beauty.

Beauty. What does it really mean? It’s so subjective yet it always seems attached to some sort of unspoken set of standards. I define beauty by the emotional response I have to someone or something. I feel most beautiful when I am naked, when I am singing and when I am practicing yoga—and I mean really practicing the unity of mind, body and spirit that yoga prescribes.

Here is why: these are the times I am most me. I mean really, when you’re naked, you can’t hide. There ya are. It’s GREAT! You can’t tug at your pants so that they disguise the belly that you might think looks unattractive. You can’t yank your shirt down so that someone looks at your boobs instead of at your thighs. You can’t hide. You’re bare. I used to hate being naked because I hated my body, but fuck that. Nudity is spectacular. Go take your clothes off and take a peep in the mirror. No, really, do it. Now. How gorgeous are you? Look at your skin, the way it glows, look at the shape of your WHOLE body—don’t you dare pick it apart and look at it piece by piece. Look at YOU. All of you. You’re GORGEOUS. Man, I am grinning just thinking about how truly beautiful you are and how incredibly miraculous your body is as it carries you around and gives you so much life. When I am singing, I feel similarly. My voice is just mine. It doesn’t sound like your voice, just like my body doesn’t look like your body, and I thank my lucky stars for that. I don’t want to look like you. I want to look like me and I want to sound like me. I want you to look like you and sound like you so I can sit in awe of your genuine self. And when I sing I want to express what I feel and what I think. I want my facial expressions and the way I make music to tell people what is inside my heart. No one can use my voice to sing their own song, only I can produce my music, so why wouldn’t I?

Ah, and yoga. I love yoga. Union. Union of mind, body and spirit. I don’t want all the aspects of my identity to ever be separated. It is in separating them that I start to pick at myself and even start to believe that I am anything less than fabulous. I am in fact not anything less than fabulous. When I practice yoga, I look at my body in the mirror at the gym and think, I am beautiful. Here is my praying, peaceful, gorgeous self, channeling all the loving energy I can hold out into the world. Here I am healing, loving, creating a healthy space for me. Wow. Lately when I have been practicing yoga, I have been almost overwhelmed by the joy I am feeling. And in honor of that, I want to say in gratitude to all those in my life—thank you for loving me even in those times I did not love myself, even in those time I truly believed that I was ugly and I fostered self-hatred behind fake smiles. I can now say that I am learning to love myself as I am, learning to explore my utter humanity and what I am finding I believe whole-heartedly that it is absolutely beautiful—mt