Tag: body care

A healthy, regulated nervous system is vital for good mental health. The nervous system is responsible for discerning our general wellbeing and it warns us when we’re no longer safe. For example, we may be experiencing fear or heightened anxiety in the face of a confrontational conversation with someone we love. We may feel that by our hearts racing, having trouble thinking clearly, shortness of breath, or wanting to run away as we’re having that conversation. Other times, we may shut down, disconnect or ghost people in order to avoid a challenging situation. In any of those scenarios, our nervous system is experiencing some sort of dysregulation through overstimulation or shut down. We do not feel safe and our nervous system is working properly by letting us know and moving us into the primal, protective part of our brain. 

Maybe we face that fear and address the challenging conversation a ...

Body First

“Sorry” I said as I muted myself and leaned out of the camera’s view during my virtual therapy session. A ferocious sneeze escaped and I blew my nose with the force that comes with being a week sick. I unmuted myself to re-join the session and my therapist looked at me and says “No need to apologize, Kati. Body first.” 

“Huh?” I replied, not entirely sure what she meant. She proceeded to explain that I have no need to apologize for my body simply being a body. “Sneezing, snot, using the bathroom…. These are merely bodily functions of all people with bodies and don’t require an apology” she explained.  I laughed and agreed that it was odd that I’d automatically apologize for blowing my nose… I was, after all, recovering from Covid and congestion was unavoidable. And yet my apology had slipped out faster than I could stop it. It had actually felt like I was being conside ...

With warm weather comes the invitation and at times, even necessitates, cooler clothing that inevitably shows more skin than would be seen in cooler weather. Out come the shorts, sandals, sleeveless shirts, dresses and swimwear. Adjusting our apparel for the weather can produce many feelings - from confidence and contentment to feelings of shame, embarrassment, contempt or even jealousy. These feelings point towards a story, embodied from our head to our toes, of what we should think, interact, feel, judge and name our bodies. This, in turn, shapes our relationship with our body. And this relationship is under constant assault, internally or externally.

The assault on our bodies ranges from an uncomfortable or judgmental side glance we notice from someone, a comment relegating our worth as greater or lesser depending on our size, or being ignored or minimized for failing to present in a particular way. Some of us h ...