Falling Forward Part 5

So, here I am. Months after my initial fall. And I am busy every day LOVING my body through its process of healing. Some days that means holding the space for the little girl in me to be sad or frustrated or even afraid. My life has changed, and I cannot know what that will mean tomorrow – or even a few years down the road. What I CAN know, however, is that I am willing to create enough self-love and self-care every day to love my body and honor it – even through limited mobility, or pain, or discord. My body is my HOME, and I love it no matter what. For today, that means that I am willing to embrace physical therapy to be as STRONG as I can and to create an energy of healing all around me.

What I have learned louder than anything, is that my body needs to move for my emotional well being. I am naturally a vibrant and happy woman – I have done a TON of inner work to be able to say that with conviction – and exercise makes me even happier. I KNOW that I will always create a life with movement and exercise – whatever that may mean at the time. Right now, it may mean swimming instead of aerobics, and when I’m eighty, it may mean chasing my partner down the hall in my walker. But whatever it is as each day unfolds, movement makes my life richer, and for that I am grateful. I will get back there, and patience is key. Thank you God and body for allowing me to practice patience. How are you being patient with your body today?

Laura Fenamore, CPCC and Body Image Mastery Mentor
Laura@LauraFenamore.com
http://www.LauraFenamore.com

Fat Chance – Two Tips to Navigating Tricky Holiday Horrors for Food Addicts

For some, having a happy holiday may as well be called, “fat chance.” It seems that no matter how hard we work to insulate ourselves against the issues of our childhood and the home and family who reared us, the tunnel from Thanksgiving to New Years is a mine field loaded with hidden traps, double agents and slim chance of survival without self-destructing or ripping open old wounds and old injuries.

How are we to protect ourselves from harm and mental injury? Do we amputate our past and the people in it? Are we to avoid holidays and celebrations altogether? Perhaps, but at what cost? These are your holidays, and if managed carefully, YOU can create new traditions of love and family.

You DO bring the most wonderful ingredient to that new recipe, after all. That would be YOU!

Your holiday season can look however you want it to. You can bring a healing and vibrant heart and rock solid self-love.

So what is next? And what will your roadmap look like this season of Peace and Love?

As a Body Image Mentor, if I were to offer only two tools to use to build a beautiful, magical holiday this year, they would be support and planning.

Tip #1 = Support Support, Support and more Support. Do you get the picture? Remember, you are building a new experience with the holidays – one where food will not be a double agent – appearing as comfort and haven, but underneath only offering guilt, shame, and blame.

Your new building needs strong supports. It needs a long list of like-minded travelers who will listen, laugh and help you through the rough moments. If you can literally bring one of those people with you to events and places that feel more like combat zones than “home,” that would be terrific. If that’s not possible, perhaps there’s one person at home who does support you. Let them be your oasis. Do not focus on those with whom you must "work” to earn approval or love. Stick with your support person, no matter what.

Before the holidays even begin, start to talk about your fears and your pitfalls with others who walk the same path. Finally, remember that there is an endless stream of love and a strong foundation running through our Earth, through our universe, through every cell of your body. You are a precious child of this life force, and all the support you need is present if you find yourself feeling isolated, or even abandoned, in rough enemy territory.

Tip #2 = Planning Okay, here’s where the real work starts. First of all, plan your food. PLANNING IS POWER. Call ahead, ask what will be served. Bring something you feel good about eating that is in your plan just in case nothing at the party or event works for you. You are not a victim of anything that you choose to do, or any place you choose to go. Do not put yourself at risk to binge, purge or starve. This is the most basic and self-loving action you can embrace.

Next, have an escape hatch and get-out-of-jail free card, even if it’s only for a few minutes. (A loving exit strategy is your highest goal, of course). Have a vehicle or a rescue squad at the ready. Remember, one person might let you down, but a squad, well now you’re talking!

At the very least, feel free to step away from an uncomfortable situation and call someone you feel safe talking to. Keep calling people to reach someone on the other end of the phone. People want to connect with other people and often we are helping the person we are calling just as much as they are helping us. Go to a nearby quiet café haven to retreat, if things get crazy. You can always retire to a quiet room (I have been known to hang out in bathrooms or closets, wherever I can get quiet space), and pray or read some centering affirmations or a spiritual book. Remember food for the soul is what will sustain and nurture you.

