Learning to be the Expert of Your Own Body
Stephanie Burstein, MFT, Registered Intern, Child & DBT Coach
We live in a society filled with mixed messages about body image, health, and what loving ourselves truly means – it can be overwhelming! How do we navigate the confusion and learn how to be experts of our own bodies? What does it take to deconstruct social myths about health, replacing fallacies with a greater understanding that each body is unique and wonderfully different?
Luckily, there is an organization dedicated to teaching others how to have healthy relationships with their bodies. The Body Positive, based in California, empowers individuals through trainings and public awareness. This past month, I was thrilled to participate in The Body Positive’s professional training at Florida Atlantic University. Participants learned about the Core Competencies of Intuitive Health Model, found in the organization’s book, embody: Learning to Love Your Unique Body (and quiet that critical voice!). I am excited to share what I learned and hope you embark on your own journey towards body acceptance. The following competencies can stand alone, but when combined they create an enormous feeling of empowerment and positive change. Here is my take on each competency:
(1) Reclaiming Health
Working at the Oasis has taught me to take an intuitive and mindful approach to life. By developing a mindfulness practice that has helped me identify my body’s needs, I have embraced a health-centered approach to self-care versus society’s weight-centered tactics.
(2) Practice Intuitive Self-Care
Self-care is not a cookie cutter process – it’s about listening to your body’s needs, not what society thinks you need. My intuitive self-care routine varies from movement to creativity. If I am feeling restless at my computer, I will walk. Intuitive self-care helps you cultivate a more authentic version of yourself.
(3) Cultivate Self-Love
Learning to love yourself will help you discover self-compassion. Self-compassion means practicing care and understanding for ourselves, and providing validation when things don’t go our way. The more self-compassion and love we have for ourselves, the more likely we are to take chances and make life-affirming choices.
(4) Declare Authentic Beauty
Once we have cultivated self-love, we open ourselves to authentic beauty. Authentic beauty means that we are able to see others and ourselves from a compassionate perspective rather than society’s perspective of superficial beauty. We are able to appreciate our own beauty for its uniqueness.
(5) Build a Community
This competency espouses finding people who share your vision of self-compassion and health. Individually, we may find it difficult to change the media and society, but together we are able to empower each other by creating a community where principles of self-love and compassion take precedence over harsh judgments.
I look forward to incorporating The Body Positive’s core competenticies into my life, both personally and professionally. For more information, visit thebodypositive.org.