Eight years ago when I first embarked with intention on my wellness journey, I began posting photos of my belly on social media. The purpose was definitely brag related, but it was never about weight. It was always about how the outward appearance of my belly reflected a state of inner chaos, and how the lifestyle changes I’d implemented helped me to regulate my internal experiences. While I understand that the society we live in doesn’t socially condone bragging, I honour my accomplishments by owning any bragging I will be doing moving forward as I settle down for a new foray into my wellness.

IBS is an underlying theme in my life which I got under control years back through diet, exercise, and mindset shifts. Three years ago I followed the path that was already written for me, and changed up my entire life. While the changes were unquestionably necessary, the cost was that over the last few months the cumulative impact of all the shifts, compounded by the global shift we’re all enduring my digestion went completely and intolerably whacky again.

I HATE HATE HATE being bloated. I’ve put a lot of effort recently into acceptance of that state as I always really don’t agree with being at war against my own body and trying to force it into submission. I trust deeply in my own ability to heal, and I know that my job as resident of this particular body is to tune into its wisdom and LISTEN. 

I was resisting yet another dietary change as there is already so much that I can’t eat without consequences, but I also truly believe that we should not be able to eat all the things without consequence because most of what is marketed as fit for human consumption simply does not align with our basic biological needs. The lesson is that the resistance and the justification to needed changes give us more information about how we perceive ourselves than the impact of the actual changes themselves.

I leaned into the resistance, and I made another change, and voila – day 6 of perfectly calm and happy belly. I’m working deeply now into this beautiful concept of stillness, and now my body and my mind are able to exist in harmonious stillness together, which for me is the ultimate way of being. It’s THIS space that I yearn for when I’m not in it. This is the ability to exist in the moment; this is the capacity to understand what it means to embody presence. What a gift, to be unhindered by our bodies. And this is the place I’m creating a methodology around so that I will eventually be able to offer others the space to be able to connect with this gift in themselves.