I have been through this before…periods in my life when I wasn't dancing, at least not formally. I dance in my room, in my kitchen, in the shower (no singing but dancing!), in my car, but it is in a dance class is where I really appreciate my body. As you can tell, I dance everywhere, but the feeling of being in a class and working on something specific allows me to focus all of my energy and surge it through my body, in every extension, isolation, kick, hip roll, and hit. The whole world falls away and I am there, tunnel vision, just me and my body. I look into my own gaze and flirt with my reflection, I dance in the very first row, I am not shy, I am strong, I am powerful, I am grace, I am me.

Again, I am in a period of life with less dancing. With graduate school and very limited income, I can't fill my plate with all that I used to, and this has caused a grieving process for me. I have learned to do movement in other ways, by going on hikes to the beach, for walks by the marshlands by my house, yoga at the local community center, and then the dancing in the kitchen, the shower, my car...

Well, I was very lucky this week because my professor cancelled class and I got to go to a Samba class at the community center. As we women waited for the teacher to arrive, I became aware of my body in the mirror, in the front of the class, I was unsure of myself. I was unsure of the camaraderie of my peers because the women were using the minutes before class to do crunches and leg lifts, and chat about spin classes. What an unfamiliar setting, what a strange feeling to feel like an outsider in my own element.

The teacher said nothing to the class as she started the music. We stretched and moved and undulated our hips. Then we moved to floor and did an intense cycle of crunches and our bodies contorted in various positions. I was aware of my belly, how it sat touching my thighs as I drew my legs in close. I noticed how my breathing was more audible than the woman next to me. I started to feel embarrassment creep in as the teacher eyed me and encouraged me to straighten my legs, which were in a fury of shaking because they were working so hard. As fit as I am, crunches are not my strength.

After calisthenics, we stood up and the teacher changed the song to a loud, primal drumming beat. The sound of the ancestors, ancestors that I claim, that I make my own, that I give every cell of my body to as I dance. As we danced across the floor, I pushed at the air harder, I moved my hips wider, I stomped and jumped and swung my black curls to the rhythm of the dance. My teacher rushed over to me, put her hands out and held mine and said, “Where did you come from?” I told her that I dance Samba. She told me that I was a beautiful dancer and looked at me with eyes full of love and adoration. My next step threw me off--I was dizzy. There was something that shifted in me because I knew I was coming back into myself and that step, right after she noticed me was a step moving me in the direction of myself. She gushed over me at each transition, wanting to know more about me and the type of dance I did, asking if I would come to her other classes for advanced dancers. I let her words wash over me like a warm bath of crystals, adorning my body and giving it thanks.

This is what I know...I was the biggest woman in the dance class that day and the other women probably thought I was different and maybe that I was out of shape because I couldn't contort as they did...but what I know is that I danced that day. I danced for every day that I haven't since I started grad school, I danced for every cell in my body that feels love and gratitude and passion and for a body that people cast off as big or overweight or not good enough. It made me feel so good that my body had not forgotten to allow me the movement that it always had. This body, right now, is enough for me to express my joy. I cannot wait to have that feeling of freedom again.

Hello Body Positive Community!!

I am coming off of an amazing weekend at our Be Body Positive workshop at the College of Marin. I am full of energy and have renewed commitment to the work of self-love. There is something amazing that happens during these weekend workshops. By the end of two days, the love in the room seems to burst at the seams! Women and men are reclaiming their beauty, proclaiming their truth, and sharing their wisdom about LOVE!

I wanted to share with you something that came up this weekend: the idea of radical self-love. Radical means, departing markedly from the usual or customary; extreme, excellent, wonderful. You might wonder, “How do I get there? What would radical self-love look like in my life?”

You already possess the tools to unlock the love inside.

Start with what you know:

What do you know about yourself (your relationship with food, your body, relationship to others)?

What experiences have you had that have uplifted your spirit?

What obstacles have you overcome?

