The Embodied Experience of a Researcher Researching Embodiment

My experience to date of researching the embodied subjectivity of therapists working with clients presenting with eating disorders is having interesting and unexpected effects on my own sense of embodiment. My experience of living within, and experiencing the world from within, my own body has changed over the last year and a half that I’ve been conducting the research.

For many years, I now recognise how much I lived from inside my head. I intellectualised everything and tried to rationalise everything, living a very detached life, regimented by self imposed intellectual ‘rules’. Believing I had to be “the good little girl” in order to be loved and accepted, I was relatively disconnected from my Self and my own body. I took my cues as to how I “should” be from this set of rules; living life according to how, and who, I believed other people wanted me to be.

This disconnection from my Self and my body was a huge contributory factor to my experience of eating distress and non-acceptance of my body. As I journeyed through Anorexia, I attempted to disappear, causing my body to become increasingly small and insubstantial … as I felt my Self to be. Moving then through a phase of Bulimia, I was attempting to grow, to fill my body with my Self, to allow both my Self and my body to become more substantial … but an ongoing lack of self-acceptance led to the Bulimic purge and rejection / repulsion of that attempt. A rejection / repulsion of my Self. And these symbolic meanings of eating disorders seem to be relatively common to a number of people experiencing eating distress.

My ongoing internal battle continued until I stopped fighting myself and allowed my Self to live within my body. And for a number of years prior to embarking on my research, I felt myself to be relatively comfortable with my experiencing of my Self in my body.

However, as I’ve read countless books and research articles, and interviewed people for my research, my sense of embodiment has intensified massively. I’m now very aware of how I chew over any information given to me before digesting it and allowing it to become part of me and my belief system. In the past, I was more likely to simply swallow whole what people told me, introjecting other peoples’ beliefs and ideas about the world, and consequently then not living true to my Self. Now though, reflecting on any information I receive allows me to mull it over, consider if and how, I can integrate it with my own beliefs before digesting it and allowing it to become part of me. Bulimia fits symbolically into this idea … wolfing down food indiscriminately (food symbolically representing information, ideas, love, etc) before then rejecting / expelling it through the act of purging because it doesn’t fit comfortably into one’s sense of Self.

I’m now very much more connected to my body. I’m aware of constantly checking things out with my body to find out how I’m feeling about something. It’s very easy to rationalise / intellectualise things, but feelings experienced within the body can often be relied upon to tell the ‘truth’ … trusting one’s ‘gut instinct.’ It takes time and awareness to ‘listen’ to your body and to learn to interpret what its feelings are communicating to you … my body now, is a valuable source of information for me…

I’m aware now of when I’m biting something back, something I’m maybe reluctant to voice … by the tension in my clenching jaw. Linked to this is a tendency to chew my lower lip, again when I’m biting something back; this is usually linked to feeling angry & not wanting to verbalise what I’m feeling. My shoulders raise slightly when I’m tense … I become aware of it, consciously drop them, and & I feel instantly relaxed. I have a certain tilt to my head when I’m feeling confident … when I need to access that confidence, I know I can tilt my head that way & I feel instantly more confident! And one of the big ones for me is holding tension in my stomach … for many years, I hated my stomach, rejected it … I now know that for me, my stomach is where my true Self rests … tension there means I’m not connecting fully with my Self.

And a rather more bizarre effect for me, has been how react to TV programmes such as “You’ve Been Framed” where people are shown experiencing physical pain … I find myself struggling now to watch them as I physically feel their pain. I’m also aware of a ‘rush’ of feeling from my adrenal glands as my body physically responds as though the incident is happening to me … bizarre!

Our bodies are fascinating communicators and they tell us so much about ourselves. Observing other people’s bodies can be very telling too; it’s easy to hide the truth behind words, but our bodies are constantly ‘leaking’ out the truth! It’s simply a case of learning how to read the messages of our own, and other people’s bodies.

Body Image … Embodiment … Embodied Subjectivity

‎
The quote below was posted on Facebook today (11.1.11) by Marc David, the founder and director of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating…
“A postulation on Body Image: the only way to truly heal a negative body image is to ‘embody’ - meaning to land in our body right now, as it is - move it, breathe it, celebrate it, explore with it, get curious about it. Thinking we will love our body at some future time when it reaches perfection is a dead end strategy. The question is - what does embodiment mean to you?”

The subject fits very neatly in with my current PhD research topic where I’m researching the impact on the counsellor’s embodied subjectivity of working with clients presenting with issues related to disordered eating. This client group tends to have a poor body image and a negative or very fragile connection to their own body and I’m wondering if the empathic connection counsellors make with their clients has any effect on the counsellor’s own sense of themselves within their body.

Our bodies are how we visually present ourselves to the world. Our bodies are the vessel in which, and from which, we experience ourselves and our world. As babies, we were at one, we were fully connected with, and to, our bodies … babies respond automatically to their body’s needs and signals. But as we grow older, we are taught, and we introject, messages from people around us that cause us to disconnect, to varying degrees, from our bodies and its instinctive yearnings and needs. This, in many people, leads to a sense of shame; of their bodies … but also of themselves … for our bodies are our Selves.

And it’s this intrinsic connection between our bodies and our sense of Self that I’m interested in researching further…