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 the signals your body is continuously sending you. Attunement is the ability to recognize basic needs such as hydration, fueling, oxygen, rest and then giving ourselves those things in order to return to homoiostasis.
Homoiostasis comes from two Greek words that mean ‘equal’ and ‘holding still’.
Self attunement is referenced as ‘being present in your body’.
Body Sensing & Somatics
The ability to recognize pain and tension in any area of the body and recognize that emotions and memories can be attached to it. Traumatic events can leave invisible injury. There is substantial research on the use of somatic awareness therapies for trauma survivors. See an example here. Frontiers article on trauma therapy
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, and your proximity to other people around you).
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.
