SPT-Fall2014

Because it’s hard to fully accept
one’s self. And it’s hard to fully
accept one’s body.
Isabelle and her daughter, Sam, practicing radical acceptance.
I am selfish, impatient, dorky, and
narcissistic. AND I am wise and
brilliant and funny and deeply
connected to the spiritual world. My
toes are insanely crooked. My spine
is curved. My boobs are droopy.
AND my face sags. My body has
survived almost 30 years of an eating
disorder and can still do yoga and
dance and make love and eat
whatever foods I give it. THAT IS
ONE AMAZING HUMAN BEING.
When I practice the art of noncomparison,
or said differently, the
art of absolute curiosity, I get to
know and explore the brilliant
creativity of Creation that lives in me
and in my body. I become like a baby
who first notices her hands and her
feet. Have you seen how fascinated
she is with her toes?!
This makes me want to ask: Who is
my body? MY body, not my 20-yearold
body, not yours, not the
supermodel’s or the movie star’s. I
also become passionately curious
about who I am. Not Oprah, or
Mother Theresa, or my neighbor. Me.
In this moment. Now.
The Art of Active Listening
In these last few years, I’ve also
learned the art of active listening.
This has required me to come back
into my body after years of
abandonment. You see, there is no
way for me to practice listening to
my body or myself if I am not there,
if my consciousness has been looking
outside of itself for guidance about
who to be.
This has not been easy. There was a
perfectly good reason I left my body!
I had done a brilliant job leaving the
old traumas, the pain, the shame, the
hate, and the rejection behind. And
while my cells lovingly and patiently
held them for me, I now had to find
the courage to feel them again, and
even possibly love them for the first
time.
What I didn’t know was that
coming back into my body and
practicing listening also meant that I
discovered my body’s brilliance, my
intuition, the crazy-ass deep, infinite
love that lives at the very core of me.
I love the words “active listening.”
Like absolute curiosity, active
listening requires engagement,
presence, a focusing on what is
happening now, and now, and now.
There is no way for me to know
when I will be hungry, what I will
want to eat tonight, whether I will
want to do yoga, rest, or go to the
gym tomorrow. It is not possible for
me to know when I will die, what
next year will bring, or what the
world will look like in 20 years. My
only job is to listen to what is
happening in this moment and take
loving action if necessary. No more.
No less.
The Art of Radical Acceptance
My last and hardest practice in the
last few years has been that of radical
acceptance. This practice could
only occur after I stopped comparing
myself to others and listened to my
truth instead.
Are you sick and tired of covering
yourself up with masks and defenses,
of wrestling your body into a size and
shape that has little to do with who it
longs to be? Are you ready to trust
that being yourself is the only way to
be truly free?
I declare my commitment to being
exactly who I am, the sacred, the
messy, and everything in between.
I'm not promising it will be easy. I
still sometimes would rather to hide
in a corner than accept my body or
myself as is. This re-owning process
is scarier than anything I've ever
done. And more exciting and
astounding as well.
But if I don't do it, who will? And
if you don't do it, what will your
default life look like?
Are you with me?
Isabelle Tierney, M.A., LMFT is
coach, author, speaker, and therapist with
an international following. She is
passionate about teaching us to “Dare to
Be You! The Sacred and Messy Art of
Being Human” through her podcast, her
writing and her practice. She is also an
expert on eating disorders and other
painful habits and addictions. She is a
published writer and national presenter.
Most of all, she loves being a fully
embodied human.
Somatic Psychotherapy Today | Fall 2014 | Volume 4 Number 2 | page 76