The Art of Dramatic Living

Many of my posts are spontaneous. I think of something I want to write about, I happen to have access to the tools I need and I write. I was planning on writing something else today about my disintegrated organization and priority system and the re-imagining of a new system, but that excitement will have to wait.

I’ve written about my body image issues before. Links to those posts are here:

Body Image, Eating and Creativity

Perfection is Death

This is another one of those, but different.

Here’s what happened. I traded acting classes for belly dance classes with a lovely woman whom I have come to adore. The two of us were in a play together over the summer. Both of us had to wear some revealing costumes. I spent the first half of the play parading around in a slip and my friend came on in scene two wearing a mini-skirt.

While I was parading around onstage in that slip, I had an image in my mind of what I looked like. The image in my mind was much kinder than reality. I knew someone was making an archival video of the show, but I wasn’t self-conscious about it because no one would ever see it except for the director and the cast members. We got together shortly before the holidays to watch the video. And, honestly, I was devastated.

I know I’m 44. I know my body has changed. I know I haven’t exercised or taken care of my body with any consistency in the past 20 years. But, I had spent so much of my youth, my 20’s and my 30’s battling my body. Really hating it and subjecting myself to harsh criticisms in a brutal business. When I walked away from that business, I also turned my back on my physical self. So, my physical being, always a subject of scorn and a vehicle for self-sabotage was abandoned. I was hoping all my body image garbage would just go away if I ignored my body. Guess what! It didn’t.

So we watched the video of the show we did this summer and I did not like the way I looked in that slip at all. My posture was horrible. I kep jutting my head forward to make a point so it looked like my head was one creature and the rest of my body was a separate creature. Which is metaphorically true.

Then I started taking belly dance classes. I’ve always wanted to learn to belly dance. The music is irresistible. The draw has nothing to do with my heritage. I’m Norwegian and Welsh. Did you just get a funny mental picture of a Viking woman dancing around the fire wearing animal skins and horns on her head? For some unexplained reason I’ve always been drawn to belly dance, but this is the first time in my life that I’ve had the opportunity to study with someone.

It’s hard! My friend has muscles in places I didn’t know muscles existed AND she can move them rhythmically in isolation. Holy mama! I couldn’t walk for two days after the first class. I had started rehearsing another show by then and the director and the rest of the cast thought it was really funny to watch me climb on and off the stage.

In the class after we had watched the video I confessed my feelings about how I looked. My friend looked at me and said, “Well, what do you want to do about it?” Good question. We’ve started working out together and keeping each other accountable for exercise. She has some goals she wants to work on so we’ve been trading exercise videos and getting together for workouts when we can.

I made a pact with myself that I would exercise every day that I am physically able. It’s been two and a half weeks so far and I’ve been good to my word. I know it’s extreme, but I do have some checks and balances in there. I have a minimum that I can do on days when I just can’t make it through a full work out. I can do ten sun salutations and that counts as a work out. But I can’t do that two days in a row. I picked every day for two reasons:

1. It’s easy to remember.

I don’t have to think about it or write it in my calendar. I just have to do it every day.

2. I know me fairly well.

And I know if I give myself an off day my chance of not exercising the next day and the day after that increases by 70%. (I’m going with my gut on that percentage.)

Today I got my newsletter subscription from Suhaila International. My friend has studied with Suhaila and it’s Suhaila’s technique that she is sharing with me. Suhaila has introduced audio mp3 downloads in her store and she has a free mp3 available on Body Image. I took the time to listen to it today. I almost cried. She talks about something that is completely parallel to my own experience.

Now that Facebook has become the standard for reconnecting with old friends, I have access to pictures that I haven’t seen in 25+ years from high school, undergrad and grad school. When I look at some of the pictures from my good ole bad old days, I look thin and (okay, I’ll say it) even pretty. And I look at those pictures and I see a pretty shapely girl and I remember how much that girl hated and fought with her body back then. And I think, “If only…”

Suhaila talks about that same phenomenon in her Body Image audio. You can find it here: http://www.suhailadigitalstore.com/audio.php

I’m not linking directly to the audio. I may be able to figure out how to do that with Suhaila’s permission later. This is the link to the audio section of her digital store. It’s the third mp3 in Suhaila’s Chit Chats. Enjoy.

For anyone out there who groks this, I’m sending big love and compassion your way. We can heal. Blessings to you.