topic on the show is self love and body image can you honestly say that you unconditionally love yourself and your body or do you struggle with critical judgment the oysters in your own mind well stay t because my guess offer important tips for loving all of this positive energy starts right now so i'm here with joy and don and jan welcome ladies the positive energy thank you oh my gosh i'm just so happy to have you all here and the room is already filled with love that love is in the room because we're going to talk about love today loving ourselves and loving these all of the so our topic of self love is a great topic self love really is about our personal relationship with our body and and ourselves and making sure it's a loving relationship we focus so much of our love on others and it seems so easy to love others but can we direct that towards or solve in the same way we would our beloveds mar loved ones house those warm feelings love ourselves deeply fully and unconditionally or is that the easy to love another there's outside self but even sometimes we can mistaken our own what we call and perceive of self love i found that over the years it's a layered approach of just deciding how to love myself more how to love myself deeper be on and what what i see as flaws or imperfections i think that's really the deeper part of self love is getting into those places really digging as he said love ourselves when it's easy right when we do things we consider to be well done and not the other times when we're in those dark places so it's a process that evolves as we evolve and matures as we but donna for you what about self love self love is just that full acceptance but comment on what joyce said i've been struggling with it a lot as well and i said how am i going to get here and talk about but it's such a good lesson to learn that the the healing of this isn't linear it's always work and just like we work our muscles in the gym we have to work the mind as well so we always need that reminder that even if we fall off and have a bad day it's not that we're bottoming out not learning and not healing but it's just another chance to get some perspective and learn for another day because it's not it's not an easy path it's it's always work and it was like starting over every day a little bit of i was a very dynamic almost depends on how we wake up on what side of the bed and what it is that we have going on right but it's it is it is that feeling we want to be constantly there and it's also about our behavior do we treat ourselves with love and do we speak about ourselves with love to others and in our own minds do we say kind loving words to ourselves what about for huge and tell us about self love for  for me kind of think of it as like a really broad umbrella when i think of self love i think basically the act of prioritizing anything that supports your own wellbeing and so we've got aspects of that that we do with our bodies like nutrition or movement but we also have the emotional and spiritual side of self love where you know something like forgiveness or acceptance can be you know a really huge relief to us and help us embrace ourselves a little bit more deeply and be able to provide more love to the world as well miss so many misconceptions especially as women that we need to get past around giving ourselves permission to take care our selves and to love ourselves and i think that those messages are out there more and more they were given to children now these were telling them please love yourself above all else is not selfish and is not self centered to love yourself in fact you can't give from an empty cup so let's connect that to our topic today around body image and body image just for folks who might not even know is certainly about your relationship to your body but it is about the subjective perceptions that each of us carry around our by it is the filters and the lens through which we the way we feel about what our bodies is is filtered through that and even how people see themselves when they look in the mirror such that it's often distorted based on that subjectivity there are people we look in the mirror and we see only the flaws or only the faults or only right and it's magnified so that's that negative body image what we want to see is positive body image translating body  love to body love so what is party positive body image to you what does that mean and you know how do you explain that to others joy well it's interesting that that right now i'm here because of i had this idea that i knew what body positivity was and i really think that i spiritually bypassed that and i told myself this is where we're going to be this is where we need to be but i didn't want to deal with all of the the gunk the monk you know the the muck of it all and i woke up one day and this was maybe i had i had to say about four months ago and it was you my body talking to me you're not body positive anymore you're not you're not treating this vessel as a vessel and i had to really define redefine what that meant to be body positive and to love myself and do practices and movement but also compassion so it's not just what we do it's like how we on the outside but it's how we treat ourselves from that compassionate place and what would i do to first do no harm so those two things of how do i love myself every day wherever i'm mad and how do i not harm myself so to me positive body image what comes up for you you know because we think about in a day how much are we always told as women from one where young looking at magazine covers we always need to be more we need to be skinny or lose ten pounds have less wrinkles wonder are we ever taught to just be ok with where we are and yes we have things we want to do when our lives that make us feel good like exercise and eating healthy and those things make the vessel feel well but when do you find that peace within were never taught that so i think it's such a good thing to remind especially our kids like all of this that what it what is the concern for when you can just find peace within and what makes you happy and that should be shining outward in your body and i think when you feel that confidence when you feel that happiness that's when the positive image comes through  die we leave these beautiful vessels behind and we continue beyond that so we are so much more than that but you know we're still in this human journey of chorus and that means we're trying