Category Archives: Self-Care

December 18, 2014

Getting through the Grey

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I don’t know about you, but where I live we are deep in the middle of the grey and rainy winter.

While I adore where I live, this part of the year gets tough.

When the days are so short and there is so little light to soak in during the day. Thankfully we’ve had a bit of sun here and there, but still…I feel like self-care is so pivotal right now and it’s been on my mind so much more.

Which is a big part of why I wanted to bring back the Self-Care Class this season. I’ll be sharing more about my own self-care tools with the class participants but one of my favourite tools is going for photo walks.

In the spring time I like to make a practice of going out for a photo walk in the last hour of the day as the sun starts to fall away. A few weeks ago when I realized that it was starting to get dark at around 4pm I decided that as many days as possible I was going to pause from my work (I usually work at home in the afternoons) and get out for a short photo walk at around 3pm.

Some days, especially when it’s raining, it has been as short as walking the half block to the alley way, to the path around my house and back. Which takes a total of about 2 minutes max.

Other days I’ll go a few blocks and sometimes even further.

Somedays I’ll come home with photos to post and other days I don’t. Cause to me photo walks aren’t just about getting photos. They are about making space to slow down, to notice, to feel engaged with the natural and human world. In this case I notice what light we do have as it is about to fall away. Even if there aren’t the rays of light that fall in the spring. Even if it is raining.

Because to tell you the truth. I didn’t fall in love with photography on a sunny day. It was a grey day when I jumped in a puddle and decided to try to take a photo of it with my new (now old school) flip phone with the super crappy camera and that moment when I felt myself fall in love with the potential to capture a moment.

It wasn’t the gorgeously radiant days only that helped this become a healing tool for me. It was a multitude of rainy days when I’d go out when the rain paused with my macro lens to capture the water droplets.

And while I sure do love a radiant sunny day for capturing a self-portrait, largely because of the way it enriches the story…the light isn’t the only thing that makes a photo shine. It is gifting ourselves with the space to tell our story. It is us that shines too.

So while I’m feeling that overwhelm of this season with so much less light, it’s the time that I need to come back to tools I’ve been using this whole time. It’s about opening my heart again and again to the ways that the camera can be self-care and how even these short photo walks fill my well.

If you’re interested in digging deeper into self-care this season and and want to know more about the Self-Care class, head on over here!

October 20, 2014

Selfies as Spiritual

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Shouldn’t we focus more on our soul than our bodies?

Shouldn’t we be celebrating our inner beauty?

Aren’t we more than just our bodies?

Isn’t it more important to be a good person inside than to celebrate our outer body/beauty?

These are questions or comments I get every once in a while on a photo or blog post, that focusing so much on our bodies doesn’t seem right (to them) and shouldn’t we focus more on the amazing spirit inside that body?

The answer I have is Yes. And No.

Yes inner beauty and our spiritual path (as in exploring our relationship to that which is beyond ourselves) are so vital. Yet I don’t see them as disconnected from the path of learning to love our bodies.

The journey to finding self-love for me and to being my own beloved has been both an internal and external one. Of befriending myself, filling up my own well, sitting with my loneliness, untangling stories of self-hate. It has indeed been about finding my own inner beauty. It has about becoming a person who is in tune with kindness as a core value both towards myself and others.

Yet these things are happening within a body. About a body. To disconnect the self-love journey from my body is to discount a whole deep well of potential healing.

Here is the truth I see around me and with so many folks who have come to join me for Be Your Own Beloved. They tell me that they’ve been on a self-love path for a long time but had been avoiding with dealing with that remaining piece of self-hate that hand been lurking in the shadows or in the way they saw themselves in photos. We are looking everywhere else for peace within without thinking of the possibility that external body-love could help us.

Because it’s supposed to be egocentric or vain to want to love our external body, right?

Learning to love your body isn’t vain or egocentric, especially when so many of us are coming from the opposite of ego.

You have the right to choose to love yourself.

Our internal and external selves are connected and if we love our personality, our drive, our mind, but still hate our bodies, we are living in hate. If we are focusing so much on our inner selves but still have hate towards our outer selves, that is yet another spiritual door awaiting us.

While the process of taking selfies is indeed about how we relate to our body in a photo, the photo is the tool for us to learn to love our bodies in our everyday lives too. It isn’t just about getting a new Facebook photo (though that is always a plus). It is about using the camera as a doorway to a more peaceful, compassionate relationship to ourselves and our self-image.

Which includes how we see our bodies from the outside be it a sideways glance in a store window and the reaction we have about seeing ourselves, or how we see our bodies each morning when we look in the mirror. Or, of course, how we see ourselves in a photo. Our relationship to self-image is a place where many of us have the potential to shift our relationship from a place of critique to kindness.

It often feels that using selfies as a tool for healing our body image isn’t as much about the photo we get itself as the journey we go on to get it and the way we choose to relate to the photo itself. It has felt like a deeply spiritual journey, far more connected to purpose than vanity.

But to me it is inherently related to our bodies.

To say we aren’t our bodies or we want to focus on our inner beauty leaves our body shame waiting for us, still hanging out waiting to be heard.

So to answer those questions of inner vs external beauty I wonder if we could reframe it:

What if our bodies and that our inner beauty can be strengthened by healing our relationship with our outer beauty. We have this deep & rich potential place of self-learning that feels deeply spiritual, with our body as our guide.

