Body Love + Reverence

In this episode, we’re taking a deeper look at Body Love + Reverence.

Relating to our bodies is something that’s interwoven into every single day and moment of our lives. This is the main reason I’m so passionate about bringing love and reverence to the experience of having a body for women.

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In episode 441 of the Embodied Podcast we discuss:

(2:37) How major industries have made women feel unhappy and dissatisfied with their bodies

(6:48) Why the pillars of Body Love + Reverence are for anyone, regardless of the relationship with your body

(8:33) Body Love + Reverence Pillar #1: Sensual healing is about being able to tune into your self and feel and know the truth in your body

(9:29) Body Love + Reverence Pillar #2: Beauty as medicine is deciding what our own perception of beauty is, and developing the “eye of the beholder” in all areas of life

(11:27) Body Love + Reverence Pillar #3: Working with your intuition allows for presence, which enables us to fully tap into the human and soul self

(14:49) Body Love + Reverence Pillar #4: Energetic awareness shows you how powerful you really are, and taps into potential you didn’t know you had. This releases unprecedented reverence for the body

(15:26) Body Love + Reverence Pillar #5: Sacredness of every body means every single person’s body is sacred. What would you do if you knew how sacred you really are?

(17:02) Benefits of body love + reverence

Resources mentioned in the episode:

Work with me:

Apply for the CHERISH Retreat by 9/30 to receive 10% off
Check here to see when the Body Love + Reverence Course is available

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Quotes from this Week’s Episode of the Embodied Podcast:

There’s something unique and specific, especially about women’s bodies, that gives us access to the mystical, magical and transcendent.

Sensual healing is about being able to tune into yourself and feel and know what’s true and knowing what yes, no and truth feel like in your body.
When we allow beauty and all of its spiritual and natural glory to grace our lives with its medicine, we can bloom in a way that allows us to experience ourselves beyond the body.
Working with your intuition is a guaranteed way to sift through what is nonsense and irrelevant to you and stay focused on what matters most.
With body love and reverence, you’ll be ready and feel confident and excited to explore and experience more things in your life, it allows you to tap into more of your soul, ancestor and divine wisdom and medicine.

How was this episode for you?

Was this episode helpful for you today? I’d love to know what quote or lesson touched your soul. Let me know in the comments below OR share the episode on Instagram, tag me your stories @elizabethdialto, or send me a DM!

About the Embodied Podcast with Elizabeth DiAlto

Since 2013 I’ve been developing a body of work that helps women embody self-love, healing, and wholeness. We do this by focusing on the four levels of consciousness – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

In practical terms, this looks like exploring tools and practices to help you tune into the deep wisdom of the body and the knowing of the heart, which I believe are gateways to our souls. Then we cultivate a new relationship with our minds that allows the mind to serve this wisdom and knowledge and soul connection, rather than override it, which is what many of us were taught.

If you’ve been doing self-help or spiritual development work for a while, these are the types of foundational things that often people overlook in pursuit of fancier concepts that often aren’t practical or sustainable. Here, we will focus on building these strong foundations so you can honestly and thoroughly embody self-love. If you’re feeling it, subscribe to the show, and leave us a review wherever you listen from. You can also keep up with show updates and community discussions on Instagram here.

Transcript for Episode 441 “Body Love + Reverence“:

Elizabeth DiAlto 00:00

Think of the pain perhaps, that you have put yourself through or women you know have put yourself through, or that we see women everywhere putting themselves through diet and exercise programs, treatments, medi spas, Spanx and shapewear, squeezing ourselves into modern day corsets. In some cases, cosmetic surgeries, expensive facials, injections, lasers.

Elizabeth DiAlto 00:27

Hello, everybody, this is episode number 441 of the Embodied Podcast. I am your host, Elizabeth DiAlto. And I am excited today to spend a little more time on something I’ve mentioned over the last few months. I know I briefly touched on it in the 40 lessons in 40 years episodes, and that is body love, and reverence. I’m happy to be here talking about this today. Because a I have a new course coming out called the body love and reverence course, which is meant to be subversive medicine, for women to tap into their freedom, their peace, their power of the Highest Degree. But also, I’m just extremely passionate about this, not just because of the impact it’s had on my own life, on the impact that I’ve seen have on the women in our community over the last decade. First I want to start out with you know, some reflection questions.

Elizabeth DiAlto 01:30

How would life and the world differ if more women loved and revered their bodies. And this is something that I encourage people to think about from both a mystical perspective and a practical one. Practically, think about all the money and time women, maybe you are one of them spend as a result of being at odds with their bodies, all the different things, all the beauty products, all the anti aging, this that in the other thing, the workout equipment, the gym memberships, the trainers, and by the way, that is not to knock or discount the actual real value.

Elizabeth DiAlto 02:14

There’s certainly mental health benefits. There’s all kinds of honest benefits to stuff like that. And there are certainly people who take it to excess, and are constantly chasing, you know, magic bullets or quick solutions or things so that they can feel better or look better. And a lot a lot a lot of it revolves around looks right? We have major industries, the beauty, industry, health and fitness, weight loss that exist, simply because women are made to feel unhappy and dissatisfied with their bodies, and as well are so deeply programmed and conditioned to put so much value on the appearance and the performance of the physical body. And so the truth for most women is that over the course of a lifetime, the investment is 1000s and 1000s of dollars, if they can afford it.

Elizabeth DiAlto 03:15

And then for people who can’t afford it like all kinds of other ways of chasing that stuff. Or in some cases going into debt like there’s there’s no limit on how far Some women will go. In pursuit of looking better under all kinds of guises right? Think of the pain perhaps, that you have put yourself through or women you know have put yourself through, or that we see women everywhere putting themselves through diets and exercise programs, treatments, medi spas, Spanx and shapewear squeezing ourselves into modern day corsets and some cases cosmetic surgeries expensive facials injections, lasers.

Elizabeth DiAlto 04:05

That made me think of Dr. Evil and Austin power like laser beams oh my god, you know what’s popping into my head right now? I don’t know for my 80s and 90s kids listen into the show right now. My younger folks apologies if you don’t get the reference but look this up the movies Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure where they were time travel. I’m just imagining bringing like Socrates who they called so crates in the movie, or I think Joan of Arc was another one to modern times. Like imagine sending Joan of Arc to get lasered.

Elizabeth DiAlto 04:47

Like what the hell she was out here fighting holy wars. You want me to laser the hair off of my vagina? The absurdity right but this is this is what. We do the waxing the plugging the threading. It’s intense. It’s intense, and it’s pervasive. And maybe you’re not someone who was ever susceptible to that, if that’s the case, kudos to you and whoever raised you. But one of the reasons I’m so passionate about people having loving relationships with their bodies, and especially women, and developing reverence for the sacred vessels that we inhabit, is that we’re living through times that are so miraculous in so many ways, but also so challenging in so many ways, and the body is central to all of our life experiences. When we can have love and reverence for something that’s undeniably interwoven into every single day and moment of our lives, it becomes one of those rising tide that lifts all the boats. Now, there are a lot of factors that impact how everyone interacts with treats and feels about their bodies. Because this is the School of sacred embodiment. We’re always about integrating the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

Elizabeth DiAlto 06:08

It’s also important that we have some freaking fun pleasure play, enjoy doing it, like even just my little giggle fit over, imagining Joan of Arc going to like, the laser hair removal place, like we have to acknowledge, even if we participate in it, we have to acknowledge the absurdity of it, you know, bring some levity bring some lightness, and just look at it for what it truly is. And also, here in the School of sacred embodiment, we’re not about muscling through any part of the complex nature and experience of both having a body and being a spiritual being having a human experience.

Elizabeth DiAlto 06:48

And what I love most about the pillars of body love + reverence, it’s up there for everyone, regardless of your starting point in relationship to your body, whether you carry deep shame, hate your body, you’re on okay terms with your body right now, maybe already have some love, respect and appreciation for your body. These pillars are pathways to an even better experience, one that is more mystical, more magical, and more transcendent. And here’s the thing, this is something that I know to be true. And again, just because I know it to be true, in my experience, and the experiences I’ve seen with 1000s of women over the years, doesn’t mean it has to be true for you, right. But something I know to be true, is that as women like we are portals to the great mystery, right? Everybody is but there’s something different about women. There’s something unique and specific, especially about women’s bodies, that gives us access to the mystical, magical and transcendent.

Elizabeth DiAlto 07:47

And in case you’re hearing me say these things, and you’re thinking like well, this all sounds nice, but the world is burning. Like there’s more important things. The question I have for you around that is where do you think innovation and solution to the world’s biggest problems are going to come from people stuck in the same old habits, systems and ways of thinking about and doing things, people driven by fear, insecurity, worry, panic and doom, where people with the consistent ability to tune into ways of thinking feeling being in creating well beyond what we believe is possible, and how we feel comes back to how we think comes back to our freedom bodies, because all that stuff takes place in the body. Right? So the five pillars of body love + reverence. The first one is sensual healing. There is something indescribably magical about learning to speak your body’s unique language of the senses. And if you’ve been listening to this podcast, for any period of time, you’ve undoubtedly heard me mentioned that learning to speak your own body’s language. Central healing is about being able to tune into yourself and feel and know which true knowing what yes, no and truth feel like in your body. This opens the doors to discernment, to pleasure, joy, wisdom, magic and power that most women don’t realize has always been available to them. Part of it is about disentangling sensuality, from sexuality. And obviously, yes, they make incredible partners, but they also exist separately from one another, and sensuality has so much more to it than being sexual.

Elizabeth DiAlto 09:29

The second pillar is beauty as medicine because women have such deep programming around needing to be attractive and desirable in order to be chosen. Our relationship to beauty gets dominated by a focus on not just physical beauty, like out in the world, but our own physical beauty. And of course, then we are measuring ourselves against standards that have been decided for us. And that’s really part of the journey of beauty as medicine is deciding what our own what’s our on perception of beauty, or programming through our programming, we learn to compare and despair around our looks, rather than developing the eye of a Beholder of beauty and all of life.

Elizabeth DiAlto 10:12

When we allow beauty and all of its spiritual and natural glory to grace our lives with its medicine, we can bloom in a way that allows us to experience ourselves beyond the body. And this is kind of this might sound a little contradictory, like we do all this work for body love and reverence so that we can experience ourselves beyond the body. So we can actually experience our soul so we can experience our energy, so we can experience our connection to all that is. Also this allows us to tap into so much more life that has nothing to do with our bodies. a deeper appreciation for the body can then emerge. Because it’s being in a body, it’s having a body that allows us to experience all the beauty around us and within us. And then when we’re more tapped into our sensuality, our ability to perceive

Elizabeth DiAlto 11:02

beauty is amplified. In a way this is like going from living and experience life in black and white, to experience everything in Technicolor, not an overwhelming way, but in a way that feels like being fully alive. So tapping into beauty as medicine is another way to come more fully alive to have a more vibrant radiance experience in your life. The next pillar is working with your intuition. One of my favorite teachings from Carolyn Mace is about intuition. She reminds us that many people don’t want to learn how to work with their intuition. Rather many people want to like a lot of people’s drive and motivation for learning how to work with their intuition is because they want to know and control everything. They treat intuition, like an ability to see into a crystal ball and predict the future. So they can always know what to do, how to keep themselves and their loved ones safe, and prevent anything bad from ever happening.

