’m kind of a big geek about the technical side! I love figuring out how to do neat things with my camera and discovering new apps & tricks.

So this past year I’ve had so much fun sharing lots of tips & tricks in the form of blog posts!

I thought I’d gather them all together for you in today’s post…the tips & tricks posts from the past year.

I’d also LOVE to know if there are any questions you have, or things you’d love to see a tips post about next year!!

[ezcol_1half]