How to Build Body Awareness to Enhance Your Training
Written by Savannah Wishart - Savannah is a CFL1 certified coach leading several of our group strength & conditioning classes here at Trailhead Athletics. She is a wonderful photographer and creative writer, having contributed for Paleo Magazine. Savannah also provides life coaching to clients who find success with a non-traditional approach to physical and mental health, which includes but is not limited to exercise and nutrition. You can find her at The Primal Revolution.
As humans, the most natural place to be is simply… in your body. Where else would we be?
And yet, we are often everywhere but here. In an increasingly distracting modern world paired with the driven ambition of western societies, we spend a lot of time in our head. We think too much, keep ourselves in whirlwinds of busy-ness, and have endless to-do lists.
We are human beings, but ironically, we have evolved into human doings. As a result, many of us are stuck on autopilot, feeling disconnected from our bodies.
That “doing” is great when we are efficient and effective, and when we hold boundaries between work and play.
With the world at our fingertips and increasing time spent in front of screens, our minds hop between distractions. Much of our doing is passive - a way to keep ourselves tuned out from the present moment.
How do we reverse the outward arrows of focus to turn in on ourselves?
There’s no denying that our intellectual capacities as a species have led to innovation, daily problem solving, and higher standards of living. But when we lean too heavily into our minds, we often disconnect from our bodies.
What is “Body Awareness”?
Body awareness is the simple act of being present in your body, with a calm state of mind. It is an internal understanding of where your body is, both in time and space. Not only the core and what you can see with your eyes, but where you extend to outside of your vision. Where do your limbs land when you no longer see them?
If you’ve found yourself feeling frazzled, anxious, depressed, stressed, or disconnected from your body, your nervous system might be in a state of dysregulation. Sometimes it’s obvious, but other times we may not even know we’re disconnected from our body. If we’ve always been on autopilot, that disconnect is our “normal.” If that’s the case, we don’t know that there could be another way.
Building intentional practices that engage both our body and mind in unison builds a foundation for our nervous system to catch up with our busy lives. The end result? A calm and centered presence - a gift not only for ourselves, but those around us.
How the Nervous System Supports Our Physiology
The full spectrum of the nervous system is a deep world to dive in to, but the introduction looks like this:
The two most commonly talked about parts of our nervous system are the Sympathetic Nervous System and the Parasympathetic Nervous System, branching within the Autonomic Nervous System.
An easy way to remember the difference is: The sympathetic nervous system activates the fight or flight response, while the parasympathetic system is responsible for activating the rest and digest response.
That’s why you might notice issues with your digestion when you are in an activated stress response.
When you consider the full range of stress responses to include Fawn and Freeze response, it gets a little more complicated, as these two stress responses are associated with the Parasympathetic Nervous System.
Regardless of where you land with your own personal stress response, the reaction is instinctual - an unconscious response from the primitive lizard brain. Fortunately there are ways we can bring awareness to these reactions and take place behind the wheel, finally stepping off autopilot.
Understanding your specific reaction is not imperative to apply the practices below, but it can be helpful. If our Parasympathetic NS drives our stress response, it is often helpful to upregulate (dance, jog, take a cold shower). On the other hand, if our Sympathetic NS fuels our response to stress, it’s helpful to downregulate (meditate, breathe, take a warm bath).
The first step to change is always awareness. From there, you are empowered with the tools to build a different way of being.
The Trauma Disconnect
The mind-body disconnect increases if we’ve been exposed to trauma or invisible illnesses - such as mental health challenges or autoimmune. These struggles, though not seen on the surface, are felt internally - and more often than not, they’ve convinced us that our bodies are not a safe place to be.
Trauma may look like a physical injury - a broken leg, dislocated shoulder, sprained ankle. Often, trauma is invisible - wounds from abuse, childhood neglect, autoimmune disorders, mental health illness. Many of us have faced challenging adversity.
We have plenty of reasons to be disconnected from our bodies, even without a traumatic experience. As adults, we sit more and play less. We forget how to jump, how to climb, and become more sedentary. Our time is spent scrolling on phones, watching television, and working overtime.
If that sounds like you, here are a few ways to invite body awareness, to enhance training - both inside and outside of the gym. Give them a try next time you’re working out with us at Trailhead Athletics.
Slow down your movement. It’s easy to rush through movements, especially when they are difficult. We often just want to get them over with, and it seems like the faster we move, the better workout we’ll get. But - slowing down the movement creates space for you to be curious about where you feel your body and what muscles are working. Start to experiment during the T-Pose exercise, movements that incorporate the wobble mat, and all of our bosu ball exercises.
