This episode is packed with beautiful concepts and practical exercises that you can use right now to help you on your journey toward loving your body. I talk about what it takes to let go of our past selves and step powerfully into who we feel we are meant to be. I also share with you what it was like letting go of my therapist of 9 years and how that plays a role in this process.
Book a free boudoir discovery call here:
https://calendly.com/rebeccasigala/boudoir-discovery-call
I would love to hear from you on Instagram!
https://www.instagram.com/rebeccasigalaboudoir
This episode is packed with beautiful concepts and practical exercises that you can use right now to help you on your journey toward loving your body. I talk about what it takes to let go of our past selves and step powerfully into who we feel we are meant to be. I also share with you what it was like letting go of my therapist of 9 years and how that plays a role in this process.
Book a free boudoir discovery call here:
https://calendly.com/rebeccasigala/boudoir-discovery-call
I would love to hear from you on Instagram!
https://www.instagram.com/rebeccasigalaboudoir
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Body Image Revolution. Today I want to talk about a very interesting and relevant topic, which is our identities and how can we use that to step into the women that we always felt we were meant to be. This is going to be a really good one, guys, so feel free to take notes. I'm almost seeing this as a masterclass in letting go of our past selves, and stepping into the future versions of who we want to become. I was having a conversation with G-d earlier, and I gained a lot of clarity, which I had been hoping for. So I hope that this episode comes with that clarity and intention. And it's my hope that you just take what you need from this, that it's exactly what you need to hear right now. So try to be open, and even if it doesn't seem like it applies to you right away, be open to the ways that it does, the ways that you can use it to improve your life, your relationship with your body, or even use it to help other people. Just a side note on praying. I'm actually not the type of girl to sit and pray with a prayer book. I really don't even know the last time I did that. I'm more of just a talk out loud from my heart kind of person, and I'd like to say that I do that often, but it's actually been a while, and I think that some of the challenges that I've been experiencing in my life right now, were pushing me towards this conversation. Which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. I think it's easy to get frustrated by life and challenges and even feel like we're doing all the right things. Why is this thing going wrong? Why am I not communicating properly? Why are things not feeling exactly right? But then when you actually take a moment to get grounded in your body and connect with yourself and the universe, it's like, duh, this was available to me all along. Just wanted to share that with you because it was such a nice realization that I had for myself. That of course I had before, and that sometimes we need to have those realizations again and again. So part of what I'm personally going through right now, are you going through something too? Because I honestly feel like it's in the air. What I am going through is that I just have this strong, intuitive feeling that I'm being called to step into a more powerful version of myself. I've been doing work on myself for the last decade, and I have grown in ways that I never thought were even possible, but there are still some things that sit heavily on me, some things that I feel like are energetic blocks as I try to move towards my goals, and it feels like I'm being pulled back. And so now I'm going through this process of shedding this past identity and it feels painful in my body at times, and it hasn't been an easy process. Even though when I do take a small step back, I can really see how beautiful it is. I'll share a little bit about that later on in the episode, but I also wanna share with you how you can use this concept to improve your body image. So how do we let go of the identities that were formed so early on? We want to fully understand, have compassion for, and love our bodies, and the question is, can we get there by being who we've always been? So I want to bring up this idea with you and don't worry, I'm gonna come back to that question. This is all going to come full circle. There's this idea that our thoughts create our results. The idea is, is that most circumstances are neutral or that they could be neutral, but the meaning we attach to them informs the way we see the world and how we think and behave. So let's pick a circumstance, like, you gained weight. I'm sure you have an automatic response to that circumstance, like you feel it in your body, but just because you have a certain thought or feeling about it, it doesn't mean that it's the absolute truth. Those thoughts could have come from so many different places, and sometimes they're not even ours. So the circumstance is that you gained weight, your diet culture inspired thoughts might be: I fucked up, I'm not disciplined enough, I'm ugly, no one will find me attractive. And from your thoughts, you'll then have emotions, and those emotions can be thought and also felt in your body. You could be sad, angry, repulsed, disappointed, embarrassed, ashamed, lonely. And from there I would ask you, which actions are you taking, or not taking, from those emotions? So some things that you might be doing is restricting your food. You could be spending a ton of time obsessing over your body in the mirror. You might spend even more time starting to search for ways to lose weight online. You might cry to your best friends. things you might not be doing is socializing as much. You might avoid buying new clothing. You might not feel as free in your body. You might not dance in the kitchen like you normally do. And your result here, is that you stay in this mindset of lack and discontent and you don't love your body. So how can we switch this around? You might ask. Let's do this exercise again and shift it a little bit. So you gained weight. It's totally neutral if you want it