Elizabeth DiAlto 11:59

That’s what a lot of people want. And obviously we know that’s not how it works. However, when we can better work with our physical and psychic senses, we become so much more present with the world around us. This enables us to fully tap into both logical sense and intuitive sense, the human self and the soul self. So it does actually make us more safe, because it plugs us into more truth. Truth in our modern world has become extremely evasive with the way media and social media are constantly bombarding us with so much information, disinformation and misinformation, which by the way, I don’t remember what it is I always have to Google it. But there is a difference between disinformation and misinformation. I know that the difference is one of them is intentional, and one of them is not. And I just forget which is which. But what I mean by that is some people are intentionally spreading information that they know to be false. And some people are spreading information, because they themselves don’t know that it’s false. They think that what they’re saying is accurate and correct. And again, one of them is this one of them is Miss.

Elizabeth DiAlto 13:05

Either way, working with your intuition is a guaranteed way to sift through what is nonsense and irrelevant to you. And stay focused on what matters most. Because if there’s one thing like even all the technological advances and innovations in our modern world, so many of which are like incredible, they save time, they allow us to do things that like you know, our ancestors never would have imagined were possible. It’s also incredibly distracting and incredibly derailing from things that we really value that really matter most to us. And for some people, it can be very, very unhealthy. Depending on the context, the amount of time they’re spending, all those kinds of things right. The next pillar is reverence an energetic awareness. While intuition and energetics are certainly connected, just like sensuality and sensuality, sensuality and sexuality are certainly connected.

Elizabeth DiAlto 15:00

Talk about them and think about them all day. But until you actually have a lived and felt experience of it, you don’t understand the magnitude. So energetic awareness shows you how powerful you really are, and taps you into potential you didn’t know you had. And this is what unleashes on precedented reverence for the body because the body as some of you have heard me say before is a pathway, a portal and a temple. The final pillar of body love and reverence is the sacredness of every body. As practical and realistic as I am. I’ve seen too much miraculous healing take place not to believe that sacredness is possible and vital. I have met people who’ve experienced trauma and tragedy beyond imagining, but still managed to be brilliant, loving and caring people. I’ve met human beings who are the embodiment of everything is possible. And you know what’s different and unique about all of them, despite anything that they might have in common? Their bodies.

Elizabeth DiAlto 16:01

No two people inhabit the same body. And every single person’s body is sacred. Every single person is sacred. Every single system of oppression in this world exists because people are disconnected from their own sacredness, the sacredness all around them, and the sacredness and everybody else. Think about some of the most horrific horrendous things that you’ve ever heard of happening to human beings. The people who perpetrate those things would never be able to do those deeds, to act those things out. If they were connected to their own sacredness to the sacredness in all of life, and the sacredness and everybody else. There’s a quote you probably have heard before, I don’t know who said it originally. But it’s what would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Elizabeth DiAlto 16:49

This quote acknowledges how much we hold ourselves back out of fear. What I’m offering you here is a different question. What would you do if you knew how sacred you really are. So I also want to chat about more specifically, some of the very big benefits of body love + reverence. Some of this may be a little redundant things I’ve already said in the episode. But as I say all the time, if something is repeated, it is worth repeating and worth hearing more than once. Peace of mind is one thing more consistent and sustainable mental and emotional well being is a big benefit of body love and reverence. It also makes aging a glorious, evolutionary and liberating experience, instead of something to dread fear or go to extreme measures to counteract we mentioned earlier, it saves money and time, right? Because when you have body love and reverence, you stop chasing magic bullets, quick fixes, jumping from program to program for all things related to your body health and healing.

