No, I don’t mean that kind of exercise, I just mean this is a practical action, something you can physically do that can help alleviate body shame and get into a more body-neutral perspective. I want to clarify that I am not talking about body positivity, but about body acceptance or neutrality. The goal of this exercise is to separate your idea of your body as a visual entity with positive or negative implications. I tried this out when I realized I was subconsciously avoiding parts of my body that I deemed “bad” (my thighs, hips and upper arms) when putting on lotion after my shower. So I thought, what would happen if I focused on those parts first? What would happen if I brought my awareness to them as part of my whole body? Obviously this isn’t going to be a cure-all for your bad body image days, but I hope it can be a useful tool along the way.

Materials:

Body lotion that smells really nice. It doesn’t need to be fancy or high quality, I just use Vaseline’s lavender-scented body lotion.

A towel

A room at a comfortable temperature where you can be alone

A phone light or flashlight

The exercise:

Spread your towel out somewhere comfortable in the room, I usually put it on my bed Put your lotion bottle right next to it Close all the blinds/curtains, turn off all the lights, make the room as dark as it can get Use your light to get back to the towel without injuring yourself tripping over stuff in the dark Put a generous amount of lotion in your hands and rub it around between your palms. Put your lotioned-up palms close to your face and take a deep breath through your nose to smell the lotion. Slowly rub the lotion first into the part of the body you hate the most. Trust your hands with this one, you will know instinctively where to go. Then lotion the part of your body you hate the second-most, and so on. Finish with the part of your body you like the most. Make sure you’ve lotioned your entire body by the end. Every time you take more lotion, rub it between your palms for a moment to feel its texture, and bring your hands up to your face get a good whiff If your eyes begin to adjust to the darkness, try to close them Wipe your hands off on your towel Sit there in the dark for a few minutes and try to feel the lotion soaking into your skin. Make sure you can’t see your body during this time. When it’s all dry, run your hands over your body again, this time starting from your feet and slowly feeling all the way up to your head. Feel the softness of your skin. Make sure not to avoid the parts you don’t like. Turn on the light and put on your clothes. Or don’t. Sometimes I like to stay naked after this for a while because I actually become so neutral about my own body that it feels okay for a while.

The goal is not to think about your body at all, actually, but rather to experience it, to feel its existence in the neutralizing space of darkness. It’s to rebuild a self which you have fragmented into individual pieces by treating every part of yourself with equal regard, even if it’s just for a few minutes. I hope I can eventually get to a point where I am able to do this with the lights on effectively (let me know if you do!). But I think so much of our body shame is visual, we are so concerned with the way our bodies look that we forget to spend time on how they feel, and the darkness offers a temporary respite from the emotionally loaded visual world. It helps remind us that our body exists outside of what it looks like. Symbolically, putting something that smells very pleasant is a way of giving your body love physically even when you can’t do it mentally; by putting something on your body that you find pleasant, you are showing your body that it deserves pleasant things – all of it, not just the parts that look a certain way.

Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash