Recently, my favorite professional fitness baddie Tracy Anderson posted a short list of gentle suggestions on how to get into a fitness routine for the new year on her Instagram page. It was so different than so many other blogs I’ve read about starting a new discipline.
It focused on the sensations and emotions that come along with hitting the mat, like finding a sense of calm, resisting chasing the burn or pain, and taking a moment before you move to connect with your beautiful, healthy body. All extremely good and kind of novel stuff, but chief among them was the final suggestion: to spend an extra 15 minutes a day naked, which is actually the best thing I ever heard. She makes this suggestion because it is very easy to neglect something you are constantly covering up/hiding from/refusing to look at.
In the spa, we care for bodies that have undergone childbearing, decades of hard labor, unbelievable grief, surgical procedures, joint replacements, and the list goes on and on. And I notice a heartbreaking habit among so many of my clients, in that the removal of clothes portion of the service is almost always accompanied by an apology: “sorry I didn’t shave my legs, sorry I have stretch marks, sorry I had to get a mole removed from one too many suntans on the beach.” And I know why people do this, not being airbrushed and perfectly lit and all, but to me, these apologies for things we don’t need to feel sorry for sound like apologies for having a good life. Celebrating your naked body is on the same energetic circuit as celebrating a life lived. I
know that a deterrent for many people coming to the spa for certain services, namely the Raw Ritual Scrub, is that nudity is something we are taught to be ashamed of in some way. But the story of our lives is written in and on our bodies, our soul’s only home.
Compassionately asking yourself why being sorry for your appearance is something crossing your mind’s eye can be the starting point from which a healing journey can begin. And feeling comfortable and secure with your body begins with harnessing the bravery it takes to be nude for more than 90 seconds daily.
The Ritual is the most luxe place in Cleveland to get started.
