Our physical bodies are a microcosm of the brilliance and beauty of the Universe. The fierce autonomy and inextricable interdependence we each experience within the ecologies in which we are nested is mirrored in the complexity of the interconnectedness of mind, body and spirit. The body we incarnate into is the homebase from which we weave our belonging in and to The World. It is in the most intimate space of our body that we feel our love for and devotion to The World. With our bodies we explore the bounty and beauty of the physical world, feeling the ways we are so perfectly designed to experience the physical, emotional, and spiritual complexities of our participation in the grand unfolding within and around us. 

What happens to our experience of our belonging – to our capacity to intimately experience and be genuinely nourished by anything – if we are caught in an adversarial relationship with our body?   

Many of us grew up in a consumer, conformist society that uses airbrushing and photoshop to create impossible standards for the appearance of bodies. When we don’t measure up, it promises to remedy all of our shortcomings with the latest diet and exercise regimen, makeup, and shapewear. When this fails, we can turn to Western Medicine to surgically or chemically 'fix' the parts of us that will not conform to the culture’s impossible standards. 

We’ve also been handed a stack of expectations about our relationship with our bodies that includes so much more than our appearance. We are told how our bodies are supposed to sound, smell, function, find and feel pleasure. If we deviate from these prescriptive constructs, the problem is us and we’d better do something to hide or fix it, or we can just write ourselves off as not measuring up, not being beautiful, and therefore, not having value. We are taught to believe that our body’s worth has nothing to do with its incredible capacity or how it feels from the inside out. Instead, we are taught to relate with our bodies from the outside in, based entirely on how they look to everyone else.

This messaging and the resulting lifelong focus on and concern with the shape, function, and appearance of our bodies distract us from what is truly ours to be and do in the world. It alienates us from our truthful and fierce voice and it withers our sense of value, worth, and belonging. We are herded into relationships of comparison and competition with one another, rather than into relationships based in connection and collaboration. Our value is reduced to the extent to which we manage to fit within the standards set forth in movies, television, social media, and the glossy pages of magazines. 

This alienation from, and commodification and objectification of our bodies mirrors the way that we, as a society, relate with the Earth. We’ve separated ourselves from nature, and have turned the Earth and all of the other-than-human beings who inhabit it into objects for us to use without regard for the impact. Their value is defined not by the fact they exist as essential and intrinsic beings within the Web of Life but rather by the value they have to us, and to corporations who profit from turning them into 'resources'.