Recently, I was listening to an Australian woman talking about her buddy. I came in in the middle of the conversation, so I just kept my ears open. This sweet woman was talking about how she was becoming better at listening to and supporting her buddy; how she was really making an effort to be kind and express appreciation to her buddy. She spoke of how strong and beautiful her buddy was, how her buddy was always there for her and how she wanted to return the favor.

‘What a lovely woman,’ I thought to myself. ‘How wonderful that she is making a conscious choice to be there for her friend.’
My heart was full of admiration and respect for this stranger, and I knew I was hearing this conversation for a reason.

And then, I realized what she was saying.
What my North American ears heard as buddy, was actually this woman talking about her body.

Many of us grew up in a culture where it was considered “vain” to love our bodies. It is not socially acceptable to be a narcissist, but it is considered “normal” to obsess over what we don’t like about our bodies. Media of all types feed a steady stream of images showing us just exactly what a loveable body “should” look like. We are encouraged to strive towards a photoshopped ideal.  We are trained to hide, cover, disguise, peel, or even surgically alter the parts of our bodies deemed not acceptable.

Intelligent people often pick a few train-wreck examples of vapid humans with nearly ideal bodies and highly under-utilized brains and decide they want to be nothing like THAT.
(As if the choice is either / or.)

Spiritual people often just pretend they don’t even have a body.
Or they resent their body as a burden, a literal drag.

To say that most people have mixed feelings about their bodies would be an understatement. Next time you’re in a grocery store, take a look at the magazine rack. Women’s magazines are especially reflective of our cultural schizophrenia, but you can also find a lot of humour on the covers of Men’s Health and GQ. The G-rated magazines often feature a cover with a story about how to be swimsuit ready or drop 5 pounds in 10 days with the text superimposed on a background of a chocolate cake. The magazine on the right seems to imply that the secret to being fit is Cheesecake Bliss.
The R-rated magazines tout articles about being strong and independent right alongside the latest trends in plastic surgery and how to change yourself to please your lover.
As a culture, we give ourselves a LOT of mixed messages about physicality.

It wasn’t always like this. As babies, we delighted in discovering our bodies. Have you ever watched a baby stare at her hands?
(“Whoa, dude!  It’s soooooooo trippy. Hands, are so… like… amazing!” )
As young children, we loved pushing past our former physical limits and developing new strengths, skills and abilities as we played. We crawled and walked and ran and climbed and tumbled and jumped and skipped and danced and twirled without provocation. Movement was joyful and spontaneous and natural and fun.
Once we entered school, we learned to schedule our natural movement. Spontaneous movement was not approved or appreciated in that environment.
And then we became aware of appearance.
With the awareness of appearance and comparisons, came self-consciousness.
At some point, whether at age 5, or 15, or even 25, most modern people decided their bodies weren’t naturally “good enough.” They needed work.

We traded our natural delight in our bodies for an unnatural message that our bodies were flawed, probably VERY flawed. Instead of flowing with our bodies and respecting their wisdom, we began to fight against the very bodies that were keeping us alive. Our movement went from being joyful to be being “work.” Our attitude towards our bodies shifted from having fun to “whipping” ourselves into shape. “No pain, no gain.”
There are gazillion dollar cosmetic, fitness and diet industries that depend upon our collective physical insecurities for their financial well-being.

Now I’m not advocating that you “let yourself go” or forgo personal hygiene or any such thing. (No one wants to sit next to that person on the airplane who doesn’t believe in bathing.)

I’m just encouraging us all to experiment with being kind and attentive to our bodies, appreciating our bodies for their strengths and beauties rather than berating them for their perceived flaws. What if we begin to see scars as testaments to strength;  laugh lines as evidence that one has lived well;  limitations as gateways to new power?
Our bodies love to bathe and move and drink water and eat living foods.
What if we listen to their wisdom?

As spiritual people, we get to acknowledge that we incarnated for a reason. We are inhabiting a body for a purpose, and I believe a big part of that purpose is JOY! Let’s return to that natural state of JOY in our bodies. Let’s dare to Love and appreciate and celebrate our body buddies independent of any cultural conditioning. Let’s see these Earth suits as the amazing miracles they are and cease berating them for what we think they’re not.

I am personally choosing now to see my body as my buddy, and I invite you to do the same.