Bridging the Mind-Body Gap: A Journey into Open Lines of Communication with your Body
Oct 17, 2023
Jamie Magdic
Ever wondered how your body would communicate if it had a voice? Well, we're about to give it one, as we embark on a transformative journey of body image exploration. We're bridging the gap between the mind and body by writing letters to each other, opening a channel of communication and fostering a healthier understanding of our intimate relationship with our bodies. Join us as we explore this unique activity where we express feelings, gain insights, and allow growth through healthy dialogue.
In this episode, we'll be navigating the roller coaster that is our relationship with our bodies. We'll be discussing how writing a letter from the body to the mind can foster vulnerability and understanding, despite the highs and lows. Sharing examples and guiding you through the process, we aim to make it less daunting, and more of a stepping stone towards building a healthier relationship between the mind and body. We conclude with an exercise focusing on self-awareness and its importance in this journey. So, buckle up and get ready to journey into the fascinating world of body image!
Ever wondered how your body would communicate if it had a voice? Well, we're about to give it one, as we embark on a transformative journey of body image exploration. We're bridging the gap between the mind and body by writing letters to each other, opening a channel of communication and fostering a healthier understanding of our intimate relationship with our bodies. Join us as we explore this unique activity where we express feelings, gain insights, and allow growth through healthy dialogue.
In this episode, we'll be navigating the roller coaster that is our relationship with our bodies. We'll be discussing how writing a letter from the body to the mind can foster vulnerability and understanding, despite the highs and lows. Sharing examples and guiding you through the process, we aim to make it less daunting, and more of a stepping stone towards building a healthier relationship between the mind and body. We conclude with an exercise focusing on self-awareness and its importance in this journey. So, buckle up and get ready to journey into the fascinating world of body image!
Speaker 1:
Today we're going to be doing something a little bit different. We are going to be talking about and going through an activity for body image that I love doing. I ask all clients to do this because I think it really helps you to build healthy communication between you and your body. Now I really look at our food and body image as a relationship, because it is a relationship and it requires qualities and input that a relationship needs, like communication and trust, safety, understanding. I really want you to think of your body and food and those elements. Think of the relationship you have to them and the relationship they have to you when we are moving through this activity. There is a whole other podcast episode about how to view food and body image as this relationship. I think it really helps you to start to understand it more, build a means of communication, build new behaviors and just think of it for the dynamic thing that it is your relationship with food. It's dynamic. There's a lot of components to it. It's not simply just food. It's not simply just nutrients and what's in the food. It's a relationship with it. The same goes with your body.
Speaker 1:
Without further ado, let's dive into this activity, which is letters to and from your body. I want to invite you to try out this activity. You can pause or you can listen to the whole episode and try it out later. I want you to actually try and apply this and see what it does for you, see what it does for starting to build a healthy communication between your body and you. This activity is where you write a letter to your body and also where we practice having our body write a letter back to ourselves. The objectives of this is two. Number one explore, process and express how you are feeling towards your body. Number two, to understand your relationship with your body and your body's relationship with yourself, which might be a new concept, but we're going to try to get into our body right and think about what it's feeling and what it needs. Number three, to start the dialogue, to learn how to listen to one another. And number four to express those feelings and to ask the other what it needs. Your relationship with your body and your body's relationship with yourself is, as I mentioned just that. It's a relationship and in relationships we need an understanding, an ability to listen to one another, an ability to understand and mend and ask each other what you both need and how you both feel. So let's get started.
Speaker 1:
Step one I want you to speak directly to your body so you can write this out on paper, write a letter, or you can speak it out loud right now, when you're in the car listening to this podcast or on your walk listening to this podcast, and speak directly to your body and just let it roll out, just free right, set the timer for five minutes and free, right or free, speak and just name everything that comes out. Let it out. What thoughts are coming up, what would you like to express to your body? What do you want to say to it? What emotions are coming up for you? Speak directly to it, let your body know.
