Connection to Essence – Episode 2 | Body Image: A Different Perspective on Ourselves

00:00 Speaker 1 Connecting to the Essence. So we finished recording one episode instead of, uh, recording for five minutes and shutting off the microphones because we have nothing to talk about. Just kidding—we always have something to talk about.

00:11 Speaker 2 Right, but, uh—

00:12 Speaker 1 But, uh—

00:12 Speaker 2 But I didn’t think people—

00:13 Speaker 1 What? Record and all that.

00:15 Speaker 2 Because I told you, what, how am I going to sit here for an hour? What kind of world is that?

00:19 Speaker 1 So no, it’s not an hour, it’s half an hour, and that’s perfectly fine. I’m coming from a place where I’m talking with you about something that interests me and makes me curious. And I have a feeling it might interest other people too. I could see you weren’t suffering.

00:36 Speaker 2 No, I wasn’t suffering.

00:36 Speaker 1 You even enjoyed it. So I said, come on, let’s do another episode. I’m already here and the equipment’s already set up, so let’s record another one.

00:44 Speaker 2 Right.

00:45 Speaker 1 We won’t tell them we came back a week later and recorded it. We’ll publish it a week later.

00:50 Speaker 2 But I’m curious, because you record with so many people. You’re always doing podcasts, all the time. And you keep saying, “I’m not the center, I’m not the center,” but I think that someone who can make room for so many people to be at the center—

01:06 Speaker 1 That’s the kind of shlichus I have.

01:08 Speaker 2 But she can be—she must be very connected to her own center. I mean, I don’t think you can—

01:12 Speaker 1 To being a conduit. What you said in the previous episode about being a conduit really speaks to me. That’s where I am: I’m a conduit. For me, sitting here and being filmed is way outside my comfort zone. I don’t like it. I’ll be completely open with you: I don’t like seeing myself, and I’m working on that and going through a process with it.

01:35 Speaker 2 Yes, I noticed you didn’t even look at the camera.

01:37 Speaker 1 I don’t. First of all, I tell myself that most people listen to podcasts rather than watch them. And I know that I love what I do, I’m good at it, and I believe in it. So that’s okay. I’m stepping outside my comfort zone. That’s why, for me, it’s less about being the center, or how I look, or the camera angle. Those things interest me less.

02:02 Speaker 2 But it makes me wonder—maybe it’s not the same thing, I don’t know—but in workshops, if people film me and I watch it afterward, I feel like I was all spirit while I was there, and suddenly I see a body. There’s something really—

02:13 Speaker 1 And I come face to face with that.

02:14 Speaker 2 No, it’s not that I have a problem facing it. It’s just that, in my experience, we’re all spirit there. You’re spirit, I’m—we’re— And then suddenly I see that I was standing there on my legs, talking, walking among the people. I mean—

02:29 Speaker 1 Sitting on the—sitting on the mat.

02:30 Speaker 2 Sitting on the mat. But while it’s happening, I don’t experience that.

02:33 Speaker 1 What do you experience?

02:35 Speaker 2 Something above all that. Nothing hurts. First of all, I’m genuinely not hungry or thirsty, and my body doesn’t hurt in any way.

02:41 Speaker 1 So you’re spiritual.

02:42 Speaker 2 I don’t know if that’s what you mean—

02:44 Speaker 1 It’s as if the soul leaves the body. You’re having an out-of-body experience, in a way.

02:49 Speaker 2 Yes, even if I wasn’t feeling well. I might go into a workshop after not feeling well beforehand, and the moment I enter, there’s no trace of it. It’s the same with the children. Whatever was going on with me beforehand doesn’t matter. I will say, as an aside—and I tell the instructors who work for me this too—that I won’t go spend a day with the children if I haven’t slept well or eaten enough. I’m very particular about that.

03:12 Speaker 1 You expend a lot of energy there.