to be. Maybe your thought is, it's normal to change. It's normal for bodies to change all the time, or that makes sense for where I am at right now, or it doesn't mean anything about me, or I'm just as beautiful with my weight gain. Maybe your emotions could be contentment, peace, gratitude, joy. From there, you might go about your day as normal, or you might be extra inspired and do something creative, like write a poem or paint. You might feel more in the mood and be intimate with your partner or pleasure yourself. Or you might buy a new piece of clothing because you're feeling so great in your body. And what you're not doing is the destructive behaviors that led you to your body dissatisfaction beforehand. and so what are your results from here? You love your body. You understand and trust your body. You have compassion for yourself and for others. This is a great tool that can honestly be used for any circumstance, and I often use it with my clients as they are shifting their thoughts and beliefs about themselves and their bodies When we want to reach our goal, for example, we want to love our bodies more. It's not what do I need to achieve here? You can't say, when I do X, then I will love my body. That is sourcing our power from outside of ourselves. And the truth is, your power is within you. The question we actually need to be asking ourselves is, who do we need to become? Who do we need to become to be someone who loves their body? So you might ask what makes up a person? What makes up an identity? It could be something about where they live, their religion, their family, or it could be our thoughts, our beliefs, our behaviors and habits, and those things lead to the results that we see in our lives. As someone who didn't love their body, my identity was someone who was entrenched in diet culture, meaning that I was always on a diet. I worked out because I wanted to change my body. I complained about my body to my friends. I compared my body to other women. I didn't believe that fat was beautiful. I was picky about who I thought was attractive, a k a, having quote unquote high standards, which is such bullshit. I consumed media without really thinking about it. I gossiped. I said mean things about my body to myself all the time. So in order to become someone who loves their body, it wasn't about achieving a goal. It was about literally shedding this past identity of who I was, to become the version of myself who really loved her body. I had to let go of thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors that no longer served me. Even if it was hard to do that. You think it was easy for me to stop counting calories? Shit, that did not happen over night. But I knew that I couldn't count calories and have the level of body acceptance that I desired. So it took time and I headed in that direction for several years until I eventually stopped. Can't believe that I stopped. I really don't count calories anymore. Other things that I stopped were hanging out with certain people, engaging in certain types of conversations. I invested in my personal growth and healing at a very high level. I got a therapist and coaches. I spent money on acupuncture and massage therapy and energy healing. Past versions of ourselves have lots of excuses for being who they are, and a lot of times they're not just excuses, they really are reasons. The thing is, past versions of ourselves need to be seen. They need to be honored and celebrated because they're a part of us. They should be thanked because they kept us alive. They brought us to where we are today, but we don't need to hold on to them just because that's what we're comfortable with. In fact, the growth is in the discomfort. The discomfort of facing ourself and having self-awareness. The discomfort of wanting something new for ourselves, but still being who we are right now. The discomfort of intentional change, of boundaries, of moving forward towards that future version of ourselves. If you're able to, just take a minute now to envision your future self, someone who is in love with their body. Who's that woman? What is she thinking? What is she doing on a day-to-day basis? What's her job? What are her creative outlets? Who are her friends? What clothing style does she wear? What does she like to eat? Where does she live? This is really an amazing exercise. I've done this so many times, on my own journey, and simply envisioning it, having the awareness of who you want to be, can literally be life changing. I recently did this exercise with my business coach Nicole, and I kept doing it throughout the days and weeks after our session. I started to put all my decisions through the lens of does this align with the life I'm creating for myself? I'll share one thing that came out of it for me, which was very big. I was imagining my future home, what I was wearing, my kitchen, and all of a sudden I thought about my therapist, which was kind of random. The one that I've been with for the last nine years. I imagined sitting down at my kitchen table to start a therapy session on Zoom, cuz that's what I'm doing these days, and I just didn't envision him as my therapist. Trying to put his face in that computer screen just didn't feel aligned with this future version of myself. I realized, future me does not have this therapist. It was a big moment of clarity. For the past several months, I had been evaluating this relationship. The pros, the cons, if it made sense that I was still going, who I would go to in the future, what I felt I needed, what I was getting, and it was this logically based conversation that I continued to have with myself and sometimes to him as well. But when I did this exercise, I felt it so deeply in my body, and it's not even because this was a bad relationship in any way. It was actually an amazing one. Oftentimes shedding a past identity isn't so black and white. It's not like I need to stop this bad habit or end this toxic relationship. Oftentimes, it's something that's just not serving us in the most aligned way for us. That maybe something is just a little bit off, and that by choosing that thing, or person, over something else, we're blocking ourselves from the growth that we need and desire. Like I said, this