HEALTH AND WELLBEING.

The Body as Our Foundation. On Empowerment and Self Authorship. 

“We experience life through our bodies” wrote therapist and social worker Joann Peterson emphasising how deeply living is felt and that our bodies are our foundation.

We are first our bodies, our sensations, our conscious mind, the prism through which we predominately experience the world” develops later.

In science and medicine in the early 19th century the mind became separated from body, a belief that has permeated through time and space so that our greater culture now elevates the pursuits of mind, over body. Following these dictates, modern life has slowly pulled and shaped our attention outwards, away from body. When our attention is constantly placed outside ourselves we can become disconnected and disembodied.

And thus ways of restoring our attention towards our bodies and being present in them, is how we regain a felt sense of identity, health and empowerment,

Bessel Van Der Kolk and others of modern medicine and science offer ideas for how we can restore insight into our bodies from meditation, to movement, therapeutic touch, and body awareness practices. These practices offer agency, the scientific term for empowerment, which is having an internal sense of control, of self authorship.

In a world that increasingly offers it’s opposite, honouring our bodies and their needs maybe a courageous act, as James Clear wrote “Being yourself is a continuous effort.There is always another expectation placed upon you, another person pulling you toward their preferences, another nudge from society to act a certain way.It’s a daily battle to be yourself, not merely what the world wants you to be.” And in our bodies, we may find ourselves.

By Helen Coutts.

16. Jan. 2026.