Be.yourself

The Body Positive

An organization against body shaming Listen to your body, learn and thrive.

All types of body shaming are awful, but in this post I want to focus on fat shaming. I know that many of those who are contrary to body shaming can make mistakes, considering we live in a society that encourages us to judge individuals based on their body size and appearance.

The Body Positive is a non-profit organization founded in 1996. Their major objective is to assist people in developing self-esteem and self-awareness. What they do is encourage people to have a loving and accepting relationship with their bodies. They organize in presence activities but also online material such as videos and courses to follow. If you’re an educator, you may take the training course and incorporate it into your curriculum. If you simply are someone that wants to lean how to be at peace with themselves, well this is the organization for you.

I believe it is essential to teach body positivity in boys and girls, especially when they are children. If something like this happened regularly in schools, things would be different in the sense that no one would avoid the issue. This organization’s training is based on “The 5 Competencies.” The competences are abilities that, if practiced on a daily basis, will lead to a healthy and calm lifestyle. If you suffer from inadequate self-care, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, self-harming behaviors, substance addiction, weight cycling, or relationship violence, you should visit their website.

This 5 Competencies approach is being explored by prestigious colleges such as Stanford and Cornell, which I found interesting. Hopefully, they will incorporate it into their study courses since everyone deserves to be happy and content. We all have critical voices that tell us we aren’t clever enough, fit enough, attractive enough, and so on. Even if this critical voice we have cannot be ignored, you should be able to control it with the help of this body positive community.