not to take on societal messages the ones that don't serve us and we're carrying some of those childhood messages with us as well subconsciously not recognizing how much that influences the way we think about ourselves and feel about ourselves so what do you for you jan when you hear body image i'm working towards positive body image i it's a little bit of a i know it's only because i saw the video that you did which was wonderful our ground being honest about yourself and your journey yeah i mean i think i have an inner mean girl that was born when i was around like nine or ten and you know she really didn't get any traction until the teenage years but you know i'm keenly aware of the way i've judged myself pretty much my entire kind of adolescent life on and how that was in some ways like modified and magnified by the by the women and girls i was surrounding myself with and so you know each of us was being unkind to ourselves and then we would feel the need  spread that around and really creates this really harsh cycle of permanent judgment and so unselfish and it really does and so learning to kind of tame the mean girl in my he mean girl in my head who tells me that you know this part of my body isn't good enough or that my body in general isn't enough or isn't healthy or isn't all of those messages it stops you from making any sort of progress or growth and so i find myself continuously working on that mean girl and trying to treat myself or my inner self like a best friend and what you do not talk this way to this way to the people that you love and so if you can just even walk the talk on that yeah all of a sudden there's a softening that happens and it can be quite magical but it is it's a process and it continues like joy said on and on it's forever and it is so good that it is a universal experience that we all share and we just sort of come out of the closet about it we all have that little voice living in our hands that is all about the ego and the conditioning that we had but first we accept it and that little voice needs love doesn't need to be admonished needs to be heard excepted but then you don't necessarily have to listen to it so i know that each one of you are here because you are all doing awesome work in the world with women and helping them as well as your it parallels your own journey and for me as well so let's help the women out there that are struggling a little bit this with body image today with some tips some of your favorite tips and tools or strategies or mindset shifts that we can offer them so so what what do you do you or would you say to women who are struggling with this well i think that one of the main things is to find something every day not the same thing but every day something that maybe is a flaw not just oh i have pretty eyes not i have i like my hands but go dig deep find something that you might even find repulsive and set it right and own it so that you can then it no longer is someone else can you have q with it or you own it you love it it's self compassion every day find that one day it heals the shame that we have about these little things only closet them and we don't talk about them that's when we bring shame to it and that is toxic to us to our minds and bodies so that's a wonderful to just find one little thing and celebrate that even if you felt it was a flaw yesterday today try to celebrate it and i'm going to challenge on that maybe not celebrate it but i'm just that embrace it because we don't want to go into oh i should be here because what if i can't celebrate my tip or two so so i made you know i do work i do a lot of leadership in career coaching and i do you work with people sometimes on confidence and you know i think so much of it is how much time and energy we actually spend in that place of darkness and criticism like you said i think it's important to acknowledge the darkness because that becomes not so scary when you start to to dig into it and accept it but at the same time there's there's for me i think of it as my body is not the whole of me yeah and when i can start digging into the things i actually love about myself the moments in time or i shy and the moments in time where i felt really proud of who i was sometimes i have people do like a visualization where they do a little slide show of those moments in their heads so they can kind of pull themselves out of the out of that like critical judgment moment in time when they really need to muster that yeah absolutely get shifting the energy  refocusing recognizing that we always have the power to do that so a lot of this of course goes to again mindset and psychology and but it takes a lot of self awareness because a lot of this the voices in our heads the negative ones we don't recognize them and we don't catch them most of the time so those are some of my favorite into walls is teaching people how to create affirmations or how to create positive intentions how to refrain their negative self talk and make it positive as well and some of the more experienced processes that make you more not resistant to the positive like meditation and visualization and things like that so what do you have any other attractor tribe that that's such a huge fan i've really seen that in the last year that everyone around me is kind of on the similar path so there are when you start understand what people who are on that path with you they're going to pick you up when you have a bad day and you're like oh my god i'm back to square one everything's mass and then they're like no you're just having a bad moment like ok so always surround yourself to people who are going to give you that perspective recite you're ok you know they tend to come around when you need them the most as well because the universe works in those kinds of mysterious or non mysterious ways right to change that we are changing that we are very beautiful creating that community and the i think it is do you agree that it is sort of a movement right now there is an underlying undercurrent of a movement so you could look at the world as a things are happening are becoming more negative and going downhill but not really if you look closely at what's happening there's an undercurrent of people being more and more kind to one another of women especially coming forward and standing up for themselves and expressing themselves and using their voices and refusing to let those those old notions come into play any longer do you see