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.
3:10Related Readings
Take Refuge in Your Body
When the storms of life hit, your body can be a place of refuge and healing. Cyndi Lee says it starts with making friends with your body.
Let Your Mind Move
Francis Sanzaro on the profound potential for awakening found in unifying body and mind.
Guided Body Scan Meditation with Christiane Wolf
Join former physician and renowned mindfulness and Insight (Vipassana) meditation teacher teacher Christiane Wolf for a guided body scan meditation to help release tension, reduce stress, and reconnect with your body through gentle awareness.
Body Scan Meditation
Discover the benefits of body scan meditation, a practice to reduce tension and increase body awareness by focusing on each part of the body, promoting relaxation and mindfulness.
3 Mindful Movement Exercises
Thich Nhat Hanh offers three mindful movement exercises for well-being, "a wonderful way of connecting your mind and body in mindfulness."
How to Make Friends with Your Aging Body
If you have a negative body image, says Jenna Hollenstein, contemplating the five skandhas can help.
Awakening in the Body
Being mindful of the body is a profound—though often overlooked—opportunity to deepen our meditation and develop our insight.
Love Your Body Meditation with Trudy Goodman
Trudy Goodman leads a guided body scan meditation.
What Is Your Body?
It’s less than we think. It’s far more than we know. It’s who we are but it’s not. Contemplate the deeper reality of the body.