#bottom up

Shout it from the mountaintops Joe !

You might have heard someone say something like, "My head is saying one thing, but my gut is saying another." In other words, "What I know in the higher-order part of my brain has not trickled down into the lower, felt-sense part of my brain. There's a disconnect." When it comes to changing our sense of self and moving away from an over-fixation on appearance, the best way to get what we know about body positivity into our felt sense of ourselves is to have new experiences and to savor them... When we are hyperaware of our outward appearance, our inner awareness often suffers. Learning to tune in to the inside of ourselves interoceptively (for example, noticing sensation in bladder, heart, stomach, and lungs), and practicing that regularly, has been shown to improve body image. Interoception is possible because of all the messages that run from our body to our spinal cord (through something called afferent nerves), up to our brain stem, and then into a region very deep within our brain called the insula. Interception is essential for creating the experience of balance and homeostasis, regulating emotion, having a sense of body ownership, and experiencing continuity as a person over time. When we have these experiences, we are training our attention to remember ourselves as more than an appearance, and we are less likely to try to manage our appearance as a means of creating agency in our lives. (A) way to practice interception is by paying attention to when you are hungry, full, tired, or need to use the toilet... Try asking yourself next time you are hungry, "How do I know I'm hungry? How would I explain this to someone who had never felt hunger before? How do I know that I'm full? What is it like? What senses are telling me that I can stop eating?" Even if body image is not your concern, practicing interoception is worthwhile. People who are able to notice their interoceptive cues and do so with a high degree of accuracy are better at completing complex cognitive tasks and using intuition for decision making. In contrast, people who have a low degree of awareness and accuracy around interoceptive cues are more likely to see their body as an object, and they are more likely to struggle with depression and eating disorders.