Relaxing into my skin

on the brilliance of being in a body

Aloha, I’m Ashley. I write about life through the lens of love for creative souls who seek to make life more beautiful. If you find value in the magical and inspiration in the messy middle, subscribe to join the journey. Your footprints will be celebrated.

Relaxing into my skin is like letting my soul melt into the wrapper of my body, like letting my mind and all its busy intelligence pool into the crevices of my toes. It’s dropping down, filling up, feeling whole. 

It’s being in the vessel that carries my human around, being in my human that carries my spirit around. 

It feels good — thick like maple syrup fresh from the refrigerator. Full like my favorite meal. Shining bright, like mica. 

And it’s not a place, until recently, I could readily embody. 

For having had such a physical, athletic existence — competitive gymnast, competitive tennis player, high school and collegiate dancer, surfer — you’d think embodiment would be my go-to state. But it’s not. 

I’ve got a mind that just won’t quit and an intelligence like wildfire. My mind loves learning, figuring out, dissecting, rebuilding, problem-solving — thinking. It’s whip quick and hungry. So much so that it’ll often leave my body behind, an afterthought in the act of living. 

My body does not like this. It rebels, often in tightness, aches, and some sort of pain. It talks to me, and it’s only recently that I’ve been listening differently. It's not something to fix but a sacred conversation, a transmission of information. It’s constantly talking in a language I’m only starting to learn. 

It might be the most important conversation of my life. 

Do you know how many years I thought I was fat? Pretty much all of them. My hypervigilance around body size started young. As a gymnast, my diet was severely restricted — nothing with more than five grams of fat or sugar in the first three ingredients (the sugar part was a great idea, but the restriction is where it backfired).

I remember being nine and so starved for sweets that when I found squares of chocolate in the pantry, it felt like I’d won some sort of satisfaction lottery. Several sizable square blocks of dark chocolate sat in their orange paper box, waiting for someone to notice them. Oh, and I did. Alone in the dark pantry,  I scanned the room like a bank robber about to commit her first heist, salivating with anticipation. I scraped my teeth across a bar only to discover it was baker’s chocolate, unsweetened. Disgusting. Such a disappointment. I went back to spooning honey from the gallon jug in the pantry. 

When my gymnast days ended, I was released from that restriction, in theory at least, but the hypervigilance and unwavering surveillance of my person stuck with me.

For most of my life, I lived in perpetual fear of being too big. If you’re in constant fear of your body, it’s not a very safe place to be. To be embodied, then, is dangerous. The mind, on the other hand, is a very safe place. Intelligence, after all, is lauded. But to live primarily in the head steals a sense of belonging that only exists in the body. 

When I relax into my skin, I feel safe, whole, loved — beyond metric. 

The more embodied I am, the safer I feel. And that can be hard. For those of us whose bodies have been abused, it does not feel like a safe place. And yet, it is home. It is my only guaranteed home.

Today, I’m not interested in being small. I’m interested in feeling full in my body. I’m interested in honoring this vessel that carries me through life. I’m interested in luxuriating in the physical form for as long as I am gifted it. 

Movement helps. But for me, it must be playful movement. Do not ask me to exercise. I fucking loathe “exercise”. It always seems like a good idea — weights, running (ha!), gym. Not for me. But athleticism through play, in ways that allow me to feel my body’s strength and flexibility, enlivens me. Surfing, Pickleball (a ridiculous name for a sport, but when you name a game after a dog, hey-ho, what do you expect?), walking, swimming, and yoga all relax me into my skin, like my spirit settling into the hammock of my body. 

But other ways do as well: noticing how the water feels on my skin, what the grass smells like, how it tickles between my toes. The wind caressing my cheek. The sound of dancing leaves. Senses, senses, senses. Turn them up, thinking down. Tiny wonders.

When I have a hard physical day or a sensually forward one, it puts me so deeply in my body that it’s like my mind drops to the basement. I like my mind down there. I like choosing the floor it inhabits, but it’s only possible when I am grounded in my physical form. 

Last year I read a book that I proceed to evangelize to my friends and family, called The Glucose Revolution. It’s the only thing in the history of all the fad diets and exercise regimens (of which it is neither) that has ever stuck with me because it’s simple. It’s non-judgmental. It’s science, and it’s non-punitive. It’s changed the way I eat (so many more vegetables, still quite a bit of chocolate), and it’s helped change the way I feel in my body. 

A few shifts happened concurrently. More veg (always a good idea), flattening my glucose curve, which is responsible for many a mood swing, and letting go of trying to conceive. For the three years we tried, I both abused my body with heavy work (renovating a house is no joke) and tried to be so so careful with it, spending two weeks of every month trying not to jostle it too much lest we break loose any tentative life that had taken root. Now it is free. Free to move, free to eat, free to be, just as it is. 

The scale is gathering dust under the guest bathroom vanity, and it only comes out when we need to weigh the dogs or a suitcase. I’ve started to feel joy when I look at pictures of myself, allowing the memory of the moment to supersede criticism of the image. 

I don’t want to be smaller, I want to be FULLER. That feeling has nothing to do with my weight or my size. I feel more embodied than ever, but it’s not been a straightforward path, and I still think about body size more often than I’m probably aware. It is a reflection and comparison compulsion I am trying to wean myself off of — maybe by the end of my life, I will have succeeded. Given our culture, I’m not sure it’s possible, but I aim to try.

My mentor said to me years ago, Cherish the vessel. It has stuck with me as a tenet to live by. My greatest wish for bodies everywhere is that they are cherished. That these ever-changing, miraculous bodies we are fortunate to inhabit for such a short time are loved. That they are wholeheartedly worshiped and adored by the only one who matters — the one who carries it around. I wish it for me, and I wish it for you too.

What is your relationship with your body? Is it fraught? Do you see it as a workhorse, something divine, something to use, something to adore? Do you love it, hate it, want it to be different? It’s worth looking at.