I love learning about bodies. Whether it is about the brutality of black bodies or, in this case, how we come to understand our body. In this workshop, I had the pleasure of dissecting how I’ve come to know my body through food, exercise and words. After this workshop, I came away with the understanding that accepting your body as whole is a dance.

I love my body and fully accept it as it is. I haven’t always been able to say this. For a long time, I thought my body was a dirty and ugly vesicle, unwanted and forgettable. I haven’t always been confident and it was an arduous process to get a place where I can fully claim and praise my body. I realized that once I gave my body meaning (more importantly, acknowledging that God had already given my body meaning), there was a shift in the way I carried myself. No longer did I worry about what others thought of my body, no longer did I question how attractive my body, no longer was body about politics, sex or their economy. It was simple purposeful.

I’ve always been different. Additionally, I’ve known that I was suppose to me different. But, when you are surrounded by people who don’t look like you or value your body, it is hard to see its diversity as beautiful. When I accepted the fact that God made be to be distinguished and extraordinary, it was easier to see that a ordinary body, mind or soul was something I never wanted.

While the details of this workshop are of little importance, the affirmation that I received from the fellow attendees is what this workshop meaningful.

I can confidently shout that I love my body but that doesn’t exclude me from the doubt, micro-aggression, racism, and sexism that my body receives to diminish its purpose. I know that coming to the specific and recognizing  my power has allowed me to continuing dancing a new dance with myself.

Last Tuesday I went to the Love Your Body workshop to learn more about how we perceive our bodies. I think that in today’s social media age, it is really hard to to feel good about your body. We are always surrounded by advertisements and movies where everyone looks like a model and we begin to think that is the norm. In reality, those people spend hours working out and dieting. Even then, there is usually a lot of Photoshop involved to make them look like what we think is “perfect”.

This workshop taught me a lot about how food relates directly to body image. The interesting part was that even the foods that we liked had much more meaning behind them and they usually related to experiences or feelings that we have had in the past. We did one exercise where we talked about what our favorite food was when we were children and why we thought that was our favorite food. The workshop leader, Lyn Staack, mentioned how when she was a child and got to pick her birthday dinner, she picked what she thought was her favorite food. But thinking back to it now, she realized she would pick a food that she liked but also would make sure that it was a food that her sister didn’t like. It was interesting to see how much experiences in our past our feelings towards people influence what we eat now.

We also did an activity where we physically posed in a position of our favorite activity. Some people posed like they were running, or reading, or doing yoga. Doing these poses also brought on a lot of feelings for some people that made them remember what it was like to do these activities, or a time when they did these activities the most. For example, people that posed like they were running were brought back to when they did track in high school.

Overall this workshop was really interesting and I’m glad that I went!

For a long time I thought that loving your body meant accepting that very few people look like the perfect slim “sexy” bodies portrayed in the media. And while this is true, and important, it’s not all there is to it. Later I learned that loving your body also means filling yourself nutritious, healthy foods, making time for fun, stress relieving exercise, and giving your body and mind a break every now and then. This means getting enough sleep, eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, and doing physical activities that you enjoy.

In the bustle of a semester at Cornell it is easy to neglect these things, but this workshop reminded me to love my body and to make time for these things. It also reminded me to be honest and positive towards myself.

I really enjoyed the exercise at the end where we had an opportunity to draw a picture of ourselves and pick out the things we liked about ourselves. It was a really positive way to end the workshop.

Last week’s workshop, Love Your Body, was not my favorite in particular; however, it expressed one key fact: Loving yourself has much to do with know who you are.

Taking the time to know who I am I believe will boost my confidence in, and love for, my entire existence. Lyn Staack really connected loving oneself to understanding our entire existence – our physical form, the complexities of how the body works, our interactions with world issues, our interactions with different types of people and their ideologies, our interactions with our families, and most importantly, our interactions with ourself.

While those are a lot of things to consider it is important that every day I live, I explore these interactions and my existence. Why? Well, otherwise it will be a lot more difficult to love myself…Right?

Being body conscious is now a natural part of society because of the media presented all around us. We’re constantly being subjected to advertisements and commercials that try to define beauty which at times creates unhealthy obsessions. These companies brand and advertise to have everyone think that there is always a way to make themselves better or more beautiful given this one product, even if the person is perfectly happy and healthy. This was the subject around our discussion within the workshop, Love Your Body, hosted by Lyn Staack.

It was a very interesting and informative session. We talked about how society shapes how we look at ourselves, but more so how little things in our lives can affect us carrying forward. We had a discussion about our favorite food, and not only how we liked it because of the taste, but why that food became our favorite. For most it was deeply tied into ones childhood, and how the situations of the time changed our perspectives.

Afterwards, we also had a small drawing exercise where we drew ourselves and labelled things that we liked about  ourselves. It was a pretty healthy activity to look at yourself and instead of honing in on the flaws, look at everything you should be happy for. It was a great talk and workshop that showed everyone that we’re all beautiful in one way or another.

