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

Description

Many of us have a complicated relationship with our body. Maybe you've been made to feel ashamed of your body or like it isn't good enough. Maybe your body is riddled with stress, pain, or the effects of trauma. Maybe you think of your body as an accessory to what you believe you really are--your mind. Maybe your experiences with racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, ageism, or sizeism have made you believe your body isn't the right kind of body. Whatever the reason, many of us don't feel at home in our bodies. But being disconnected from ourselves as bodies means being disconnected from truly living and from the interconnection that weaves us all together. Psychologist and award-winning researcher Hillary McBride explores the broken and unhealthy ideas we have inherited about our body. Embodiment is the way we are in the world, and our embodiment is heavily influenced by who we have been allowed to be. McBride shows that many of us feel disembodied due to colonization, racism, sexism, and patriarchy--destructive systems that rank certain bodies as less valuable, beautiful, or human than others. Embracing our embodiment can liberate us from these systems. As we come to understand the world around us and the stories we've been told, we see that our perspective of reality often limits how we see and experience ourselves, each other, and what we believe is Sacred. Instead of the body being a problem to overcome, our bodies can be the very place where we feel most alive, the seat of our spirituality and our wisdom. The Wisdom of Your Body offers a compassionate, healthy, and holistic perspective on embodied living. Weaving together illuminating research, stories from her work as a therapist, and deeply personal narratives of healing from a life-threatening eating disorder, a near-fatal car accident, and chronic pain, McBride invites us to reclaim the wisdom of the body and to experience the wholeness that has been there all along. End-of-chapter questions and practices are included. Cover Title Page Dedication An Invitation to Begin 1. Fully Alive: Exploring and Understanding Embodiment 2. How We Become Disembodied: Lies about Our Bodies and Finding Our Way Home 3. The Body Overwhelmed: Healing the Body from Stress and Trauma 4. Appearance and Image: How We See Our Body from the Outside 5. Feeling Feelings: Getting to Know the Emotional Body 6. You Are Not Broken: A New Perspective on Pain 7. The Body and Oppression: When Bodies Are Political 8. Pleasure and Enjoyment: The Sensual and Sexual Body 9. Holy Flesh: Reconciling the Spirit-Body Divide 10. Living as a Body: Embodiment Practices to Return to Ourselves Epilogue: A Letter to My Body Notes With Gratitude About the Author Praise Copyright About the Publisher