Last Wednesday I was in NYC with supermodel/body acceptance advocate, Emme in Washington Square Park. I was there to teach the women in her Meet Up group how to move from body loathing to body loving. But the funny thing was that I was struggling with my own message and I was overcome with insecurities around being fat and feeling old. So I took the opportunity to share my confidence building tools with the other women.
My daughter, Cara joined me in support, acting as my photographer for the day shooting a presentation that I was giving for a Meet Up Group led by supermodel/body acceptance advocate, Emme. (She’s the tall, statuesque blonde standing in the back row.)
I joined forces with Emme that day to speak to the group to teach the women how to move from body loathing to body loving. But the funny thing was that I was struggling with my own message and I was overcome with insecurities around being fat and feeling old. Scared to death, I decided that comng clean and being honest about my own frustrations with my body was the best way to go.
Lucky for me any doubts I had about doing that disappeared into thin air after Emme suggested that we start the group off with a nice relaxing guided meditation.
She led us into a space of silence and peace with Wayne Dyer’s “I Am” meditation. It was so luxurious and delicious to be able to just close my eyes and immerse myself in the guided meditation.
As I looked around in preparation to start my talk, I noticed that my audience was filled with young women, in their mid-late twenties, so I was inspired to begin with a personal story. I said,
“I truly believe that there are no coincidences. Twenty eight years ago, I was a student here at NYU and as a beautiful slender 22 year old woman, I would have never risked exposing myself by wearing a pair of shorts. During those years, I was plagued with daily thoughts and feelings of shame and self-hatred toward my body.
Today I’m 51 years old and proud of the fact that I’ve come such a long way in terms of my relationship with my body. At a size 18/20, I’m more comfortable with myself than I ever was when I was wearing single digit sizes.
I shared with the group my insight that your relationship with your body is an outgrowth of how you feel about what’s going on in your life. I told them that I’ve wasted so many years feeling insecure and insignificant, always looking towards others for their approval. And now I realize that your value is not determined by the size you wear.
I said I urge you to recognize how beautiful and fabulous you are today so that you can be more present and live in the moment and enjoy your life now because if you let those fears and insecurities take hold, they’ll ruin you forever.
Almost as soon as I said that, the rain began to pour and we had to all huddle together under a makeshift tent that Emme manifested with some seriously quick thinking. 
Then we got right back to business
and I gave the women a demonstration of how to use EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique to change the way that they feel in the moment.
I shared with them that this is always my go-to method for creating quick confidence in any situation.
Here in this photo, I’ve got to give EFT a big shout out because it makes it possible for me to stand passionately, speaking and teaching and being a role model of body acceptance, giving me the confidence needed to buck social conventions, wearing shorts and exposing my big chunky, fat arms to clarify my message that beauty can’t be defined by size.
I’m so excited to know that I got to share a legacy of love with the next generation in hopes that they are now aware that no matter what their size or situation in life, they can always choose to accept and respect themselves and their bodies and set the standard for taking extra steps to give themselves the gift of extreme self-care on a daily basis.
Here are the most important points we covered that day:
- Happiness is a choice. No matter how rotten your circumstances or how bad things seem, you can always do something to feel better. The easiest, most effective, healthiest and fastest way to do this is by learning to manage the energy in your body.
- Everything is energy, even your thoughts. It’s important to tame your inner critic because if you don’t, it will make you feel miserable and out of control and anxious all the time.
- The amygdala is a part of your brain that acts like a smoke alarm and when you’re stressed it causes you to go into freak out mode.
- When you’re under stress, your body produces harmful chemicals that could be causing you either emotional or physical pain now. Many people ignore these thinking that stress is a natural part of daily living. But if you continue to ignore the signals, they’ll only get more intense and ultimately they will lead to illness and disease.
- You can control your stress levels by tapping on acupressure points on the side of your hands and throughout your body.
- The way you feel about your body is like a moving target. There will be days when you think that you’re fabulous and others when you can’t stand to look at yourself in the mirror. This is just an indication that your internal smoke alarm is going off telling you that you feel stressed about your body.
- EFT is an easy stress relief tool that you can use to take the edge off of any negative emotion.
- But you’ve got to get really honest with yourself and say how you really feel in order for it to work.
To get the whole scoop, you can download the archived episode of my “Lovin’ the Skin You’re In” radio show called, “Bust Out of Your Approval Slave.” http://www.blogtalkradio.com/the-juicy-woman/2013/07/11/bust-free-from-your-approval-slave
And to learn more about Emme, her Inside Out Meet Ups and all the other great things she’s doing, visit Emme’s site at http://www.EmmeNation.com