03:14 Speaker 2 Yes, but I’m consciously saying that if, G-d forbid, I’m impatient because I didn’t eat properly or sleep properly—

03:20 Speaker 1 You think that’s within your control.

03:22 Speaker 2 Then I’m doing them a disservice. Not even myself—them. And I’m very careful about it. Sometimes I sleep seven or eight hours, strange as that might sound. I want to wake up with a full battery, be with them, and then the day ends. While I’m there, I’m there. That’s it; nothing else matters to me. But I know I’ve made the effort physically. At the same time, I really don’t experience physical sensations there. I remember breaking my leg. I had a meeting with someone. I was walking, broke my leg, and continued through the whole meeting. It didn’t hurt. The fall itself was extremely painful, and moving to get to a chair hurt. But once I sat down, I was in the meeting.

04:04 Speaker 1 Wow.

04:04 Speaker 2 I just carried on until the end of the day, and when it was over, I couldn’t get up from the chair. I told the women there, “I apparently can’t get up, but I’m okay.” I remember dragging myself to the clinic afterward. It was right on the same street, and it really was a fracture. I was in a wheelchair afterward; I physically couldn’t walk. But she said, “It didn’t hurt? Your whole ankle is broken!” I said, “No, once I was sitting down, it really didn’t. Walking from here to there hurt terribly, but when I sat with them, I had no pain at all.”

04:36 Speaker 3 Now, if you’d been sitting there without a conversation or some kind of interaction with your spiritual source, it would have hurt.

04:45 Speaker 2 Of course, of course.

04:47 Speaker 3 So you really are having out-of-body experiences.

04:53 Speaker 2 That’s your definition. It feels too big for me.

04:55 Speaker 3 It does sound like a big label.

04:58 Speaker 2 Too big for me, and even strange, I’d say. But those really are my experiences.

05:03 Speaker 3 Want to talk about body image?

05:05 Speaker 2 Let’s.

05:06 Speaker 3 Let’s try, because it’s something I struggle with a lot. In the end, I’ll decide whether to scrap this episode.

05:16 Speaker 2 Go for it. It’s yours.

05:18 Speaker 3 Look, if anyone’s watching, we’re both dealing with a bit of excess weight.

05:28 Speaker 2 No, with excess weight.

05:28 Speaker 3 Right, with excess weight. For me, it controlled my life for many years, to the point of hatred. I really, really hated myself. It defined me, it ran my life, and I felt I had to justify my existence all day long. I did a lot of work on that, as I shared with you. But then I meet you, and you tell me you don’t have that. That you’ve always been okay with your body. Even with excess weight and all of that—how does that happen?

06:08 Speaker 2 First of all, I remember us talking about it and you sharing that with me. I still feel that we’re different in some ways. If I want to glance at the camera, I might think, “Okay, am I sitting up straight?” and adjust how I’m sitting. But you won’t even look. I’m not sure whether you watch it afterward.

06:26 Speaker 3 No, I edit the episodes in the end. I watch them, and I do see myself. I’m in a much, much better place today. Though lately I’ve suddenly started noticing the excess weight again. Those lower feelings are coming back.

06:42 Speaker 2 That’s interesting. I think, ultimately, it’s the story each of us tells ourselves. And I’m not dismissing the—

06:48 Speaker 3 Yes, we also live in a world.

06:49 Speaker 2 Right. So, in my childhood experience, looking back, I don’t think it was even an issue. I mean—

06:57 Speaker 3 Were you always fat?

06:58 Speaker 2 I was always on the heavier side. Always. That’s how I grew up. But I think I experienced myself as someone who was very loved, both as a child and as a teenager, so it wasn’t an issue for me. And over time—maybe it’s also a matter of taste—I like people who are on the heavier side. I’m choosing my words carefully here, but I find a certain beauty in it. Even when I was looking for someone, I wasn’t looking for someone thin. That appealed to me less.

07:31 Speaker 3 You see children, and maybe children who are on the heavier side even come to your classes—

07:36 Speaker 2 Yes, I have children like that.

