Authentic Health and Attunement

Have you ever heard of the phrase authentic health?

 It's introduced in the Intuitive Eating work book by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Authentic health is the beautiful overlap of our inner attunement with our health values. Often times, our views of health can become very narrow. Focusing on things like exercise and nutrition and leaving behind things like mental well-being, relationship to food & movement, caring for ourselves and listening to & meeting our bodies needs.
In order to work towards authentic health it's important we make steps towards developing attunement, A skill we are all born with.

Attunement is having the ability to listen to our bodies needs and respond to the them in a caring, respectful way.

For most individuals that struggle with disordered eating and body image concerns, our ability to practice attunement get's shadowed by external rules and rigidity. It's common to lose your internal signals and replace them with external messages from diets, culture and outside influences. As we work towards reconnecting to our bodies, we can begin to develop attunement. 

Attunement disrupters (things that make it hard to tune in to your body and respond in a nurturing way)

• Skipping meals and/or restricting certain types of foods
• Exercising regardless of being injured, sick or tired
• Overworking
• Not getting enough sleep
• Suppressing emotions
• Excessive stress
• Difficult time setting boundaries or speaking up
• People pleasing
• Dieting/ following external guidelines and ignoring the bodies cues
• Excessive social media use

One way that we can nurture and learn attunement is through self care.
Catherine Cook-Cottone explains below:

Self Care: The Foundation of Well-being
Self-care is defined as the daily process of being aware of and attending to one’s basic physiological and emotional needs. This includes shaping one’s daily routine, relationships, and environment as needed to promote self-care. Self-care is seen as the foundational work required for physical and emotional well-being, and is associated with positive physical health, emotional well-being, and mental health. Research suggests that steady and intentional practice of self-care may prevent the onset of mental health symptoms, job/school burnout, and improve work and school productivity.
(https://www.catherinecookcottone.com/research-and-teaching/mindful-self-care-scale/)

Attunement nurturing

• Getting enough sleep for your body
• Regular and consistent food intake
• Joyful movement
• Self-reflection
• Awareness of thoughts and feelings
• Making time for relaxing, play and down time
• Self compassion practice
• Maintaining a manageable schedule
• Setting boundaries and speaking up/knowing needs
• A meditation or mindfulness practice

Attunement is foundational when it comes to nurturing authentic health. I want to invite you to take some time this week to reflect and practice what it feels like to go inward. To listen to your body and explore with curiosity the signals it's giving you.

Rooting for you on your journey of well-being,
​Hanna