You Are Your Body: Here’s How to Feel More at Home in It

Metadata

• Author: Elna Schütz
• Full Title: You Are Your Body: Here’s How to Feel More at Home in It
• URL: https://psyche.co/ideas/you-are-your-body-heres-how-to-feel-more-at-home-in-it?utm_source=rss-feed

Highlights

• I was angry at what my body was ‘doing to me’, and at first I kept trying to push it to do my will, which usually meant doing more than was reasonable. If you have ever tried to push through burnout or even a strong flu, you’ll know that our bodies do not take kindly to being treated as single-use items. (View Highlight)
• In psychology, this kind of step towards connecting your psyche with your body is called embodiment. It’s about recognising that your emotional and mental experience deeply affects your body and vice versa. Whether your experience of bodily disconnect was as dramatic as mine, or more subtle, there are benefits to learning how to recognise it and reconnect. (View Highlight)
• The idea of becoming disconnected from your body might seem odd at first. One might assume we are automatically and constantly connected. While this is true in a practical sense of the brain residing in the body, many scenarios or patterns can disrupt the psychological and emotional connection. The pain I experienced is one notable cause, but there are many others, some more social or subtle. (View Highlight)
• Aspects of life in modern Western society push us towards a gradual bodily disconnect (View Highlight)
• The therapist Hillary McBride writes in her book The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection Through Embodied Living (2021) that:

  embodiment is the way you are in the world, but that embodiment is influenced by who you have been allowed to be – through what has been discouraged and encouraged – and your sense of safety and agency in it all. (View Highlight)

• Another source of disembodiment might be the narratives you’ve been told about your body by your environment or community. A religious group that promotes abstinence as purity might instil a sense of disconnect from sexual desires. A teen whose weight is constantly criticised may start operating as if their whole body and its hunger are negative and unworthy. Someone from a marginalised race or group may have experienced so many microaggressions that they subconsciously start moving through the world as if their personhood is not valid and welcome. (View Highlight)
• Even though the problem of bodily disconnect is systemic and common, all too frequently it goes unidentified, or it’s not taken seriously. One reason is that it tends to bubble up as an unhappy cry for help rather than a clear set of ‘symptoms’. (View Highlight)
• Because I was not in touch with my body, I made her the enemy in my mind. The obvious problem with this, and a lot of forms of disembodiment, is that we end up missing the answer, which quite literally lies within ourselves. (View Highlight)
• When people operate from this disembodied state, the cost is often large but seemingly mysterious. It could look like emotional outbursts that seem out of proportion to the current situation, but are actually a representation of a long-hidden belief or feeling. In my case, it meant I would push myself repeatedly beyond my body’s boundaries, such as attending events when I was in great pain because I didn’t want to face the reality and, in truth, the responsibility of being kind to myself. (View Highlight)
• The idea that your body is good and, in a sense, your partner or your home, might seem flippantly simple, but understanding this is at the core of embodiment. In her book Somatic Psychotherapy Toolbox (2018), Mischke-Reeds provides worksheets that word this as ‘befriending your body’, for example through touching parts of your body softly to become more aware of them. An exercise on speaking to yourself kindly includes phrases like: ‘I welcome you. I love/embrace you, too. Thank you.’ These positive ideas and practices can be a starting point for fostering a healthier sense of the body because they counteract beliefs and habits that contribute to disconnection. (View Highlight)
• Another simple but important step is paying more attention to what is happening in your body. Mischke-Reeds recommends enquiry questions that you can ask yourself while you are sitting still or walking, such as: ‘What do I feel? What am I sensing? What’s my experience right now?’ These questions should focus on how your body feels and what it is sensing. If it could tell you a story, what would it be? It can be helpful to start tracking this over time, asking yourself these questions regularly and seeing how changes show up. (View Highlight)
• Another step you can try on your own is moving your body mindfully. Walking, dance and exercise can all be a part of making us more aware of and connected to our bodies. Somatic release exercises, such as shaking your body, can also help you feel more aware and connected. There are more formal and comprehensive therapies around this, such as Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE), but shaking your body for about 10 to 30 seconds in the morning and evening can be a good place to start. (View Highlight)
• Disembodiment is often caused by unprocessed emotions or experiences, both past and present. If this is true for you, you should consider a practice that helps you to confront this constructively and safely. ‘When you process the things that have been unmetabolised or held in your body, all of a sudden, there’s room to reconnect,’ Lyons says. (View Highlight)
• Mischke-Reeds practises the Hakomi method. This psychotherapy has been around for more than 40 years and involves mindfulness and hands-on somatic interventions that focus on transforming the beliefs instilled by formative experiences and recreating positive ‘missing experiences’. Somatic experiencing, developed by Peter Levine, is a similar, widely used modality that focuses on processing, accepting and releasing the way trauma is carried in your body. (View Highlight)
• Another was McBride’s book encouraging me to say out loud that I am this body. I wept realising that it was alright to want to be connected and at home in myself, even when pain and societal pressures had pushed me in the opposite direction. (View Highlight)
• Ultimately, embodiment is something you absorb into a healthy, mature relationship with yourself, rather than a psychological chore. Deirdre Fay, a trauma therapist and author of the book Becoming Safely Embodied (2021), says ‘it’s a developmental task of becoming an adult to realise I have to know myself, know what I need and want, so that I can be in relationship with the world.’ (View Highlight)
• As you practise feeling more connected, hopefully there will come a natural ease to it, and a new way of listening to and understanding your experience. I would not call myself fully, or even substantially, embodied, but making this deliberate shift to reconnect more with my body has changed my life. This shows up most strongly in how I handle myself when I am in pain. I am now able to be in the moment, listen to my body, and allow the experience without immediately wanting to change it. As I practise this way of relating to my body, it becomes easier to listen to my whole self in other spheres, such as that darn changing room with its mirrors. (View Highlight)