07:36 Speaker 3 And you see that they’re struggling. Do you feel sorry for them?

07:43 Speaker 2 First of all, maybe—maybe Hashem sends me children who... What immediately comes to mind is this wonderful girl in my kindergarten class. She’s in her last year of kindergarten, and she’s a full-figured girl with such self-love. I wish we all had that. She really is a ray of sunshine. And her mother dresses her beautifully. I think there are two things here: in the end, the girl feels beautiful, and to me she is beautiful. I think the other girls see her that way too. If you asked them whether there’s a full-figured girl here, I don’t even know if they’d single that out.

08:13 Speaker 3 Thank G-d, I was always socially accepted. I never got negative feedback from the people around me about my weight, but I probably already had the strategic side of me that I work with today. From a very young age, I always knew how to laugh at myself, how to make something of it. So it occupied me a lot on the inside, but nobody knew that on the outside. It’s not that I was a rejected child or anything like that. I always knew how to cover it with lots of other things.

08:45 Speaker 2 But yes, I do remember that you—

08:46 Speaker 3 But it came from that same people-pleasing place. Once I realized that what I wanted was, in a way, to be seen and yet invisible.

08:54 Speaker 2 That’s exactly what I was about to say. It’s your story to share if you want to, but you did tell me about situations that were terribly painful and difficult. And I think they did leave their mark on your soul.

09:08 Speaker 3 I think of this as my trauma story. I was in this situation where I was dealing with my weight and a skirt that wouldn’t close on me, and I felt that people were frustrated with me and all that. I just remember asking Hakadosh Boruch Hu for the earth to open up and swallow me, like Korach. I wanted to disappear. And from that came this very, very deep wish to be seen and yet invisible. From then on, it started running my life. I was eleven. Now, this story came back to me through my daughter Mushi, when she was that age. She’s very thin and very talented and very beautiful and all of that. I was with her, trying to deal with a skirt—the opposite story, a skirt that was too big for her and that I needed to make smaller. And I said, “Wow,” and I cried, and I was happy for her. How wonderful that she doesn’t have to deal with this. Because to me, it is a struggle. And then I met little Chani again, and began to understand where she was, what her challenges were, and what she had experienced: wanting to be seen and yet invisible. As though my presence, and my weight, took up unnecessary space in the world, and I had to justify it. So that didn’t come from a healthy or good place. And then I started doing the work of seeing myself as a whole person, and accepting and loving myself. But it’s a lot of work. I work on it a lot. And meeting—when you say, “I like seeing fat people,” for me, my fatphobia really, really—

10:40 Speaker 2 Comes up? Seeing it is challenging for you?

10:42 Speaker 3 It affects me. No—why? Maybe it would have once. Not because of you as a person, but because I immediately see it through my own story. I see the struggle you must be going through, and that place—and I live in a world where that isn’t considered beautiful. That’s what goes on in a fatphobic person’s head. But everyone sees it through their own story. I’m telling you this from mine. And actually, when I meet you, part of me doesn’t entirely believe you. See how strong my story is for me? But at the same time, it inspires me. Wow, how beautiful! Here’s someone who lives in a world where she loves this, she loves herself, and that also gives you the ability to give love to others.

11:24 Speaker 2 But I do want to say, as an aside, that I don’t see this as giving any legitimacy to fatphobia. I don’t know; everyone will take it however they take it. But I can say that, for example, we eat very healthily at home. I really, really care about nourishing the body. I think that because I’m connected to my body, I eat healthily. I really try not to—I mean, I don’t eat sugar, certainly not processed sugar—

11:46 Speaker 3 I know you pay a lot of attention to your health.

11:48 Speaker 2 And I do feel that the body is, ultimately, a kind of Beis Hamikdash. So I feel that, in the end, this is who I am. My body too—this fullness—I feel like I was born this way. I feel it’s connected to my personality and to the person I am.

12:05 Speaker 3 Haven’t you tried dieting in your life?

