A Path Home to Ourselves

Body Trust® was created by Hilary Kinavey and Dana Sturtevant, authors of Reclaiming Body Trust: Break Free from a Culture or Body Perfection, Disordered Eating, and Other Traumas. While each person who has studied their work would say slightly different things about Body Trust®, here’s my take:

Learning to trust our bodies is not something most of us have ever been taught. In fact, most of us have been taught the opposite: push past the pain, ignore the hunger, deny the pleasure, work through the fatigue. We’re so busy trying to prove our worth. Often the striving doesn’t result in feeling good about ourselves. It often makes us feel worse.

Body Trust® is a radically different way of moving in the world—a paradigm shift. Body Trust® assumes that each and every body is worth listening to. Our bodies know when we need to rest, when we need to eat, how much effort is enough, how much effort is too much. Our bodies know when to say yes with enthusiasm and when to say no with clarity. Our bodies give us signals all day, every day.

Despite our bodies sending us constant messages, we live in a world that makes listening to them really difficult. The dominant paradigm projected from every conceivable corner of our culture tells us to override the wisdom of our bodies and instead follow this trend, adhere to that diet, put on a good performance, just be what we tell you to be. It’s exhausting. And for some of us, it feels downright soul-killing.

What does trusting your body look like?

Every body is unique. Every person comes to this work with their own experiences, hopes, and worries. Trusting your body looks different for each person. But here are some things we could work on in Body Trust® coaching that might help you build a closer connection to your body:

• Telling your body story. How has your relationship with your body changed over time? When did you stop listening to your wants and needs, hopes and fears? What kind of relationship have you had with your body and what kind of relationship do you want moving forward?

• Exploring the things that bring you closer to or further away from trusting your body’s wisdom.

• Surrounding yourself with people, images, and activities that support a new way of being in your body. Making new friends who inhabit bodies of all shapes and sizes. Collecting art that celebrates a variety of bodies and especially bodies that fall outside the “thin ideal”. Following social media creators who actively reject weight stigma and diet culture.

• Making conscious choices to walk away, when you have the safety and energy to do so, from the things that make it hard to listen to your body’s signals.

• Building community with people on a similar path. The broken connection between you and your body didn’t happen in a vacuum, and it’s not likely to get better in a vacuum. We need each other for this work.