I struck my familiar pose of running. My fingers tingled in anticipation. My breathing slowed and calmed. The tension fell from my neck, to my back, to my legs all the way down to the floor as it left my body. I was calm, ready, and I was powerful.

Yesterday I attended the Love your body workshop. My take away from the workshop was the above scene, where we had to replicate our form of exercise. I chose running, as it is something I do to de-stress, relax, and the stay happy. Yet when I chose the pose, it was amazing how quickly my emotions changed. I felt transported back to high school, when I would toe the starting line before a race. All the emotions of racing – the excitement, the calm, the readiness – were present years later, in a library room on West campus.

This power pose helped me feel more confident and powerful. I enjoyed the event, and urge anyone who reads this to try to find their power pose. Its amazing how a simple pose can change your state of mind of the better.

Tonight’s workshop was held by Lyn Staack, the Youth Community Educator at the Advocacy Center.  She instructed us to share our thoughts towards food, body, and exercise with a partner.  At first, I did not realize the social and cultural connections between our favorite childhood food and personhood.  As Lyn continued with her poem reading and commentary, I started to see how the outside world, especially the media, could influence how we eat, how we act, and how we see our body.  She also asked us to act out how we exercise and think about what we feel about the pose.

The workshop challenged me to think about why we perceive our body a certain way and why we put certain food in our body.  A more important aspect of body image is how we react to other people’s opinions.  Do you avoid certain foods because of the stereotypes?  Do you eat certain foods only because of your family?  Would you change your diet or exercise routine if only your personal desires are taken into consideration?  These are some questions to be answered when you think about your body.  Ultimately, are you happy with your body and who you are?

Tonight’s talk was exciting because it had potential to make me feel very vulnerable or really empowered. I find it difficult to openly discuss body issues because there’s no metaphor to imagine — our bodies are right there in the open, the “elephants” in the room (only joking). That’s why I wish we had more time to get to know the people in this group. It’s difficult to be honest about my body image to myself, and it’s even harder to try to communicate my thoughts in front of strangers.

The talk was divided into Food, Exercize, and Body. Through these topics, we learned how the first step to loving your body is FEELING your body. The coolest exercise for me was drawing my full body and writing things I liked about myself. I did not think it would be such a challenge. The problem wasn’t coming up with things I liked or didn’t like about myself… it was openly “sharing” it with the group by writing it down. I felt uncomfortable writing down that I liked the way butt looked, or the shape of my eyebrows. I had trouble honestly drawing the outline of my thighs. I was constantly censoring myself from myself and others.

I hope to continue to be aware of my body, and notice what I am happy with. Like Lyn Staack said, although you can’t change a lot of things in this world, you can stand a little taller. This simple-sounding yet bold move can change how you feel, and you and other people will notice the difference.

As I opened the red message box on Facebook from my (now ex) boyfriend and slowly read “We need to talk” I already knew it was over. An over that I needed badly after being in a brief, but nonetheless verbally offensive relationship. He broke up with me (both as he said and as I perceived) because I was too fat.

Despite having such a (no pun intended) growing body of friends, family, and overall people that loved me and saw past my physicality and loved all aspects of my psychical being, the words from a partner hurt more and still vibrate a month after the break up. It vibrates when, after he muttered the words “I don’t go to the gym to date a fat girl”, my tics from childhood came back – shaking my foot up and down in a restless leg syndromic way, and biting my cuticles until they bled. Tics that had been around since my cousin passed away when I was 6. Tics that my psychologist from CAPS said existed because of my bi-polar and ADHD tendencies. Tics that I learned were non-verbal cues that told people I was a ticking time bomb – “Oh I just thought you were an overall anxious/antsy girl”.

This was all I could think about when Lyn asked us to pose in the position of activity you do the most. Even posing caused anxieties to flare up. And even writing this post I had to bandaid a finger after chewing away at my cuticles for the past hour remembering all the hurtful things I had to erase from the past month.

Why do I share such an intimate story to a group of Rose Scholar bloggers?

Because nobody should have to go through the verbal abuse that I went through. A verbal abuse that went on months too long, and completely destroyed any body positivity I had accumulated. Especially at Cornell, physicality is treasured and those who don’t fit into that trove are casted out.

Because I know how it feels like to be told you’re not enough and to somehow find the strength to see past the pain right now.

Because he has not stopped me from fully embracing and going to small sessions called “Love Your Body”.

Because during the session, when Lyn told us to draw yourself, I didn’t know she meant draw your body too.

Because as I stood there, the only one with a face portrait, and was asked to point out five things they love about their physical self, I couldn’t think of one.

Because this is the last time I want to speak of him and let his hurtful words influence anything I do.

Because I spend time out of my day (instead of studying) trying to find posts online from people who have went through this type of physical negation.

So that I can resist the urge to message him again.

‘Because if you ever find yourself explaining to someone your value, you have already forgotten your worth…‘

So to anyone fighting for their right to live in their homes; their bodies, please read below:

http://latinarebels.tumblr.com/