For most of us in this culture, tuning in to ourselves means knowing what we’re thinking, perhaps also knowing what emotions we’re feeling. We’re seldom taught to consult our bodies for significant non–health–related information. Bodies are things to be maintained—fed, bathed, clothed, exercised—in return for which they’ll take us where we want to go. Of course, if you have an eating disorder, the body is also something to be pummeled and disciplined into submission.

If you limit yourself to this set of uses (and abuses), you miss out on some powerful ways your body is prepared to support and assist you! This includes helping you with eating disorder recovery. To get what your body has to contribute to personal growth and recovery, you have to be able to “tune in to the body channel.” This means paying attention to how your body is responding to present experience, past memories and learnings, and future plans or expectations.

If you’d like to check out how this works right now, try the following experiment, remembering to stop if anything about it makes you uncomfortable:

1. Start by dropping down into your body. You might do a simple check in, beginning at the top of your head and working down to your toes, just observing what you find. Where might you feel settled or relaxed? Or just neutral? Where do you sense tension or constriction?
2. Now think about something that really annoyed you recently. How does your body respond? Where does it respond? For example, does your jaw tighten? Does your stomach knot? Or your fist clench? Responses may be obvious or subtle.
3. Next think of any accomplishment that made you feel proud. Notice what your body does when you tap into this pride. For instance, does your chest expand? Does your spine straighten? Or might you feel lighter? Again, notice responses may be more obvious or more subtle.

Virtually every experience has a corresponding body response. When you learn to tune in to your body responses, you tap a source of information about yourself that is every bit as useful as knowing what you’re thinking and feeling.

(For some of you, being in your body for any reason feels out of reach or unacceptable. This is particularly likely if you have a history of trauma. If you are someone for whom deepening body connection feels unsafe or unreachable, for whom numbness or shut–down feel like the only safe or known option, you may find it useful to work with a professional who understands how trauma becomes locked into the body. The work to reclaim body connection can be slow going at first. But the payoff for your patience and effort will be well worth it.)

Here are two big advantages of tuning in to the body channel that will interest you. First, your body never lies about what you’re feeling. It will tell you accurately about feelings your conscious mind is denying or ignoring. When you become aware of what you’re feeling, you can make conscious choices about how to respond. Second, your body is the first to know. It sizes up experience and reacts before your conscious mind can pull its thoughts together. Knowing accurately and knowing early can be great gifts, for example when you’ve been accustomed to acting first (think eating disorder symptoms) and asking questions later.

In my next post I go over specific ways body awareness can help in eating disorder recovery.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.