James Ray, Personal Trainer, Wellness Leader and Founder of Reframe Club, talks with Malachy about the practice of acceptance.

James and Malachy talk about the parallels between physical movement and mental wellbeing and explore how we can develop our acceptance muscle.

Here are some of our favourite moments.

What is a body acceptance workshop or therapy?
It’s a way of helping people find freedom from a lot of those messages we receive from advertising and we receive all our life so that people feel a bit more freedom

What exactly do you mean by acceptance?
I think the best place to start with acceptance is to define what it isn't. The first thing it's not is understanding. If we're one of those people who continually ask why then we'll find the first why and then look for another why and then we'll look for another. So there's not a lot of peace in understanding.

Acceptance isn't resignation. Resignation is an idea that this is how it is and this is how it will always be and resignation is a really heavy, leaden feeling.

And acceptance isn’t tolerance. Tolerance is hanging on for dear life you. Nobody can hang up hang on forever so tolerance is always finite. We can put up with things for so long but eventually, we will often snap or break or break down.

So acceptance is an attitude: it's half thought and half feeling: an attitude that says ‘this is just how it is right now’. It's a simple thing that is very difficult to achieve. A deadlift is a really simple thing: you bend over, keep your back straight, get all everything in line and lift the weight. It's really simple and it's a really difficult thing to do and the same with acceptance. It's a thing that we can practice and we can build-up to get better.

We’ve talked about the acceptance gym as a concept…
…and what happens with acceptance is people go along there really wanting to get fit and they do too much too soon, get sore and don't come back. And the truth is it's not a quick fix, it's a gentle journey, a compassionate way. Often people try to accept things that are too difficult to accept at first and what we have to do is to build up our acceptance muscles and it is possible to build up our capacity to accept more and more difficult things.

How does this relate to neuroplasticity?
I'm a great believer in the concept of neuroplasticity. Basically, we can change the way we think with conscious practice. New research says that we can be creating new neural connections in our brains right into our 90s. The more you do it the more you can do it, just like any other fitness regime.

With acceptance, say we have a really difficult thing that we might need to accept say, a really tragic bereavement for example, and you know they can't accept that - that's that's just too big a weight to lift. So what we might look at is the fact accepting the fact that they can't accept it and if that's too difficult still we might even accept that it's a struggle for them to accept that they can't accept that they can't accept it which might sound a little bit convoluted but once we arrive at the exact level of somebody's capacity the acceptance comes.

We rarely will we know why everything happens but we can accept that things happen. The ability to live with unanswered questions. Having to know the answer to every question is a kind of reactive energy whereas the ability to live with unanswered questions is a kind of responsive energy.

How can people start practising and cultivating body acceptance?
The first thing that could be really useful there is to accept that it's really difficult. We will have been bombarded throughout our lives consciously and unconsciously with messages that our body shape isn't how it should be. Advertisers stimulate our shame reactions so that we will go and sign up to a regime, or buy a load of diet shakes or join weight watchers.

Then, accepting that doing that on your own is really difficult and reaching out for help is a really useful thing, having that community support. No amount of willpower will give us a sense of accountability and accountability and acceptance are far more effective factors in human change than willpower and motivation.

What do you mean by accountability in developing body acceptance?
It would be for me to say, “I'm going to do this”, do it and then tell somebody when I've done it, knowing that if I didn't do it they wouldn't care about me less, they wouldn't value me any less, they wouldn’t accept me any less. And the fact that I know that their level of acceptance wouldn't change whether I did it or not, paradoxically, makes me more likely to do it.

Acceptance is difficult because it hinges on a paradox and for some people, particularly people who like to know why, paradoxes are really difficult, because paradoxes are things that don't make sense that make sense. That can blow fuses for people.

How does resilience fit in with acceptance practice?
When people first see me people are often very reactive. What I mean by that is they'll have a feeling and they'll just bounce off that feeling. Over time it is possible through acceptance to get to a place where we're much more responsive so we'll have a feeling and we'll be able then to consider what we do and then choose our behaviour. So that resilience is the ability to have an emotion, experience it, know what it is and then make a choice of behaviour.

Imposition and prohibition don't work. Our minds respond best to invitation, which is a much more gentle way. If we invite ourselves to explore feelings and to accept things.

So if I were concerned about going to the beach this summer because I wasn’t accepting of my body, how could that affect my mindset on a day to day basis?
What comes to mind is, if we start from a compassionate place very little can go wrong. So for example, right now I'm here in lockdown, I'm a good cook and I'll probably put on a bit of weight. Let's just be compassionate for that and realise that in the circumstances, I'm doing the best that I can and accept the fact that sometimes I am still subject to those shame messages that the advertisers send out…
…when the reality is I'm missing out on a beautiful sunny day with my friends and could be swimming in the sea…
… absolutely, and be kind to that aspect of ourselves because telling it to go away only makes us think like that more. When you put restrictions on yourself it’s always tolerance, which is unsustainable, but by practising acceptance it grows and is more than sustainable, it’s regenerative and increases your capacity to accept your body in different situations.

Have you got any tips for people to minimise that shame?
This is going to sound a bit left field and tangential, but one of the consequences of living with shame and anxiety is that we produce stress chemicals. If we practice gratitude every day, if we record three things that we're grateful for on a Facebook group, in a journal, as a family at the dinner table… if we are consciously grateful every day, that starts changing how we think. When we experience gratitude we produce oxytocin which is the antidote to the adrenaline and the cortisol - our stress hormones.

Let’s say you have a massive billboard the whole world is going to see, what are you sticking on it?
What am I sticking on the billboard? I'm going to go back to one of my great heroes a man called Carl Rogers who was the founder of the sort of therapy that I was trained in originally and practice my own version of now. He talked about empathy, acceptance and honesty. If the world was based on that it would be a better place I think.

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Reframe Club is a fad-free coaching Course and Community that helps people reframe old habits and mindsets and create a healthier life where you are happy in your own skin. Read more here.

If you’re interested in acceptance workshops and counselling at Lifetime, you might be interested in our Wellness offering or Gratitude Practice.

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