Beautiful is you.

Make no mistake loves: you are indeed beauty. It is not the girl on the cover (or the guy with the football). They are indeed beautiful but it isn’t exclusive to the size of their muscles or their waistline.

I don’t really know where to start with this subject because it is so deep and tied to so much in my life and identity. But, lately I have been confronted by it on all sides and so I decided to be brave and talk about it.

I spent years of my life wishing I could look different. I hurt myself for years trying to be fit into an ideal that wasn’t me. Just plain denied myself the chance to be myself and embrace my own body, mind and spirit. This is where I breathe from when I say to you:

I hope to help you Free Your Om.

How did we get to this point in our modern world? The point where we would rather be hit by a car than deemed fat? Or unattractive? Or gay?

It has nothing to do with health and everything to do with your capacity to love.

Can you let yourself love? And be loved? Can you love yourself?

It is easier to have compassion for others. It is justifiable in our culture to hold yourself to a damagingly high standard of action. We are all third chakra in this nation: go, go and go! We need Ahimsa for our own heartbeats in this. We are nation of doers they tell us. “Buy this” and “Be come that”, “Be there first”, “Spare no expense”.

Specifically though, what is it about the madness of equating being thin with being (fill in your own supposedly unattainable quality here) that is so contagious? It is truly radical to embrace yourself for who you are and what you look like.

The number on the back of your Levis—is just a number of the back of your Levis.

Start your own revolution and deny the media a place to sell the madness. Stand up tall and embrace your belly, your thighs and your beautiful smile. There is life with pie. A world of real life and martinis not looking at everything as a number.

It took me a lot of inward gazing to see the beauty in being myself. A lot of yoga and a lot of patience.

There is an equal amount of effort trying to get you to go the other way and that will prevent you from ever embracing yourself—but will show you how to purchase some form of self acceptance.

Nope. You are you because everyone else is taken loves.

Satya: Embrace the truth about your whole self. You are not your body. You are not your issues. You are so much more than that. Not singular and indeed infinite.

You are infinite and a part of the divine cosmic love that pulsates within your every cell. Free your Om.

Om—the sound of all sounds that resonates. It pulses to the same beat of our universal consciousness. You are no coincidence loves, everything about you is absolutely perfect exactly the way that it is.

Shine bright my little dancing stars.

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Apprentice Editor: Holly Horne / Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: elephant journal archives