In relationship with your body

Recently, I found myself reflecting on a phrase that was used in a book I was reading: developing a partnership with your body.

At the time, I could see what the author was trying to convey. It was an attempt to describe a shift in how we think about ourselves: moving away from seeing the body as something separate from us; something that belongs to us, carries us around and occasionally lets us down.

But the word partnership didn’t sit right with me.

I found myself thinking about it on the drive home from giving a workshop yesterday called Bye-Bye Back Pain.

To me, a partnership suggests two separate things working together. There is a sense of negotiation, of two parties meeting each other halfway.

But our body is not separate from us.

It is not something we have. It is the way we experience being alive.

 

Being in relationship

The relationship we have with our body is one of the most important relationships we will ever have. Yet it is one that many of us lose connection with.

We learn, often from a very young age, to override our own signals. We ignore tiredness because there is something else that needs doing. We push through discomfort. We become disconnected from hunger, rest, movement and the simple experience of being present within ourselves.

Sometimes this happens because life requires it of us.

Sometimes it happens because we are trying to belong, to be accepted, to be everything that others need us to be.

And gradually, without even realising it, we can move away from ourselves.

I know this because I’ve experienced it myself.

One of the most challenging discoveries I ever made was recognising that, at times in my life, I had abandoned myself. I had lost touch with what I needed and what was true for me.

It was a confronting realisation.

Yet it was also the beginning of coming back in relationship with myself.

Not by becoming someone different, but by reconnecting with something that had always been there.

This is one of the reasons I value the teachings of yoga so deeply. At its heart, yoga is not simply about physical postures. It offers us a way of becoming more aware, more compassionate and more connected to ourselves.

This is also why the work I do through Natural Back Care and Spine Health is about more than symptoms.

The body is not a separate mechanical object that happens to carry us through life. Our experiences, our emotions, our thoughts and the way we relate to ourselves are all part of the person who is living in this body.

When we begin to develop that relationship again, something changes.

We become more aware of what our body is communicating and more curious about what it may be asking of us.

Even after many years of practising yoga, this reflection has inspired me to look again at my own relationship with my body.

Am I truly listening?

Am I caring for this body in the way I would care for something I deeply value? Or am I occasionally reaching for another chocolate Brazil nut while knowing there might be a wiser choice available?

Perhaps that is the beauty of relationship. It is not about perfection.

It is about returning.

Again and again.