These are the basics. They are only the basics. They are the absolute minimum that all of us should consider and achieve if we plan to truly enjoy our holidays for 2008. And why not? The Earth is revolving, and we will not see these days again. By filling our two hands with these two tools, we will find ourselves empowered to keep the food in its right place. A place of healthy sustenance. To fuel us from one beautiful day to the next, creating a lifetime of holidays and celebrations strung together on the golden threads of self-love, self-care, service and camaraderie.

Here is what I want for you.

On January 1st, 2009, I want you to look back at Holiday Season 2008 and say, “This holiday season was like no other!” It was the best holiday season ever because I stood up for myself and for my needs; I followed my heart, said “no” when I needed to, and took better care of myself than ever before. I did things differently this past holiday season, and as uncomfortable as it was for me at times, I did it anyway. I enter this new year feeling freer and better about myself.

That is what I want for you.

I invite you to get started now!

In health,

Laura Fenamore, CPCCBody Image Mastery Mentor
www.LauraFenamore.com

www.BodyImageMastery.blogspot.com

Four Steps to Being Inspired to Exercise

Our bodies are magnificent instruments. Almost without any effort they operate day after day, year after year. They digest, they move, they smell, they feel and they breath. The air we breath. There is nothing in life as simple and as profound as the air we breath. The average person could probably live four to six weeks without food and an average of ten days without water. But air. Air is a completely different story.

We must replenish our air supply millions of times a day. Every breath is the food of life. It is how our cells renew themselves. In fact, oxygen is even a key ingredient in weight loss. Our bodies simply cannot metabolize fat without oxygen and water. It is no accident that our magical bodies, when asked to work harder, demand more oxygen. Energy is metabolized when we work out, and it needs oxygen for the process to work. The more we move, the more air we need. But how do we find the inspiration to ask our bodies to work harder to begin with? That’s the million-dollar question.

For some of us, exercise is a love affair, but for others, it is a chore, or not part of our lives at all.
The very word inspire, broken down to its Latin roots, means to give breath. So finding a team of supporters to inspire us, as we make a renewed effort toward every-day movement and self-care is irreplaceable. It can mean the difference between success and failure as we try to create a life of physical activity and health. Why not build your own team of supporters? A small team. Your personal team can include friends, coworkers, relatives, a trainer at the gym – anybody can be part of the group that in-spires you to claim your right to be healthy and live longer. Next, build a plan around that team.

Try following this four-step recipe for your new life:

Step 1. Invite the RIGHT people to be on your team. Remember, this is the team to INSPIRE you. Don’t ask anyone to join who has a history of criticizing or demeaning you. For this effort to work you will want to choose upbeat, motivated team members who you genuinely enjoy spending time with. Consider inviting those friends you love, but rarely have free time to see.

Step 2. Pick a specific day of the week to MOVE with each member of the team. By setting up these four “inspired movement” sessions, you will not only feed your body, but your soul with thank you too. FOUR days a week, you will have one hour with someone you enjoy and feel encouraged by. Maybe Monday morning is a friend from the gym, and Wednesday evening is your spouse. By setting specific times, you become accountable not only to yourself, but also to your teammate.

Step 3. Plan activities that you enjoy. This sounds simple, but with a friend, exercise becomes playtime again! Saturday speed walks and Thursday racketball. Maybe one of your team members loves Yoga or swimming. It doesn’t matter what you do, just be inspired and get MOVING.

Step 4. Remember that breathing isn’t just about exercise. Pick a friend to really talk to. Talk about WHY you overate, your fears, your hopes for your new body. BREATH and open up to someone. Seek their inspired responses. Conspire with them to make NEW plans for your new life.

The Today Show recently did several shows on life expectancy that looked specifically at men and women living past NINETY years old, who were still healthy. Dr. Thomas Perls, Director of the New England centenarian study stated clearly that part of how long we live is based solely on LIFESTYLE CHOICES. (You can see how your own choices effect your lifespan at www.eons.com.) He stated that exercise is HUGE to a healthy life and to subtract at least FIVE years due to a lack of exercise. He went on to share that the three legs of a long life are: eating healthy, staying active, being social.