Elizabeth DiAlto 17:52

And then similar to saving money, it saves time because you’ll be much more tuned to what isn’t isn’t for you, what’s worth your time and what’s not. So you can stop squandering your most precious resource precious and and renewable resource time. It will improve your relationship with food and movement, if that is something that not only that you struggle with, because some people they don’t necessarily struggle with that. But it’s just like, it’s a preoccupation, right? It takes up a lot of time. It makes it easier for you to form healthy nourishing habits makes you a better leader and role model, especially to all the women in your life, and extra, especially to the children and young ones, you are mentoring and guiding whether you realize it or not. Whether sex is important to you, or to frontier you’ve avoided or tolerated because of your body. Body, love + reverence can open up a world of better sex, of ecstasy, pleasure, sensuality, intimacy and connection that you’ve never even imagined. It also opens you up to more pleasure, joy and satisfaction in life in general. Freedom is a big one.

Elizabeth DiAlto 18:57

Are there things that you avoid for reasons related to your body that having a better relationship to your body with self? For some people? The answer is yes. And there’s a long list. For some people might be a few things. And for some people, maybe that’s not where you are, and that’s great. With body love and reverence, you’ll be ready and feel confident and excited to explore and experience more things in your life. By the love and reverence allows you to tap into more of your soul, ancestor and divine wisdom and medicine. There is a lot of medicine available to you from lifetimes, ancestors and divine beings who love and support you unconditionally. By the love and reverence prepares you to access receive and utilize what is out of reach when you’re uncomfortable in fighting and Hating Your Body. Because those things they truly don’t go together. Like you can’t hate yourself. You can’t hate your body, right and you are not your body, the self and the body. Those are different things. But you really can’t hate aspects of yourself, and hope to access all of the brilliant beautiful, amazing wisdom

Elizabeth DiAlto 20:00

I’m a medicine that’s available to you fully right. I’m not saying you can’t access it at all. But it’s certainly like clamps down your access the image that just popped into my mind, which is a popular image is like a clogged drain, right. So imagine, shame, regret, hatred, negativity, crappy beliefs, all that kind of stuff around your body that’s going to clog up your channel that’s going to clog up your pipe, to be able to receive and flow, the wisdom and the energy, and the medicine that is available to you again, from your soul, from your ancestors, from the Divine, from any guides that you work with, body love, and reverence also enhances creativity in any way, from creative expression, to just being a more powerful co creator of your life and your wildest dreams.

Elizabeth DiAlto 20:52

And then last thing I’ll say, is a benefit by the love and wisdom, which you know, this is not an exhaustive list, although it was a pretty long list is better decision making better decision making better boundaries, and overall confidence and self esteem, which if you’ve ever been a people, pleaser, someone who over functions or over gifts, or someone who let your insecurities rule your life, you know how valuable it is to have better confidence and self esteem, self worth, be better at making decisions and be better at setting boundaries. So that’s what I wanted to share with you about body love + reverence. Today, the course is going to be ready and open for enrollment, either on or before September 25. I took a trip for my birthday. And I hadn’t factored that into the creation process. I was like, I’m gonna be offline for like five days leading up to this. So if you go to untamed yourself.com, forward slash links, if you see a link to the body love + reverence course there, it’s open and available.

Elizabeth DiAlto 21:49

And if it’s not there, yet, it is not ready. But by the very latest, it will be ready by September 25. And I’m so excited to launch this in honor of both my 40th birthday month, and the 10 year anniversary of the School of sacred embodiment month. So thank you, as always for listening. Oh, by the way, if any of you listen to the podcast on Spotify, and you have a moment, please click on the podcast to rate it. You know, I’ve never been great at this asking people to like rate and review the show. But some people look at that stuff to determine all kinds of things, if they want to invite you to speak at stuff and whatever, which is like hilarious because they can’t check my downloads and they can’t check like all their like rankings and stats from like the last eight years. But they’ll go look at Spotify and be like, Oh, only like 25 people have ranked or rated the show or whatever. So if you have a moment it’d be great if we could boost those Spotify reviews and you know, whatever platform you listen to, if you listen on Apple, I mean we have a couple 100 ratings and reviews on Apple, which is good. But if you have a moment to just go boost that up for me that would be super amazing, and I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you so so much for being here. The show notes are at untamed yourself.com forward slash podcast and we will be back next week.