Dare to Bare Your Soul

by Shrankhla Holecek on Feb 10, 2017

Going bare isn’t just about going makeup free. It’s about confronting the barriers created for us by society and defeating obstacles that exist within our own minds. It starts with recognizing that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all standard for us to live by and brushing off anyone or anything that tries to convince us otherwise. As soon as we understand this, the battle becomes silencing our own inner critic and learning to not let our insecurities get in the way.

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How many times have you held yourself back from doing something because you were afraid? Not spoken up because you lacked the self-confidence to do so? Silently stepped down because someone’s voice rang louder than your own? How many of us have let our insecurities stop us from living the lives we’ve always dreamed of?

We’ve long been conditioned as women to be soft spoken and polite. Especially in the workplace, we’re taught that we must keep quiet, that it’s unacceptable to show emotion, and that we must dress a certain way to be seen as presentable. We must be “lady-like” and never speak out or really say what’s on our minds. As we saw this past week, even powerful women like Elizabeth Warren are still subjected to being silenced.

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No wonder we feel the need to keep our mouths shut. When we do, we’re described as “shrill,” “bitchy,” or “overly emotional.” It’s often easier to just keep our emotions locked away and hide what we’re really thinking to avoid the harsh criticism from a society that condemns us for not behaving in a certain way.

These are the external barriers we must overcome. And in order to do so, we first have to acknowledge they exist. As far as we’ve come, women still are not equal. We still make less than our male counterparts and feel the pressure to play by the rules set in a society dominated by men. But this is only the first barricade.

Even more detrimental are the barriers we put on ourselves. It’s one thing for society to tell us we aren’t good enough, but when we start believing it ourselves, that’s when we’re really in trouble. So what can we do to step out of that self-defeating mentality and start owning our emotions, our insecurities, our vulnerabilities?

In our opinion, it all goes back to going bare.

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We must bare our souls and speak up. We have to leave our pride behind and prepare ourselves for the backlash. Keeping quiet only leads to compounded anger and frustration: pent up emotions that can manifest into physical ailments or diseases.

Emotional repression is actually considered to be a key creator of toxins in the body. In Ayurveda, there is an emphasis on the importance of eliminating toxins to treat diseases, which is why many Ayurvedic treatments start with detoxes or panchakarmas. Anxiety is the most common ailment that results from emotional repression, and hormonal imbalances are a close second – so turns out that daring to go bare skinned requires baring our souls!

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The more we speak up, the more confident we become, giving us the strength and power we need to present ourselves in the way WE choose. With or without makeup, in pants or a skirt, as a badass homemaker or a boss CEO. No right or wrong; just our rules, our way. And that's the TRUE beauty of going bare.

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