Kaitlyn Bruneau (Listen To Your Body)
Licensed clinical social worker Kaitlyn discusses understanding and adapting to the body's changing needs throughout life. The video emphasises the importance of regular body check...
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How Can You Stay Aware of Your Body's Changing Physical Needs?
Being mindful of your physical needs can also help protect your mental health. One way to do this is by keeping up with any preventative doctor's appointments such as your yearly physical or regular dental cleaning. It can also be helpful to speak to a medical professional if you notice any changes as time goes on.
How Should You Respond to Physical Injury?
One other common area of change for our bodies is in response to injury. As this is almost always unexpected, it can be quite jarring, disrupting your routines, shifting your abilities, and potentially having long-term effects. It's during times like this that kindness and grace with our bodies is most important. Our mental and physical health impacts one another, so trying to promote a sense of healing through acceptance. Positive self-talk and compassion can go a really long way if you experience an injury applying similar tools as to what we talked about earlier, body scans, self-care practises, and building a routine may be even more important.
What Role Can Mindfulness Play in Body Awareness?
One great way to be in tune with your body and its needs is a regular mindfulness practise. When it comes to our bodies, a mindfulness practise may involve quick scans and check-ins for what you're feeling physically or what your body's craving. This may bring up insights related to food, hydration, exercise, mobility, and more. A mindful body scan would involve taking some time in a quiet, calm place, either lying down or placing your feet flat on the floor, and then checking in with each part of your body, either from top to bottom or bottom to top. At each part, check in and take note of what you're feeling without any judgement . Doing this regularly can also help you take note of any changes that are occurring and better monitor them over time. It can be mentally challenging to adjust to our changing bodies, and it's completely normal to even grieve for what we once had that we may no longer have, such as a fast metabolism or flexible muscles. It's important to be mindful of how these changes and the potential grief impacts our mood, making sure that this does not lead to excessive rumination or false beliefs about what is possible. Instead, you can redirect your attention to what you would like to do to take care of your body. It can be really empowering to take care of our physical needs and our bodies since there is no one else that can do it for us. It can also be really helpful to have a regular self-care practise structuring that in whatever way would feel most helpful for you. This might be a more in-depth skincare routine or a spa day for yourself. Time taken to stretch or take care of your muscles or a general mindful meditation practise. With each of these, you're hopefully forming a positive relationship with your body. That can be built on kindness, care, and appreciation, which all will be helpful in response to change.