Bodies and Respect and Choices

This may not be as finished as I would like, however, I wanted to blog. I may not express myself as well as I should like to, but I am making a choice!

Some of my students did a very silly thing in another class.......not only did they copy work from the previous year, they also added some very sexist comments to the powerpoint slide. Every year I do at least one class on the place of women in the workplace, and also society, and this fell just at the right time. I then went on further, and gave them some articles to read about a remarkable woman Camila Batmanghelidjh. www.independent.co.uk/ne
ws/uk/crime/ive-got-kids-w
ho-sleep-with-knives-under
-their-pillows-834553.html www.guardian.co.uk/socie
ty/2007/oct/10/guardiansoc
ietysupplement.childrensservices

We then discussed the woes of society, and what could be done to help. Yes, I know I am supposed to be teaching them Business English; however I do have a sound pedagogical base for my methods....once they have discussed such difficult things, then business English is a piece of cake!

Soo, where does that get us. One thing that is clear from the articles is how removed from their bodies (and society) these kids are. Having been abused, so horrifically, they often continue to abuse themselves, with drugs etc. And they do not respect themselves. How could they, they have been disrespected in the worst way. Here I come back to Sophrology, and Dr Caycedo saying that society is now very ill, and I have to agree. And that these kids are not "conscious" or aware of their bodies. They can't be. It has been necessary to cut of their awareness of themselves in order to survive. How can they respect anything when they themselves have been so "dissd" This does not make it any easier for their victims, when their learnt responses leads to another act of violence. And for those who are touched by it. I don't have an answer here, for those damaged souls.

So where does that take me? Well, the distance between being conscious of our bodies, respecting them, and really owning them. Let's look at society, and what do we see. Unreality! Airbrushing women whose heads become larger than their hips.......cosmetic surgery, increasingly for men as well as women.... the oversexualisation of women, reducing them to objects, as seen in my students actions above.....the oversexualisation of men too, putting unreal expectations on them, six packs, constantly virile........the abolition of childhood.....no good clean dirt, learning your bodies limits, through play.......too dangerous, too risky leading to too too bland!

And then this morning, I started to re read Stephen Covey's the 8th habit. So far it is talking about choices. Scary things choices. It means that we are responsible for ourselves. We can't argue that a big boy or girl "made" us do something and then ran away. We are free to chose. And quite often we don't make the right choice. If we had always done so, well, we wouldn't be here, to be quite brutal. If we had made the right choices we would have eaten less and exercised more.

We, or at any rate I, are removed from out bodies. I continue to make choices that disrespect my body. I've just looked at a photo taken on my 40th birthday. I'll be 53 next week. I was coming out of anorexia at the time. So I'm quite slim. According to the BMI I was really healthy. But I wasn't. That doesn't stop me looking at the photo, and dreaming of getting back to that weight. Not realistic. Not healthy.

So the bottom line for me. If I truly respect my body, I shall take better care of it. I shall make choices, and one of those choices is to let go of the perfecionism, to stop beating myself up for the mistakes. To stop letting the past rob me of the present, and above all of my future. I am working on choosing to accept the body I have, and therefore owning it, and then choosing to do what is necessary to repect my body more.

I am becoming concious of my body, and the choices I make concerning my body. I chose to respect myself.