Learn to See Yourself with Compassion

April 19, 2016

Claiming Space at the Beach

claimingspacebeachcover Yesterday afternoon and evening my lovely friend Sylvia and I headed to her favourite beach outside of the city, one I’d been excited to check out ever since I heard of it. The tide was high so we sat in beautiful (and surprisingly warm) waist deep ocean water blissed out at the fact that we can do this in April in Vancouver!

After a swim we chilled on the beach in the fading sun and like I do pretty much everyday, I pulled out my camera to take some self-portraits in this wildly inspiring setting.

Just like any other day except this time…I was in my swim suit!

And not just any swim suit, a 2 piece…the kind I had a story around, that I’d never been able to adorn my body with. I’ve worn a 2 piece once before but to a quiet lake…and that time I invited myself into the frame too and had a really vulnerable experience with it, as photos indeed can bring up those old body stories that might be trying to follow us around, defining our worth.

You can check out that post here: Making Peace with My Body…In a Bikini

On that day, I could feel that experience of shame rising up but instead, got resilient and chose to seek out the photo that felt like it really captured the energy of the joy of the day, rather than get lost in the shame spiral I could feel myself nearing. It takes practice to pull ourselves out of those moments of self-critique, but it is indeed possible.

Because our outtakes get to be our teachers.

The healing doesn’t just happen in the ‘good’ photos.

It happens in the ones that we struggle with too.

For a long time now, my personal goal (and what we’re exploring in the Body Peace Program too) has been to find body neutrality. To be able to take photos and see my body not as bad, or good…but just me. Just my body without those value judgements.

So…at the beach yesterday, I took some photos while we chilled after the swim and the beach was fairly quiet.

And there she was, me…in the lens. And I looked at these photos without judgement.

Maybe it was the light which was SO dreamy.

Maybe it was because I love this bathing suit and it’s SO comfy and fits well (something that we plus size folks don’t always have in our clothing).

Maybe it was the nourishing energy of sitting in the ocean for an hour that swept away worry of how the suit looked on me.

Or maybe it was that the work I’ve been putting so much thought and practice into was paying off.

Because for the first time ever in a bikini in photos, I didn’t go into a shame spiral.

front800 If someone else had taken the photo at the same moment…I quite possibly would have. If I had tried to take a ‘fashion-blogger’ style photo…I probably would have (cause that’s just not me).

But that’s the power of taking a self-portrait.

We are in charge. We are in control…of how it is taken and how we react to it. How we move in it, when we take it and yes…we are in charge of how we feel about it too.

It’s about standing our own power.

Claiming space.

So, I dared myself to go even further outside my comfort zone and then this next photo happened:

back800 Because if I could see my front body with neutrality on this day (it’s not like it’s forever thing that we achieve…it’s something to savour when we experience and build emotional memory around it…increasing our chances of having it happen again)!

Now, my back body (my back and butt in particular) are parts of me I’m most definitely not at peace with yet, but we’re working on it. And by ‘at peace’ I mean this sense of neutrality. I don’t need to LOVE that part of myself but I’m sure as heck tired of hating it.

The sun wasn’t quite as glowing by this time.

But still…when I see these photos, that second one. I just see my body, not as something good or bad, yes, even those parts (like rolls) that we are told are ‘bad’ by societal standards. They don’t trigger me here.

Both photos are totally unedited and unretouched.

I share this not to try to show off, by any means or try to prove how much I LOVE my body…because that’s not what it’s about. But I did want to share it because I don’t think we talk enough about body neutrality as a possibility. We may think that the goal of body-accpetance is to LOVE our bodies and then shame ourselves on our tough days if we don’t always feel that way.

But body neutrality is settling into that non-judgemental place, where we are neither good or bad, neither hated nor wildly loved. Really, where we just get to…be.

And that’s what these photos taught me, and I hope that you’ll get photos someday where you can see yourself in that way too, as though we just cleared off an old lens and now I can see clearly again.

Now, there’s another piece…that YOU will see the photo if I share it.

That’s another element to this puzzle of accepting our bodies. How will we deal with how other people view us. But here’s the thing. The more work we do on making peace with our own body and finding our voice outside of our inner critics, the more we realize that other people’s opinions of our body are…theirs. Not ours.

If you see these photos with judgement, I can’t help that. Nor should it define how I feel about them.

You might see my body as something disgusting or beautiful.

It doesn’t matter.

What matters is how we define our own worth.

And the more non-judgemental my own voice has become, the more I don’t even think about how others might be judging me.

And it’s not something we achieve, even days like this when we get these peaceful moments.

It’s a practice of claiming space, defining and redefining how we see ourselves, and inviting in resiliency on the tough days.

I starting my own body-image healing journey using photography over 8 years ago now, not sure where it would lead and am so grateful it has led to helping other people help themselves in this way. I’m not here to heal you…I’m here to help you heal yourself.

In terms of my own body image healing, I’m not sure where it will lead from here, but I’m in for the journey.

Cause the more we can let go of worrying how other people see us, the more room there is for us to just enjoy days like this with the sun shining and the ocean warm enough to swim in…in April.

