Lockdown living for some has brought a liberating change of choosing comfort clothes over formal wear, relaxing hair and makeup routines or experimenting with different looks, colours and styles as going to the hairdresser was put on hold.
For others, it has raised concern about their weight or body shape and how it might have been affected by changes in their usual patterns and behaviours of exercise & eating.  And as we now transition our way into more social interactions again, many are worried about how others might judge them because of how their body looks.  
If you are feeling this way, then please know that you are not alone. It is important to understand that these feelings are not actually about how you look. Rather they relate to your perception, thoughts and feelings about how you look – your body image. 

4 Aspects of Body Image

There are 4 aspects to body image. Knowing these can help us understand our own sense of body image:

1. Perceptual Body image is the way you see yourself. This is not always a correct representation of what we actually look like. We can perceive ourselves to be bigger, or smaller than we actually are or to have a different shape than we actually do.
2. How you feel about the way you look is called your affective body image. That includes the things that you may like or dislike about your appearance, body shape or specific body parts.
3. Cognitive body image describes the thoughts and beliefs you have about your body. Examples of negative cognitive body image would be, ‘my body is disgusting’, ‘I would feel better about myself if I was a different shape’. 
4. When someone feels unhappy with how they look, then they may carry out certain behaviours that they believe will change their appearance or hide what they believe are their flaws (eg excessive exercise, disordered eating, missing social events, not being seen without full makeup). This is behavioural body image.

What lockdown has highlighted, or exacerbated, is a cycle of trying to change the outside in order to change the negative feelings and thoughts on the inside. This cycle can further deepen a sense of being ‘not good enough’ unless you look a certain way, further fuelling a belief that you will not be accepted by others unless you look a certain way. 

Changing Your Perspective

Things that may be helpful to improve your body image are;

• Focus on positive qualities, skills and talents that you have that are not related to how your body looks. ​​You are whole person, with many gifts to offer the world, not just a physical body.
• Practice finding things about your body that you like. This can be tricky to begin with but it gradually becoming easier. For example, you might recognise that you like your feet, and you are grateful for what they do for you, and where they take you. 
• Avoid comparing your body to others. All bodies are completely unique, as are you. We are different heights, bone structures, colours, postures and personalities. Accept your uniqueness and over time you can learn to embrace your body and appreciate that it is part of what makes you special.
• Make conscious decisions about what you read and look at. If something you read or watch leaves you feeling bad about your body, then turn over, mute or delete. Remember that a significant majority of images in the media are unrealistic, digitally altered and not true representations.

• Learn to trust that your body and you are on the same team. We can work WITH our body and gently shift postures that we adopt to deal with or hide uncomfortable feelings we have about our body. In doing so we can experience how it feels to be accepted by ourself first and foremost and to be seen as our whole true self. You may wish to use the short movement practice below as a starting point.

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For many of us, staying at home means we have more time available and more space in our day. Perhaps this offers an opportunity for us to do some of the things that we have been wanting, meaning, to do for some time. Perhaps instead this new found space and time offers up less of the distractions that we unconsciously create to shut out our inner critic, and we find we're unable to get away from the one person we don't want to be stuck with - ourself.

Too much time to think, too many changes to negotiate our way around and less interaction with others can be breeding grounds for our inner critic. We find ourselves self soothing in various forms - food, drink, binge watching - or creating new distractions to keep us away from ourself - cleaning what's already clean once more, visiting the supermarket 'just because', or online shopping for things we 'need'.

Now, this comes with no judgement from me - I get it! I seem to have cultivated a new passion for duvet covers and pillow cases that I didn't know I had! 

But I do also know what it feels like to be full of dislike for yourself and to sit with yourself when you'd rather run the other way. It takes courage. It IS challenging to self soothe in kind ways and to show ourself love and attention when we'd rather point out all our flaws and make a list of how and when to eradicate them. And it does take strength to notice who we ARE and accept all parts of Ourself. I also know that ultimately until we learn to do that then we will continue on the same old, same old cycle.

Now, let's be realistic, we don't make one big leap from disliking ourself to being filled with self love. That's a hell of a big ask I reckon. 

So, we start small! I've recorded and attached this short activity that you can try.  Just maybe it can help you can discover that actually some part of you is ok and worthy of some kindness. You may find that it feels nice to do this activity and you feel good for taking the time to look after you. Maybe it's the start of getting to know your body, building a relationship beyond the distractions and disconnection. Maybe you do it once and never again! But maybe it's the first step in making friends with yourself and being ok in your own skin.

You will need some hand cream, or lotion that you can rub into your skin. If you don't have anything like that at the moment then you could also use a couple of drops of olive oil or cooking oil.      

Life, as we know it at the moment, has limitations. The space that we each inhabit with our daily patterns and behaviours has decreased to a smaller range as we stay at home and reduce our interactions. We interact with screens and we spend most of our time in our living space. We cope with these limitations in our individual ways and we seek, and find, a new normality.

So too do we respond to these limitations by moving differently. As we go about our daily lives we express, respond and react with movement. We gesture, we habitually move from one place to the other, we move according to our emotions and to our interactions with others and the world around us. We move unconsciously in different ways and in different directions every single day of our life. So as we stay at home, living differently, our patterns of movement are changed, the variety of our movements are reduced, and, without being aware of it, we reduce the full expression of our self. Couple this with challenging feelings we may be experiencing as a result of lockdown, and we can find ourselves becoming stuck in uncomfortable patterns. How we feel affects how we move, and how we move affect how we feel.

What this means however, is that we can use movement to unstick our patterns and change how we feel. By consciously expanding our movement we can expand our expression again. By moving in different directions - bending / stretching, squatting/ reaching / rotating - we can bring back some of our 3D self again. We open into the space we are in, rather than locking into it. .
By moving through a few really simple movements we can shake off the physical feeling of lockdown that might be adding to already challenged emotions.
The attached video takes you through a short movement practice. It's 5 minutes long and opens and moves the body in 3 dimensions. You don't need any special clothes or kit, just you, your body, yourself.
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3 years ago, a great teacher* of mine taught me a phrase that I really love, and now often use in my own classes. She said:

“We know what the weather outside is. But how is the weather inside for you?”

The first time I heard it, I was able to tune in instantly, curiously and with no sense of judgement as to how I was feeling at that point in time. It is that latter point that was a completely new revelation for me. Tuning into my body had become second nature to me by then, and I'd become so much better at being able to identify how I was feeling on an emotional level as well as physical. Yet I struggled to not feel a need to do something in response to identifying my emotional state. I would judge how I was feeling to be positive or negative, and would either begin a process of trying to hold onto that feeling, or running away from it. Rather than acknowledging 'how' I was, I'd make a judgement about 'who' I was based on that emotion and change my behaviour accordingly. 

Let me say this clearly: No emotion is a bad emotion.

We need to be able to tap into different emotions to give us our whole range of being human and to give perspective to each individual emotion. We need sadness, joy, guilt, anger, grief, embarrassment and the whole gamut of emotions. They are a fundamental part of what makes us human, and they teach us how to relate to and connect with others. Way back, before we had language, these emotions WERE the language we used in our social cultures and tribes. They were also our internal signals as to what we contributed to, needed from, and how well we were functioning in our tribe.  
 
Now, I think I logically knew this a few years back. I'd probably seen the Disney animation 'Inside Out' by then (watch it and get your kids to watch it - it perfectly encapsulates our internal emotional system). So I kind of got it. But I certainly didn't really believe it within myself. It took an analogy for me to see my emotions more objectively and as a result to, ironically, feel them more clearly.
 
Considering my emotions and moods as internal weather allowed me to accept their presence and that they would pass. I saw the 'feel goods' like sunny days and rainy days (I absolute love the rain!!!) filled with energy, creativity and joy. I saw the 'feel mehs' as foggy or dull days where energy was lower or flatter yet things still happened just in a different way or at a different pace. And sometimes it was just a storm that would be messy, but it would pass. I realised that I accept all atmospherical weathers unquestionably and accommodate them accordingly, yet I hadn't been doing this with my own weather. I became kinder to myself as a result of accepting my emotions, and my emotions become more regulated and less extreme (at some point I'll wrote a blog about emotional regulation - a fascinating subject - but it's not for today!). 

By accepting how I am, and FINALLY with no judgement, I now make better choices for myself with regards to how to best meet my needs. Sometimes the changes are subtle. A bit like knowing I'd best take a warmer jacket when it's cold, I might choose not to go to places that will make me feel worse or potentially dull my sparkle. Sometimes the changes I need to make are more substantial. I might need to have a difficult conversation or, yup, give myself a kick up the backside. Usually the big changes come when I realise certain emotions aren't passing as naturally as they might otherwise, and I realise I'm stuck. 

As Brits we’re socially conditioned to talk about the weather pretty much most days. But I wonder how often, in general as a nation, we take time to observe our own internal weather. I suspect not enough. Maybe our starting point is to clock when we mention the weather of the day, and to have a wee internal check inside to our own feelings too.

As Billy Connolly once said "There's no such thing as bad weather - only the wrong clothes". Indeed there’s no such thing as bad clothes, just inappropriate or misinformed self care.

​* thank  you to Clare Gates-Sjoblom, known affectionately by us teachers as 'yin yoda', for this phrase and for your teachings. That simple turn of phrase hit me deep and changed much. <3 <3 

We had a full on few days of activities and for the first time in many years I ‘double-did’ on some days (i.e something sporty in the morning / something else sporty in the late afternoon). We did such a mixture: road biking, road running, mountain biking, fell running, hill climbing. We rolled out our mats and yoga-ed. 
🧘🏼‍♀️ 
And we both commented on how much we felt like we’d got ‘us’ back again. 

Since we first met, hub and I have been big movers. We thrive under high levels of activity, and the ruggedness of adventure. Our first decade together involved trips to mountainous regions all over the world to trek and climb peaks plus getting out on our bikes for hours to explore the Scottish landscapes. He climbed higher and harder, I cycled further and faster. 

​Our challenge has often been resting and staying still! 
🧘🏼‍♀️ 
We’ve been working on this and have been trying to find the balance these last few years. At times during this process, we have both felt like we have lost our adventurers within. In reality we’ve just not wanted the big challenges we thrived on in our younger days, and we’ve struggled with how to find the motivation without the ambitious goals. He no longer wanted to climb the world’s highest peaks. I no longer wanted to race all over the world. Our priorities changed. I turned to yoga, hubby turned to study and learning. We evolved, but an essence of ‘us’ lay dormant.

Somewhere, sometime, not so long ago, one of us realised that we needed outdoor adventure back. Life just didn't feel the same. Something was missing. So we put up the photos that most epitomised ‘us’ and we longed to feel the life in that essence again. 

It's no coincidence that movement is my modality. I find movement such a metaphor for life and often look to it to teach me what I need to see, or to gather the resources that I need to build within myself.

Of course, yoga and pilates are important practices for me to play out these metaphors: when I need to feel strength I am drawn to strong standing poses, when I need to go inwards and look within myself I am drawn to forward flexion or the stillness within yin poses. 

But I also feel these metaphors in sport: the challenge of long endurance sessions when I have to apply patience and conserve my energy, the process of moving forward when I want to stop and learning to dig deep and keep focused towards my goal when other things threaten to get in the way.  

It's triathlon that has taught me a big lesson recently. It highlighted to me how I have been transitioning through stages and phases of life.  In triathlon, 'transition' is the change time between each of the swim, bike, run elements of the race. It is the moments between getting out of the water in the swim and onto the bike, and then the moments from getting off the bike and out onto the run section of the race.
Transitions in triathlon are about being smooth, focused, efficient. They are about getting to, then settling into, the next phase of the race as quickly as possible.
    
