Your Body Is Not A Mess

Your Body Is Not a Mess 

Part One: How Pain Science Informed the Way I Talk About My Body

I’m writing the next couple blog posts to share my ongoing journey with changing my own “self talk” regarding my body.

We’ll call this Part One – How I Learned to Talk About My Body with More Respect.

Some years ago after graduating with the masters degree in kinesiology, I took a pain science course.

I walked away with a lot of great “sciency” concepts and a deep understanding of pain.

I more fully understood the brain’s role in pain.

I understood that pain is real.

I also understood that pain does not always mean what we think it does even though pain is a red flag signal from the brain to the body and vice versa. 

Pain does not always mean damage to our tissues or the need to end a specific kind of movement.

Pain also absolutely does not mean that my body is “bad” (fill in the blank with any synonym of bad) because my body is perceiving pain, discomfort, sensation, or not working the way I want it to/think it should.

I walked away from that weekend course with lightbulb moment after lightbulb moment about my thinking and talking habits when it came to my own body, sensation in the body, and the use of fear mongering language when thinking/talking about my body or the bodies of my students/clients.

I began to grock that how I think and talk about my body, not just when it perceives pain, plays a highly significant role in my personal agency, my willingness to keep moving (or not), how I perceive myself, how I present myself to the world, my confidence, you name it…

It was the beginning of an ongoing journey to notice and dance with what I call catastrophizing thinking and negative follow up language.

This idea or maybe even obsession I seemed to have with fixating on the worst possible scenario and outcome, using the harshest possible language in my head and out of my mouth about my body or anything unpleasant I felt in my body was creating habitual loops in my thinking, a certain labeling system that was blocking my chance to ever feel good, right, or grateful about all the things my body does for me every single moment of every day that I am alive.

Let me repeat…. ALL THE THINGS MY BODY DOES FOR ME EVERY SINGLE MOMENT OF EVERY DAY THAT I AM ALIVE.

For me, it has a cultural context.  We live in a culture where countless numbers of things having to do with our bodies (fallen arches, arthritis, headaches, back pain, bunions, knees that roll in, low bone density) are hot topics of what is “wrong” with us.

We also live in a culture that has standards of beauty that don’t necessarily fit into what happens when we age.  

Do you remember when the world stopped noticing you because you were growing old?  

I do.

And being completely honest with you, I have struggled my entire life with body dysmorphia, which is a deep seated perception that my body is flawed, wrong, unattractive even with medical or personal reassurances. 

This habitual way of thinking and talking negatively about our bodies is more common than you’d think.

There is not a week that goes by when I don’t hear someone who is moving with me in a class or a private session tell me about their “bad” body part.

Bad can be defined as “of poor quality or a low standard” or “substandard”.

Can I be the first to tell you that no part of your body is bad, of poor qualtiy, or substandard? 

Do you think your back, your knee, your shoulder are out to get you?  

They’re not. 

They are not the bad guy doing you wrong.  

They’re actually doing everything they can to keep you moving forward through your life.

But it’s hard to believe this if I create a story about my body that I repeat over and over again – “this is my bad knee”, “my back is weak”, “my psoas is tight”, “my shoulder is F’ed”. 

Neuroscience supports the idea that our thoughts create our reality.  

The creation of catastrophizing language or building a story about my body being some kind of bad substandard thing keeps me in a spiral of ideas and fears, and yep, probably more pain.

So what if we stopped doing this? 

What if we began to notice and create mindful adjustment or “right speech” when it comes to our body? 

What if we created a new “reality” in our thoughts and could move to appreciating our body, even when it has parts that are in pain or not working the way we expect them to?

In Part Two I’ll share what I’ve been going through for the last month in my own body, and of course, my mind because those two are inextricably linked.

I’ll share with you my process and how I’ve navigated an ankle that had a lot to say to me.  (btw, it’s not a bad ankle, but only a couple of years ago I would have told you that it was!)

In the meanwhile, I invite you to notice when the words you use to describe your body, discomfort, and limitations are inherently negative.  When you notice this, I recommend pausing and then taking a moment to thank that body part, that pain, or the sense of limitation for all it is doing for you, communicating with you, or allowing you to make good decisions for yourselves regarding movement and taking care of yourself.