What Does Body Trust Mean to You?

There’s no shortage of fuckery out there right now, with Ozempic and other new medications being marketed for weight loss, WW expanding their business model to be able to prescribe these new meds, the recent  AAP guidelines, and the GooPie Goop in the news again promoting disordered eating under the guise of health promotion, only to find out this “news” story was created to distract people from a lawsuit she’s involved in. So much bullshit to sort through.

Our commitment to divesting from the status quo that is diet culture and the dominant weight paradigm is constantly challenged. To paraphrase something Savala Nolan said when she was talking to one of our groups last year, there’s always something trying to pull us out of the soil of liberation.

The newer you are to this work (when our roots in body trust are shallow), it’s easy to get swept up and away from all you are exploring here. To wander and then return is the path to reclaiming body trust.

So we wanted to help you reconnect with what brought you to exploring body trust with us.

What does body trust mean to you?

Here’s what it means to some folks who have participated in our programs:

Among many things, body trust means freedom from the prisons of had to be, must be, should be, only can be good enough if…freedom from conditional worthiness.  – anonymous

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I experience Body Trust as a stopping, a settling, a softening, and an opening. It’s a pathway to my authentic self. It takes courage – my authentic self, inside and out, is not always pleasing, and I was taught to please to stay safe. So much of my turning away from Body Trust meant looking to external cues to make sure I was “okay”. That kept me frantically busy and tense: exactly how I felt on a diet! This was a “normal” feeling to me. Body Trust meant learning a new normal: the steady, still, ever-present, exiled self that was patiently waiting for me. I stopped trying to protect her by dieting. Through a long process of stopping and starting I’ve begun to let her speak. – Abigail

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Believing my body has my best interest at heart. Taking the time to learn how to hear, interpret, and when necessary respond to my body’s signals and sensations. It’s being a partner with and loving caregiver to my body. Body trust is the inner knowing that my human body is a home that my soul resides in during this stage of my existence.  – Linda

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For me, Body Trust is about coming home to myself and trusting my body as an authority in my life. It’s a process of not only listening, but also believing and being in dialogue with my own body. It is a path towards freedom and even an expression of the erotic (as defined by Audre Lorde). – Dawn Serra

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To me, Body Trust means knowing how my physicality is simply one part of who I am. The size, shape, aches, wrinkles, ripples, bumps, bruises, and overall material presence of my form is constantly breaking down, building back up, and accommodating the material existence of who I am so that I may move, touch, feel, and experience that which is beyond my self. Body Trust is about knowing that if I treat myself with compassion, love, forgiveness, and kindness – just as a parent would their child – my body will in turn be a joyful companion to help me endure the ordinary misery that is human existence.

~Kari Valley

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For me, it’s learning how to quiet all of the other voices in my head so that I can hear my body instead. It means developing a relationship and a dialogue with my body, and treating it like a valued partner. Like any relationship, sometimes it’s work and it is always evolving, so body trust is a commitment to honor that relationship even when it’s hard. – S.K.M.

How do you feel after reading other people’s thoughts on body trust?

What’s one thing you want to hold onto?

Trust your process.