How To Show Up: Lessons From Life Modelling

Recently, I stepped into the experience of life modelling for the first time. It was an incredibly uplifting, affirming experience. It was a simultaneously heart-thumping and calmly powerful experience. 

For anyone who isn’t aware, life modelling is fully nude. It’s interesting, what a big deal it is to be naked in this way; and yet it is. And at the same time, it really isn't. A paradox that we might see in other parts of our life and work. The nakedness or vulnerability of new ventures in life and work. The enlivening, uplifting, at times terrifying nature of them, alongside the fact that everything we do is built on what has gone before - and our relationship with the experience is shaped by our narratives and society’s narratives. 

I believe strongly in the power of experiences such as these as portals into new perspectives on ourselves, or how we might newly step into spaces: they serve as evidence to ourselves of what we're capable of. 

I’d love to share some of the lessons I took from the experience about how I want to show up in my work:

Know your ways into reconnecting with your power

For me, and I believe for many people, physical bravery and challenge which by necessity combines with mental stretch, is one of the most powerful avenues into reconnecting with and re-establishing my sense of my strength, my agency, my sense of my whole self as a powerful being. 

As someone who has a natural tendency towards a very busy mind, opportunities for embodied physical experiences like this, opportunities that support me in dropping down into my body, are essential. Even in my writing, the first draft is written by hand, sitting on the floor: two physical elements I know to be essential to the flow of my writing. 

I wonder how this is for you? What are your avenues in? How do you create them? 

Embodied is essential. 

If I had simply tried to think my way into feeling prepared for life modelling, I couldn't have done it and I certainly wouldn't have been as free and easy as I was. Instead, I danced big time beforehand (Shakira and Kay Tempest by the way). I connected with my breath. I felt my feet on the floor. I felt into the strength of my body, my strong thighs, my back, my arms. I stroked the soft fleshy parts that I am sometimes unkind to. I then deliberately chose poses that took deep breaths initially, but that took me deeper into my strength, for example a variation on warrior pose. In my first pose I stood with strong legs and my arms open around my head. There is only so far we can go in the growth that we want without working with our bodies: certainly if we want our growth to honour our whole selves and to be built on sustainable and self-compassionate foundations. 

Go before you're fully ready: and go resourced. 

If I'd waited until my heart stopped thumping, I would never have taken my robe off, or even turned up in the space. Instead, I created the space to step into and showed myself that it was okay by doing it. Fundamentally. I did it in a resourced way. Connecting with my breath; shared voice notes with the facilitator beforehand; texting my cheerleader friend who had done it before. I am categorically not a subscriber to the ‘just jump’ school of thought: it fails to take so many needs, privileges and divergences into account. However, there is a clear and strongly evidenced place for standing in the knowledge that it is by doing that we learn what we're capable of.

Beauty is subjective - and relational 

One of the reasons I wanted to do this was to step into just how subjective beauty is and indeed how subjective each and everyone's views on us are. There is only so much we either can or need to do about this. Doesn't this hold true in so many parts of our life and work? 

I learned recently from Emma Dabiri in her book Disobedient Bodies, that amongst the Navajo of North America, beauty was understood as found in process and relationship, not something in and of itself. Beauty is in the nature of things; in relationships. This struck me so powerfully when I read it, and is in support of what I experienced in that room: that we were there in curiosity and kindness and in art, not judgement, objectification or value ascribed through arbitrary trend-led notions of superficial beauty. The ways in which we engaged with one another, verbally, visually, energetically, intentionally, was what made the experience beautiful and profound, not the specifics of the shape of my body or the lines on their pages. 

Be playful 

I did try to be demure, honest! In fact, I was at times and did do traditional poses.

But I also knew that if I tried to do this in a way that wasn't me, I would feel more self conscious. So I played, I tried things out, and I included some silliness. It felt like me. I know that I can have a tendency towards seriousness when trying new things and trying to get them right first time. So holding in awareness this pattern, I deliberately invited in some silliness and a bit of ‘fuck it’. And once that energy was introduced, it built momentum, in part in relation with the responses from the artists. 

Create accountability, whatever that looks like for you. 

By saying the initial ‘yes’, telling someone I would be there to do it, I knew I would do it. Of course that I've been sick and really not okay, I could have cancelled and would have cancelled. This external commitment, however, was very important. It's something that I consistently put into my life including my work so that I show up as I know I want to.

Impulsivity is not always bad, especially from a full-bodied ‘yes’ 

I saw the invitation for this life modelling opportunity on social media on a dark wet January morning. Without thinking it through, I sent a message to say yes. Had I thought about it too much, I probably wouldn't have done it. Something in me clicked very quickly into a YES: I noticed it and ran with it. 

Tuning into noticing what an embodied ‘yes’ or ‘no’ feels like to you is one of the most powerful tools we can equip ourselves with. There is deep nuance and variability to it, of course. Learning and embedding the practices that help us to do so is a life’s worth of learning. 

Choose where you bare yourself.

I'm comfortable being naked outdoors, especially if doing something like jumping into water. This has been an avenue for me into feeling more confident in my body. I don't think I would have stepped into life modelling without that outside playground. And still, there was a strong element of choice in how and when I bared myself in the life modelling setting. 

You always have this choice and it’s important to exercise it. This applies to choices concerning when we share parts of ourselves, of our experiences, of our ideas and fears. We live in a world that tells us we should share all, bare all, all of the time. This doesn’t serve us.

Choose your spaces wisely and then step into them.

Keep the evidence and use it. 

This is something that I talk to my clients about all the time and use myself: build up the evidence that you can do brave things that you can grow, make changes happen, and deal with what arises. I'm not talking about a record of achievement, pieces of paper that are external validation of yourself (though keep them as well if it feels good) but evidence of the how you've approached things you're passionate about: evidence of what you created, learned, shifted. Return to this evidence time and again, including and especially when you're feeling scared of the next step. I asked a couple of the artists for pictures and will absolutely have these displayed in my house. 

I would love to hear how this has resonated with you and what elements of it you might take forward.

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