When you move toward that which is most fulfilling and life-enhancing, healing follows regardless of what your health is like in that moment.
Your health is not outside of you.
We all have unresolved shame, because it is used as a tool to control behavior.
True health begins with your thoughts. Thinking about comfort, strength, flexibility and youthfulness attracts those qualities into your life and body. Dwelling on illness, fear, disease and pain does just the opposite. Your work is to notice and change your thoughts and move them in the direction of health and happiness.
The body creates health daily. It is inherently self-healing.
Loving everything about yourself - even the 'unacceptable' - is an act of personal power. It is the beginning of healing.
Understand that you have the ability to get healthy and stay healthy.
I want girls to have an imprint of self-love firmly in place at a young age.
I remember when my mother taught me about my menstrual cycle and pregnancy. She, like millions of other mothers before and since, did not have the words or the experience to teach me about the miraculous cycle in my body - the cycle that is responsible for all human life on our planet and connects us to the moon and the tides. Nor did she have the words to teach me about the gift of sensual pleasure that is the birthright of all girls. If she had, my life surely would have been different. For one, I probably would not have suffered from devastating menstrual cramps for decades.
As a doctor, let me tell you what self-love does: It improves your hearing, your eyesight, lowers your blood pressure, increases pulmonary function, cardiac output, and helps wiring the musculature. So, if we had a rampant epidemic of self-love then our healthcare costs would go down dramatically. So, this isn't just some little frou-frou new age notion, oh love yourself honey. This is hardcore science.
Shame cannot exist in conditions of light, sunshine, and humor. So the very moment that you share your most shameful moments - and can learn to laugh about them - then the spell is lifted. And you, too, are free.
As a physician who knows the importance of body image to our overall health, I wanted to have a way to inspire women to love their bodies no matter what size or shape they are. This is possible!!! And I know EXACTLY how to do this because I've done it myself and I've helped thousands of others to do the same thing. It's women's health at its most fundamental level!
A grudge is like a cesspool; forgiveness like a flowing river.
What would your life be like if your body were your friend and ally?
The inability to love and accept yourself and your humanity is at the heart of many illnesses. To be loved and accepted, you must start by loving yourself. If you have traits that you consider unlovable, you must love them anyway. . . it's a paradox.
You don't need to deteriorate with advancing age.
Be joyful and experience pleasurable lives.
Our desires are the way that the healing life force comes through us and replenishes our bodies.
All over the world today, many girls still get the idea that their bodies are somehow not as good as a boy's body. These girls - who later grow up to be women with girls of their own - get the message that they are weaker in spirit, not worth educating, somehow cursed because of their menstrual cycle, and so forth.
Ellen Langer’s work has been an inspiration to me for years. Counterclockwise, her latest book, will change the way you think about your health – for the better. It’s simply fabulous.