What we find is that when we start from what we already know about ourselves, we can follow a progression from what we know to what we like, and then to what we love. It is about giving yourself permission to discover what it is about yourself that you love. It is about opening yourself up to the possibility of loving your body, right now.

Ask yourself:

What would it feel like to love my body?

What would change for me in terms of my relationship to myself and others?

How would my life be different?

Something that I committed to this weekend was that I want the love for myself to swim in the world’s deepest oceans, to climb the highest peaks, to rest on the smiles of children and elders, to hold hands with my brothers and sisters around the globe, to warm my heart and feed my soul. I want my love for my body to rest upon my hips, to sit between my toes like sand on a beach, to cradle my belly and to crown my head. I want it to surround every inch and curve in a warm and enveloping embrace. There is an infinite amount of love in the world! There is enough for us all to have some. There is enough for us to cultivate it and share with others.

The idea that love for your body can transform your life is radical. This is The Body Positive work. We believe that love for your body changes your life because you learn that you are enough, you are beautiful and worthy of living your life now. Loving your body gives you the wisdom to love yourself in every moment.  Start with what you know. Go towards what you desire, and hold a frame that says that in this moment you are beautiful, and you are worthy of love, just as you are right now.

Happy New Year from The Body Positive!

The new year is here, and with it comes the expectation to better your life, change what you didn't like about yourself last year, and create an "all new you." I am happy to share my New Year's resolutions with you, and I hope you'll do the same in the comments section of my blog (resolutions that are not about weight loss). 

I will love my body this year!

I will work to quiet the critical voice that creeps into my head that says I am not supposed to be exactly as I am!

I dedicate this year to loving ALL OF ME!

I welcome you to join me in resisting the commercials, the buzz of the chaotic messages,  the pressure to change your body for cosmetic reasons. You are beautiful right here, right now, and this year (if not ever before) is when you get to learn to truly love yourself.

Here are my suggestions for 2011:

Tell yourself that you are beautiful as often as possible. Admire yourself, and remember you're not conceited if you do! Clothe your body in what makes you feel good, what makes you feel beautiful, in the body you have right now. Ignore size tags in clothing, and don't weigh yourself! How do you feel?

2. Enjoy your food!

Try going to the grocery store or market and walk around and see how you are drawn to different foods. Experiment with different recipes for the food you choose. Taste and try new things, and find what foods delight your senses. Enjoy food with others! Feed and nurture your body.

3. Play!

Explore movement based on what you want to do, not what you "should" do to lose weight or burn calories. Try going for a walk in a beautiful place and let your mind wander. Find a beautiful setting and sit in wonder. Dance in your kitchen while you cook, or dance with your friends. Laugh and play with your children. Wrestle with someone you love. Go outside, seek the type of movement that renews your energy and spirit, and makes you feel strong. Play!

What if you could give yourself everything you need-support, praise, adoration, kindness. How would your life be different? Face your struggles and think about what it would be like to live differently, what it would be like to not blame your body for your problems. Leave the pain behind and choose love for yourself.

5. Resist all messages that suggest you should look any different than you do now!

Challenge the status quo! Dare to live differently! Speak your mind and speak up for yourself! Change the channel on your television if what you see makes you feel badly about your body! Join together with other people who are seeking to live with more joy by being kind and loving towards their bodies. Appreciate your body exactly as it is in this very moment. Take a moment to give thanks to your body for all it does for you every day of your life. Cultivate the life that you want right now, at this weight, and with your body exactly as it is.

2011 is the year to love your body and live your life!

The revolution starts with you!

I recently found the book, The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life, and from the opening quote, “Make your choice.  Are you ready to be strong?” (quoting Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of my favorite TV shows of all time), I thought this is the next book that will reaffirm everything I do, everything that I am, and support me in how I love myself AND my body! Well I was wrong. I guess even the girls who take back the word fat and “accept” their bodies still don’t do enough to love them. What’s the difference between acceptance and love? Acceptance doesn’t prompt any action; it feels like, I’ve accepted that this is the way my life is. It isn’t engaged! Love is about connecting to, appreciating, doting upon, finding affection for, and sitting in awe of something, and more importantly someone. So I say, I’m proud that there are fellow fat girls out there, but if all we’re going to do is accept our bodies, I say I have better things to do. I’m here in this world LOVING every inch of me, and that, to me, is a more Body Positive thing to do.

