Welcome to the Her On Top Podcast, Season 2, Episode 8! Kayla discusses body image and how reclaiming your relationship to your body is paramount to having a deeper relationship to yourself and more ease in your sex and intimacy. Kayla deconstructs how society convinces women that you are not enough in order to sell products and keep us in a state of control. Kayla then offers ways to begin to cultivate a deeper love and reverence for your body. Kayla ends by telling women that you deserve to love yourself fully, including your beautiful and powerful body!

Go To reclaimingstoriestherapy.com to schedule your FREE 30 minute consultation with Kayla if you want to dive deeper into these topics for yourself in a therapeutic setting.

Resources: 

Podcast Website: her-on-top.captivate.fm

Instagram: @herontoppod and @reclaimingstoriestherapy

Blog:

How You Feel About Your Body Is Keeping You From Pleasurable Sex

I have a question for you.

What is your relationship to your body?

What does that mean for you?

If you could close your eyes for a moment, maybe take one deep breath in through your nose, out through your mouth and just really think about what is my relationship to my body?

Are there parts of my body that I love?

Are there parts of my body that I wish were different?

Can I find any nice thing to say about my body or is it all pretty negative?

Welcome to her on Top.

I'm your host, Kayla Moore, a licensed sex therapist therapist and I'm here to create a space for you to feel normal, learn and reclaim your relationship to sex and intimacy.

Each episode is going to be filled with us taking a deep dive into our bodies, our souls, and our oh so yummy sensuality.

I am bringing my expert knowledge on sex and relationships to help you experience embodied pleasure, satisfaction and connection.

Guess what?

Sex is for you and you deserve to get what you want.

This is her on Top.

As a disclaimer, these episodes are based off of my clinical knowledge, but as I am not your therapist, please take care with all that is discussed and talk to your own therapist or seek out a therapist if you are wanting to dive deeper into these topics for yourself.

Hello my lovelies.

Welcome back to the Hurontop podcast.

I am your host, Kayla Moore, resident sacred feminine sex therapist and we are here today for another episode.

Today we're going to be talking about something that I really have been trying to incorporate in most of the episodes that I have done so far, but we're going to be specifically talking about and diving into body image or what I want to really be more about reclaiming your relationship to your body.

Body image is kind of what we have been told in society or is kind of the, kind of well known term for, you know, how we feel about our bodies.

But I personally feel like the term body image feels kind of dissociated from thinking about our bodies as full, complete whole beings that are comprised of our mind, our body, our souls, all the aspects of who we are as a person.

So that's what we're going to be conceptualizing around today.

But how I want to even just start the conversation is by saying this is really a reclaiming of your relationship to your body and to your full self.

But we're going to break it down in understanding why we think about our bodies and minds differently and why body image has become such a huge topic and something that I work with people on a daily basis.

So I have a question for you.

What is your relationship to your body?

What does that mean for you?

If you could close your eyes for a moment, maybe take one deep breath in through your nose, out through your mouth, and just really think about what is my relationship to my body?

Are there parts of my body that I love?

Are there parts of my body that I wish were different?

Can I find any nice thing to say about my body or is it all pretty negative?

Just think about that for yourself.

What narratives pop up in your mind about your body when I present this question to you?

I think most of us would say that we have a pretty negative view of our bodies.

It's pretty clear that society has told us we should be ashamed and feel like our bodies are not something that is divine and perfect.

So what is society's impact on how we are feeling about our bodies?

I think we all have some understanding that, you know, what we are advertised to or what we are marketed to is creating some distance and distrust in our bodies and a feeling of I don't really want to own the fact that this is my body and that it's the only one that I'm going to have and that I need honestly to find a way to love it, that.

I looked these up on Google, so these were very quick Google searches.

But the global beauty industry is worth 500 plus billion dollars.

And the wellness industry is also worth 5 plus trillion dollars.

So these are billionaires, big, big industries.

And I will fully disclose like I am, I would consider myself part of the wellness industry, but I would say that there are certain parts of the wellness industry that we are actually focusing on wellness and we are actually trying to help people get to a place where they feel like they can be their full selves and realize their full potential.

Whereas other pieces of this industry are really just trying to sell you things because they want you to feel inadequate so that they can get your money.

