5 mirror exercises to love your body!
Loving your body isn't easy, or at least it's not easy for everyone. Today, then, it seems to be even more difficult: the media, social media, advertising bombard us with images of retouched bodies, leading us to compare ourselves with very little real physicists who, yet, seem to dictate the canons of a beauty that it appears almost unattainable.
Loving your body in a similar context becomes almost an "undertaking if you forget that the" only true value of beauty is uniqueness: each of us is different and each is beautiful in its own way, there are no rules or criteria to to comply with!
According to experts, more than 90% of women cannot love their body, they are not satisfied with their body when they look in the mirror. Often this altered view of oneself leads to real body image disturbances, which lead us to always see ourselves inadequate when we look at ourselves.
The trick to learning to love your body, then, lies in being able to transform the mirror from an enemy to a real ally. To do this, take some time for yourself and test yourself with the 5 exercises we recommend!
1. To love your body, you need to know how to look at it
To learn to love your body it is important to know how to look at it without criticizing yourself and filling yourself with negative comments. If you are used to belittling yourself and saying about all colors because you don't like your legs or the color of your skin, your nose or your butt, try this exercise now.
All you need is a mirror, possibly full-length, that allows you to observe yourself from head to toe. Stand in front of your reflection, without any distraction, and try to breathe deeply to relieve tension, as if it were a kind of meditation.
Now focus on what you see. Observe all the details of your body with the utmost objectivity, without expressing any judgment. It's about learning to look at yourself while holding back criticism. At first you may feel very uncomfortable, almost as if you don't know the woman in the mirror. We are so used to not really seeing ourselves, but a non-existent ideal that we relate to, that the moment we can really look at ourselves the sensation can become alienating !
This exercise should be repeated for several days in a row, until you feel that sense of inadequacy and discomfort in front of yourself vanish and you begin to see yourself as you really are, in your splendid uniqueness.
2. Loving your body means showing it gratitude
Once you have learned to look in the mirror without making judgments or criticisms, you can proceed with this second exercise. Always stand in front of the mirror, breathe deeply and clear your mind of images of perfect bodies and prejudices about yourself.
At this point, it's about focusing and reflecting on everything your body does for you. We take it for granted, but it isn't! Do you hate your legs? Think of everything they have given you: romantic walks, swimming in the sea, the simple possibility of going wherever you want. Instead of despising them, try to thank them. Show gratitude to your body, it is essential to learn to love it!
So focus on what you generally don't like about yourself and find a reason to say thank you. At first it will be difficult, you will not find the right reasons, but trust me: they are always there. Even wrinkles have their reasons and can become splendid witnesses of a life full of emotions for which you are only grateful!
3. Ask yourself in the mirror what you like about your body
Now, however, just focus on what you don't like! This third exercise to learn to love your body in front of the mirror requires an extra effort, that of trying to say what you like instead of your body!
Don't shake your head - we know it's much easier to say what we hate or want to change about our bodies than what we love. The effort lies precisely in this research. To love your body you have to love yourself, so be kind to your reflection: look for a detail that you like. Start from that to re-evaluate your body in its entirety.
By training yourself in the mirror to focus attention on your strengths instead of on your defects, day after day you will be able to see the former in an increasingly clear and evident way. It really is just a little exercise!
4. Remember a situation where you felt your loved body
It has happened to all of us, at least once in our life, to receive a compliment from a person we admire or respect or love, whose judgment - in layman's terms - matters to us. Then stand in front of the mirror, close your eyes and try to remember that moment.
Try to remember every little detail: the environment you were in, the color you wore, the physical sensations you felt after receiving that compliment. Try to relive that moment by totally identifying with it.
At this point try to attribute a color to your feelings and emotions of well-being and add it to that memory, until everything seems to be permeated by that same color.
Open your eyes and look in the mirror now, feeling that same colored aura on and around you, as if it were a halo of positive energy that surrounds you, with which to permeate all your image in the mirror. You will most likely have to smile. Your unconscious is memorizing that positive feeling and, if you repeat the exercise consistently, it will learn to associate it with your own image.
5. Learn to love your body with the affirmation technique
And finally, here we are at the fifth exercise to love your body. This is an exercise that should be done every morning as soon as you wake up, to give yourself a good boost of self-esteem and start the day in the best possible way! Get out of bed, then, and stand in front of the mirror. Look yourself straight in the eye, suspending all judgment of your body, and repeat that you love yourself as you are.
Repeat the affirmation over and over until you feel that you have completely internalized it. Maybe the first few times it may seem ridiculous, but if you do it believing it really will work. You can very well vary your statements to make in front of the mirror, based on the ones you feel most yours, most important to you. It starts with the ones that you would never dream of telling yourself or that you really do so much, so much effort even just thinking about how you refer to yourself. These are the right statements.
You can tell yourself that you love yourself more every day, that you are in love with yourself and your body, that you respect your body and are grateful to it, that you take care of it with your every action, that your inner beauty is reflected in the inner one. Inspired by these love phrases in our album: before addressing them to a partner it is important that you learn to address them to yourself!
