Latest / Just Julia / I Got My Body Back, So Where Was I?

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I Got My Body Back, So Where Was I? · Just Julia

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I got my body back, so where was I?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: For a long time, I told myself that I would feel like myself again when I lost the weight.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: After becoming a mother, my world became very small and very full at the same time.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: For the first two years,
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: so much of my attention went toward my son that I barely thought about
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: who I was outside of being his mother.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: What he needed,
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: what he was eating, whether he was sleeping, where we needed to be, what came next.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't say that with regret.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Those years mattered enormously to me, and I wanted to be present for them.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: But somewhere inside all of that love and responsibility, a part of me became very quiet.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sensuality was certainly one of those parts.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I kept telling myself that it would come back later.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: When I lost the pregnancy weight.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: When my clothes fitted differently.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: When I felt comfortable in my body again.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: So eventually I did lose the weight.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I became stronger.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I started enjoying clothes again.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I looked in the mirror and recognised my body in a way I hadn't for a long time.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then I waited.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Where was she?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where was that part of Julia I thought had simply been hiding underneath a few extra kilos?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't automatically return.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: That was when I started wondering whether perhaps I had been looking in the wrong place.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because when I really thought about it,
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't started hiding that part of myself when I became a mother.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: I had been doing it for years.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I left Brazil when I was 17 and moved to New Zealand.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: I became very aware, very young of how a Brazilian woman could be perceived outside Brazil.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: There were stereotypes around being sexy,
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: sensual, wearing certain clothes, moving a certain way.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And whether those assumptions were fair or not, I became conscious of them.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to be misunderstood.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want anyone to think that because I was Brazilian,
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: because I had a feminine body,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: because I might naturally express myself differently,
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was somehow less respectable.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I adapted.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I learned to contain certain things.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I became more careful about how I dressed, how I moved, how I entered a room.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I often avoided eye contact.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: I looked down.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: I made absolutely sure nobody could confuse confidence with invitation,
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: femininity with availability, sensuality with promiscuity.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Later, professionally, that instinct became even stronger.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be taken seriously.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted colleagues to see my work, my intelligence, my results.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I never wanted being the woman in the room to become the most interesting thing about me.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: It hurt.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Not because I wanted my boss to be attracted to me.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely didn't.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: It hurt because somewhere inside me, I knew what he had noticed.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: I had become very good at switching that part of myself off.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps I had confused being respected with making myself completely neutral.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then I became a mother,
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: and whatever was still left of that side
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: of me disappeared even further underneath nappies,
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: routines,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: exhaustion,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: and the enormous emotional occupation of taking care of another human being.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: By the time I finally felt physically confident again, I realised something strange.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: I had changed my body, but I hadn't changed the relationship I had built with it.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: A few months ago,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: while I was at Mindvalley University in Tallinn,
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I saw an evening event called Love Touch, a tantric connection experience.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Even the word tantra made me hesitate.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: I am married,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: I am a mother, and I knew perfectly well how that word could sound without context.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't go because I was looking for something sexual,
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: and I certainly wasn't looking to cross a boundary in my marriage.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I went because I was curious.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Some part of me was asking,
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: could there be something here that helps me reconnect with that part
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: of myself I have spent years keeping under control?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: The experience turned out to be very different from what someone hearing
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: the word Tantra might imagine.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: We were fully clothed in a yoga studio.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: There were clear boundaries and constant reminders that nobody needed to participate
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: in anything that made them uncomfortable.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: We moved to music.
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  SPEAKER_00: We danced.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: We worked with the senses.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: At one point, wearing an eye mask, you simply received sensations.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: A scent, something gently brushing against the skin, music around you.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the exercise I remember most had nothing to do with touch.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: We had to look into another person's eyes.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was paired with a woman from Canada whom I had never met before.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't speak.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: We simply moved with the music and looked at each other.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like almost nothing.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't feel like nothing.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Try looking into another human being's eyes for several minutes without filling
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: the silence,
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: without joking,
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: without reaching for your phone,
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: without looking away because you suddenly feel exposed.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: It is extraordinarily intimate.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't sexual.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was human.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: For someone who had spent years instinctively lowering her eyes,
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: there was something almost confronting about being asked simply to look.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not seduce, not impress, not perform.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Just look and allow myself to be looked at.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe that one evening suddenly transformed me.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that Tantra unlocked my creativity or
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: that Kundalini changed something measurable inside me.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: I can't prove any of that and I don't need to.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: What I do know is that experiences like these have made me more curious
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: about how much of ourselves we quietly abandon.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes because we become mothers.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes because we enter a profession where we think softness will make us look weak.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes because we learn that ambition makes people uncomfortable.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes because we are afraid femininity will undermine authority.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes because somewhere along the way we received the message
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: that being sensual means being sexual and that if we want
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: to be respected we should distance ourselves from both.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe that anymore.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think marriage means the only relationship I am allowed to cultivate
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: with my body is the one I have with my husband.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: There is also the relationship I have with myself.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: That might be the part I had forgotten.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps you have forgotten something too.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe sensuality isn't your thing at all.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the part you lost was your creativity,
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: your ambition,
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: your playfulness,
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: your confidence, your curiosity, the way you dressed, the way you laughed.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: The things you wanted before everyone needed something from you.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you've spent years taking care of children,
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: building a career,
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: keeping a marriage together,
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: managing a home,
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: being responsible and becoming very good at being everything everybody needed,
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: you may eventually look around and realize you can't quite locate yourself inside
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: the life you built.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think the answer is to go backwards.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want the Julia I was at 25 back.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: I want to meet the woman all of those experiences created.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: The mother and the professional.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: The wife and the individual.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: The serious woman and the sensual one.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: The woman who can walk into a room knowing what she is talking about
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: and still feel Your way back,
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: It might not be Tantra.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: It might be dancing,
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  SPEAKER_00: therapy,
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: meditation,
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  SPEAKER_00: exercise,
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: traveling alone,
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: wearing something you haven't allowed yourself to wear in years,
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: taking a course,
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: starting the project you've kept postponing,
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: or something as small as lifting your head when you're walking down the street
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: and meeting another person's eyes instead of automatically looking at the ground.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: The method matters less than the question.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: What part of myself have I been keeping in the dark
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: because I thought I wasn't allowed to be her anymore?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe, when you find the answer, you don't need to become her all at once.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can simply start letting her back into the room.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just Julia.