Body Love

We define Body Love as untangling the network of our beliefs and “shoulds'' about our bodies from the sensations that actually feel good to us and our bodies. Oftentimes these “shoulds” are not what feels best in our body. When we do Body Love work, we are reflecting on the desires of the body with compassion and curiosity, rather than with denial or shame. In this work is an underlying belief that our bodies hold important truths about us and this series will help us uncover these truths in a way that is aligned with our values.

The concept of Body Love comes from our experiences of inner conflict.  Facilitator, Brian Nuckols, developed the Body Love process from his work running recovery groups. He developed this process while working with people healing and seeking clarity and change in their relationships to porn, gambling, shopping, alcohol, and food. While these challenges, and the people who experienced them, were all different on the surface, there were surprising similarities at a deeper level. What all these experiences shared is that each behavior was motivated by a desire to feel something nice or remove something that felt painful in the body.  People discovered that the unhelpful behavior existed at the level of a compromise between the “shoulds” and the heart's natural desires. We noticed that once we identified and challenged some of the oppressive belief systems, a pathway towards healthier expressions of these values, and the embodied sensations we feel when expressing them, emerged!