Head to Toe Beauty

I know, the economy is tanking, gas is going up, people are losing their jobs and you’re feeling very scared and hopeless. Everywhere you turn it’s on the news, your friends and relatives’ phone calls are all about how bad it is and still, nothing’s improving. You worry at night about how bad it is going to get before someone does something. Somebody will do something right? Then you remember, oh yeah, there isn’t anybody to fix it. It’s the cycle of an economy so large that it is its own entity. And nothing can fix it. And so you panic and worry and wonder,’how did I get here?’ and you feel alone, ashamed that you can’t afford gas or a movie where before you were buying different purses for different outfits. I know. I hear you.

But I actually have a very strange solution. And no, it’s not about a new multilevel marketing job or just accept where you are, or a plan to get rich quick or rob a bank… It’s a solution that really works. But it’s the one and only solution that no one wants to look at or accept.
Most people see what’s outside of them and those problems, people, job and things that need to change before they will be happy. And right now, it’s money. We are ALL seriously stressed about money. This seeing what’s outside ourselves actually does us harm. It makes us see what we lack, and then it brings inside of us, a feeling of shame, less-than, lack and failure. We pull up to a convenience store and a very nice new SUV pulls up and we think, ‘boy I wish I could have the money to own one of those’. But what you’re not thinking is that person is upside down in the money owed on that car, it guzzles gas and they would give anything to scale down and get something smaller. So seeing how much we lack is not only a lie but can really hurt you and bring you down. The truth is that in these times, everyone is suffering, whether you can see it or not. So you don’t get to be the woe is me person.

So what do you do? The key is in focusing not on what’s out there, bills, cars, lack of money, job, work, etc. but to bring your focus into your body. It is through our bodies that we experience our world and our place in it and so the way out is to go inward. It is inside you where you will find your strength, your power, your best ideas for change and solutions for problems.
There are levels of awareness and the most aware person feels their spiritual energy, listens to hints from the intuition, trusts ideas and operates from a position of peace and trust from within. The next level is feeling powerful physically, beautiful and strong and capable so that you can take the information you have and feel capable of putting it into action. You feel strong physically and that makes you feel stronger emotionally and you know you have the energy to accomplish what must be done for you and your family.

Once we start to dissociate from our bodies, because they are overweight or they hurt or we begin to resent them for betraying us we begin to move our focus outside our bodies so that all our awareness and attention is focused on anything except how we feel, our heart rate and breathing, our stomach and hunger, our skin and how soft it is, instead we focus on dinner, tools, cars, money, bills, the faces of those we love and the things we are doing without.
This shift of focus from inside to outside is the key. It’s the key to pain and despair. And the key to fixing it is to put our focus back inside our bodies. How long has it been since you’ve felt your heartbeat? How long has it been since you’ve been aware of your own breathing? How long has it been since you touched the back inside of your knee or put lotion on your feet, or looked straight into the mirror and didn’t make a single judgment, positive or negative, just looked. As parents, teachers, spouses and employees it gets hard to notice what’s inside but our disconnection from that is to disconnect from the gas pump and run on fumes. So how do you start and where do you go from here?

The way out is in
The goal from here is to relearn our bodies. We have to come back in touch with our senses, our balance, our heart beat, our spirit, our voice and intuition. We have to begin by taking care of the physical body we inhabit. Do your nails and hair, put lotion on and shave. These things get lost by the way side during troubled times. But these are extremely important in our plan.
The next part involves losing weight and getting our muscles strong. As women, we are rarely taught about testosterone and its role in our lives. But it is very important for women. It helps us fight certain cancers and build muscle strength, it helps keep our other hormones in balance and keep us mood balanced. But testosterone is the hormone of attitude. When we can get our bodies muscular, and tight, we begin to live in a different universe inside and out. Once your body feels strong, you feel strong emotionally. You are in touch and that voice speaks loudly giving you the next idea and push forward. Your strong body changes you mentally and gives you a superman attitude where you don’t feel defeated.

Where to begin
If you’re overweight, or just gave birth, or are unmotivated, I can hear you…..”Yeah, I’m not anywhere near that.” And that’s perfect because getting there is part of the process of transforming you into the powerful strong woman our ancestors were, that we can be! Economy, blah! We have resources, we can always find another way. And when you’re in that state, those other ways show up like miracles. I have experienced it myself, from a size 16, breaking out in rashes, tired, unmotivated and depressed, to lose down to a size 5, rock climb and feel powerful and strong. I used to teach science so I knew about my body and how to use it to my advantage. But my beginning was small. Walking around the block and starting to take half the food off my plate. I didn’t see any reward for my efforts for a month. And then it was off and on. But I realized it was a process of transformation. It wasn’t just my body I was changing, I, ME, was changing. My mind, my spirit, my power was changing.

What emerges in us is just as different from who we are now as we think it will be. But focus on today. What can you do to start today? Sometimes all it takes is saying no to candy today. And maybe tomorrow you’ll walk around the block. But this walk is your path back to power. I hope you keep walking running and playing your way back to the only person who can weather this storm.

The Author
www.HowToTeachScience.com is where you will find Teresa Bondora. She lives in Atlanta, GA with her family where she counsels others on the realities of losing weight, and support in the sciences.