They really just want you to feel bad about your body so that they can sell you product that will fix it.

And we have been inundated with this, most of us, since we were very, very young.

You know, girls are starting to diet earlier and earlier, starting to feel insecure about their bodies earlier and earlier.

And it's hard, it's really hard to feel and see the change that has happened in our society around what the standards of beauty have become.

The industries really want you to feel as though, you know, they are the answer to you feeling love and affection and gaining attention and having success in your life, that you need something else or someone else to fulfill that within you.

And that is just not true.

That is bullshit that we need to work on eradicating and relearning or creating a different narrative around the fact that we as human beings, and especially as women, are divine just inherently in yourself.

If you are on this planet, you are divine, and that just means that you are already enough.

Basically, these industries and our society at large have told everyone, but especially women, that you are not enough.

And knowing that you are a divine being just by being a human being that came into this world through one of the most amazing processes that are available in this world is the creation of life.

And so, because you are a part of that, you are a divine being.

So that is what I want to work on today and work on having you know about yourself and about your body.

So many of the women that I work with really struggle with body image.

And it keeps them from being able to be comfortable in themselves and with their partners.

I think this is really one of the biggest barriers to sex for most of the women that I work with.

They're just so ashamed about the different parts of their bodies.

And they don't want their partners to see the different parts of their bodies that they think, you know, my partner's not going to be attracted to me anymore.

Or a lot of times it's not even necessarily about their partner.

They may think that it is about their partner, but I think it's more of, like, I am so ashamed of myself that I don't even want to see those parts of myself.

And therefore, I don't really want my partner to see it.

But I think there's less emphasis on, like, well, if my partner sees this, then they're not gonna be attracted to me.

Cause usually a lot of the women that I see have had partners for a long time.

And I actually went through this in my own relationship.

And I think I continue to have to work out my mindset around my body, too.

But your partner could tell you, you know, they love you a million different ways and don't care what your body looks like and want to be able to experience an intimate sexual relationship with you no matter what.

And it still is going to, or it's not going to fix, you know, those things that you think about yourself.

And so I find with a lot of the women that I work with that, again, it's less maybe what they think that their partner is going to think and more about what they feel about themselves and not wanting to confront that in the moment.

And that's really hard.

So I'm here Today to give you a few things of how do we start this conversation?

Because this is a long journey.

This is not something that I can give you like a few quick fix it tips on and you go do them.

And then you're totally cured of your negative thoughts around your body.

It's really an ongoing process and an ongoing journey, I think, for all of us to continue to break down these societal narratives and norms and to continually have to remind ourselves and live out a different narrative.

It's not something that comes easy and it's not something that is easily changed.

But I think it's a really important practice for us to start doing and to start thinking about.

So what are some ways that we can start to change, Change the tide and really think about our bodies in a different way?

So the first one would be awareness.

How do we have awareness of even how we think about ourselves, what we feel about ourselves?

We can't really do anything differently or have any change if we don't have awareness.

First of all, what is actually going on for us in our brains and in our hearts?

It all starts with just noticing what's happening.

So taking a week or so to just notice.

How often are you saying negative things about your body?

How often are you talking negatively about your body to someone else, like your partner or friend?

How often do you make jokes about your body?

Just having an awareness of that and noting that to yourself and maybe jotting it down in a journal every day, just noticing, like, when does that come up?

How often it comes up?

Is there anything that precedes that for you when you are starting to think negatively about yourself?

You know, is it when I'm getting ready in the morning and I see myself in the mirror?

Is it when I'm feeling really overwhelmed, when I'm feeling sad, when I'm feeling like I'm not succeeding in some way?

Are there places or feelings in your life that invoke those things?

Or do they just come all day, every day, no matter what?

So taking some time to notice, that's the first step.

Another thing you can do.

And I think these are a little bit controversial because some people, I think, think affirmations are silly and that's okay.

But I do really think that affirmations, even though they are not the full picture because they are working a little bit more with our mind versus our body.

And I do think that the body has a big, a big piece of the pie when we are talking about reclaiming your body, obviously.

But we also have to change the narrative in our minds and in our hearts.

So that means what we believe as well as what we say or think.

And so affirmations, I think are really powerful because I do believe that what we speak, we speak into existence.