Because there is life to be lived and more time to live it when we’re not focusing our energy on critiquing our body!

claimingspace300 If you’d like to join me in a journey to claim space and exploring standing in your own power in your photos, join me for the Claiming Space class starting May 1st! And if you’re seeing this April 19th or 20th, I’m giving away 2 spots to the class over here on Instagram.

Find out more about the Claiming Space class here!

The original Be Your Own Beloved class is also open for registration if you’d like to start your journey to see yourself with compassion through your camera, this class will be a game-changer for you!

Find out more about the Be Your Own Beloved class here!

April 13, 2016

Introducing the Selfie Starter Guidebook

I’m super excited to share that the Selfie Starter Guidebook is here! I really wanted to create something for those folks who might be drawn to this work of taking selfies and seeing ourselves with compassion, but aren’t sure where to begin. Or have lots of questions that feel like they are in the way of beginning. Or are nervous to take a class but an E-Book feels like a more comfortable place to begin!

The E-Book Covers topics like:

What is a Selfie
The Gear you Might Need (and my DIY approach)
How to take your Selfie (all those questions you might worry are ‘silly questions’ answered).
How to Hold or Prop Your Camera
Types of Selfies (and tips for taking each kind)
3 Selfie Activities for you to Try
Playfulness and Experimentation
The importance of taking LOTS of photos (and having outtakes)
Indoor and Outdoor Selfie Location Ideas
Letting go of worries of what others might think
My favourite resources and posts for you to continue exploring though!

And even if you have taken one of the classes already, this E-Book can be a great companion for your journey if you’ve already taken the Beloved Beginnings or Be Your Own Beloved E-Courses and a reminder of some of the technical and selfie approaches you’ve explored in class (plus different prompts than you’ll find in those 2 classes).

Head on over here to get your Selfie Starter Guide!

April 11, 2016

Going Through the Camera rather than Avoiding it…

It might surprise you (or perhaps not at all) that my goal with all things Be Your Own Beloved isn’t actually to convince you to take selfies everywhere, all the time.

I think that’s something that we’ve been told to panic about selfies. That we’ll be addicted, that we’ll take them all the time everywhere. And some people will (and why don’t we just let them)!

But most of us won’t.

Some days I might fill up a memory card full of selfies, other days just 1 or a few are just right. Other days, none at all.

It’s not an addiction, it’s a place for us to cultivate a relationship with ourselves and the world around us.

Sometimes we might need a lot of that self-care, other days we might not.

Sure, we hear of teens being addicted to taking selfies and yes, presently this is their tool for self-expression. But those teen years are a time where there is the most pivotal self-definition and self-discovery going on. What if they just need these tools a bit more than we might later in life?

But really, this isn’t about how many selfies we take.

It’s about why we might want to take them.

You see, my goal here in these courses isn’t to get you to take a certain number of photos or have new profile pictures (though the later is definitely a perk). My goal instead is to help you get to a place of neutrality with photos. Where you don’t see your body as good or bad in them. Where you are able to see yourself clearly.

Here’s the thing though…it is through taking photos, not avoiding them…that we get to that place where we are no longer triggered by them.

It is through filling up that memory card, being willing to have ‘outtakes’ that we find that neutrality, that we create a habit of cultivating compassion though the camera.

I feel mighty grateful to get to engage with folks daily who are on a body-positive or self-compassion journey who have put SO much effort into healing their relationship to food or exercise, to finding that place of compassion for themselves here and now. Yet SO many of them still have this tenuous relationships with photos.

And it is something we can push to the side. But then we are avoiding being in photos, which in a big way is engaging more in a negative relationship with photos than what we fear might be awaiting us when we actually see the photos.

The fear is harder than the action itself.

We can’t go around our struggle with seeing ourselves with photo.

It will still be awaiting us on the other side.

But we can go through it.

We can step into the fear and claim that space, like we’ve been claiming it in other parts of our lives.

And, I expect that your experience will be much like mine when I started on this self-love through selfies journey. I ended up having far more fun than I expected and feeling like I was not only getting photos that allowed me to see myself reflected back in that neutral way, where I got to see my body just be my body…I also became more able to deal with those moments of tunnel vision that happen when we have the opposite, when we see photos and feel triggered into old body stories.

It’s by going through the camera, not around it, not avoiding it…that I truly believe we can find our way to a more compassionate relationship with our bodies in photos and in our lives as a whole.

So take a selfie today…I dare you. It’s not going to open the door to narcissistic behaviour…but it just might open the door to a future where you no longer get tunnel vision when seeing photos that focus in on your perceived ‘faults’ and instead can see your body in a photo with compassion.

Or come join me for the Claiming Space E-Course starting May 1st! Or the Be Your Own Beloved E-Course (if you haven’t taken it yet…it’s a great place to start this journey) that runs this July.

March 31, 2016

Separating Selfies and Social Media (and taking our Selfies, for Ourselves)

Often in conversations around selfies, especially those bashing selfies, the argument is that selfies invite people to be narcissistic, make them focus on getting other people’s attention and that we do them to get likes or comments.