During my prime competing days in triathlon I was an ace at transitions! I could get off my bike, get my helmet and bike racked, trainers on, gels picked up and then back out the transition area for the final run of the race in well under 30 seconds. Many of my medals were won on the basis of my transition times being quicker than my competitors. I was known for my fast transitions and would often hear coaches tell their athletes to watch and learn from how I did them! It was about being organised and focused and decisive. 

​So I find it hilarious, and ironic, that I can be fairly rubbish at dealing with transitions and change in the bigger context of my life! In my younger years, maybe not so much, but as I get older I've definitely found it more challenging to know which direction to go in, what to let go off, what to take with me, and I really care more about how others are handling the transition too. If I play out the metaphor, my transitions in life these days are the equivalent of me finishing the swim and then taking my wetsuit out on the bike leg with me while also having a full bag of snacks because I don't know what I might want for energy, and then trying to lug my bike with me while I run and during ALL of that I'm hell bent on making sure that my competitor has got out of the transaction area unscathed and onto her bike ok too. Jeepers! 

I AM going through a transition at the moment. I've changed my work pattern to suit my energy levels better and I'm in the process of building up some work nearer to my home to make commuting easier on myself. I think that I'm now in that decisive, focused stage of transition but I had a heck of a faff about getting to here.
We moved to the country 6 years ago to enjoy a different lifestyle, a quieter and less busy one. Yet, I insisted on keeping my city life going at the same volume and pace as it had been. My working days became way longer! 7am get ups needed to become 5:30am get ups in order to not sit static in traffic. Dinner time got later and time sitting in cafes increased as I wasn’t able to pop home between working both ends of the day. There was me metaphorically lugging the wetsuit and bike with me into the next stage of this event called life, but not sure what to put down where and when and what to take with me. 

The light bulb came when I realised that I actually love getting up at 5:30am. It really suits me. So the other end of the candle had to stop burning. It was time to stop spending my evenings coaching running groups, something I’d been doing for 18 years. It was a decision that I found difficult to make but knew that I had to. It was time to leave it lovingly in the transition area. Of course I was taking all the lessons and experience I’d gained from those 18 years forward with me, because they were threaded through me and integrated into how I work with people in others ways.
    
Once I had made that decision, things felt so much easier and it was clearer to focus on moving forward with a different energy. I am settling into the new pattern of working and I can feel that I'm beginning to flourish from it. My energy levels are significantly better and as a result my thoughts are much clearer and more positive. I'm doing less 'managing' my life, and instead I'm enjoying 'being' in my life. It does feel like a load has lightened and I'm actually doing more while also feeling incredibly rested. Deciding what to let go off has also helped me focus on what does fill my working week. I really enjoy my time in Edinburgh much more now and can think clearer when working with clients there. I've got other work much closer to home now too and it lets me have study and creating time which is so important to my development. When I wind down at the end of a working day I have an evening now to spend with friends, catching up with tv or just doing life stuff. It feels great. Really great. 

I can see in hindsight actually that the process of transition is simply a case of decide, focus, action, go. It really was like my triathlon transitions used to be. I would decided exactly what I needed, where I was laying it out, what order to do it and then it was just a case of focus, action, go. The decision was the hardest bit. And I guess sometimes it takes getting to a place of carrying too much and losing energy before you even realise that you need to make some kind of decision and what is serving your energy and what isn't.
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So, thank you triathlon for teaching me about life - again! I'm ever so thankful that you are a force, and a resource,  in my life.  

I suspect I am not the only one who finds my relationship with social media a challenge. My struggle with it is ongoing.  

Some of my closest friends have turned their back on Facebook, Instagram et al and they no longer feature in their lives. My husband tells me he doesn’t miss scrolling through pages of minion quotes while drinking his morning coffee (he has a point!) and if anyone wants to know what he is up to then they can pick up the phone. He occasionally asks me who is up to what, but it’s clear that he doesn’t miss it.  

My stock line, when he extols the virtue of being socially media-less, is usually ‘If I didn’t run a business then I wouldn’t be on it either’. But in reality, I’m not entirely sure just how true that is. I wonder if perhaps it’s a very handy excuse for me to keep my social media presence up. 

