Our most personal challenge

Long gone are the epochs during which people tried to hide their body, considering it to be the center of impurity and temptations. Today, appearance is our calling card. The body is more expressive than our thoughts and beliefs. It speaks eloquently about our attitude towards ourselves in terms of the views that other people stop on us. And if our ancestors were more or less content with what they received from nature, today it is in our power to change our appearance, giving ourselves the look and shape that we like. However, between the fashion for an impeccable appearance and the freedom to choose one’s own image, between the cult of the image and self-love, a balance is needed: only then can the body, our constant companion on this earth, become our helper and friend.

“Every morning, when I enter the bathroom, it’s like rediscovering my own body,” admits 33-year-old Katerina. – And two years ago it was an absolutely alien, heavy burden for me … Over these two years, I lost thirty-two kilograms. Previously, we existed separately – me and this shapeless, heavy block, which I could not consider my own. The people around looked at me with pity or hostility, but this is not the main reason that made me lose weight: I incredibly wanted to become light again, run, climb to our fourth floor without shortness of breath, look in the mirror with pleasure. So far, I can’t say that the body has become my dear, close friend, but I feel that we are already on the way to reunification.

Paradoxically, today, when only impeccable faces and bodies look at us from TV screens, magazine pages and advertising posters, talk about the need for unconditional self-acceptance is heard louder and louder. “Of course, it’s good to accept yourself the way you are, but on the condition that you liked yourself from the very beginning,” says 46-year-old Leonid. – Personally, I was just born again at the age of 30, when I corrected my nose. Every time I looked in the mirror, I felt like I was seeing someone else. Because of this huge crooked nose, I seemed somehow insidious, secretive … The exact opposite of what I really am! And I wanted the nose to be in harmony with my face and character. To reconcile a person with his appearance is one of the tasks of aesthetic surgery, confirms the famous French plastic surgeon Sydney Ohana, partner of the Rhana clinic in Moscow.

Conversely, psychoanalysis confirms, a body that is mistreated by its owner is a body that has never been loved. “The attitude of a mother towards her child – the way she looked at him, hugged him, was gentle or cold with him – is a determining factor,” explains psychoanalyst Martine Teillac. – By thinking, working on your personal history, you can find a clue, realize the reason for not loving yourself, and then make an attempt to come to terms with yourself. Indeed, in fact, the obsessive desire to receive approval from others is nothing more than a search for someone whose attention we once so severely lacked.

In addition to those who hate or, on the contrary, are crazy about themselves, there are many people in whom their own body does not cause any emotions or is constantly criticized. Salvation for many of them can be a positive view from the outside, which will help to come to terms with themselves. The clearest example is women who feel better about themselves after they feel wanted. “I have always been unhappy with myself,” admits 35-year-old Dina. – I found a lot of flaws in myself: small breasts, full hips … And so on until I passionately fell in love. It was some kind of element – only then I realized how generously I was able to give and receive pleasure. How can I not love my body now, which gives me such happiness?

Rewrite draft

The body embodies us physically, vividly telling about the way of life we ​​lead, what difficulties we experience. “The way we take care of him, nourish him, please him, shows how we get along with ourselves,” says psychotherapist Svetlana Arkhipova. “We can blow the dust off of ourselves and at the same time treat our body very hard, like an animal that needs to be tamed.”

Starvation diets, hours of exhausting exercise, hardware procedures – all this is aimed at keeping our recalcitrant body in check, correcting the “draft” given to us by nature. The other extreme is not to think about your health, nutrition, lifestyle at all. It’s like two sides of the same coin – a bad attitude towards your own body. And even if the first way to torture him is socially more acceptable, both extremes mean the same thing: the body for its owner is an adversary that must be defeated or rejected.

And here’s something else you should not forget: there is a difference between the image of our body (as we imagine it) and itself. If the first (image) can be looked after like a favorite flower, then the second requires constant contact with our inner world. “To be aware of yourself, you need to feel your body,” said the founder of body-oriented psychotherapy, Alexander Lowen. “If we treat the body badly, then we don’t feel it, we don’t live in it, and therefore we can’t provide it with the care it needs.”

Body and mind are one

A living mechanism (as medicine sees it), our body does not intend to remain soulless. This is evidenced by the growing popularity of the psychosomatic approach to the treatment of diseases, today’s mass passion for yoga and other Eastern practices. Psychoanalyst Serge Tisseron believes that even phenomena such as piercings, tattoos, or the abundance of hypersexual bodies in advertising and show business are all harbingers of a return to our body culture in its full dignity. “He was kept at a distance for a long time,” he analyzes. “Today, for the first time in Western culture, we are ready to view the workings of the mind as an extension of our own body.”

It turns out that today we are less and less ready to be divided into two parts – the so-called pure mind and primitive, downtrodden, forgotten flesh. This sharp opposition between body and mind begins to gradually smooth out in favor of a more harmonious concept of the human being.

And this means that we will finally be able to perceive our body as it really is – not a machine and not an object of worship, but a worthy partner whom we will hear and respect. Perhaps this is the most personal challenge that we should answer.

And try to find a balance between exactingness and indulgence towards yourself.