Being at Peace With Our Body

Moving Beyond Body Image, Obsessing About Our Health & Fearing Aging With the Help of Our Right Brain

My daughter (then 7) and mother “walking in wonder.''

Part of any healing journey is to be at peace in our body.  Our ability to feel embodied is a job for our brain’s right hemisphere. Our left hemisphere sees our body as a thing or rather a sum of things.  Left unchecked (and fueled by cultural standards), our left brain has us judging, seeking perfection, disturbed by aging and/or relentlessly fixing our bodies.  What can we do?

“You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” - Albert Einstein

Why Are We Detached or At Odds With Our Body?

As with other aspects of brain development, much of how we experience our bodies is influenced by our natural tendencies and our experiences. 

Certainly our unique biochemistry, for example undermethylation, will make some of us more vulnerable to landing in a left brain view of our bodies.

During attachment, we are held (almost always on our left side as infants, which stimulates the right hemisphere).  We have our first close physical and emotional connection with another human being.  We feel cold, hungry, discomfort, we communicate through crying and our needs are met.  Repeatedly we are learning to feel our bodies and express our emotions.  Hopefully, but not necessarily, this cycle is happening to a “ good enough degree” and laying the foundation for our right hemisphere.  

Culture will further shape this.

During our early education, our right brain starts to get put in the corner.  Drawing, dancing, and moving are replaced by reading, writing, and sitting at a desk.  Play is replaced with organized physical education.

By the time we are teens, movement becomes a competitive sport or a performance - a means of excelling.   As we try to make sense of our changing bodies, we are bombarded with images of how our body should look. 

As adults, we’ve collectively outsourced many of the things our ancestors would have done with their bodies.  As professional athletes and performers move, sing, dance, make music and pretend (act), we sit still in front of our screens and watch.  

Many of us have had this disconnect further compounded by health issues and a belief that our bodies “shouldn’t be misbehaving” or defying us. Medicine and even functional medicine, in an attempt to fix, leaves many of us feeling less whole than our illness does. 

And for many of us in middle age - just as we finally feel more at ease in our bodies, they start to change and they do so in a left brain culture that doesn’t know how to make sense of aging.

How can we grow those neuronal connections of the right brain, so we can return home to our bodies?

I think of it like caring for a baby.  While the left brain might analyze or set goals for that baby, the right brain sets intentions….intentions to nurture, support, heal, protect, connect, listen to and feel a sense of gratitude - in this case gratitude for our wholeness.

10 Ways To Return Home To Our Bodies

1. We can provide comfort - wrap our body in a warm blanket fresh out of the dryer and notice how that feels. We can take a warm/hot bath….just the perfect temperature for us….all with the intention of providing comfort.  We can take our body out for a walk, or get down on the floor with it and stretch…ideally unplugged so we can really notice what that feels like to be in our body, to feel our joints move, our chest rise and fall,...our heart beat.  Before I used to give talks, I would find a bathroom so I could wash my hands with soap and warm water. This was my way of giving myself care and warmth so I could be present.

2. We can feed our body, this time with an intention to nourish. We can take our time, savor, and relax.  Even if we find ourselves  in a less than optimal food experience, as I did last night while eating out, I could tell my body, “This is what I have for you at this moment.”  

3. Similarly, if we are taking supplements, we can take them with the intention of supporting our body.  If we are benefiting from medication (even if our long term hope is not to need the medication), we can be thankful for modern science and that we live in a time where we can have this benefit.   Putting anything in our body while thinking we are harming ourselves - is most certainly harming ourselves. 

4. We can protect our mind from the messages that media and marketing inevitably wire into our brains.  Fifteen years ago, I stopped watching TV. One reason was that the news anchors were starting to look too perfect, while regular people in my life (myself included) were starting to look more flawed.   Social media brings new challenges here, but as my daughter says, “It’s not social media that’s the problem, it’s who you choose to follow that’s the problem.” We do have a choice.  I’m personally inspired by those  on social media who are obviously at ease with themselves and doing (and sharing) what they love.

5. We can protect ourselves from ourselves.  We can notice when we’re operating out of the left brain.   We are always one brain hemisphere away from some peace of mind.  When we shift into the right brain, we can see the bigger picture of who we are and why we are here.  I find that shifting my attention to where I find purpose and joy is one of the best remedies for breaking destructive thought patterns.

6. If we've been sending our body angry or judgmental messages when it's not complying with expectations, we can apologize ....”I’m sorry I let the cultural input come between us.”  If we have a tendency to forget we even have a body, we can apologize for that too. “I’m sorry I’ve been living in my head and have neglected you.”

7. We can listen to our body….and not interrupt, not diagnose….just listen and be curious.  “Why did you tense up when that person said that?” “Why do we only overeat when we are with this person?”  Our body has a lot to share. 

8. We can “sink down” into our bodies.  The way I like to do this is to take a deep breath.  As I exhale, I relax my shoulders and then exhale a little more and drop my shoulders further.  “Ahhh…..”

9. When we see our reflection in a window or look in the mirror, or when we awake or lay down to go to sleep, we can simply say, “Thank you.”  While doing a body scan where we close our eyes and notice each of our body parts, starting with our toes, we can add a thank you….especially to those “parts” our left brain has deemed, “not right”….”Thank you, Skin,  for holding me together and for giving it your all to cover up my veins…oy...oh, yes,.....Veins - thank you too, for carrying all that blood back to my lungs.  But for you, life would be pretty deoxygenated and well…..messy.   We can even get cellular, thanking our mitochondria.  Recently I’ve been thanking my metallothioneins. And lastly….

10. We can walk in wonder while staying aware that our time here is fleeting.

"There's a lovely story from the Cork area (of Ireland)....The body had died and the soul was on its way out the door. Just before it went it turned and looked at the body, and it felt such a sense of poignancy for the body in which it had lived for seventy years that it went back and thanked the body and kissed it three times before it went on its way." - John O’Donohue

This list is not complete or definitive. Please feel free to add to it.

Until the next time,

Courtney

P.S. Paid Subscribers - Look out for a post that will take a deeper dive into the topic of listening to our bodies. I’ll also be commenting briefly on the human studies that show how damage to the right hemisphere and damage to the left hemisphere impact one’s sense of their body.

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Medical Disclaimer:

This newsletter is for educational purposes and not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment for either yourself or others, including but not limited to patients that you are treating (if you are a practitioner). Consult your own physician for any medical and psychiatric issues that you may be having.