And yes, I know selfies are defined as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media”. So, if someone hasn’t taken them, it’s easy to look at that definition and think that is all it is.

But that isn’t my experience.

That’s not what I’m seeing around me or on social media itself.

That isn’t the way I approach it in my classes.

Quite the opposite in fact.

When the term selfie emerged in 2013 with the shifting of the tools we were able to take selfies with, when most phones not only had a camera but a front facing one in which we could see ourselves, selfie culture emerged.

But that word ‘typically’ in the definition of a selfie is an open door, one I see so many people choosing to walk through. To not be typical, to actively change how and why we take selfies.

For many of us, taking our own photo is incredibly empowering. It allows us to take the power back into our own hands, to create our own visual media, especially when we don’t see ourselves reflected back in visual media culture. It becomes a truly different experience than having our photo taken by someone else. We are the photographer, the subject, the lighting director, the artistic director and the artist that takes the raw photo and adds a creative spark to it.

Not only that, but it is a doorway to our relationship to ourselves. I hear so many people say that they see a photo of themselves and it feels like a stranger. I felt that too when I started taking self-portraits. But I started to see her as someone I wanted to befriend, to get to know her, to not have pre-concieved notions of who she might be or how she might look in the photo.

The camera became a way to get to know myself and to create a relationship that was based on compassion, forgiveness and possibility.

And it had nothing to do with social media.

I think it’s a big roadblock to people especially when they start taking selfies, to think that it needs to be a photo that is shared. Starting from this place of taking it for other people’s viewing will only take us so far. It leaves us thinking:

What will other people think?

Will anyone like it?

Will it be worthy of likes and comments?

But that is not really about selfies at all. It’s about our relationship to other people, our self-worth and our relationship to social media.

Selfies and social media are not the same thing.

What about taking our selfies, for ourselves?

If we DO choose to share our selfies on social media, then I really encourage people to get clear on their own answers to those questions first and reframe it:

What do I think about my photo?

What about it resonates or makes me want to share it?

What do I like about the photo and what would I say to that ME in the photo if I were to comment on this image?

When we ground ourselves in our own power, in our own relationship to our photo before we share it, it profoundly changes the experience. And when you experience this, you’ll see that it’s not out of ego or self-focus, it’s about building a relationship to ourselves, to valuing our own self-perceptions with the same weight (or more) than we might hold other’s opinions.

Because we can never predict or control how other people are going to respond to a photo and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to ride the rollercoaster of other people’s opinions of me as my core information for my own worthiness. I want to define that separate from what anyone might think.

We have a right to be in our own visual story, to see ourselves reflected in the photos of our life.

And they are worthy whether we share them or not.

And yes, sometimes I’ll find myself taking a photo and will realize that I took it craving likes and comments from other people and it’s a wake up call. An invitation to return to those questions, that self-inquiry.

Then, when we do choose to share them, if we choose to share them, people’s encouragement becomes a bonus, not where we are deriving our worthiness.

Because we have already offered ourselves that.

And it’s a process, but I think often we don’t think of selfies as being separate from social media, but they are.

What photo would you take today if you weren’t worrying about what anyone else thought? How would you view your selfie differently if it was only you seeing it?

Let’s start there.

Let’s fill up our own well first and then choose to share if we want to.

Let’s reclaim selfies as an act of self-care, separate from the act of sharing it.

Try it today, take a selfie just for you…I dare you!

March 25, 2016

Perfectionism or Resonance…Which are You Choosing?

Oh perfectionism.

How many people are you stopping from picking up their camera to capture the beauty around them.

Or within themselves.

With your standard of what our photo ‘should’ look like to be enough, to be worthy of being shared, to feel validated in taking it.

But the truth is, you can only take us so far.

Instead of you, perfectionism. I’d rather ally with Resonance.

With that feeling you get when you experiment and capture a photo that you couldn’t have planned out, but that feels like it tells a story you haven’t been able to put to words yet.

That feeling of taking a selfie and smiling back at the person looking into the lens at you, and not cause everything is ‘just right’ but because they feel like a friend.

Perfectionism limits us before we even begin.

Resonance opens doors, has us standing side by side with ourselves rather than against ourselves.

So perfectionism, I’m sorry, but now that I’ve gotten past your hold, I can’t turn back.

Seeking resonance has so much more to teach me, even if it does take courage, even if it doesn’t always look the way I want it to. Because it guides me by how I feel, from my own inner source rather than external perceptions of ‘enoughness’.

To let down the wall of who we think we should be and meet ourselves anew.

And yes, this might involve taking more photos than we’re comfortable with to get it.

Yes this might mean having lots of outtakes.

Yes it might mean stepping into the unknown.

But that’s where the beauty of life happens, in the mess, in the unconditional.

Where ‘enoughness’ is asking to be our greatest teacher.

In the space beyond perfectionism’s control.

I’ll meet you there.

Click here to find out more about the Be Your Own Beloved E-Course starting September 1st!