Finding Home in Your Body: How Yoga Heals in a World That Teaches Us to Distrust Ourselves
- Melissa Strickland
- Jan 21
- 8 min read
The Silent War With Your Body
For many of us, the relationship we have with our bodies is a quiet battle waged daily. From a young age, we are immersed in a culture that teaches us to suppress, to control, and to mistrust the very vessel that carries us through life. We learn to shut off sensation, to ignore the ache in our back from a day spent at a desk, and to put a lid on our emotions for fear of appearing weak. This internal conflict is fueled by a relentless stream of societal ideals that tell us our bodies are projects to be perfected, problems to be solved, or commodities to be judged. It's a deeply ingrained struggle, leaving many of us feeling disconnected, alienated, and at war with ourselves.
But what if there was a path back to peace? This article proposes that yoga offers a powerful way to end this silent war—not by "fixing" or changing the body, but by creating the conditions to reconnect with it, rebuild trust, and find a true sense of home within oneself. It is a journey from our outer world into our inner world, where we can finally meet the essence of who we are. This practice is not an exclusive club for the flexible or the fit; it is a profoundly personal and adaptable path accessible to every single person, regardless of body type, ability, or experience level.
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1. "Every Body is a Yoga Body": Deconstructing the Myth of Perfection
Before we can begin to heal our relationship with our bodies, we must first dismantle the intimidating stereotype that so often stands at the gate of the yoga studio: the image of the "yoga body" as exclusively tall, slim, white, and hyper-flexible. This pervasive myth is one of the greatest barriers to the practice, making countless individuals feel that yoga is not for them. The first, most crucial step toward making yoga a safe and accessible space for healing is to reclaim its true meaning—that it is for all people.
The guiding principle of a body-positive approach is that every body is a yoga body. This isn't just a feel-good slogan; it is a fundamental reorientation of the practice. Instead of forcing your body to fit a preconceived shape of a pose, you allow the pose to fit your unique body. This philosophy honors the reality that every person's anatomy, history, and experience are different, and it celebrates that diversity as a source of wisdom, not a limitation.
‘This book celebrates all that yoga is. It breaks down all barriers and shows us that yoga has open arms for anyone who wants to practice. A liberating look at how anyone can be part of what yoga has to offer mentally and physically.’ – Fearne Cotton, on Donna Noble's Teaching Body Positive Yoga
At its heart, this approach is about adaptability. A therapeutic and inclusive yoga practice can be modified to meet the individual needs of each person, giving them the space and freedom to explore their own experience. On the mat, this provides a corrective experience of positive exploration of body, mind, and heart.
It is "corrective" because it directly counteracts years of negative, critical, or judgmental experiences with one's body. In a world that so often teaches us our bodies are wrong, this practice replaces those painful messages with gentle moments of curiosity, acceptance, and self-directed kindness. It is an opportunity to build a new foundation of trust and safety, one breath at a time.
To understand why this inclusive approach is so revolutionary, we must first look at the powerful forces that taught us to become disconnected from our bodies in the first place.
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2. The Roots of Disconnection: Why We Learned to Mistrust Our Bodies
The feeling of being a stranger in your own body is not a personal failing. It is often the direct result of powerful cultural and social forces that have, for over a century, taught us to view our bodies as objects to be controlled and perfected rather than as the source of our lived experience. Seeing this history makes it clear: the shame you may feel about your body was never your own. It was manufactured and handed to you.
In industrialized nations, many of us learn from a young age to suppress our inner world. We are taught to shut off sensation, ignore the cramp in our wrists from typing, and put a lid on our emotions. We learn that indulging the body and its appetites is a sign of moral weakness, while denying the flesh is a path to worthiness. With trauma, this becomes a profound survival strategy; people opt to live in their thoughts, "constructing a world through words, as a way to separate and keep the big, bad, overwhelming pain in the background."
This learned suppression is compounded by intense societal pressure to achieve a specific body type. The desire to be thin is not a natural state but a culturally produced ideal attached to social class, race, and gender. Over time, this has established a cultural obsession with weight, reinforcing the idea that our worth is tied to our appearance.
At the end of the 19th century, as Hutchinson observed, science was also helping to shape the new slender ideal. Physicians came to believe that they were able to arrive at an exact measure of human beings; they could count calories, weigh people on scales, calculate “ideal” weights, and advise those who deviated from that ideal that they could change themselves.
This history has left a deep imprint, creating a legacy of self-distrust that can feel impossible to overcome. Yet, yoga offers a direct, science-backed method to counteract this learned disconnection and begin the process of rebuilding the bridge between mind and body.
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3. The Science of Reconnection: Rebuilding the Mind-Body Bridge
While rooted in ancient philosophy, yoga is not merely a spiritual or abstract practice. It is a powerful tool with measurable, science-backed effects on the brain and nervous system, offering a concrete path back to embodiment. The practice works from the bottom up, using the body to directly influence the mind.
