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We spend enormous amounts of time thinking about our bodies: how they look, whether they're healthy, what hurts, what needs fixing, and whether they're performing the way we want. But how often do we actually experience life through our bodies?

Returning guest Dr. Manuela O'Connell joins Emma and Chris to explore what we've lost by treating the body as something we have rather than something through which we experience our lives. Manuela shares how her own experience with chronic illness and dance led her toward somatic approaches and a deeper understanding of embodiment. She argues that psychology itself has often privileged thoughts and language while overlooking the information carried through sensation, movement, emotion, touch, and other forms of bodily awareness.  

Together, they explore how culture, puberty, shame, body image, technology, and social media can disconnect us from embodied experience. They also discuss what it actually means to "listen to your body" and how slowing down, noticing sensations, and reconnecting with our senses can help us develop a richer relationship with ourselves and the people and world around us. 

Key Takeaways

  • Western psychology has traditionally emphasized thoughts and language while paying far less attention to embodied experience. 
  •  As children, we experience the world through our senses and bodies, but culture and language can gradually teach us to regard the body as an object we possess. 
  •  Listening to your body isn't necessarily intuitive. Manuela argues that noticing and discriminating physical sensations is something we can actually practice and learn. 
  •  Our bodily responses are shaped by learning and experience, particularly when it comes to detecting safety and danger. 
  •  Social media can intensify the tendency to reduce the body, and even the whole person, to an image. 
  •  Becoming more embodied starts with slowing down and paying attention to sensations and senses we routinely overlook. 
  •  Reconnecting with the body doesn't have to become another self-improvement assignment. Manuela encourages approaching it with curiosity, exploration, and even a sense of adventure. 

View extended shownotes here

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