Beyond steps and reps

The path to wellbeing for sensitive bodies

Photo by Caleb Jones on Unsplash

When people want to improve how they feel in their bodies, most turn to the general guidelines that we’re all familiar with:

• 5000 - 10,000 steps/day

• 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity/week

• 7 - 9 hours sleep/night

• 1-3 sets of 8-15 reps of bicep curls/session

You get the idea. You may have different numbers but we all have guidelines in our heads.

There’s nothing wrong with any of the recommendations (and there are a lot of them). For the most part, they have some science or anecdotal evidence that backs them up. They are easy to conceptualize and put into practice. For many people, they get great results.

And if you’re one of those people, keep at it.

But for many people, these recommendations fall apart.

First of all, they can lead to drudgery and boredom (which leads to guilt and shame when you stop following them). These numbers have no life to them. When you approach wellbeing as a dataset, it can get very dry with time.

Secondly, these recommendations don’t work well for people with sensitive, unpredictable bodies. Bodies with chronic pain, chronic conditions, flare-ups that come and go need a more responsive approach to wellbeing.

Forcing your body to do 20 minutes of strength training on a bad day–it’s bound to create unpleasant consequences.

The somatic, intuitive, responsive path to wellbeing

There is a second path to wellbeing and many people don’t come to this path until the first one doesn’t work.

The somatic path.

This path is heart-centered, compassionate, intuitive, (often) gentle, and joyful. But despite this list of attractive adjectives, often this path is very challenging.

Many people come to my studio after struggling to continue the guidelines they want to follow. They want to go to the gym or continue running but their body always hurts.

When I ask them to do basic, small movements and report what they feel, everything blows up.

• Some people don’t know what they feel

• Some people get angry that they can’t do even small movements when I ask them to move with awareness

• Some people get frustrated that somatic awareness feels less satisfying than entering data in their app

For these people, moving somatically is a huge challenge. They struggle to know what is a bodily sensation and what is an emotional reaction (do I really need rest or am I being lazy?). Without clear guidelines, the path to wellbeing seems murky.

And yet, this is exactly what living in a body means. There is nothing digital or binary about embodiment. It’s all organic.

For people with sensitive bodies, developing awareness of your body’s sensations is the way forward. Over time, you learn to read the signals more clearly. You have a better sense of what is a healthy challenge and what might cause a flare-up. You learn to be responsive to what you feel at this exact moment–not what you felt yesterday nor what you hope to feel tomorrow.

And this awareness can inform what and how to move each day.

All of this can take time. It takes being willing to let go and accept the bad days with the good. It takes letting go of what you think you “should” be doing and instead, doing what's right for you.

And most importantly, it requires looking deeply at what you think is wellbeing.

True wellbeing is not without discomfort. It’s joyful–not in a giddy, overly happy way, but in a deep, contented way. It has rest and activity, pleasure and pain, good days and bad.

The “Presence” path to wellbeing (a bonus path)

The last path to wellbeing is the most intangible and the most rewarding.

Be completely present no matter what is happening

This path is spontaneous and non-conceptual. It’s neither data-driven, nor somatic. 

This is the path of being content with exactly what is happening, as it happens, whatever it is.

Being present means accepting challenge, pain, and illness equally with happiness, pleasure, and good health, and seeing all of this as part of your journey. 

You let the energy and vibration of life play out in their many varied forms. You allow all of life to happen, exactly as it does.

Obviously, this is a high bar. And to prevent misunderstandings, it’s important to acknowledge the true challenges of sensitive, unpredictable bodies. It is very difficult to live with chronic pain and illness. This is very real and I don’t want to create a Pollyanna idea that if only people accept their discomfort, life would be grand.

Still, if you hold both the experience of discomfort and the potential of acceptance at the same time, it creates a little space around your experience. It gives a little room to breathe. 

The only way I’ve found to develop this presence is through meditation.

And I’ll be honest: I’m not there.

But from time to time, I get glimpses of what this might be like if I could sustain it. In those moments, being embodied is both mundane and sublime. It’s those moments that inspire me most.