12:07 Speaker 2 There was one time. You’re asking me this, and just yesterday I was sitting with a friend and telling her that there was one time in my life... I don’t know if I want to tell the specific story, because it involves someone who’s no longer with us. Anyway, the person has passed away. But the point is that I was at the stage of shidduchim, and my father said to me, “If you don’t lose weight, you won’t be able to get married like this.” I remember being really shocked, and within a very short time I lost weight relatively quickly.

12:35 Speaker 3 Wow.

12:36 Speaker 2 I thought, okay, getting married is something I want. So you think, if it’s up to me, I’ll do it. Anyway, as time went on, I realized it wasn’t healthy for me. I really felt that it—

12:47 Speaker 3 That being thin wasn’t healthy for you, or that this particular diet wasn’t?

12:49 Speaker 2 No, that particular diet wasn’t good for me. So I let it go and went on with my life. And at my wedding, of course, I looked the way I do now. I remember a moment at the wedding when I said, “Well, I got married at my highest weight.” What does “highest” mean? It’s relative. I’d always been full-figured, so my weight didn’t go up and down like an accordion. I didn’t have extreme fluctuations. There was that one time I lost weight, and then I went right back to how I’d been. There wasn’t some huge... But I said, “Well, I got married exactly as I was.” Today I laugh about it, because it’s clear to me that this was just one point in my journey through all of this, in the whole world of relationships. And in the end, I say that every person comes with a journey. We chose our appearance, we chose our parents, we chose what we would look like.

13:37 Speaker 3 What do you mean, “we chose”?

13:38 Speaker 2 We chose. Before the soul comes down into this world, it actually chooses its journey here. We chose what we would look like. I chose, and you chose how you look—

13:48 Speaker 3 Why did you choose this?

13:50 Speaker 2 I don’t know why. But maybe, when you said that it makes me love people just as they are, and makes it easier for me to accept myself—maybe that’s the reason. I don’t know. Maybe, as you said—

14:02 Speaker 3 So we chose it in order to be able to fulfill our purpose.

14:06 Speaker 2 Yes.

14:07 Speaker 3 Our shlichus.

14:07 Speaker 2 To carry out our shlichus here, yes. Now, my journey is to... When you say this is part of your journey, I feel that my own journey involves many different things, and my challenge isn’t there. I have other big challenges, and—

14:22 Speaker 3 But you chose it. You’re saying you chose this.

14:24 Speaker 2 Yes, but... In the end, we chose our parents for our shlichus, to bring who we are into the world. We chose our family; we chose our appearance. And that’s how it is, it really is. We came here to bring ourselves into the world in this form. So I say, okay, I chose this.

14:41 Speaker 3 I don’t want my children to face this struggle. I know they’ll have their own struggles.

14:46 Speaker 2 Why? What happens if they do face this one?

14:49 Speaker 3 Because I feel I paid a very high price for this struggle. Maybe I could have gone through it without that trauma, without that deep wish to be seen and yet invisible. Maybe I wouldn’t have experienced that. But then I probably wouldn’t be who I am today either.

15:11 Speaker 2 Is there some way your weight does serve you? Sorry to ask it so bluntly, calling it “weight.” It’s a bit—

15:17 Speaker 3 I don’t th—no, I don’t think so. There’s avoidance there, and emotional eating, and all those things. But I also had surgery once and I was thin, thin, thin. Yet in my mind—it’s all in your head, too—I was fat, and I hated myself then as well. That was before the process I went through of accepting and loving myself.