You know, that if we are continuously telling ourselves negative things about our body, then that's what we're going to believe.

But if we change that to thinking more positively about our bodies, then over time, you know, we may start to believe something different.

So I definitely think having affirmations that start with I are really important.

So that you are saying, you know, I am beautiful, I am worthy, I am enough, I am a divine human being.

Starting with I is an important way to help that feel more like something that is true for me or for you.

And it may feel completely off putting at first.

You may be like, ugh, I can't even believe that I'm saying these words.

They feel completely foreign and untrue.

But I encourage you to stick with it and see what it feels like over time.

Because over time, again, we've spent many years, probably many decades probably believing negative narratives about ourselves.

So it's going to take a while for that to transition in your mind and in your body to feel differently for you.

Um, I also recommend to clients to put these, like, around your mirror.

Like you can write them on some sticky notes and put them up around on your mirror in the bathroom while you're getting ready, or you can put them on your computer at work, or if you work at home, around your computer.

So there's somewhere where you are going to be consistently and can see on a consistent basis.

So those are affirmations.

The next thing that I think can be helpful is to focus on what your body does for you instead of how it looks.

So this is something that I've been incorporating into a lot of the guided meditations that we've been doing is thinking about for yourself, what are the things that my body actually does?

What are the functions that my body provides for me?

Thinking about our feet, like, where do our feet go?

Where have they carried me?

They are, if we are standing up, they are the thing that is connecting me to the earth and they are supporting my weight.

And they are part of the system, the full system that carries me from one place to another.

If we think about our hands, what are all the things that our hands do?

I don't even think I could list all the things that my hands do on an even in one given day.

Our hands are so integral to what we are able to do.

I know Some people may not have hands, but our limbs or any part of our body that helps us do the things that we need to do throughout our day are so important.

Our wombs, as women are hugely integral to who we are and how we function.

Our, you know, flow and cycle of hormones, the ability to produce life.

It's not required that you have, you know, created a life and given birth to feel the energy of just what it could mean to create life, the ability to actually do that.

And if you are not somebody who has been able to do that, that is also okay.

Like, we are all given that life breath in us through just being the people that are living and so really finding reverence to whatever your body is capable of doing.

Our bodies do a million things, probably a billion, trillion things a day that we don't even think about at all.

We breathe, we.

Our heart beats.

Like, how crazy is it that our heart literally beats from I don't know how many weeks it is of pregnancy of when the heart actually starts to beat, but it's pretty early on.

So even before we are like a full human, like, before we are fully even, like, developed into a fetus, we have a heartbeat, and that heart beats until we die.

And I just think that's crazy.

Like, that is a really strong muscle that just never quits and is there with us through our whole life, which is really cool.

And, you know, our brains.

Our brains are amazing.

They can do almost anything.

We have created our whole world with human brains.

I mean, there's just endless things that you could think about that your body does for you.

But I think it brings a different reverence to who we are and what our bodies can do and how we function from one day to the next.

If we are thinking about our functions, another thing that can be helpful is being aware of other people's bodies in public spaces.

I remember going to my kiddos swimming lessons when we first started going to the YMCA and feeling actually pretty negatively about my body in my postpartum period.

And we can talk a lot more about postpartum as a transition period for bodies in a different episode.

But it's a hard time.

It's a really hard time for women as your body has changed so much and will continue to change and will be changed forever.

And so I was feeling, you know, pretty down about the state of my body.

And yet there are so many different body types in our world and so many women that I'm sure had similar thoughts as I did, but were out there, they were wearing bathing suits, they were with their kids and they were getting in the water and they were just doing their thing.

And I just remember feeling, and still feel to this day how amazing that is.

I was like, yeah, we are all just out here doing our best, getting through our days in the bodies that we have.

And that means showing them in spaces that we may not feel overly comfortable sharing them in.

But, you know, we do it because it's important.

Most of the, at the ymca, mostly it's because of kids that we're there to enhance our kids learning and development and bonding with them.

And I think it's great that there has been a movement for moms to really just.

It's just like, just do it.

Just get in there.

Just be part of your kid's life and get in the water regardless of what you feel like in a bathing suit.

Because it's worth it.

It's worth it to have that time and those memories instead of sitting on the sidelines.