So creating a supportive, spirited support team not only turns exercise into fun, friend-filled breaks in your week, it also gives you more years to spend with those friends! This encouragement can truly help you to make the lifestyle changes necessary to live the good life and turn being physically fit into something you look forward to.

The truth is that we simply cannot have healthy bodies without consistent exercise and movement. Our hearts WANT to work. Why not start by choosing your team. You will be amazed at the support, friendship and intimacy you will discover by asking those four people to help you on your new road to health and wellness.

To your inspired life! Laura Fenamore
Body Image Mastery Mentor
www.LauraFenamore.com

The Prioritization of Self – Every-Day Exercise

Creating global sustainability has become, thankfully, far more than a buzz word. As a people, we are, thankfully, concerned with being respectful of our beautiful, generous home, the planet Earth. After all, without an Earth, where would we live? Sounds simple, right? How ironic that so many of us overlook our more personal home, our own bodies. We must ask ourselves the same simple question: Without a body, where would we live?

Every day, we prioritize everyone and everything before we “treat” ourselves to a good walk or an aerobics class. We act as though movement is a luxury to be earned after our work is finished and the dishes are put away. All week long, we drive our kids from one activity to another, while we literally sit behind the wheel of the car, growing our bodies bigger and bigger, and our personal sustainability more and more unlikely.

My life call, and my occupation, are tied to body image, but that doesn’t necessarily make hitting the gym any easier. Like everyone, my schedule is jam packed. I have clients I mentor, courses I teach, books and articles to write – every single day – not to mention friends, family, and public speaking engagements. But like a loving parent, I cannot speak to my clients endlessly about the prioritization of self and the importance of exercise without living those values. Hypocrisy does not sit well with me.

But what are we to do differently? The to do list is endless, and day after day, so many truly important things just don’t seem to happen. Free time feels more like an oxymoron than a goal.

The simple and encouraging reality though is that the time you invest in caring for yourself, especially exercise, not only comes back to you at the end (exponentially, in fact), but it frees you from countless sorrowful hours you would have spent on illness and pure exhaustion from being inactive and overweight.

Your choice is literally the gym or the doctor.

Today, love yourself so much that you choose personal sustainability, and stay HERE, alive and thriving for many years to come.

Make every-day exercise your NUMBER ONE priority. CHOOSE to stick around long enough to do that “to do” list. In fact, why not add a few things to it.


Encouragingly yours,
Laura Fenamore
CPCC and Body Image Mastery Mentor
www.LauraFenamore.com

Waves of Doubt

Probably the hardest thing that we deal with in our lives is doubt. Oh sure, we go through enormously difficult situations – we lose jobs, we lose loved ones, we get sick, the list of hardships can be mind boggling.

But doubt is probably the most difficult hardship to conquer. It can literally come from nowhere and can feel like the snake in the garden, winding itself sneakily through our joys and our confidences. It can attach itself to our best relationships and undermine our finest moments.

Before his death, Socrates once described pleasure and pain as two sides of the same coin, saying that one could hardly live without the other. I wonder if we too easily cast doubt into the same pot as pain and disregard its enormous value to us as human beings. If we can accept doubt as part of our life process of faith, we can see that they are literally the yin and yang of one thing, rather than being at odds with one another.

Doubt and Faith. I suppose we much too easily believe that the opposite of love is hate or apathy. When in truth, the thing at odds with deep love is that undermining thread of doubt. Like the Buddha says though, life is suffering, and if we can accept that it is so, we can simply ride the wave of life and love each part, each experience, even the painful ones. They are part of our human adventure, and they make the beautiful all the more rich. And the wisdom and compassion that is born out of pain is immeasurable. So how can it be bad?

The waves of doubt in our love stories is no different. They are natural, they are human. We have not caused them, nor can we prevent them. But if we accept that this is as it should be, we can ride them. We can ride the ups and downs of our deep loves and know that they are beautiful and strong. The doubt is not bad.

