In this episode, your host, Leandra Costa, talks with Relationships Done Different Facilitator Anaa Abualfaraj about changing your relationship with your body. Anaa grew up in a part of the world where relationships were taboo, and the only relationship she knew was the marriage relationship. Everything was taboo - even showing skin was taboo - and she didn’t know how to love herself. She was born with a body, but she was never taught how to love or listen to it. She started Access Consciousness in order to have a relationship with herself, as that was a relationship she had never had and one that she had always been searching for. Before Access Consciousness, she never knew she could have an Interesting Point of View, where nobody was right or wrong, and that she could follow her own path.  Becoming an Relationships Done Different facilitator gave her the space to explore the relationship with herself and with her body. Growing Up in Judgment Anaa was raised in an environment where, as a woman, you needed to be quiet, hide your skin and lower your voice. It was a constant judgment on her body. Now, in social media, there is a different type of judgment: this picture of perfection. There are certain skin tones and body types that it seems everyone aspires to have. We see this perfection in social media but when we look at ourselves and we don’t match up, we hate ourselves. It creates a separation with the self and creates so much judgment! As a child, Anaa had a very interesting relationship with her body. Her way to comfort herself was to eat, and her way to fit in with others was to eat, and her way to quiet her voice was to eat. In 12th Grade, she was around 100 kilograms and she hated herself. It was her way to cope with everything around her. It was as if she saw her body as wrongness and was keeping it in a cage and feeding it like an animal. The “Aha” moment When she started with Access Consciousness and the Relationships Done Different tools, it was like she finally let her body out of its cage. She was asking questions, but her body refused to answer or to give awareness because it had been locked up for so long and there was a lot of judgment. The ‘Aha’ moment was when Anaa first heard Gary Douglas say, “You and your body are in a relationship together.” She realized that she couldn’t control her body:  her body had awareness by itself. She decided to discover everything that was possible with her body.  She asked, “What do I love about carrying a weight that I love to hate? And what is the value of having this body that I’m always in constant judgment of?” She asked her body to show her how she could be in relationship with it. Essentially, she started talking to her body. There was no awareness, no answer, but she was determined. She asked what she could be or do different for her body and she started to listen. She looked at how her body felt when she ate certain things. Previously, she exercised from a judgment and hated it, but after asking her body what type of workout it enjoyed, she started walking. She tried different exercises and she experimented with the number of times she went each week. All the time, she kept asking questions and getting an awareness of what was good for her body.’ Talking to your body The biggest shift for Anaa and her body was asking questions. The one question that she asked for months was, “What is the one thing I eat that you don’t like?” She became aware that her body reacted to gluten, so she gave it up for about two years. She doesn’t have a gluten allergy, her body just doesn’t desire gluten and she honors her body by not eating it.  The body sometimes rebels against its person. Anaa respects everyone who is vegan/vegetarian, but when people are on a very fixed diet, the body sometimes rebels. Your lifestyle  needs to be a constant choice. Everyday you should be waking up and choosing your diet. It’s a conscious choice,