On No Longer Defying my Own Body

Ever since I became more in tune with nature’s cycles and learnt more about the Celtic Wheel of the Year, I stopped making New Year’s resolutions. It didn’t feel natural, nor particularly motivating to set intentions when the natural world around us has gone within to rest and replenish. I do, however, start to nurture seeds of intention. And for 2025, one of those seeds is to do with my body.

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

I don’t know whether it’s because I’m gradually nearing sixty, or that 2024 saw me embracing more of my sacred feminine, or maybe it’s a mixture of both, but I’ve certainly been pushed to view my body and my relationship to it in a very different way. It all began with a shoulder injury back in April. I’d been having pains in my left arm since the beginning of the year, finding it more and more difficult to lift weights above my head and hold planks, but I fooled myself into thinking it was just a sprain and that my arm would ‘right’ itself in due course. But, no surprises, the pain didn’t go away and in fact it got worse to the point I could no longer lift my arm beyond my shoulder nor stretch it. Cue multiple visits to the chiropractor and strict instructions to avoid Body Pump, Box Fit classes and heavy weights. I was gutted and very annoyed at first because I loved my classes. Actually, I loved that they were keeping me ‘fit’ but, if I was being really honest, I didn’t love how exhausted and pushed to the limit they often made me feel.

Luckily, I could still swim and it was while I was doing my slow laps of the pool that I suddenly realised how much more pleasant this form of exercise is, and how much I’d pushed my body to excess over the years. Looking back, I know I’ve never really had a healthy, balanced relationship with my body. I’ve always struggled with my weight and I was made conscious of it at a very early age. My food intake was often monitored because apparently obesity ‘ran in the family’ and so: you don’t want to get fat, do you? This clearly stuck in my head because from that moment on, in one way or another, I was always conscious of my weight and body shape.

I joined a gym in my early twenties so I’ve done some form of regular, heavy-duty exercise for at least three decades. I’m well-acquainted with most of the equipment in a gym as well as free weights and bar bells. I’ve run half marathons, taken part in a duathlon and done numerous high intensity classes. Until recently, I dismissed yoga as a namby-pamby form of exercise – if it doesn’t get your heart rate up, it’s not ‘proper’ exercise. I was never really exercising for the endorphin rush – although that was a bonus – I was always exercising to keep the weight off and/or so I could allow myself a ‘treat’ or two. This strategy kind of worked until I hit peri-menopause and then failed drastically at menopause and beyond because try as I might, I could never shift the excess weight I’d put on.

It was only when injury forced me to slow down, that I really began to question the habit of a life-time. Did I really want to continue pushing my body to the limit? I guess the issue is that many of us – consciously or subconsciously – treat our bodies like objects. They become yet another thing in this largely out of control world that won’t do as it’s told or won’t behave as we want it to. And the more I can force it to look slimmer/stronger/younger, the more in control I feel. Many of the conversations I over-hear at my health club are about which gruelling workout or restrictive diet works best to beat our bodies into submission. But is this really the best way to go about things?

Thankfully, towards the end of last year, I finally decided to make peace with my body – the body that has faithfully carried me through many decades of my life despite all the criticism, rejection, frustration, restriction and downright bullying I’ve subjected it to over that time. I’m now learning to tune into my body more rather than forcing my mind’s will over it. I’m learning to be gentler with it, to honour it, to love it as it is rather than treating it like a stubborn being that won’t do as it’s told. These days you’ll find me in the yoga studio – yes, I realised the hard way that certain types of yoga are definitely not for namby-pambies! – or practising Tai Chi or doing slow, meditative laps up and down the pool. Day by day I’m beginning to feel more at peace with myself because I’m dialling down the internal struggle I had between my mind and body. I’ll always want to stay fit and healthy, but I’m realising there’s a better, more accepting way of doing that. So that’s one of my intentions for 2025 – to be kinder to my body, to treat it like the ally it is rather than a stubborn enemy.

Who else can relate?