Your Body is Magical + Here's Why

Your body is magical. 

Having a body that functions correctly is an amazing thing. Even if your body doesn't always function correctly--and we've all got our issues--our bodies are pretty amazing. 

One of my BFFs had her first baby on Monday night. As I flipped through the pictures of her on my phone (in our text chain), I watched her belly grow from hardly nothing, to a little bigger, to huge, and then, with the next flip, I was left with an image of her holding her baby--the baby that, just hours before, had been inside her body. The baby that was literally grown and fed inside her body. 

We see these sorts of "before + after" pics every day [And do you remember this incredible YouTube music video that documented the process?], and I feel like we--or at least I, and perhaps other people who haven't had a baby--don't think much about what the body goes through in order to make that process happen. 

Yesterday, my aunt had a final surgery (of many), on a leg that was shattered 2.5 years ago. Over a long journey since her initial injury, she's had multiple procedures done and was left with large pieces of metal in her leg, holding it together. 

And then yesterday, they cut her open, removed the metal, sewed her back up, and poof!  She was putting some weight on her formerly-shattered leg a few hours later. Her leg has basically healed after being completely useless just a few years ago.  Sure, medical science played a huge part in this (which is also incredible), but her body healed. 

On a much smaller level but still an awesome one, every day I watch students come into yoga poses that only months before were totally out of reach for their bodies. I witness yogis coming into their first crow pose, or first headstand, and I see the excitement and joy on their faces when they come out of the pose, amazed by what their body just enabled them to do. 

Our bodies are simply magical. They're adaptable, they're able to heal themselves, grow babies inside of them (OMG!), fight horrible diseases, come back from unimaginable injuries, find balance while upside down, run marathons, survive horrendous conditions, and more. 

We deal with our bodies all day, every day. We gripe about them, criticize the parts of them that we don't like, beat them up, overwork them + tire them out, don't always feed them the best fuel, and still, there they are. A part of our journey and our companions in every waking moment of our existence. 

What if we gave our bodies just a bit more credit for all that they enable us to do? And what if we appreciated them a little bit more? 

We talk about this ad nauseam [in yoga], but how often do we take the time to just be in awe of our magical bodies throughout our days? 

The next time that your body does something for you--whether it's wake up on time the day that you forgot to set your alarm, surpass a fitness goal, land a handstand, or come back from a summer cold--I encourage you to be mindful enough to stop what you're doing and pause to acknowledge your incredible physical vessel. 

It's pretty magical.