Body Image - Nine Suggestions for Improving Body Image in an Appearance-Obsessed Culture

Most women in cities and towns who are interested in fashion and beauty tips in printed and electronic media are exposed to new standards of thinness and appearance on a regular basis. The next level of what hot or sexy, if taken seriously, has the potential of damaging a healthy body-image.

How to undo the damage of appearance-obsession and start to accept your body?
Here is a list of suggestions that may be used for making peace with all your body-parts:

1. The intimate knowledge of your body is the key in developing respect and healthy relationship with it.

2. Moving your body in the many ways it was meant to move, is the way to get to know it. The human body was meant to move, constantly.

3. Moving your body for just functioning and utility is not enough. Move it for pleasure as in free movements to music, dancing, fitness, and sports.

4. Relax. Let your body teach you what it wants and needs.

5. Give up on the habit of comparing yourself with others around you and with images in the media.

6. Make peace with your family’s expectations about your appearance. In many cases it is not you who demands perfection; it’s a family member…

7. Show respect to your physical reality through healthy nutrition and adequate rest.

8. Accept the reality of your natural size and shape. Become aware of the hazards of the condition called body-dissatisfaction.

9. Realize that the standards of beauty in our culture are driven from the outside in and do not fit how most of us are built.

This decision to make peace with all your body-parts can give you great relief instead of grief. Once you make peace with your whole body, New Years’ Resolutions, birthdays and aging don’t have to include empty promises about your body-image.

How about some help articulating what is it that hurts and what can be done about it. Would you like to improve your body image and sexual pleasures? Relationship Coaching will help undo years of negative body image. Un-Trap Yourself!

There are more solutions and observations for body-image issues. These ideas are presented in the program: The Body Trap. This educational/entertaining program may be delivered as a keynote speech or a seminar.

By:Nili Sachs, Ph.D