Cellulite: spiritual meaning and emotional causes

What cellulite is

Cellulite is the dimpled, "orange peel" look of the skin on the thighs, hips and buttocks, and sometimes on the tummy and upper arms. Everyone has a layer of fat under the skin. Bands of connective tissue run through it and tie the skin to the deeper layers. Where the fat pushes up and the bands pull down, the surface looks uneven.

Cellulite is normal. Most women have some after puberty, and some men do too. Slim people have it as well as heavier people. Genes, hormones, the way connective tissue is built, age and the thickness of the skin all play a part. It is harmless to health, and it is not a build-up of toxins. Some people choose treatments such as laser, subcision or fillers, with modest and often temporary results, and many people choose nothing at all.

Cellulite is different from cellulitis, a bacterial infection of the skin that makes it red, hot and painful and needs medical treatment.

The emotional meaning of cellulite

Because cellulite is so common, it is worth saying first: dimpled skin is not a flaw. What the spiritual interpretation looks at is not the dimples but what you hold inside, and the way you judge your own body.

Feelings kept inside

Cellulite is read as a place where things are held: anxiety, parts of yourself you keep back, emotions you have pushed down, regrets and resentments you hold on to. The tissue that keeps fat in place becomes an image of what you keep in place inside.

Commitment and abandonment

Cellulite is also linked to commitment, to yourself or to someone else. You may be afraid to commit fully to the person you love, and hold back from moving forward together. That fear can have its root in a time you felt abandoned. Holding back then feels like protection.

Old hurts from youth

Sometimes a part of your younger years is hard to look at. Experiences that hurt and marked you may still press on you today. They can dampen your creativity and the open heart you had as a child.

Squeezed by the mirror

Many girls start very young to worry about their shape, and to want a body that matches what society calls perfect. In French, cellulite is peau d'orange, orange-peel skin, and the image stretches to feeling like a squeezed orange, pressed dry by expectations. When looks become all-important, you may come to see yourself as ugly or less than others, and lean on other people's approval in ways that turn into dependence.

The question here is not how to change your thighs. It is where that verdict on yourself came from, and whether it was ever true.

Creativity held in

When creative energy has no outlet, through art, through communication or through sexuality, it is pictured as stored rather than spent, kept prisoner in the body. Cellulite may ask what in you wants to be expressed.

Saddlebags and protection

Cellulite on the outer thighs, "saddlebags" in English and culotte de cheval (riding breeches) in French, is given a particular sense. It is read as the feeling of having to watch over your children constantly so that they have the very best, or over whatever stands for your children: a project, a home, the people in your care. It also points to the wish to protect your power as a woman, and to a fear of being abandoned.

Living passively

Finally, cellulite can sit beside a passive way of living: letting others decide instead of making clear choices of your own, and a deep insecurity about losing your safe place, your haven of peace.

A gentler way to hold it

• Name what you hold. Pick one feeling that stops you moving forward and let it be seen, even only on paper.
• Let it in gently. You do not need a breakthrough. Give that feeling a little room in your days, a little at a time.
• Question the standard. Ask whose idea of a perfect body you are measuring yourself against, and whether you agree with it.
• Recognise your worth. List what you value in yourself that has nothing to do with your shape.
• Let creativity out. Give it one outlet this week: drawing, singing, writing, or a conversation you have been saving.
• Choose actively. Make one decision yourself that you would usually leave to someone else.