Gross or Good?

Reflections on how we think about our bodies.

Tonight I was teaching a “strength & flexiblity” class for the dance club at the university where I’m working on my PhD. It’s become a sweet part of my weekly rhythm to incorporate my favorite types of movement, inviting otherss to join me in slowing down to connect with their bodies and not feel pressure to force movement, strength building, or stretching, but instead, to tune in with the feedback their bodies are offering, and adjust their movement based on what their body would most like to do each Monday night.

Tonight we enjoyed moving together to an 80’s playlist, which I was delighted to see was known not only by me but the younger faces all smiling back at me as well. And toward the end of the hour, as I was looking at my bare feet while we were stretching, I had a thought—and mind you, I am not a pedicure girl, and it’s getting cold and dry over here in Scotland, so there’s an unpainted toenail super dry skin situation happening here that includes a not entirely healed big toe that incurred a massive infected ingrown toenail last year...

Now that we have that clear… As my feet caught my attention for a moment, without really thinking, a thought ran through my head about making a joke to the class, apologizing for how rough of shape my feet were in, pointing out that they were probably in rougher shape than others around me and I’ve had a little more wear and tear in my decades of life.

And just as quickly as one part of me jumped to unkindly judge my feet as looking gross, another part of me ever so gently countered this, leaping to another thought: Look at them! These are the feet who walk deep into cold sand as I run into the North Sea, who take me on coastal paths and swimming in crystal clear coves. These are my feet who have traveled around the world and dance freely with friends and carry me through my days, mundane, adventerous, and everywhere in between. Look at them! They are beautiful. They are incredible. They. Are. Awesome. Period.

And while this might feel like a most random and silly story of internal dialgoue that I maybe didn’t need to share with the world, I can’t help but wonder if there’s any part of you that might want to join me in thinking differently about your body. Is there a part of you that you’re quick to judge, call gross, or feel insecure about around others that you’d like to see differently?

Maybe you want to appreciate how your hands hold all the things, type all the words, drive your car, pick up children, and/or prepare food that keeps you and others alive.

Maybe you want to indulge in some gratitude for your hips, thighs, ankles, or glutes who move with each step, carrying you from one moment of your day to the next, stabilizing you and speeding you up or slowing you down with the cadenece of what’s before you and behind you.

Maybe you want to trace the lines of wrinkles on your face, chest, arms, or hands, honoring the ways you stretch, smile, see, and reach for people and the world around you, how the movements of your life and imprinted and preserved on your being, like a living legacy.

Or, fill in the blank for any other part of you that you want to slow down and see not as gross, bad, ineffective, or less than, but instead, that you want to see as one piece of what holds you together, that you want to see as good, that you want to celebrate and delight in, even if just for a moment.

Our bodies — ourselves — do so much even as we simply stay alive each day, let alone all the other doing we carry each moment. How might we experience life more freely if we moved through those days cheering on all the muscles and bones and skin and wrinkles and grit that makes up the whole of who we are? Who move together, in tandem, as the whole of who we are?

And if offering this kind of posture feels entirely impossible and foreign to offer to your own self, I wonder if you can imagine this for another person. And if you can imagine holding this posture toward another person, please know, I can certainly hold this posture toward you, and I hope one day, even if it feels like the most remote hypothetical not-so-possible-possibility, that you might hold this posture toward yourself too.

May it be so <3

Fall in Scotland has been nothing short of dreamy. This is from a walk on Saturday morning with a friend.