15:38 Speaker 2 And if you could look at it for a moment from a distance, as a bigger picture, is there something you can be grateful for in it? Can you say, “Okay, thank you,” because it did—

15:47 Speaker 3 I think I’m a more sensitive person because of it. I’m better able to see people because of it. I can genuinely be more of a channel, too, because maybe even physically there’s this capacity to contain, to make room for others and see them—because of my wound, because of my pain. I think every person goes through challenges as they grow. For one person it’s this, for another it’s something else. Everyone has their own areas—

16:20 Speaker 2 But the body really is a vessel for the spirit. This might sound creepy when I say it, and people might say, “What?” But I think that every person’s physical build... In the end, the body is the home for the soul, not the soul the home for the body. And I really think that’s true for everyone. Your capacity to make room for others is so great; you have such a large inner dimension, and the vessel really does fit. I’m saying this now, and it’ll sound as though I’m encouraging—

16:49 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, yes. It’s okay—you’re also someone who lives with an awareness of health. Interesting—

16:55 Speaker 2 I do recommend eating healthily, but—

16:56 Speaker 3 Huh?

16:57 Speaker 2 I do recommend eating healthily, though.

16:58 Speaker 3 Right, right.

16:58 Speaker 2 Because that already affects the soul. My battery lasts much longer when I don’t eat sugar and when I don’t—

17:04 Speaker 3 That’s about energy, yes. Well, it’s an interesting subject, but if I want to bring this back to connecting with our essence—this subject of body image—

17:16 Speaker 2 Then first of all, we need to understand that we came into this world, again—

17:20 Speaker 3 You know what I want to ask you?

17:22 Speaker 2 What?

17:24 Speaker 3 We’re both dealing with the same outward, physical challenge. You took it in one direction, and I took it in another. Can you see and understand what I’m going through? Have you been through it?

17:36 Speaker 2 First of all, yes. When you told me about it, it hurt me. It hurt to hear you say that you wanted to see without being seen. There are situations in life, unrelated to weight, when I can identify with that feeling of just wanting to disappear in that moment. Completely different situations, in different worlds, but I think everyone listening to us can think of a moment when they simply didn’t want to be there.

17:58 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

17:59 Speaker 2 When we wanted not to be there. And in that place, I really felt pain for you. I also want to say: I wish I could give you a little of that ability, of that pleasure—the ability to walk through the world feeling that I’m entitled to take up space. Not in some grand, demanding way, but—

18:19 Speaker 3 But can you—do you like being photographed and posting pictures of yourself, having people see you?

18:24 Speaker 2 I don’t mind being—I don’t like taking photos and posting them.

18:27 Speaker 3 Why don’t you like being photographed?

18:28 Speaker 2 Because I’m uncomfortable with that whole world of media. I have something there—

18:33 Speaker 3 Forget posting. You have lots of pictures of yourselves, and—

18:34 Speaker 2 Oh, being photographed? Yes, I have loads. Loads.

18:36 Speaker 3 I don’t have pictures of myself with my children.

18:38 Speaker 2 Oh, really? Then no, we have loads. We travel a lot, too, and take pictures. I’m photographed all the time.

18:43 Speaker 3 And do you like looking at pictures of yourself?

18:44 Speaker 2 There are whole photo shoots that Shinka[?] did for me. Sure, I’m okay with it. I need to—

18:48 Speaker 3 I just can’t believe it.

18:49 Speaker 2 I love you.

18:50 Speaker 3 No, I understand, but—

18:52 Speaker 2 But I wouldn’t post them. I don’t feel a need to post them.

18:54 Speaker 3 Of course. I don’t feel a need to post myself either. But I want to reach a place where I can be photographed, look at the picture, and love what I see, without that fatphobia. It’s a process. I’m working on it.

19:07 Speaker 2 But I can completely understand that. I’m not dismissing how you feel. On the other hand, just as you can’t believe this about me, I sit here looking at you and think, “What? You’re such a beautiful woman. You look amazing. Nobody would—” Because I don’t know what you see. That’s just it—

19:23 Speaker 3 That part I do understand intellectually. Emotionally, it’s a process. That’s okay.

19:28 Speaker 2 But for me it isn’t—

19:28 Speaker 3 I’m trying to understand what I can truly give the world from this. In terms of its value, I do think I’ve gone through a process of connecting with myself and loving myself and all of that. One day I’ll come out with it, with my story—

19:43 Speaker 2 Yes.

