The Body Sacred

Since this book was written for Wiccans, a lot of the content, exercises and meditations had no particular relevance to myself as a non-Wiccan. My spirituality harbours a distinctly different worldview and thus clashes with all of the "we come from the Goddess," "chakras," and "four elements" stuff. However, much like Starhawk's The Earth Path(which I reviewed here), I was still able to look beyond the Wiccan concepts and gain something from the book.

First off, it's amazingly well-written in a f

Since this book was written for Wiccans, a lot of the content, exercises and meditations had no particular relevance to myself as a non-Wiccan. My spirituality harbours a distinctly different worldview and thus clashes with all of the "we come from the Goddess," "chakras," and "four elements" stuff. However, much like Starhawk's The Earth Path (which I reviewed here), I was still able to look beyond the Wiccan concepts and gain something from the book.

First off, it's amazingly well-written in a fantastically conversational tone (which included sarcasm, win!) so reading it was indeed a pleasure. A few exercises like creating a list of inspirational women or self-pampering to get more in touch with your body and tend to it as sacred are things I felt would prove useful to myself, and really had nothing to do at all with spirituality and thus anyone could do them. The book is built around the archetypes of the Goddess (i.e., Mother, Healer, Lover, Dancer, and Crone) and while those were irrelevant to me, the information on health, sex, the way body image is attacked in media, and much more was all very applicable to myself.

Secondly, a couple lines from the book sort of whacked me upside the head and are quotes I really need to adopt as self-reminders when negative thoughts begin to take over. However, the cover of the book did bother me a little. In a book that is targeted at body image — and more matter-of-factly targeted to plus-size women (and the author herself being plus-size) — the cover features a nude thin person, which I found a bit antithetical. But, I know authors have no control over this so I just overlooked it.

I won't hesitate to recommend this to Wiccans.