Shift Weekly: I'm Starting with the Butt in the Mirror

I'm starting with the butt in the mirror
I'm asking me to change my ways (of thinking about it)
And no message could have been any clearer
If you want to make the world a better place
Take a look at your butt(or any other body part that you dislike)
and then make a change (in your relationship to it)

 A client of mine recently made the following observation: men think about sex about half of the day and women think about their bodies and food about half the day! If you are a man and struggling with weight, hmm, I am not sure if you have room in your head to think about anything else. 

I have dedicated February’s Shift theme to “Loving Ourselves Down the Scale” and loving and accepting all of ourselves, including our various body parts, is a huge part of that journey.  With 20,000 to 40,000 thoughts going through our mind a day, and a lot of them often negative ones about ourselves and our bodies, I thought this week would be a good one to focus on how to change your relationship with a body part that you dislike. (We had a very successful Shift Class this month using this very technique—so if you missed it read on!)

Chances are that there are a few parts of your body that you dislike and wish you could change –you are not alone. There is a 13 billion dollar per year plastic surgery industry that just kinda sorta indicates our general cultural need of wanting to change things we don’t like or don’t feel are good enough.

 For years I struggled with many parts of my body:  my thighs, which always seemed to jut out too far, my knees which were too dimply, and my butt which I always stared at, with horror, in the mirror—hoping that by staring I could make it smaller.

 When I made my SHIFT and began releasing weight for good—I realized a part of the journey would have to mean accepting me and all parts of me even BEFORE I got to my ideal weight.  You see, I never had gotten to my ideal weight before because every time I got to my goal weight I still hated my body and thought that I needed to lose even more weight.  I would restrict myself more which created the rubber band effect and I would start binging and gaining the weight back.

 Now making the SHIFT I realized that I need to embrace all of me so that when I got to my ideal weight I would truly accept everything, my weight, my body parts, and myself.

 The following is an easy cognitive exercise that I developed from various body acceptance methods.  Try it out and see if you can’t start a hot love affair with a disowned part of yourself today!  Just start with the butt in the mirror…

 Shift Body Part Acceptance Exercise

To start with, it helps to observe what the language is that you use about the body part you are going to change your relationship with.

 My old negative butt “language” to myself: my bog ol’ butt, fat, ugly, pudgy, unflattering, repugnant to others and disgusting.

 Next, begin noticing when you use that language around that body part to yourself and begin to label it as “there’s that thought...”

 Example: “There’s that thought that my butt is like Jello…”.

 What separating the thought out does is reposition the use of language in your brain so that it is now just an observation of your thinking and the old negative thought itself now is not appearing to you as real.

 Example: “My butt is like Jello” now becomes “There is that thought that my butt is like Jello”.  We now have more power over that thought as we see it for what it is worth: a warped useless interpretation of that body part and not reality.

 Next in the process is not to substitute the yucky word for a nice word.  You want to replace the painful word with a neutral word.  This is a cognitive behavioral technique.  When a painful habitual thought pattern begins to come up the idea is to break the pattern in the mind with a neutral word.

 Example:  “I am moving in the direction of accepting my butt.  My butt is (instead of fat and ugly) -- patriotic, parliamentary and official!”

 Doing this kind of word substitution may feel a bit strange, but it goes a long way to breaking up the painful, hateful energy of the old language.  It’s also a fun challenge for your mind to come up with different words for your body part.

 After breaking up the negative language with neutral language for awhile, you can now move into using some more powerful and positive words to describe your body part to yourself.  It is also nice, as part of this exercise, if you can touch that body part in a loving way when you see it or think of it with this new language.

 New “Nice” word for my butt: womanly, substantial, sassy, pioneering, primitive!

Now begin using your new “loving body part language” to yourself whenever the urge to have a thought or feeling about that body part arises.

 I am moving in the directing of loving my butt (as I say this I take a deep relaxing breath and lovingly touch my butt).  My butt is pioneering and strong and has brought me to where I am in life today—cushioning many sitting sessions along the way.  My womanly and sassy butt is loyal to me and I shall be loyal to it!”

 I used this technique every day for a few weeks and soon I was looking at my butt in a whole new way and the weight literally fell off!  Not from my butt necessarily, but from my heart, and what a gift that was. 

 I hope that you will give yourself the gift of showing up for yourself and embracing that part of you that you are disowning.  Have some patience, have some love and understanding and you will have a fabulous new body part that you can proudly call your own!

 To Review:

1-     Label the negative thought about your body part as a thought and not reality.

2-     Replace the negative word about your body part with a neutral one: Patriotic!

3-     Begin adding loving, kind words to describe that body part: Womanly and powerful! (also touch that body part in a loving and soothing way).

 Keep on Shifting that butt in the mirror!

 ox Rita Black C.Ht

323 988 4574
www.ShiftWeightMastery.com

 The next Shift Weight Mastery Process is April 27^th

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