19:43 Speaker 3 A story, maybe a talk. But when you asked whether I gained something from it, I think who I am is thanks, in part, to this too.

19:59 Speaker 2 Absolutely, absolutely. I’m trying to think whether there’s anything more to add, but I do feel I answered you honestly, including about the children. When children come to me, that isn’t the first thing I see about a person. In general, when I meet people and come to love them, I don’t think I notice whether someone is thin or fat. That’s not where my attention goes at all. I notice other things: people’s nails, their eyes, their hair—whatever. Everyone has different things that catch their eye. But it’s surprising that we’re talking about this. You should know I didn’t expect us to end up here.

20:38 Speaker 4 Neither did I. But that’s actually what I enjoy about—

20:41 Speaker 2 The spontaneity.

20:43 Speaker 4 This podcast. When else would I have found myself talking about this? But I think that, in the end, it comes from the way we talk together. When did I say to you, “Come on, let’s make a podcast”? We were sitting together—I even remember the date, because it was such a date—

20:55 Speaker 2 Oh, it was a Chassidic farbrengen.

20:56 Speaker 4 It was 19 Kislev. We can celebrate it! It was supposed to be a strategy meeting, a professional meeting. You came over, and I thought, “If I’m sitting with her at a farbrengen...” I felt as though I was sitting beside a mashpia. You really are full of Chassidic content; you live Chassidus and all of it. I got so much out of it, and I said, “Wow, this is a farbrengen in every sense.” I really opened up...

21:25 Speaker 2 You’re very welcome to come to my farbrengens often.

21:27 Speaker 4 Yes. So what message do we really want people to take away from this episode?

21:33 Speaker 2 You mentioned Chassidus. I want to address that for a moment, because in the end, that really is everything. Truly. You asked me, and perhaps you were surprised, because I think outwardly we—we grew up in similar settings, in terms of schooling and so on. Outwardly we’re less alike. I think we were—

21:51 Speaker 4 I think we should do a separate episode on that.

21:53 Speaker 2 Yes, so I’ll just—should I not get into—

21:55 Speaker 4 No, no, go ahead.

21:55 Speaker 2 Then I’ll say it briefly. At first glance, we really do look different in a certain sense. And I do think that, in the very end, Chassidus and inner life—

22:09 Speaker 4 Truth.

22:09 Speaker 2 It’s simply in everything. You can’t get away from it. You can call it all kinds of names, but I feel that ultimately—even when you were talking about body image—whatever category we bring up, when a person goes through a real process of connecting with their essence, it affects everything. It can be in marriage; it can be in body image—

22:31 Speaker 4 It touches everything.

22:32 Speaker 2 It touches everything. And it brings order to the soul and—ultimately, it’s everything. I think that no matter what subject we bring up now, if we return to that farbrengen, we, we—

22:44 Speaker 4 I mean, at its heart, what is the farbrengen? Connecting to the essence. What a joy it must be to have found where you belong—to really get clear with yourself about the mission you bring into the world. That’s a great gift.

23:05 Speaker 2 Absolutely, and it’s a gift for me to know that, too. And I—this is what I—we need to wrap up, but I think this is what I do with the children. I really help them understand what their mission is, too, as they grow up.

23:17 Speaker 4 Because if your whole mission is connecting to the essence, then your role in the world is to connect people to their own essence. It means seeing each person, understanding that they have an essence, and helping them connect with it. You’ve worked out the formula for yourself. How wonderful is that?

23:34 Speaker 2 Wow, really. I feel so humbled. It’s such a great gift, right in the middle of life. That’s truly how it feels to me.

23:40 Speaker 4 How amazing.

23:41 Speaker 2 When you put it into words like that, I think, wow, what a gift.

23:43 Speaker 4 Right? To say thank you. To be grateful. That’s the place of gratitude—gratitude to Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

23:48 Speaker 2 That’s where I am.