Your body is innocent

It's the mind that attacks the body.

A few years ago, I booked a photo shoot with an excellent photographer in Portland who was part of a photo package by Scarlet Chamberlain, a stylist in Portland. One of Scarlet’s requirements was to rent a dress from Rent the Runway. Initially, I wasn’t excited about this because I was uncomfortable wearing dresses, as you’ll learn below. But after I did it, I was thrilled. It’s a photo I treasure. Now you know the story behind the photo.

After I showered, I’d stand and look at my naked reflection in the mirror with curiosity. There was no judgment.

I saw only beauty in the scar dividing my body in half from my breastbone to my pubic bone.

My husband and I had been home four months after my six-week hospitalization at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego while I recovered from a near-fatal car wreck that happened in the middle of the Baja, Mexico desert. We’d been communing with mother and baby gray whales for two hours and were on our way back to Loreto, where we were staying for a month.

My body saved my life. 

My mind helped my body to heal.

When I came home from the hospital, I was in the energy field of love because I felt as if I were touched by an angel during the near-death experience during my third surgery.

I realized something profound had happened during surgery, but I didn’t understand what I’d experienced. I was aware I was in the dark - between worlds - when I heard a voice telepathically say,

“You get to choose how you go through this experience. What will you choose?”

I thought, “I’ll choose the high road because I don’t want to be a victim. I’ll use love and gratitude to heal.”

That’s what I did and I recovered quickly from each surgery.

My energy was different when I woke up after the near-death experience during the third of five major abdominal surgeries in two weeks. Two in Baja and then three more after being air-evacuated to Sharp Memorial in San Diego.

For the first time in my life, my ego — the negative, repetitive voice in the head — was gone.

What was left was the most exquisite peace and love I’d ever experienced for the next three to four months.

I was in the place of my true Self - a place of pure peace and love inside all of us, but it’s clouded over with noise from our ego.

David Hawkins, MD, PhD, created the map of consciousness that calibrates energy fields associated with consciousness. Zero is death and it moves through negative emotions up to courage at level 200 then it moves into positive energy fields up to enlightenment at 1000. Hawkins calibrated each level using kinesiology.

The field of love is calibrated at 540 and a near-death experience calibrates at 600 on the map of consciousness. 

I stared at the scar and loved the slight "S" curve.  I thought it was beautiful and it reminded me of a Matisse painting of a stylized face.

Four months after the crash I had a sixth surgery, a six-hour urologic procedure, to re-implant my kidney ureters that were damaged from an intra-abdominal abscess after the accident.

The suture lines toward the bottom of the “S” curve had changed.  Even though there were more tucks and folds of skin, I gave my newly changed body unconditional love because it saved my life. 

During my recovery at home, I’d lost 25 pounds and noticed a bulge on my left hip bone. I initially had no idea what it was. In the accident I sustained a seat belt injury — blunt force abdominal trauma.

John and I did not notice the van didn’t have shoulder harnesses when we got in. When a car tried to pass us as our driver moved to the oncoming lane to avoid a Mexican man on a bicycle riding toward us, the car behind sped up to pass on the right and rammed into the back of the van as we came back to that lane. The van rolled over and hit a rock coming to a dead stop in a drainage ditch on the opposite side of the road.

This little bulge on my left hip looked like a small three-month pregnancy pouch resulting from an abdominal muscle torn off my left hip bone, leaving my intestines to pooch out.  

The abdominal wall muscle atrophied and died, so there was no muscle near my left hip to hold in my intestines resulting in a flank hernia. 

The first time I went to see my acupuncturist, Brynn, I undressed in the room and stood waiting for her to return.

When I was ready, she came in.

“Brynn, I want you to see this before I lay down,” I said as I showed her the pouch on my hip.

She took one long look and said,

“Alrighty then, we’ll call her Gladys,” she said as she laughed.

I started laughing and said,

“I love it, meet Gladys!”

Naming my flank hernia gave it personality and helped me think of it differently.

There’s no way to fix a flank hernia with certainty. Using mesh in an abdominal wall reconstructive surgery has high risks.

My surgeon said, “Stay trim because if you gain a lot of weight, it could be a problem.”

Gladys gets supported by wearing shape wear I’ve continued to evaluate over the years. Now I wear only Yummie shape wear, which works like a charm. Recently a physical therapist suggested K Tape would help me. So far that’s what I’m using in addition to the shape wear. While all this might sound TMI, I want to normalize body issues.

For the first time in my life, I love my body.

My body is innocent. 

It’s your mind that attacks your body. 

That’s what the ego does – it attacks your body and personality with negative repetitive thoughts from your inner critic (ego).

Your ego is not the real you.

The real you is your true Self that’s a place of equanimity, ultimate peace and love.

Growing up, I shamed myself about having skinny legs after a boy in middle school gave me the record, Skinny Legs and all, by Joe Tex. Joe sings at the end of the song,

“Man, who’ll take the woman with skinny legs? Come on someone take her, please, please. I don’t want no woman with skinny legs.”

Then my sister’s boyfriend gave me the nickname Twiggy that I have to this day!

This was the origin of the belief - I had skinny legs.

I began to compare my legs to my sister’s who had a more muscular body.

I grew up focusing on the perceived flaws of my body, the cellulite and the pouchy belly, and never seeing the beauty. 

Our culture brainwashes us to want to look like anorexic models in magazines.

Why? It’s all for the mighty capitalistic system we live in today. Our culture convinces women our bodies are flawed and we need to buy products to fix ourselves. We are fine the way we are because that’s reality.

All negative thoughts are lies because they come from the ego (language center.

The next time you catch yourself looking in the mirror and thinking a negative thought, stop and breathe. 

Forgiveness is the MOST crucial practice you can do for yourself and anyone you believe has wronged you.

Forgive yourself for any guilt and shame you’ve created around your body. 

Forgive yourself for everything negative you've said or done to your body.

Examples:

"I forgive myself for all the negative thoughts I've had about you."

"I forgive myself for how I've starved you or made you sick from dieting."

“I forgive myself for pushing you beyond exhaustion from overworking.”

A simple principle of recovery:

You are subject to what you hold in your mind, which may be conscious or unconscious beliefs.

The mind is so powerful that what it tends to believe, manifests in our behaviors.

Now over to you, please leave comments below. If you like this, please leave a heart.

COMING SOON: Your Body is Innocent two-hour workshop with coaching. I want to start hosting Sunday Salons with Sherold where I teach a concept or group coach on a topic such as money, the body, finding meaning in life and more.