is someone I had a therapeutic relationship with for nine years, so we've talked about mostly everything. He knows me deeply. It felt super comfortable, and I had so many fears about moving forward with this decision. Even just thinking about letting him go, gave me this pit in my chest and my stomach like, oh shit, this is terrifying. How will I manage my anxiety? When I decide to look for a new therapist, what if they're just not as intuitive or smart or as good as him? What if no one else will understand me? And he knows so much about me, it's so nice that he has all this context, and that list went on and on. As I took a few days to come to terms with my clarity, and the decision I knew I had already made for myself, I kept thinking, but why am I doing this to myself? Like I don't have to. There's no right or wrong decision here, at least not to someone on the outside of this. And it felt painful and scary, but that also pointed to why it was important. With the intuitive feeling, and some logical reasons that I had making me feel like I needed this for my own growth, as well as the fact that it freaked me out, made me know that I was headed in the right direction. That the discomfort would lead me to knowing and understanding myself on an even deeper level. This is why change is not easy. It would be much easier to just stay with a therapist that's been good for me, and that knows me, and just keep going on as normal, but fortunately my brain doesn't work like that. Fortunately, I think I've wired it for growth at this point, and it would've been impossible for me to continue on just doing the same thing, but past me would've stayed for sure. I gave my therapist a heads up that I wanted to talk about ending therapy with him at my next session, as of course my heart was beating out of my chest, and then at that session I trusted myself so much. I was so proud of myself for the clarity and bravery that I had and the mature, amazing conversation that ensued. Any feelings of sadness or discomfort in my body were allowed to be there. I allowed them to be there. I knew it was normal and healthy and that they would be temporary, and I was willing to feel them, in order to become who I am becoming. I am willing to feel discomfort to become the person I'm meant to be. That's a good mantra. Save that one guys. I wasn't sure if I wanted to have one more session with him by the time we got off that call. Maybe to continue going through his notes, cuz we did that a little bit like started from nine years ago and just kind of like going through the highlights of it all. And I realized that I kind of wanted him to say something like, oh my G-d, look how much you've changed and healed. Or like, you're one of my favorite clients or something like that. Maybe one more session would've gotten me a little bit more validation, but one thing he said really stuck out to me, and that was, our relationship kind of has closure in and of itself, and that resonated with me so much. We've done so much incredible work over the years, and I've gotten the support, the deep empathy, the healing and validation that I've needed over and over again, from him, and most importantly from myself. I realized I didn't need him to say anything more. And that was such a beautiful and empowering realization for me. And then I messaged him and thanked him again and told him that it felt like a great last session. And that was it. I did cry that night. It felt like a little bit of a breakup, and the next morning I felt totally at peace, and I still do. I'm so proud of myself for listening to my intuition and trusting myself like I did here. And it's not something that I've always been able to do. This process of stepping into this new version of myself is taking time, and it's definitely not just about my therapist. There are so many things that I'm going through and thinking about right now. I feel like I'm shedding these layers one by one. And it's painful and hard, and sometimes I feel like maybe I'll still be the same person at the end of this, but if I think about it for a second, I know that I won't be, because I've already changed so much through the work that I've done up until now, and I'm transforming as we speak. Through these changed thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, and even relationships that I'm lovingly letting go. You can do that too if you desire. You can keep evolving, keep becoming, keep growing if you want that, if you're willing to feel the intense discomfort of it. I'll leave you with this question today. Who do you need to become in order to deeply love your body and yourself? This question, this process of becoming is really what I lead my clients through during their boudoir experiences. Everything from the first decision to invest in themselves, to make a statement to themselves that they are worthy of the time, money, and energy, and worthy of just being documented and photographed in this way. To creating a sexual identity and expressing that through lingerie, and makeup, and the creative elements of the shoot. To going through the coaching and mindfulness practices that is included in every single package. The boudoir experience is about upleveling your identity every single step of the way, and that's why it's so powerful. No one leaves this experience the same person. And if you fully put yourself in it, there's no limit to the ways that you will benefit from changing the way you see yourself and stepping into that new version of you. I am currently taking boudoir bookings for June and beyond in Israel. You will need some time to go through the journey with me before your actual session, so be sure to contact me even if you just want to start to explore the idea. And also, I have two spots left for my luxurious New York boudoir experiences the first week of May. Which is coming so soon. You can find the link to book a free discovery call with me in the show notes so that we can connect, and I cannot wait to connect with you and help you step into that more aligned and powerful version of yourself, that is just waiting to be unleashed from within you. I'm sending so much love and strength to all of you on your journeys. I see you boo. And you can do this.