I go through phases of being more on or more off social media and it’s true that more often than not work related things pull me back in to time on Facebook and Instagram. For sure, I can’t then resist a scroll but is this really such a bad thing?

When I have periods away from social media I do feel more calm in general. I feel less overwhelmed about everything that is going on everywhere else and instead I focus on my own wee world. I spend more time thinking about those who are closest to me, doing things that make me tick and I make decisions from a more internally focused base. I want to connect with specific individuals to find out how they are and what they are up to. I want to make contact – real contact – with them. I have more time to do all the things that I keep harping on about that I’ll do when I have more time. I write, I pick up a set of pencils and draw, I watch the tv programmes that I really want to watch and I read. I feed my soul with greater nourishment when I am not on social media. 

Yet, when I find myself back on it, I am just that little bit more connected with certain people I wouldn’t otherwise be, and I get to geek out on specific subjects that are easier found this way. I love seeing updates from friends who live in different time zones, and those from friends I know from years back. I find out that the runners I used to coach are still running and it warms my heart a little bit. I like to find out what events are on, what classes and workshops my friends are running and I often find out about great training courses from social media. I regularly immerse myself in an academic journal or interesting podcast after following a link on Facebook and I feel part of an international community of other movement practitioners who are forging new ways forward in this field. It doesn’t feel so much like I have a Fear Of Missing Out, more a curiosity of what’s going on elsewhere. 

But, I guess, it’s when the scrolling gets out of control and my time on there shifts from curiosity to overwhelm that I need to get mindful.  

It can be so easy to get lost down a rabbit hole or to get pulled into the alternative versions of reality that others want us to see.  Our news feed is a very narrow perspective of what is going on around us, and a very audited one. It can be so easy to believe that others are leading more exciting, successful, happier lives than we are, without us knowing the truth behind the pictures and the words. We can fall prey to the reactions of others, seek approval from strangers and downgrade our worth all based on the content of our carefully targeted feed. I’m guilty in the past of believing that I need to be more than I am after 5, 10, 30 minutes of mindless scrolling. 
 
And I think it is the minFUL- or mindLESS- ness of our interaction that we need to look at with regards to the quality of our relationship with social media. Yes, of course, there can be times when it’s fun to look through memes of cats and dogs doing cute or funny things. And there will be times when we sit reading through things to then discover that it’s not really for us or worth our time and energy.  But it’s doing it with awareness that is the key. Are we taking a short break to have a bit of a laugh or some mini-connection with others? Or are we procrastinating and settling for a filtered connection to avoid facing some kind of void in our life? 

For me, I do enjoy some of the rabbit holes that it takes me down and the new knowledge that I can gain from using this media. I am a seeker and I always want to learn more. My thirst for knowledge can be difficult to quench and social media is a tool (not the tool) that helps with that thirst. It also provides me with an outlet to share my own learning and to expand my teaching outwards to those who find me in their own news feed and who follow their own curiosity. I’m aware now that being myself when I write will connect me with those who align. Trying to be someone I'm not, or trying to be flashing and headline-y just makes me feel bad about myself.     

Like any relationship it's about finding out what you can both give to each other and how you can support and add value to each other. If that’s spending three hours scrolling cat memes, then who am I to judge? If it gives you a community of support you cannot get elsewhere, then great. It doesn’t matter what it gives you as long as it feels to you that it is adding value. But if it makes you feel less good about yourself, stops you doing positive thing that you might otherwise do, or it causes you mental stress then your relationship with it needs to be reviewed. Perhaps you do need time away to gain perspective and to discover your needs from this relationship. Maybe you will never go back, like my husband, and the relationship has served its time. Maybe like me, you’ll continue to work your way through it, discovering what it gives you and how you can work together.

Part of this working together could be shedding your newsfeed of posts that no longer align with you. Unfriend, unfollow, take a temporary break even, from anything that doesn't speak to your real self.  Be mindful, be aware and you might discover a whole new perspective (and news feed) that you are in control of and not at the mercy of. 

Much love peeps 

CT <3 xx