What if re-learning to love your external body when you have lived in a place of self-critique or dare I say self-hate could be a doorway to deep love, the same kind you might be looking for in meditation or as you create your altars.

What if we do indeed focus on exploring our inner beauty but stay open to seeing it as not disconnected or more important than the potential for compassionate and unconditional love for the body you are in.

I know it’s a scary process for a lot of us to step into. But what if selfies could be that unexpected tool that brings you to a greater place of peace with our self both internally & externally?

I know this isn’t the standard perception of what ‘selfie’ is but I know when we’ve tried everything else on our path of healing, sometimes we need to seek out tools in unexpected places. And if you aren’t sure where to begin on that path, you might want to come join me for the November Session of Be Your Own Beloved and I’ll help you take those first steps to heal that rift between your inner relationship to self & your external perceptions of your body.

October 13, 2014

Bring a Friend & Join Beloved Beginnings!

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From now until Friday if you sign up for Beloved Beginnings (which is already super affordable self-paced class) you can bring a friend for FREE! Yes…its a 2 for 1 sale.

Maybe there is someone you’d like to encourage to a Be Your Own Beloved class by doing it together?

Or you’d like to take it with someone in your family?

Or would like to gift the spot to a friend?

OR get an even better deal by splitting the cost!

I also wanted to do this offer right now in case you were pondering doing the November Session of Be Your Own Beloved but might be feeling a bit nervous to jump in and go for it! This is a gentle 10 day version of the class that can be a great warm up for the November class and a way to ease yourself into seeing yourself with kindness through your camera.

Just let me know the email address of the person you’d like to join you when you sign up! Class starts right after I receive your registration.

The offer ends Friday and you can register here!

September 17, 2014

A Selfie Photo Shoot!

After launching the brand new class How To Rock a Selfie Photo Shoot yesterday I wanted to share a bit about how and why this came about!

As you know, taking selfies is practice for me that has helped me see myself with kindness and been a tool for body-image healing.

Alongside that, I’m also running a business, right? I need images to use for my classes and while I get a plethora of them participating in Be Your Own Beloved each time as well as going on my weekly photo walks, it felt exciting and inspiring to set a little time out every once in a while to do a Selfie Photo Shoot!

I love getting to help people have photos for their blog or business launches, so why not offer that to myself too, giving myself the experience that I offer my portrait clients. And it is much more simple than you might think.

As I’ve been teaching Be Your Own Beloved, I’ve been thinking about these photo shoots and how they are really a gift we can give ourselves. Because while getting a portrait session done is truly a gift we can give ourselves, it doesn’t ONLY happen when we pass the camera over to someone else.

We can do this for ourselves too.

I wanted to share one of these selfie photo shoots with you! This one happened last summer and I had been asked by the awesome Susan Tuttle to contribute some images to her new book as well as taking some photos for some upcoming projects.

So I went on an adventure to make it happen. I headed out to a small yet quiet path along a creek about a 20 minute bike ride from my house (yes indeed, this is meant to be fun so why not take the bike)!

I brought my tripod, DSLR as well as my iPhone.

I set it up the tripod and started getting playful in front of the camera using some of the activities I’ll be sharing with you in this class.

And then came home having so many photos that I could use for Susan’s book as well as my upcoming courses (like for the Beloved Beginnings class I launched soon after that).

I even ended up using one for an online dating profile! I’m pretty private about that part of my life at this point but I did want to step out of my comfort zone and share that in case that is something that you’d really love to have portraits for. I know I used not having photos as a reason not to do this for a while even though of course I have TONS of photos of myself. But I had concluded that I needed to have photos taken by someone else. Yup, I do that too…use ‘not having photos of myself’ as a reason not to say YES to parts of this beautiful life.

You don’t even need a reason (like a launch or an article) to do these photo shoots! You’ll simply have these photos ready for the next time you need a great photo of yourself and you can say YES without hesitation!

I hope this gave you a glimpse into the fun we’re going to have in the How to Rock a Selfie Photo Shoot class too…I can’t wait to get started and when you sign up I’ll be sending you an activity to get you started before class begins!

Come join in on the Selfie Photo Shoot fun!

March 10, 2014

Her Body was Not Wrong

She used to think this body was wrong.

That these thick thighs, this belly, these wide arms weren’t okay. The way her back flows in layers she heard others curse as ‘back fat’.

She believed it hook, line and sinker.

Walked the world as though her body didn’t deserve the space it took up.

Until it got sick of being discounted, ignored, detested.

Her one body in this lifetime.

Her one skin, her two strong legs that walked her around the neighbourhood,

Her hands lifted the camera to her two bright eyes to see through.

She slowly started to unveil.

Baggy layers gave way to clothes that actually helped her perceive her size, her curvature with her own eyes, not with another’s.

She armed herself with that camera and set out to figure out how her body looked to her.

From different angles, from the ground up, from above.

Finding that for once, no one else’s voices of whether or not her body was worthy were invited to this space between her and the camera.

For once, finally, she could hear herself speak.

And that voice, shouted over for years by louder critics.

Had always been there.

Saying ‘I’ve loved you all along, just as you are”.

Your body was never wrong.

Now tell me, you get to choose the way you see yourself from now on.

Who’s eyes are you going to choose to see through?

Your own?

Or everyone else’s?

It’s yours to decide.