The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living

by Hillary L. McBride

We can’t avoid the painful things we experience through our bodies without sacrificing the good, the beautiful, the rich.

The body is central to our experiences, to our sense of ourselves, to our autobiographical narratives. The body is the only way we have to move through life. Yet research about body dissatisfaction and body hatred shows us that the majority of us—up to 90 percent of those of us in Western culture and in communities touched by globalization, inclusive of women and men—loathe our bodies.

I began to realize that I would always be my body, but the way I experienced my body could evolve—and that evolution could be deeply good.

Thoughts are like blossoms on a flower—there’s a stem and then a whole root system beneath them.

So embodiment is a coming home, a remembering of our wholeness, and a reunion with the fullness of ourselves.

We need to reclaim every shattered fragment of our body to experience wholeness. Healing happens as we invite our bodies back into the narratives of our lives. Even if our body still feels somewhat separated from the self, this invitation can be the first act of acceptance and arrival to learn to say to ourselves, “This is my body.”