I intend to choose a positive body image
The Mental Health Foundation’s theme for Mental Health
Awareness Week is body image.
As I reflected on what I could write on body image I read a Daily Mail article on the resurgence of the use of the Transformation Game®, a wonderful self development tool I’ve used for over 20 years for myself
and with coaching clients.
The Transformation Game® is not for the faint hearted, and I
think Jane Alexander’s description of the game being like “Spiritual monopoly” and even "Bonkers" says it all. This description certainly conveys the challenges facilitators
like myself might have for encouraging people to “play the game” on an area of
their life they’d like more clarity on. Certainly the first time anyway. Many once smitten, like Jane, return often to help kick-start or realign an area of their lives.
“Ouch” says Jane Alexander - something those who play the game can relate to.
Whatever your belief about the cards you choose they
certainly help you get to the crux of an issue. For it to be effective you do have to be prepared to
go there in the first instance, and accept the odd “ouch” or two when it hits
the nail on the head, and perhaps gets a little too close to comfort about
what’s going on. Although it can be equally gentle if needed too - ie it gives you what you can cope with and need at any moment in the same way a coach flexes their styles to suit the coachee.
Having recently had a photo shoot I have certainly had my
body image brought to the fore as I struggled with what I saw in the images of
me. I’m wondering, therefore, what the game will offer if I play it with the
intention of me embracing a positive body image.
That’s where the challenge started, even before the first
dice had been rolled and any cards chosen. My intention changed a few times as
I reflected on the difference for me of
- 'Having' a positive body image
- 'Embracing' a positive body image
- 'Holding' a positive body image
- 'Accepting' my body image
- I intend to 'choose' to have a positive body image
As I set out playing the game alone I failed to roll the required number on the
dice to land on the appropriate square to start my game. A sign perhaps of my
resistance to change in this area?
The first card of the game was the guardian
angel of ‘communication’ – a mentor if you will for my whole game. A mentor who
I thought reminded me to communicate lovingly and non judgmentally with myself.
The game involved 23 rolls of the dice, moving up 4 levels
(physical, emotional, mental and spiritual) and landing on squares with names
such as: insight, setback, intuitive flash, free will, blessings, service, miracle,
appreciation, transformation, angels and depression. With awareness gathered along the way.
I’m not going to mention every move here, and instead share the
patterns I observed, and key insights I got from the squares I landed on.
Intuitive flash
I landed on this square 5 times, and feedback from
the game suggested my intuition on what to do next was faulty more often than
not.
Which feels about right – for me my body image is one of those areas where I
look for the facts and data to support my belief. There’s no room for whispers
from intuition or inner wisdom. No room for self love. Just (faulty?) data that I use to
abuse.
An interesting observation as my intuition is usually very
easy to hear – and a wonderful example that every game, and the way we play it
is unique to the intention we’re working on. It’s as if the game brings our
ways of behaving and thinking into our conscious awareness and out in front of
us in order for us to transform or transmute them before putting them back.
Free will
I landed on this square 3 times and the feedback
from the game was that I never used it well.
Reflecting on that pattern as I
write it feels like I was avoiding what I know I should be doing. Choosing
instead to be distracted by all that glitters (a world often portrayed by celebrities) – perhaps reflecting the pattern
of having my head turned by what everyone else is doing and looks like, and
trying to emulate them rather than focusing on being me.
Angels
I had many of these join me:
- Trust & Delight
- Expectancy & Beauty
- Purification & Flexibility
- Responsibility & Freedom
Hmmm ...as ever food for thought from the game that will continue over weeks to come.
Or perhaps it’s about having the flexibility to take responsibility
to trust and delight in my own beauty giving me freedom from, and purification
of my current thinking. Leading to an expectancy for a acceptance of me :-).
A great reminder that it’s our intention, our game and our
inner wisdom that nudges us to see the insights we need to understand via the patterns and beliefs we notice in the game.
Setbacks
An “ouch”y setback was:
I’d rather change the outside world rather than do the
inner work of altering my response to it.
As I reflect on this I can hear my outrage at advertising and glamour magazines
telling us what perfect looks like, and even my resistance to the expectation of
wearing make up. And yet, why am I even allowing those expectations to impact
me, why the wasted energy when it’s me taking on other people’s beliefs.
Hmmm
…. instead of pointing the finger at
others perhaps pointing at me will help shift this belief.
In the game setbacks come with pain to represent that they slow us down,
and even cause pain in our lives. We can however have pain free setbacks in the
game that invite us to consider how we may already have released or relate differently to a setback.
In my game a pain free setback was:
I stubbornly refuse to approve of my own unique process of
growth.
A great reminder and nudge that we’re all different and not
homogenised like some factory processed snack that’s the same whenever and wherever it’s
made. We’re all unique, with different intentions for our lives, different
aspirations, and different passions. So why would we look the same?!?
Insights
Insights can come with “ouch”s too - well they did for me with this one
I successfully resisted the temptation to gossip.
Yep it’s too easy to join friends and have a gossip party about
all that we don’t love about ourselves. I’m not sure I can ever remember having
a conversation about what we love about ourselves. It’s no wonder my body image gets a
battering when there’s nothing in my memory to counter the negativity.
This insight invited me to resist the temptation to gossip, and change the focus of conversations with friends when we start to beat ourselves up.
Another insight congratulates me, with the words:
Thank you for demonstrating joyous, conscious human living.
Which aligned well with another insight earlier in the game that said:
I express honesty and truthfulness in each moment, claiming my power with love.
Which feels like a great end to the game – a reminder to
stay conscious to love and joy, and perhaps not spending time or energy on things
that take me away from that.
How might my experience of the Transformation Game nudge you to choose to think differently about your body image?
The challenge now of course is to take action, and do what I committed to do during the game. One action of which is to revisit one of the stories I wrote some time ago to support my own mental health that I'm sharing next week - the wave was written at a time where that desire to be like others was not helping me mental health at all.
There were other squares and other cards and actions to
undertake during my game but the full extent of the transformative quality of the game is very
hard to convey in just words on a page. You can buy the Transformation Game® (available from Amazon amongst others) and play alone or
with friends, or be facilitated by people such as myself who are trained facilitators of the game.
Notes from another game on life balance can we found here.
Please note I played a solo game – games such as the one
Jane Alexander played in the Daily Mail article will have up to 4 players playing, and the relationship with other
players and their games adds another dimension to the insight available.
The process, the insight, setback and angel cards used here are from the Transformation Game © Innerlinks - www.innerlinks.com. ANGEL ® CARDS (a registered trademark of InnerLinks, Asheville NC, USA) © 1981 Drake and Tyler; produced by Narada Media, 4650 N. Port Washington Rd, Milwaukee, WI 53212 USA. Use by permission.