Experiment with where your gaze lands. Is your spine neutral, or are you straining your neck?
Practice bracing your abdomen with diaphragmatic breathing to move from an activated core.
Apply extra attention when practicing balance exercises. Working with intention activates the proprioceptive system (providing information to your brain about where and how your body is positioned in relationship to your environment) and vestibular system (providing information through the inner ear about spatial orientation and coordinating both sides of the body - think of it as your body’s internal GPS).
These four practices build a great foundation for everyone. If your sense of self is infused with some level of trauma, there are additional tools you can use to rebuild trust in the meat vessel that carries you through your life. “Our body is a temple” is a cliche for a reason: it’s the only vehicle we have to carry us through this life.
Here are a few simple ways to rebuild the trust in your body during your workout at Trailhead.
Begin to be curious about the difference between discomfort and pain. What do you feel, and where do you feel it? It’s common to numb out when we have felt pain, but drawing attention to that hurt can often support healing. Awareness, as with anything, is the first step. Once you locate the pain or discomfort, notice what shape and sensation the pain has. Do you feel pinching or stabbing? Puling? Burning or tingling? Is it dull or sharp?
Practice gratitude for what your body is able to do. Even the healthiest people with uninjured bodies have bad training days.
Shift your perspective. Where is a lesson disguised as an obstacle? What opportunity are you currently unable to see?
The way we move and practice mindset during our one hour training practice at Trailhead will work wonders, but it’s only one hour out of the day - and that’s if we are practising daily with intention. What happens outside of that hour? It is, after all, only 4% of a single day.
How we move, think, and feel through the rest of our life builds the foundation for how our training session will go. A day fueled with intention empowers us to amplify what we get out of our training session.
Here are a few things we can do at home and work to build that body awareness.
Practice listening to your gut. If our gut biome is out of balance, it’s difficult to tune in. Our Gut Brain is one of the most powerful tools we have. If we have digestive issues, it’s difficult to hear our intuition.
Practice a simple body scan. With closed eyes, visualize your attention moving from the tip of your toes, through all of your joints and limbs, all the way through the crown of your head.
Sit with yourself in front of a mirror. How much time do you spend looking at yourself? We often use mirrors to fix ourselves and make ourselves up. What will you see in yourself if you sit in stillness to look at yourself? Start with looking at your body, and when you feel ready, experiment with eye gazing.
Practice good posture. Our body language often reflects our internal state. Try relaxing your shoulders down your back, so that you stand taller and with an open chest. If we are disconnected from our body, it’s common that we hunch forward with rounded shoulders to protect ourselves. See if your confidence shifts after a few days!
Devote 15 minutes to a simple yoga practice. Or, if it feels like a label carries too much expectation, simply: stretch.
Experiment with breathing exercises or meditation. Box breathing is a great place to start. Less intimidating than meditation, box breathing gives your mind a focus. Choose a count of 4 or 5 seconds, depending on what feels sustainable for you. Inhale for 5 seconds, hold for 5 seconds, exhale for 5 seconds, and hold for 5 seconds. Repeat for five minutes to start.
Carve our time for stillness. Sitting still allows us to turn our attention inward. Remove distractions from your environment and give yourself permission simply to be. If you want to deepen the benefits, take yourself out into nature.
Activate physical sensation. This one’s for you if you need to upregulate. Experiment with giving yourself massages, dry brushing, or going for a cold plunge.
Practice a single sensory meditation. Look with your eyes, listen with your ears, smell with your nose, taste with your tongue, or feel with your skin. For a visual meditation, let your eyes wander through your surroundings. Observe the small details that you may normally miss. For an auditory meditation, close your eyes and open your ears to the world around you - the birds, traffic, wind. With so much going on for our senses at all times, we often tune much of it out. Cutting off some of them to focus on a singular sense pulls us deeper into the present moment.
Trauma or not, everyone can benefit from improving body awareness. Connecting to ourselves in deeper ways makes us better humans. Next time you’re feeling disconnected from your body, we invite you to lean in to curiosity and explore one of the exercises above.
We would love to hear how it goes, and what changes for you over the next weeks and months, during your Trailhead workouts. And if we’re missing any of your favourite practices, we’d love to hear from you in the comments!
If you’re new to Trailhead and live in Bellingham, pop in for a free class! We’re located at 909 Squalicum Way, between the Columbia and Birchwood neighbourhoods.