A key distinction helps clarify how this happens. We all possess conceptual self-awareness, which is the process of thinking about the self—planning, reasoning, and judging our experiences. In contrast, embodied self-awareness is the act of feeling the self in the present moment without judgment. It is the ability to sense your breath, the stretch of a muscle, or the subtle shift of an emotion as it arises. Many people, especially after trauma, learn to live in conceptual self-awareness—constructing a world through words—as a survival mechanism to keep overwhelming bodily sensations at a distance. The shift to embodied self-awareness is the gentle, therapeutic process of coming back into the body when it finally feels safe enough. Yoga is a primary method for guiding this return.
The technical term for this ability to feel our own body’s internal states is interoception. It is our capacity to sense our heartbeat, our digestion, our muscle tension, and our emotional state from the inside out. This is not just a biological process; it is the scientific basis for learning to trust yourself again from the inside out.
This disconnect is especially profound for trauma survivors, a reality captured in the foundational text by psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, which argues that trauma lives not in the narrative of the event, but in the body's ongoing sensory experience: “The Body Keeps the Score.”
Yoga gently and systematically rebuilds our interoceptive capacity. Its effects are tangible:
Nervous System Regulation: Yoga practices help regulate the autonomic nervous system, creating a healthy balance between the "fight-or-flight" (sympathetic) and "rest-and-digest" (parasympathetic) responses. This allows the body to recover more effectively from stress.
Brain Chemistry: Research shows that the practice of yoga can increase levels of GABA, the brain's main inhibitory neurotransmitter. Higher GABA levels are associated with improved mood and reduced anxiety.
This scientific process of reconnection is not experienced as a cold, clinical exercise. On the mat, it is felt as a profound and radical act of self-compassion.
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4. A Practice of Kindness: Finding Agency and Self-Compassion on the Mat
In a world that often disempowers us in our own bodies, the act of practicing yoga can be a revolutionary act of kindness. It is an opportunity to reclaim personal power by consciously choosing to treat yourself with care. This approach is built on core principles that prioritize safety, choice, and compassion over performance.
At the heart of this practice is the yogic principle of Ahimsa, or non-harming. This is not a lofty ideal, but a moment-to-moment practice of self-love. It challenges us to find the least harmful, kindest way to move through any experience, especially a painful one like shame or physical discomfort. It transforms the principle into a practical self-inquiry: "In the excruciatingly painful experience of shame, what would be a simple, kind, internal, or external expression to help inch away from shame?"
This philosophy translates directly into how a trauma-informed yoga session is facilitated, with a critical focus on choice and agency:
No Physical Adjustments: In a therapeutic, trauma-sensitive setting, the facilitator will never place their hands on a client to "correct" or physically manipulate their body. From the student's perspective, a well-intentioned adjustment can be experienced as a critique, triggering feelings of "I'm doing something wrong," "The teacher is correcting me," or even fear, undermining the very trust the practice aims to build.
Invitational Language: The practice is guided using optional language. Phrases like "if you like," "when you are ready," or "you may notice a feeling..." give the individual complete control. The power of choice is returned to the person in the body, allowing them to become the ultimate expert on their own experience.
This foundation of choice helps rebuild trust. One of the clearest ways this is practiced is by honoring a foundational rule: only move within your pain-free range of motion. Rather than pushing past the body's signals of "too much," this principle teaches us to listen to and respect them. By befriending the body instead of being at war with it, we slowly learn that it is a wise and trustworthy ally. These principles are not complex theories; they are simple tools that can be applied from your very first practice.
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5. Conclusion: Coming Home to Yourself
The journey to find peace in your body begins with a single, radical idea: you don't need to be fixed. The disconnection you may feel is not a flaw; it is a learned response to a culture that profits from our self-doubt. Yoga offers a path back, not to a "better" body, but to your body. It is an accessible, adaptable practice that reminds us that every body is a yoga body. Through gentle, compassionate, and choice-driven movements, we can scientifically rebuild the mind-body connection, regulate our nervous systems, and reclaim a sense of agency that trauma and societal pressure so often take away.
The ultimate goal of this approach is not to master a pose, but to master the art of being with yourself. It is a journey from our outer world into our inner world, a return to the calm, wise, and unbroken Self that resides beneath the layers of pain and conditioning. This is the journey of coming home.
As you finish reading, consider for a moment: What could change if you decided to make friends with your body, exactly as it is today?
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Take the Next Step on Your Journey
Beginning the process of reconnecting with your body is a courageous step. It can be a challenging journey, filled with moments of both difficulty and profound discovery, but healing and coming home to yourself are entirely possible. You don't have to walk this path alone.
If you are in the Newnan, Georgia area and feel ready to explore this path in a safe, supportive, and professional environment, we invite you to reach out. Sea Glass Therapy offers a dedicated space for this vital work, where our team includes certified yoga instructors who integrate therapeutic knowledge with body-based practices to support your healing.
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