“At the body shop, doin’ something unholy.” — Sam Smith feat. Kim Petras, “Unholy”
Trust for our bodies is a two-way street just like trust is between people. Our bodies learn to trust us as we learn to trust them, and we often need to make some important changes to achieve this.
Body trust is a self-help framework that aims to help us reshape our understanding of social and cultural messages about a body’s worth. The book Reclaiming Body Trust: Break Free from a Culture of Body Perfection, Disordered Eating & Other Traumas by Hilary Kinavey, MS, LPC and Dana Sturtevant, MS, RD, offers an intersectional perspective on how many issues related to disordered eating and body image stem from external sources (often profit-driven) that promote feelings of shame around our bodies so that we conform to social pressures (which then usually leads to spending money to achieve these unattainable ideals). By acknowledging, confronting and understanding these influences, we can reclaim trust in ourselves and our bodies if we learn to listen to our own needs rather than succumbing to harmful, toxic narratives from external sources.
A few key principles exist when building or rebuilding trust with your body. These are the principles of embodiment—how we live in our bodies—and they are an ongoing, active process. In Niva Piran’s groundbreaking 2016 studyexternal link, opens in a new tab, she outlined five dimensions of embodiment.
Each of these dimensions can be explored to enhance body trust and freedom.
- Body Connection and Comfort: This dimension refers to our ability to tune into bodily experiences of discomfort and comfort and to listen to what our body needs, emphasizing the quality of connection with our body and our feelings towards it. Often, people ignore their body’s messages to push through to what they think they should be doing, instead of what they need to do, like putting off going to the bathroom to finish a task.
- Agency and Functionality: This dimension highlights our capacity to act independently and make compassionate decisions for ourselves and our bodies. When agency is restricted, we may take up less space by denying our voice or intuition, metaphorically and/or physically, like by focusing on weight loss and denying experiences because of perceived inability or unworthiness of the body.
- Attuned Self-Care: This dimension reflects our awareness of the embodied self and how we sense or listen to what is happening in our bodies. It includes being aware of body sensations, emotions and feelings, nervous system states, or energy shifts. Attuned self-care is the space where we genuinely listen to our bodies, acknowledge when they are telling us something, and trust what they communicate about their needs.
- Resisting Objectification (the belief that external appearance is more important than your internal self) and Subjective Immersion: This dimension involves shifting our focus from the shame and pressures imposed by societal standards of beauty to the experience of simply being in our bodies. Piran describes this as “subjective immersion,” an expression of protest, resistance, and defiance against the “objectifying expectations” of mainstream diet culture, which say that our body’s outward appearance is more important than its internal experience.
- Experience and Expression of Bodily Desires: This dimension encourages us to experience bodily desires in attuned, self-caring and joyful ways. Many people deny themselves pleasure, thinking they’re not deserving of it; however, research shows that pleasure is critical to reducing stress and reclaiming body trust.