But I think it's really important to just be aware of the bodies that are around you, because most of the bodies around us are.

They are not what is in a magazine.

And even if, you know, you see somebody that is thin that maybe would, quote, unquote, have the standard of beauty that society is telling us we should have, everybody still has its imperfections.

Especially in the summertime if, you know, people are wearing tank tops and stuff.

Like, even the smallest women that I see, they still have some rolls underneath their bras or have, you know, some type of imperfection somewhere.

Like there are no bodies that are perfect, that are airbrushed and have nothing that society couldn't pick apart and say, well, this is a flaw.

And so I want to say, screw you, society, and let's just embrace that everybody is beautiful, everybody is whole, and everybody hopefully is healthy.

And that's all that matters.

So be aware of other people's bodies in spaces not as a way to criticize, but as a way to say, you know what, all bodies are beautiful.

And there are some really amazing people that don't have tiny bodies.

And that's okay.

That's absolutely okay.

My last thing that I will share with you as something to work on is, like I said, the industries out there really want you to be turning outward and looking for something that you buy in order to feel better about yourself.

And that is why the spaces that I'm in, I feel, are different.

Because I really believe that it's more about turning inward and becoming more embodied and becoming more reverent and loving to yourself.

And so creating a practice for yourself that allows you to create that intimate relationship with your body, with your soul, with your inner intuition, with your mind, that is what is going to help you feel like you are reclaiming those relationships to yourself.

So one again, it means working on how do we change the belief around you being enough that it's not, I'm not enough.

And so I need to find something else that tells me I'm enough that is outside of myself.

It's really working on changing that belief that I am a divine being because I am human.

And that is the only type of human that we have are divine enough humans.

Right from the beginning, you are enough right from when you are born.

It is not something that is earned.

And so cultivating a practice around that and working on how do I tune into myself that can be created through things like meditation, yoga, dancing.

I recently got into Oracle cards.

I think Oracle cards are really great.

Or you could also use tarot cards, journaling, breath work.

All those types of modalities are really helpful in developing your relationship to your inner self.

And when we develop that relationship to our inner world, then we're developing a more positive relationship with ourself, with our soul, with our inner voice and ultimately our bodies.

So I recommend doing that on a daily basis, if possible.

That's something that, again, in the sacred feminine space, doing some type of ritual in the morning, whether that's, you know, lighting a candle, kind of creating a little altar for yourself and putting on some spiritual music for yourself, doing an oracle card draw, doing some journaling, sitting in meditation, doing something like that.

I personally like to do yoga in the morning and then do a card draw or some meditation if I have time.

But I feel like in the limited time that I have, moving my body is the most beneficial.

And I also get some mindfulness through yoga.

So that has been kind of my specific thing that I try to do most mornings as part of my journey to continue to reclaim my relationship to myself and my body.

But finding something that works for you, where you can start your day from a place of reverence to myself, a place of grounding, a place of love and compassion for yourself, I think, really allows you to then engage with the world in a different way.

Once you then allow yourself to engage with the world, it helps discern that, like, I am who I am and I have a steady beat in who I am, and therefore I will not be pulled too far to one side or the other, that I can engage with the world in the way that makes sense for me and leave the stuff that doesn't.

So I think that's a really important practice.

I want to leave you just with the fact that you deserve to love your full self, including your amazing body.

We don't get told that enough, that we deserve to actually feel enough in ourselves and in our bodies.

So using these tools can be really helpful in doing that.

And if you are somebody who is really struggling with this, knows that this is a significant barrier to you being able to be sexual and intimate and need help in processing a lot of the different narratives and negativity that you have come across in your life, please Visit my website reclaimingstoriestherapy.com and we can do a 30 minute consultation to talk about what is going on for you and how I can possibly serve you in helping you work through that and gaining more embodiment and wholeness in yourself.

You can find me on Instagram at her on Top Pod.

You can also find me at Reclaiming Stories Therapy as well.

If you would be so kind to leave me a rating and review on whatever platform you are listening to, I would greatly appreciate that.

And as always, I welcome you back next time to listen to the next episode and I hope that these episodes are helpful in your journey towards reclaiming your body and your relationship to sex and intimacy.

And I will see you next time.

Sam Sa Sam Sa.