I have always had this sense of wanting to become a woman. To me, a woman was power, grace, a 'juicy mama', a goddess, a warrior. My childhood was full of examples of these women. Either in books of faraway lands and the magical and fruitful women who inhabited them, or in my mother, my teachers and my community. When I was younger, I thought that becoming a woman was the greatest feat and challenge that a young girl could undertake. I admired women's strength and resilience. Women are connected to the earth, we make bonds between each other, and we create new life. I thought that one day I would wake up and be a woman. Or perhaps that it would happen after my cycle or once I graduated high school. When I became a woman was when I fully stepped into my power and when I started using it.

When I found love for myself and my womanly body, I stepped into my power and made the conscious decision to never lose sight of it. This is what invoked the goddess and the sense of this divine gift of a body we are all given. This is what invoked the warrior that would stand up for myself and others who are mistreated. This is what invoked the juicy mama and the playful spirit that basks in her own beauty. What I realized, was that coming into womanhood was everything about accepting and loving myself absolutely for who I was and also for what I looked like.

Some cultural messages insist that we deny the physical body and what it represents as a way to be modest, to fit into a group, to behave or be good. This was made clear to me during The Body Positive’s recent workshop, which I participated in as a facilitator. The first activity we did was to introduce ourselves with the following: our name, what community we were coming from (i.e., school, hometown, workplace, creative community, etc.), what brought us to the workshop, and what we could say about our beauty. For all the women, the first two questions were the easiest. Most people strongly identify with their names as well as where we're from. Our communities are also strong identifiers. When it came to saying what brought us to the workshop, and making a statement about our beauty, some felt stuck. What about their beauty? Had they forgotten it had even existed? Had they ever talked about their beauty in a group before? What about being self-righteous? Conceited?

Most women shared about their beauty being tied to how they interact with others; being a good friend and confidant; being empathetic or emotional, being a good student or helping others.

When it came to my turn, I said, "I am enjoying my physical body! I have had treasured moments recently when I have caught myself in the mirror and really enjoyed what I see. I find myself doing a little dance or giving myself a genuine smile when I cross paths with my physical self. Its really fun!"

I think I pretty much shocked half the room. Of course my point wasn't to do that, but for them to realize that women can love their physical selves! We don't have to be wise or strong or emotional to be beautiful, we can risk being conceited, risk sounding confident, and proudly say that we love our bodies and therefore we love ourselves!

Being a woman is so much about the physical. It amazes me that in this society we try to shame ourselves into denying our womanly parts and our own natural flesh. We learn to lose the parts that make us women and add to parts that make us more 'desirable' to some people. I say that being a woman and encouraging our flesh connects us to the earth, honors our heritage and the ancient wisdom and lineage that created us.

We can be dynamic leaders, amazing friends, empathetic, and conscious humanitarians and also celebrate our flesh. We can be mothers and friends and co-workers and sisters and citizens and agents of change and love our bodies. We can all step into our power and find gratitude for our womanly bodies! We can have it all.

I am happy to say that my absolute love and compassion for myself and for my body have made me proud to be a woman.

When we commit ourselves to self love, it doesn’t mean our insecurities, worries, or fears magically disappear. But somehow—and maybe it is magical—when we hold ourselves with love, we have the wisdom to know that no matter what negative thoughts creep in, we are inherently good, and exactly who we are meant to be.

At The Body Positive workshops, we talk about the role our critical voices play in our lives. The critical voice is that nagging voice that torments us and makes us feel terrible about ourselves. Your critical voice may be your own nasty voice in your head, or it may be the memory you hold of what people have said to you that made you feel worthless. Often, the voices in our heads that we identify as our own, are actually the blending together of the messages from the people who have wounded us in the past with their words. A parent, a friend, a lover—their negative words have power—and we turn their messages into our own, without knowing we have done so.

