Does Your Body Feel Safe? Here’s Why it Matters.
If you read through my website, you’ll see references to my process helping your body feel loved and safe. Specifically, I mention finding the right foods to help your body feel loved and safe.
You might read that and think, well, that’s clearly just woo-woo marketing, right? I’m using language to convey a sense of trust … right?
It’s not, and I’m not.
Turns out the feeling of being safe and loved is incredibly important. It’s so central to the overall balance of your immune system (and your whole body) that I think you could boil down most functional medicine protocols to this: how can we take something away that makes your body feel threatened, and how can we add something in that makes your body (and you in general) feel safe? That might mean removing an infection and adding in adaptogenic herbs. It might mean neutralizing intrusive thoughts and adding in mindful exercise.
It might even mean removing exercise and adding calories. Which is heretical to the typical (antiquated) philosophy of health-as-thin, calories-in-calories-out theory. How could that be true, you ask?
As a middle-aged woman, have you ever struggled to lose weight even though you haven’t changed your diet and exercise? Have you ever known a woman going through this? Or have you ever known someone who exercises even more than ever and eats even less, only to gain weight? This is common in high-achieving women: small business owners, company leadership, and busy stay-at-home moms.
This scenario happens more than you think, and you can explain it with one concept: your body feels unsafe. At the molecular level, it feels as though it needs to reserve energy to make it through a famine or it needs to divert metabolic pathways to fighting an enemy, such as an infection or hormone imbalance.
Once you start thinking about your body like this, you can see why seemingly unrelated actions like resetting your cortisol rhythms with early morning light exposure, or dialing back the cardio exercise and adding in restorative yoga can affect your weight, your mood, your energy and your clarity. Yes, this is oversimplified. But as you start to stack the small, healthy life habits, you’ll begin to notice that they are synergistic. Pretty soon, you’ll have less bad days.
When you’re about to eat a donut or guzzle a glass of wine, try asking yourself if it will make your body feel safe? And if you’re not sure where to start, give root cause medicine a try.
Disclaimer: This blog isn’t meant to be taken as medical advice. It’s for educational purposes only.
