How to Befriend Your Body
Develop a compassionate, unconditional relationship with your body through practices that shift your focus from appearance to appreciation, learning to inhabit the body you have rather than struggling to fit cultural ideals — especially valuable as your body continues to change through aging, illness, and life’s challenges.
The Challenge of Having a Body
Meet registered dietitian and meditation teacher Jenna Hollenstein as she shares her own body image struggles and introduces the workshop’s shift from “struggling with my body is a personal failing” to recognizing that body struggle is a natural part of life in a culture that creates harmful hierarchies around bodies.
2:01
The Challenge of Having a Body
Meet registered dietitian and meditation teacher Jenna Hollenstein as she shares her own body image struggles and introduces the workshop’s shift from “struggling with my body is a personal failing” to recognizing that body struggle is a natural part of life in a culture that creates harmful hierarchies around bodies.
2:01
Understanding Body Hierarchies and Making Space for Difficulty
Explore how society’s false hierarchies around bodies drive us to pursue impossible ideals, and discover why shifting focus from changing your body to changing your thinking is essential — including making space for grief, anger, and disappointment as valid parts of befriending your ever-changing body.
10:19
Guided Practices: Self-Compassion and Body Gratitude
Learn two practical techniques: a self-compassion practice and a body gratitude practice that expands perspective beyond appearance to appreciate all your body does and is.
8:58
On Integration and Neuroplasticity
Discover how to incorporate these practices into daily life with patience for the brain’s rewiring process, recognizing that befriending your body means making an unconditional commitment to care for it — because our bodies, despite their struggles, allow us to experience life's richness.
3:10