Depending on what is going on in our lives, the voices may be soft or they may actually shout at us, commanding our attention. What is important to notice, no matter how softly or loudly our internal critic persists, is that the critical voices negatively affect our bodies, both physically and emotionally. Listening to, and believing, the critical voice is very damaging to our souls. It changes our whole perception of the world around us and makes us feel afraid, alone, vulnerable, and sometimes numb as we try to connect to others.

The work of self love honors the voice of the heart. While we cannot always remove our critical voices, and while we cannot insulate ourselves fully from outward influences and things beyond our control, we can choose what we take in. Loving ourselves means we know we are exactly enough just as we are, and that there is nothing we need to change about ourselves to be happy. We can learn to cultivate the loving voice by fine-tuning it like a radio station, so that its kind and compassionate messages make the critical voices fade.

Self love is what supports us when times are tough. It is what protects our hearts when people are cruel. It is what holds us in a cocoon of love and adoration, despite the inevitable sorrows of life.

When we feel down, it is as if there is no good anywhere in life. An important practice for me is to think about my days measured in joy, rather than misery. At the end of each day, I often ask myself:

What was good about my day?

What made me smile?

What made me laugh?

How can I recreate these feelings on a daily basis?

Does this mean changing my schedule to fit in more joyful experiences?

Does this mean spending more time with friends or spending more time by myself?

The ways in which we can bring joy into our lives are numerous. There is just as much joy in this world as there is sorrow. And if you fine-tune your receptor, you may catch more moments of joy and hold on to them longer. My joy practice is to smile. When things are going awry and I feel off balance, I smile and hold my hand to my heart. Just this simple act helps me know I am okay and I am good and this difficult moment will pass.

Try taking a deep breath and smiling, because it is impossible to frown and smile at the same time. Smiling for no reason lightens our spirits. Our light is then radiated out to the world and we create moments of joy for others.

I choose to see joy! I choose self love!

When I am on stage and the lights are on me, I feel so full of love. I love putting on a show! The second the lights come up and the music starts, and I can feel the audience's eyes on me, I feel at home. I enjoy every moment of being on stage and when I catch myself in the mirror I even gasp at how truly beautiful I am. This is the real me. The me that is full and happy and passionate. Who I am on stage is who I crave to be every single day. I crave that uninterrupted gaze of the audience, the gushing applause, the smiles, the wonderment, and the enthusiastic response when my dancing is done. Dancing these past two weekends in the show Earth Girls Are Easy was a turning point in my life. For all the nerves and anxiety and build up, I left all that behind when I stepped onto the stage each night. I danced like it was the absolute last time I ever would, and it is for that reason I think people were so drawn to me. Every stranger that came up to me after a show said they absolutely could not take their eyes off me. I was brought to tears with their kind words and smiled widely and said thank you. I will never argue with such gratitude for my dance. With each compliment, I took a breath in and said thank you, because each time I heard their words, a permanent imprint was made on my heart.

I could have focused negative attention on my body and for my perceived flaws. I could have picked myself apart, and I almost did...

But each time those lights went up nothing else mattered.

My body is my joy and without it I would not be myself. These arms, these thighs, these taped up ankles and knees will never be anyone's but mine. I grow so much each time I am on stage that I feel 10 feet tall, strong like a warrior woman, so big that it is only me the audience sees. I take up space, I am large and grand, and they see Me.

How I am right now is how they saw me. Not a smaller version of me, not a work in progress, but the actual me. One woman said,

"No matter what you do in your life, please please follow your dreams."

And knowing now how much this experience has changed my life, I know I can do just that.