The truest loves, in fact, are simply not the waves. They are the ocean. So deep and so strong that the tossing waves are only on the surface. Underneath, they are flowing, beautiful currents.

As human beings those waves of doubt will run through everything worth loving. They will run through our relationships, they will run through our efforts to love ourselves. They will ripple from our birth to our death, and even have the audacity to touch our experience with the Great Creator. We will doubt It’s love for us and our own right to exist. We will wonder what this life IS.

If we are able, however, to ride those waves with some expertise, the depth of love is always there to enfold us. This is the yin and yang of love. IF we allow it, we will grow to know that it cannot exist except with a love worth doubting. We are supposed to question the things of worth. We are literally born to question life itself.

Love is the one thing that joins us. It leaps tall prejudice in a single bound. It conquers speeding apathy with a word. It breaks all threads of division – race, religion, nationality, sexuality – LOVE is the great bond rising above all of those things. So bring on the doubt. I will know you, doubt, by your fruit, and for that reason, I will welcome you.


To your health, Laura Fenamore, CPCC, Body Image Mastery Mentor
http://www.blogger.com/Local%20Settings/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.IE5/BITMSETR/www.LauraFenamore.com

I LOVE MY BREASTS

In case you haven’t heard, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. TODAY, before you do anything else, go to http://www.armyofwomen.org and register to support the mission to fight breast cancer. I am happy to support Dr. Susan Love who is up to great stuff with finding a cure for the problem.

I love my breasts! I can say that with pride today.

That wasn’t always the case though.
I can honestly say I hated my breasts for many years.
I hated them. And I have come full circle. I love them now.

When I was fat, they were huge and saggy. I did not get the perky breasts that my other sisters got. I got the saggy ones, and I was pissed off about that. Later, when I released my excess weight, (100 lbs. at age 25), I had smaller and saggier breasts. Along with the weight, I lost the elasticity in my breasts. I used to make my breasts the villains -- wrong for being saggy, wrong for not being perfect.

10 years ago I went to a doctor due to an abnormal mammogram. With a history of cancer in my family, that is nothing to take lightly. Courageously, I opened myself up to this doctor for her support and her strength regarding my health, instead she took that opportunity to say that I was a “great candidate” for breast implants. She may as well have said, “Laura, your breasts are an embarrassment to society.” While those were not her words, that was definitely her message.

I remember leaving her office in shock, crying. It took me a long time to see that my reaction was normal. Doctors have a challenging job, but they are not taught compassion and love in med school. I have done a lot of healing around the thoughtlessness of this doctor, and am gifted to actually laugh about her words now. As I write this, I feel guided to send her this post so she might realize that the impact of her words is not necessarily only skin deep.

I know now that this doctor was a catalyst for me to come to peace with my gorgeous breasts. Her criticism put me in touch with my own disapproval and self hatred of that part of my body. In forgiving her, I was able to forgive myself. So this doctor was an angel in disguise. That is how I came full circle. Having two healthy breasts is a privilege! Today I can say I love my beautiful saggy breasts. Every time I see that cartoon with the woman with saggy breasts (Sylvia), I laugh and say, someone's got to have them and I love mine. I love my breasts and thank them everyday for being healthy. Visit www.cartoonstock.com/directory/s/sag.asp for a great laugh!

The area I live in, Marin County, has one of the highest rates of breast cancer in California and in the country. I often see women in the grocery stores and at the gym with kerchiefs covering their heads and I silently say a prayer, blessing them with love and praying for health and restoration to them. In an instant it puts any old remnants of my old saggy breast conversation into perspective. To those of us who have had a life long history of healthy breasts, stay grateful. To those of you women reading this who are suffering or have suffered from breast cancer, I hold you in love and pray for total health and peace and restoration to you and your body.

Breasts represent nurturing and nourishment. I want you to nurture and nourish your health mentally, physically and spiritually. You need it, your sisters need it, your daughters need it and mother earth needs it. Here is my October wish for you: That you can stand proud and naked in front of yourself in the mirror and shout out, I am perfect just the way I am and my breasts are beautiful exactly as they are.

To your health and beauty, Laura Fenamore, Body Image Mastery Mentor
www.LauraFenamore.com