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

by Hillary L. McBride

To become healthier mentally and physically, we have to get to know our inner landscapes with more curiosity, kindness, and compassion. We do that by understanding emotions as our guides to self-understanding, identity, and fullness in life. In this way, emotions are like colors in a crayon box. Knowing them means we can use them more skillfully. It is hard to have a life of wholeness if we have only one color or if the crayons seem to chaotically spew out of the box. This process of learning to use a full box of crayons, deciding how to best use colors and when it’s the right time to do so, is called emotional regulation: it is our ability to notice, manage, and respond to emotions effectively and appropriately given our context. Emotional regulation enables us to prevent and treat mental health issues, facilitates better academic performance, helps us parent with more ease, and equips us to have more peaceful, intimate, and satisfying relationships.