Over the past few months, I’ve dropped some weight — about 30 pounds now from my highest point. And 30 pounds is a lot. For perspective, a jug of milk weighs about 8.6 pounds. So if you could pick up approximately three-and-a-half gallons of milk, that’s how much weight I’ve lost. My knees and my heart and my belt all are quite happy about this.

So is my spirit.

Now, let’s get one thing clear right from the start. This isn’t some kind of body-shaming, finger-wagging, skinny=sacred kind of post. We don’t play that. This is about Deb.

And it’s about that diagram above. Notice that the triquetra isn’t divided into body-mind-spirit as is usually done. Instead, the human triad is body-mind-emotions, and all of that is contained within the spirit — our sacred essence that is, ultimately, the I AM that I AM and YOU ARE.

Our Sacred Self is unchanging. It wasn’t born and will not die. It is Infinite Joy, Boundless Love, Perfect Peace. So how could a few pounds here or there have any impact?

We pay attention to our physical, emotional, and mental health not because the Spirit suffers if we don’t, but because our ability to clearly connect with our higher Self can be inhibited. We remove layers of distraction, layers of attachments so we may become awake to and aware of our true Self.

This is why yoga includes asanas, the postures that are merely a part and that many in the West believe are the whole of yoga. If you’ve ever wiggled and squirmed through meditation because your body felt uncomfortable, it may be because you didn’t stretch and prepare the body for its role in attaining sacred stillness.

My weight loss began slowly and wasn’t initially connected to this understanding. As the months passed, I added a daily yoga practice to my newly focused attention on what I ate. Despite my Aries tendency to DO ALL THE THINGS RIGHT NOW, I discovered that ten minutes a day, every day, is better than an hour once a week which soon is dreaded and eventually falls by the wayside. My ten-minute asana practice is followed by a five-minute silent meditation. Just five minutes. (Note: I meditate at other times of the day and sometimes for longer, but that’s of no importance — five minutes is fine.)

My body has become an important part of my spiritual practice. I am responding to it as it needs and in the best way I can for me. I take care of it so that when I need it to be still, it listens. Your response to your body may look completely different. In fact, I would say it absolutely should. But I encourage you to start somewhere. Start small. Really small. Small and big are irrelevant to Spirit.

Remember that the most important part, the only part that matters, in fact, is the Oneness with Divine Presence. Anything that serves this alignment is a sacred practice.

Even calorie counting.