BODY TALK (Taken in part from Transforming Body Image) This exercise is in two parts.

Please do them both in one sitting. Please do it with as many areas of your body as you can. PART 1 1. Sit comfortably, close your eyes, and relax. 2. Choose one aspect or area of your body that you victimize most with anger, judgment, neglect, or other negative feeling. 3. Bring that aspect of your body to mind or look directly at it if you can. Become aware of the feelings you generally have about it and the kinds of thoughts you typically think about it. 4. Speak directly to this part of you, expressing your thoughts and feelings without censoring what you say. 5. Now become that part of your body, Identify with it, and experience how it must feel to be talked to this way. . . . Let a response come from this body part back to you. . . . WORKSHEET 1. What body part did you talk to? 2. What kind of messagecontent, feeling tone, attitudeis this part of you typically receiving? 3. What did you learn by Identifying with your body part? What was its response to you? 4. How often do you talk to your body like this? PART 2 1. Relax again. 2. Bring your attention to the part of your body worked with in Part 1, and let yourself fully experience this part of yourself wordlessly-simply be in communion with it. . . . Notice if any images, memories, or associations appear of their own accord as you stay in touch with this part of your body. . . . Notice any feelings that come up for you. . . . 3. Ask this part of you if it has anything it wants to ask or tell you. . . . Notice your reactions. . . . 4. Tell it-with feeling-all that it represents to you, and notice the response you get. . .. 5. Ask it: "How do you feel about the way I have been treating you?" . . . Notice your reaction to the response and respond to it with feeling. . . . 6. Ask it: "How do you need to be loved by me? and How can we be friends?" 7. Ask it how it wants you to communicate with it in the future. 8. Ask it what else it needs from you. . . . Are you willing to give it? . . . If not, what stops you? . . . 9. Continue the dialogue until you can reach some understanding about how to relate to each other in a way that benefits the whole of you. Take as much time as you need.

WORKSHEET 1. Which part of you did you deal with? 2. What did you learn about its nature, needs, its reactions to your behavior, the way you can love it, etc.? . . . 3. Describe the resolution of your dialogue. 4. Where do you feel stuck? 5. Comments. GUIDING WORDS This exercise gives you the opportunity to see more clearly how you treat your body. Some of us deluge our bodies with toxic thoughts. It is important to know what you are doing so you can change it. More important, Body Talk lets you experience the effects of your habitual behavior from your bodys point of view. What you are doing is opening the channels of positive, constructive communication between you and your body. Your body is a very sensitive instrument that, if given a voice, can teach you a great deal. First of all it can tell you how it needs to be treated. Later, when you trust it more and have a greater willingness to listen, your body can tell you a lot about its needs, likes, and dislikes. If you will listen, your body will tell you when it is getting sick, when you are under stress, when it is hungry, what it likes to eat, when it has had enough, what kind and how much exercise suit it best, when it is tired, and much more. Your body has a wealth of useful information. But if your communication is a one-way affair, with you dumping negative thoughts on your body, then this valuable information will be lost. To create a healthy mind-body communication, you will have to develop a gentler, more compassionate way of talking to your body. It is possible to be kind to your body even if it falls short of your expectations. I used to look at my legs and say all manner of nasty things. Now I look at them and see the same legs, but I choose a different approach. I acknowledge that they will never win any beauty contests. But I see them as large, strong, and functional. They work for me-they are powerful and useful and I am grateful to them. I also see that they could be nicer if I were to lose some weight and do some spot exercises religiously. I see all that. Right now it does not feel important to me but maybe someday I will have a loving, positive reason to make changes in my legs or other aspects of my body. I can then do whatever it takes because the changes will come from a base of selfacceptance, not self-condemnation. My body and I will be working together. On the other hand, if I choose to live with my legs just as they are, that will be fine also, because I know that I am so much more than a pair of legs! I have a body but I am not a body. I am a person, and I like the person I am. I choose to be kind to me, because that is the kind of treatment I deserve. I choose to be gentle with my body because I realize that it does a great deal of harm to treat it cruelly and judgmentally. Speaking harshly to my legs never resulted in any positive, lasting change. It created a state of divisiveness between me and my body that could only spell trouble. It made me miserable.

Please practice Body Talk with all the areas of your body that you malign and carry this practice into your daily relationship with your body. Start to notice when you are speaking harshly to yourself about your body. Catch yourself. When you do, it is an opportunity to put into practice a new way of communicating. As always the choice is yours, whether to continue relating as in the past or to move into new behavior. If you do not feel ready to adopt a policy of kindness and compassion toward your body, ask yourself what it would cost to make this change, what the risk would be in letting this negative practice go. See if you can Identify the assumptions that underlie your refusal. Many of us operate on the assumption that if we do not keep harassing ourselves we would go totally to pot. Nothing could be further from the truth. Harassment leads to separation and separation to further battling. It is only through peaceful collaboration that you will make your body-mind a working partnership. Keep working at this until it becomes natural and easy. It is one of the most important gifts you can give yourself. M. G. H. MARY HOWER is a freelance writer and poet living in San Francisco, California.