What Is Body Intelligence
If you are going to have a good relationship with yourself, you need to be able to tune in to yourself. Self attunement is being consistently aware and responsive to your body and mind. Attunement is the ability to recognize basic needs such as hydration, fueling, and rest and then giving ourselves what we need to return to homoiostasis. It is understanding your metabolic functioning.
Homoiostasis comes from two Greek words that mean ‘equal’ and ‘holding still’.
Attunement is being able to identify an emotion and have the skills to care for it, if needed. (Not every emotion needs time and energy but that is for another post). Self attunement is referenced as ‘being present in your body’, consistently. Body sensing. Body intelligence.
Body Sensing & Somatics
The ability to recognize pain and tension in any area of the body and recognize emotions and memories are attached to it. Traumatic events can leave invisible injury. Interoception is being aware of what is happing within the body (such as heart beat, pulse, digestion). Proprioception is awareness of the body in space (such as posture, foot placement when walking, ‘body in space’) There is substantial research on the use of somatic awareness therapies for trauma survivors. See an example here. Frontiers article on trauma therapy
Knowing What You Need
There is SO MUCH health information out there but none of it is any good to you if you don’t know what you need. When trying a new health practice, you have to be attuned with yourself to know whether it is effective or not. We ask the doctor to tell us what to do. We ask the health and fitness influencers on social media to ‘just tell me what to eat, drink, or do’. But they don’t know you. Only you know you. Only you can determine what you need. So when someone on social says, ‘everyone should be doing this’, that can’t possibly be true.
In an interview on the Modern Wisdom podcast with Chris Williamson, Dr Rangan Chatterjee surmises that if people could tune into themselves, they would be able to communicate what they need from their medical provider instead of asking to be told what to do. Listen to that podcast here if you like, Behavior Change with Dr Chatterjee .
In turn, Dr Chatterjee interviews Dr. Gabor Mate’ on his podcast where the theme is to live for yourself, not others. Dr. Mate’ is a physician known for his compassionate approach to addiction and its root causes. He is also author to several powerful books on parenting, trauma, and living an authentic life. Find his books here on amazon. These are just a few examples of how the field of medicine is more aware than ever of relying on a patient’s ability to communicate that is happening for them internally.
The body and mind don’t run on auto pilot but many act as if we are a machine that will keep on running without any tuning. Mind body neglect builds slowly and by midlife, you start feeling the negative affects in low energy, lack of mobility, foggy cognition, and in some case, metabolic disease. It is not aging that is the root cause. It is likely the years of cumulative neglect and mindless pushing of our bodies without regular, consistent, tuning in and care.
This distorted mindset that somehow we are stronger because we ‘pushed through’. “No pain, no gain’. That was an 80s and 90s athlete mentality, readily adopted and rather hard fixed mindset to change. The fixed mindset is your greatest enemy.
I ask my clients (and my children) to ‘check in with themselves’, asking ‘what do you need right now’? But sometimes we just don’t know. We feel unsure and disconnected. See the posts on ‘meditations & body scans’.
Grounding
You know when you are forking your meal into your mouth but not really tasting it? Or when you are watching a movie but not really focused on following along with the plot? Or sitting but not noticing if you are balanced or postured comfortably? Wanting to enjoy the moment but not anchored to it? That is when you need to ground yourself and you can ground yourself anywhere, anytime. Here is the training protocol.
how to ground yourself
- Pause the movie.
- Put down the plate.
- Situate your seating position to a comfortable but upright position.
- Breath easy, looking around the room.
- Feel your but in the seat, feel your feet, close your mouth, breath through your nose.
- Name 2 or 3 things you can see that you are grateful for right now. (your sofa, food, the dusk light, someone you love, your nail polish color, your sweat pants). It doesn’t matter, any small or large thing.
- Now, tell yourself how the next hour or so is going to go; “I am going to finish my movie, enjoy each bite of my dinner, then turn off the TV and go brush my teeth” (you fill in the blank)
- You might have to do it a few times in the same sitting.
This is anchoring yourself. A practice of being in the present moment. Being mindful. It isn’t suppose to last for hours. It isn’t suppose to feel like Christmas morning or your birthday or rainbows and unicorns. Just calm contentment. And you can give that to yourself.