Speaker 1:
When practicing, I want you to feel your emotions they're all valid, they're all valid and try to work toward the following. Okay, try to work toward the following Listen to understand, be open and honest. Remember you and your body can disagree, but don't dismiss each other. Don't make it all about you. Be willing to compromise and have an open mind and work to take a positive and loving approach. So when you're practicing that step one and the step two that we're going to go back to I want you to think about moving in this direction. I probably should have started with this before we started the activity. But when you're practicing this speaking to your body, your body speaking back to you initially it might just be spilling out all this anger and it comes out any which way, not really thinking about the other feelings. Right, those feelings are valid, but I want you to try and work toward a healthy communication, like it would be in a relationship. Right, a healthy, because that's what's going to help you to understand the other person. Right, we need to listen, to understand. We want to make sure we're being open and honest and vulnerable. We can disagree with one another, but we don't want to dismiss what the other is telling us. We want to consider it. We don't want to make it all about us. We want to be willing to compromise and we want to take a positive and loving approach. Right, it's not going to be work in progress, but that's what we want to do.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so going back to the activity, step two is going to be if your body were to speak back to you, what would it say? What do you think it would say For it? What thoughts are coming up? What do you think your body would want to say to you? What do you think it will want you to know? What do you think it would communicate about its needs? What emotions are coming up for your body if you were to personify your body? And then step three is after hearing from your body, what do you think you would say back? And step four is to keep that conversation going. Okay, keep it going, keep in open lines of communication, keep understanding.
Speaker 1:
So, again, when you start this, you two might be yelling at each other or you might only have feelings of anger or not understanding each other. It's totally okay. We want to move. We want to move toward more understanding. We want to move toward being more open, more vulnerable, not as dismissive, really really leaning into understanding the other one. But it's going to be a mixture of. It's going to be a roller coaster ups and downs, depending on where you're at. It could be really. It could take some time to get to a place where you even want to listen to your body. Okay, you even want to hear what it has to say without dismissing it. Now I want to leave you with a little bit of an example for this activity. So I'm going to pretend I am. I'm going to kind of go back to when my relationship with body was and food was hard, and try my best to come up with an example, because I think it would be helpful for you to hear how this conversation might go and how it might unravel and start to change.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so me speaking to my body, I would say I'm so, just so annoyed with you. I'm so angry. You never just do what I want. You won't be the size I want. I can never accept you. You're never good enough. I don't know why you won't just do what I want you to do. You're always hungry and constantly sending me these signals and you need to quit. I shouldn't be hungry all the time. I shouldn't need what you're requiring of me with food. And then, on top of it, when I ignore your hunger signals, you just come back at me and then I can't trust myself because I end up overeating or binging and feeling even worse. I just want you to comply. I just want you to be at a place where I can be proud of you, where I don't have to hide. I just hate you and I feel like you don't listen to me and you are actively working against me. You're always working against me, and then your body might say back in step two you might. I'm trying to put myself in this position and you might have trouble with even understanding what your body might say back because you've been so disintuned for a while. So I'm gonna pretend I'm a little bit further along in my journey.
Speaker 1:
When I'm talking from my body's point of view. My body might say I am trying so hard, I'm trying so hard for you. All the time I'm keeping you alive. I'm sending you single signals all the time about when to rest, when to when to eat, what I want, what I want to eat, how to have a good amount of energy. And what do I get in return? I just get. I don't get food. I don't get enough food. You ignore me constantly. With what signals I'm sending you? All the answers are within. We can be a team, but you refuse to be a team and all I want is to be a team. All I do every day in my mission is to help you. It is constantly.
Speaker 1:
I'm constantly striving to take care of you, but you won't listen to what I'm telling you. Instead, you listen to these diets and you listen to these quote-on quote nutrition experts. You can pair me to other bodies and I don't appreciate that, because this is my body, this is our body and it's pretty darn cool. And I'm frustrated with you because I just need you to take care of me, like I try and take care of you, no matter what you do to me. If you're restricting, I try and figure out how to slow certain systems down so you can still thrive in the best way.
Speaker 1:
I'm always adapting to what you're throwing, throwing at me, from new diet to new diet, to new disordered way of exercise, to, and I can't keep up and I try my best, but I'm starting to feel it. I'm starting to feel it and I worry for us. And then you might listen back and then you might speak right and you might say again if you're further along in your journey, you might start to have that understanding and be like well, you might soften but start to express your fears like I hear you yeah, that's, that's hard, but I'm so afraid, I'm so afraid of listening to you because the whole world tells me not to listen to you, it tells me to ignore you, it tells me I can't trust you. So I'm so afraid because, deep down, I'm afraid that that means I'm not gonna be lovable, I'm not gonna be acceptable and I'll stop there. It would get you know it's gonna be different for everyone, but you can really really start to take deep dives into understanding and build a connection to your body. So that was an example.
Speaker 1:
As I go through it. I'm like I just want to give that warning to take care of yourself, let it out, but monitor how you're feeling when you're doing it. Maybe take baby steps into this, because it can be overwhelming. But I love this activity because I think it is so helpful and if you don't have that lines of communication open, if you don't have that awareness there, then it's gonna be very hard to start to build a healthier relationship where you too are gonna be aligned in the long run. So I love this activity. Go ahead and try it out, wishing you the absolute best of luck and sending you lots of love and hugs until next time.