some evidence of that as well and in your work i do and i'm really blessed in the past couple of years that i've been able to really put myself in circles of women that are very nurturing and supportive and sister circles are popping up every where places where you can go and find people that can be supportive of you and people who can see that you can see the best in you even in those moments where you can access that yourself and it can be a tremendous form of support it's been huge for me and healing a lot of my old kind of sister loans we call him sometimes one of those moments where you have like women and women crying and people are you know not nice to each other it can really be scarring at times and so that's been really helpful for me in healing that on my journey and it does make i think make us all think of our child as we were girls there was always some experience or somebody made fun of us or somebody was critical of us so so it became a little unsafe or not you can't trust other women and we're changing that and hopefully that changing but definitely the tip not to isolate yourself to seek out friends or make new friends or find women circles is absolutely wonderful and just really really really important i agree with that as well so let's talk a little bit about what each of you do in the world so that you have offerings you're serving people and it's making a difference just through modeling alone if not also through the actual work that you're doing and then we're also joined talk a little bit about what you do and how that connects to body image so i teach yoga for everybody and yoga classes  yoga all types of yoga and i teach that here in town in princeton and take this video of the y m c a and other locations and i teach journey dance which is a very empowering transformation practice which we use music and dance and yoga different types of movement practices which is in itself so important to be in the body to be present to be in community and to embody yourself so embodiment is key to my work i also do one on one coaching and i host or collaborate with other people to do women circles i mean a lot of new things coming this fall and spring so yeah so let's get some would you say that all or most of what you do is about cultivating positive light oh yeah that's sort of the the underlying theme of that body respect body trust body integration right of all of who we are getting away from the outside going from the internal then to  outside so mary important very important and i can attest to that because i've been to joy's wonderful journey dance class and they really are such a great safe space and she creates such a wonderful environment an atmosphere so that everybody feels good about themselves so important very and when you see physical space the thought of what about yourself i teach yoga throughout the central jersey area born town ewing hamilton mostly and i really in my teaching i really try to teach you you know self love first fill your cup and then you were able to serve others and also to recognize that you're fine how you are your yoga journey doesn't require you to do a handstand it requires you to find peace in whatever however you feel your body feels today and i'm also doing some workshops around body positivity and empowerment and i'm hoping to do a yoga series to combine the two so we can do yoga specifically focused on the amazing this of our bodies and also to recognizing our own self worth is where confidence comes from to say we all have different things even though it's the same lineage but we're all bringing our own special guests and where is there room for competition when we all do it in her own magical way so i think that's such a good thing alone or it's a great way to teach a lo approach to yoga because people women feel insecure about their abilities in that way so if you can bring the non judge mental aspect to that which is how it was designed originally certainly as a spiritual practice it was designed so you're doing amazing work in the world self love comes up a lot when people have a hard time becoming visible in their work or becoming visible in general i like this concept that i refer to as everyday leadership which is essentially feeling empowered to be a leader in whatever way suits you whether that's a leader in the conversation with your spouse a leader at work a leader in your community to be able to extend yourself in a way that feels right for you and that feels in your power but that self love comes in it really does because people don't always necessarily see how small how small they're keeping themselves and so you know in the work that i do oftentimes we're working on  theater and feeling good about taking up more space in every way and i love the work i do and we have a fall program coming up that's that's helping small business people get visible on video ideal self and seeing them as their potential is really a lot of what each of us do so we're almost ready to wrap up just maybe a couple of quick final words from each of you before we do joy a couple of final just i would i would just go out and love you know never but i would say yeah we're done here at wherever you are just love yourself wherever you're at and wherever that is it may not be in a place of self loving but love yourself even where you're at in that and accept it and go from there right where you are where you're saying are you are hugs hugs i got to go back to you know your worth know your worth stand in your power own it be that goddess or go out and just do your thing than just shine bright for the for those positive words donna jen any final i would just say be your own best friend you have everything you need in order for this journey to be more pleasurable in order to feel that love inside of you and you will have even more to give to the world when you can when you can embrace yourself first so be your own best friend and i think you'll see that you find that things change when you do that when you talk to yourself the way you would talk to people you love it just changes everything  that so i want people to reach out to all of you and thank you on behalf of all the women for the wonderful work that you're doing and the where all and all the love think that you're bringing thank you anyone who tells you that you aren't lovable or beautiful not even the voices in your own mind you are lovable worthy and beautiful inside and out so go for it and