I haven't performed on stage in a dance performance like this in a long time. When I was in college I was so distracted by relationships and the loathing I felt for my changing body that I didn't feel connected to what I was doing. I wasn't empowered by rehearsals, and I definitely couldn't take in compliments. After a performance I would feel like running away and hiding because I wasn't proud of who I was and was unsure of what people thought of me. I sang for others, not myself. I danced to serve a group's purpose and not my own.

Now I dance just for me. I dance because I am alive. I dance to honor this life and this soul inside of me.

If I can recreate the feeling I had on stage every day of my life, I will know real joy. Dance class and rehearsal, not just performance, is a great tool for me to find joy in my body on a daily basis. The element of an audience and lights and costumes is gone but the feeling of support and love is still there. I find support from my teachers, I feel the love in my own gaze in the mirror, and I feel love for my body as I work to make it move exactly how I want, and by doing exactly what feels good. I used to compare myself to other people in dance class growing up, but in my current dance company I have so much gratitude for my own body! Because I don't feel competition with the other women, I am also able to feel appreciation for their bodies! The oldest women in my classes are in their 60's and 70's and they find great joy in movement, joy that perhaps they cultivated when they were my age. Backstage this weekend, I was talking to a woman who said that when teenagers started joining the studio she felt like she wanted to quit. She said she felt that they would judge her for being old and she wouldn't have a place in the company anymore. But what changed her mind was that she became friends with the young women and bridged the age gap. She knew then that they could all be in the company together and make it even stronger.

I had to hold in giggles when people commented on how beautiful I looked this weekend. Don't they know that I am always this beautiful? This kind of beautiful is always within me. But maybe I don't always get feedback because I don't always feel it in myself. When I do feel beautiful and worthy and full and happy, I giggle almost as if I should have known this all along!

In performing these past two weekends, I have learned that I absolutely can have these feelings about myself on a daily basis. Absolutely I can dance everyday. Absolutely I can take in what people say to me as gifts and give them back to myself when I am feeling down. Absolutely the world can be my stage, where the lights are the god and the music the goddess.

When I dance, I am Me. Absolutely.

Welcome to The Body Positive's new blog! Much of our work centers on creating community and sharing stories. This is your opportunity to share, comment, ask questions of, or just relate to this community! I want to welcome those of you who are new to The Body Positive and welcome back those who have anxiously awaited the launch of the new site!

We believe that women can make the choice to love and accept themselves just as they are, and that we can fight against the messages we get daily to change ourselves, most of which are given by the people who profit off of our suffering. The Body Positive is not a diet group, a body-bashing group, or a group where we share calorie counts or numbers on a scale. It is our goal to create awareness of the choice we can all make to start living outside the realm of diets and body hatred or obsession with changing our physical selves.

Loving ourselves just as we are in this moment, without an expectation of changing our bodies in order to feel more beautiful, more accepted, more of whatever someone tells us we should be, bridges the gaps we feel when we are among other women, and it strengthens our bonds with each other and uplifts our spirits. It is time to take back our power and our lives and end the silent suffering of women. We have created a community where beauty is inclusive of everyone, where beauty is love, strength, creativity, and compassion.

We dedicate ourselves to urging all women to take a deep breath and start living.

I feel very proud in my body today. I am learning to live this work in every facet of my life. When I feel uncomfortable or start to second guess how I see my body, I use it as a new opportunity to face a challenge. I remind myself to forget external rules, and to ignore the voice in my head telling me what I should or shouldn't wear or how a shirt sits on my belly or how my legs look in a certain pair of pants.

I am aware that when I feel good about myself, people respond to me! I could pick myself apart in a photograph but then I remember, I was really happy when the photo was taken. What about that happiness? Others will notice my happiness way more than my belly, and they will be completely unaware of how I feel my belly looks!

When we look at things and search for the greater picture or the greater person, we see true beauty. I want to be the most authentic person I can be, and changing any part of me would move me in the opposite direction of that authenticity.

If I think about where I want to find love, my journey always leads me back to myself. So it is my goal to start and end that journey from a place of love--self love!

We welcome your comments and look forward to hearing your stories.

Jessica Diaz