It’s a new year, new beginnings are in the ether, on social media, in conversation and in our thoughts. It may be a new calendar year but the new beginnings of spring are still a long way off, we are still deep in winter, some of us literally just now!
It can be a time of taking stock of what we want more of in 2025, what we want less of, what will do just fine as it is. One small gentle step at a time. Gratitude might be prevalent for what has been in 2024, or maybe we are glad that it has gone, or that we get another go around the sun in 2025. Resolutions abound, talk of them, thoughts of them, pressure to do them, or not to depending on your narrative around new year.
In the media and on social media in particular a lot of content centers on health and wellbeing.
On bodies.
And then it can get complicated.
Our connection with our bodies is a complex and many layered thing; impacted by family narrative, social status, stigma, gender, race, culture, physical ability, trauma, grief, attachment…the list goes on
It is one thing we all have in common – a physical body, but what can be a positive step towards health for one, is a first step away from it for others. Often we find ourselves in a place of conflicting values, where the need for acceptance and knowing we are Ok clashes uncomfortably with the desire for growth and investment in ourselves.
So as a starting prompt for 2025. How is your connection with your body? Not just what you think of it but also how do you experience it, know what your body needs in any given moment? We might think that connection to our sensations would be an automatic response, like pulling our hand from something that is too hot. In reality our connection to our bodies is a complex interplay of sensation, thinking, experience and context.
So many things impact what we feel, not only emotionally but in terms of the sensations we experience. Some of us might struggle to know when they are hungry, cold, hot or in pain, only realizing when we move. Sometimes this has a medical explanation, sometimes it doesn’t. Others struggle to name sensations or locate them in their bodies, or have them mis-labelled thinking we are hungry when in reality we are anxious, or feeling tired rather than stressed.
There are a thousand and one reasons why.
Medical conditions, trauma, neurodiversity, societal expectations, repeated experience and expectations of those sensations being acted upon are just a few of the things that challenge the accuracy of our interoception.
Connecting to our body sensation then is complex and knowing what we need to support ourselves is not always clear.
Knowing what we know about our bodies takes time and intention for everyone.
And it’s really important that we both receive and correctly interpret the responses of our bodies to the environment they are in. Without a well-tuned interoceptive sense we are operating on half information, like driving with only three gears or cooking without any utensils…it’s possible but its harder work than it needs to be and the results will be compromised.
Connection is at the heart of the therapeutic process, and relating to our physical bodies so we know what we need in any given moment is an important strand.
For some it takes the dedicated space of a therapeutic relationship to unpack what is going on and reconnect us to this vital information.