How Will I Love My Body?
There is an increasingly prevalent, uniform perception of love lately.
As spiritual awareness rises and we invest more in ourselves, we simultaneously idealize this process and create lists of things we *should* be doing. In my previous writing, “Should Self-Love Be a Goal?”, I also touched on this topic. As long as self-love is treated as a goal—something we feel we must do right now, or think we should be doing—we’ll continue to deceive ourselves rather than truly love ourselves.
How can you love something that you don’t know, haven’t communicated with, and don’t understand? How can you claim to love something when you reject certain parts and only approve of the bits that suit you?
Because our relationships are always incomplete, we often end up loving only half of someone—the parts that make us feel good.
Most of us don’t even have a real sense of our own body; our nervous systems are asleep. We live so much in our minds, constantly designing, deciding, and planning, that the perception of everything below our head (the sense of proprioception) remains inactive. If I can’t feel my existence without doing anything, if I’m not grounded, connected to the world through the soles of my feet, this gives birth to a profound feeling of not belonging.
Not being able to be content with yourself, not being content with the world, with your energy constantly directed upward, unable to be fully present in the here and now... The body remains asleep, unable to merge with life, because it doesn’t recognize its internal space. I’m trying to love a place within myself that I cannot perceive. I’m trying to love only the external, the surface that I can see. But is my body just my hair, my face, my eyes, lips, legs, and hips? Is my body only the parts I can see? No. So, a complete love cannot occur.
You can’t love your body from the outside.
You can’t love your body through images or only from the surface of your skin.
You can’t love it in a one-dimensional way, focused purely on passion.
You need to first settle into your body, awaken the sensations within it, perceive your inner space, your internal volume, and your inner expanse. This is a very abstract ability that can only be experienced through lived experience. Because through movement, we can feel how the body organizes itself, how intricate the internal connections are.
You can’t experience these sensations through repetitive movements. Repetitive movements are purely mechanical; they are only form. They are imitation. In imitation, we cannot find real connection, nor can we grasp the integrity of our body (biotensegrity). To find wholeness, I need to be present there; I need to be fully engaged in the movement.
Falling into the body—calmly directing the mind inward—is a process. It requires letting go of many of our habits, leading us to a simpler, more grounded place that is difficult to settle into.
Turning toward the inner perception of our body is like stopping the constant repainting of a building’s exterior because of leaks and dampness, and instead, paying attention to the entire architecture—the rooms inside, the fine details of the corridors, and the foundations that hold the building up. In other words, it’s about getting to know our home. Not just looking at it from the outside and saying, “What a nice house,” but entering it, sitting down, settling in. Expanding within the home, knowing it from the inside.
Trying to love something you don’t know is the most exhausting effort.
Your body doesn’t need your love.
It only waits for you to get to know it “from the inside.”
When that starts to happen, love will naturally be present.
Love follows existence, and as long as you try to know yourself from the outside, you will keep hitting your limits, and it won’t feel right.
But as you continue to settle inward, you will stop trying to love your body,
And your body will teach you what love truly is.