From Hacking to Tending - Meeting our Body with Presence, Attunement and Care
As a somatic practitioner and educator supporting women, I choose not to use the word hacking when I talk about women's wellbeing.
Because I believe the language we use shapes the relationship we cultivate with our bodies.
For women, that relationship is especially important.
Many of us have spent decades carrying the belief that our bodies are somehow wrong.
The wrong shape, weight, colour, age...
The language we use can unintentionally reinforce the idea that our bodies are still problems to fix, rather than intelligent living systems with which we can foster a compassionate relationship.
We all respond differently to different language.
I personally prefer using the word tending.
Because the lens through which we see the body shapes how we meet it.
And how we meet it shapes the relationship we cultivate with it.
The way we see our bodies influences the way we meet them
We don't meet our bodies neutrally.
We bring to the relationship we have with our body, our beliefs, our conditioning, our past experiences, the external lens and expectations that we are exposed to.
And often, over time, we learn to judge and compare our body, longing for it to fit into cultural and societal norms and expectations. Our inner critical voice can become harsher and more present. And we might begin to carry shame for all the ways in which we are different.
So when our culture embraces a new approach that speaks to hacking and optimising our bodies, there is a risk that it leads us to meet our body from a place of fixing, controlling, optimising and improving.
And the truth is: words aren’t just words.
They have a felt sense.
They ripple and resonate through our internal landscape … we feel them.
And while that might be unintentional, these words can convey and reinforce the message that something is wrong with you. Something needs to be fixed here.
There is a very different felt experience in being met with criticism, frustration, shame and the pressure to change, and being met with presence, curiosity, acceptance and care.
Imagine a friend meeting you with criticism when you share a problem you face, rather than with compassion and attunement … each scenario would likely lead to different feelings and potentially quite different outcomes.
In the same way, we are always in a relationship with our body - whether it’s conscious or not.
And our body experiences this relationship too.
If I’m trying to make my body feel less anxious while meeting it with frustration and impatience because it doesn't feel grounded enough, what am I communicating?
If I’m trying to regulate my nervous system from a place of urgency because I believe I shouldn't be feeling the way I do, what does that urgency itself feel like in my body?
How we meet ourselves deeply matters.
Body tracking vs. body intimacy
We have never had more ways to know what’s happening inside our bodies.
We can track our sleep, our heart rate, our movement, stress, recovery, our temperature and menstrual cycles. We can gather information that previous generations couldn’t even imagine. And some of it is enormously helpful.
But I wonder about the relationship we are cultivating with ourselves, our body, and our experience as we gain access to that knowledge.
Are the ways in which we are meeting our body bringing us into closer relationship with it, or taking us further away?
We can wake up in the morning and know our sleep score before we've taken a moment to pause and notice how we actually feel.
We can know whether we're supposedly recovered before sensing the amount of energy and capacity we have available that day.
We can become extraordinarily connected to our bodies technologically, while becoming less and less versed at knowing them interoceptively (sensing them from the inside out).
And this matters.
Because knowing more about our bodies isn't necessarily the same as knowing our bodies more intimately.
As a somatic practitioner and educator for women, I see body intimacy as a crucial foundation for us to reclaim sovereignty and agency.
Knowing our body means learning to attune to it and read its signals. To recognise when we’re hungry or tired, when we’re hovering close to burnout, when something feels off. To know the difference between a felt yes and a felt no. To sense when we need more nourishment, rest or restoration, and when we have the capacity to expand, take a risk or go after something we desire.
These inner cues help us navigate our needs, desires, boundaries and choices. They help us live in greater alignment.
So if we become increasingly used to looking outside ourselves to tell us what is happening within us, something fundamental can begin to shift.
We learn to trust something external to tell us what we feel internally.
And our inner authority can slowly erode.
Fostering a different relationship: from hacking and optimising to tending and befriending
What if, instead of meeting ourselves from a place of wanting to optimise our bodies, hack our systems or fix ourselves, we met ourselves from a place of deep knowing and tending?
Tending asks us to move towards the body.
To become intimate enough with ourselves to notice what’s here, what’s present.
To learn our rhythms rather than simply measuring them. To recognise our changing capacities and needs as they fluctuate through our menstrual cycles and the seasons of our lives. To become familiar with what depletion, nourishment, ease, tension, pleasure and aliveness uniquely feel like within us.
Our bodies are living, responsive and wonderfully non-linear. Their rhythms change. Their needs change. We change.
Across our menstrual cycles and hormonal transitions, across our seasons and life stages. In response to stress and spaciousness, grief and joy, the relationships around us, how supported we feel, how much we have been giving and how much reciprocity we are receiving.
Our bodies constantly fluctuate.
Tending makes room for our ever-changing body and approaches it with tenderness, care, compassion and acceptance. Rather than treating every fluctuation as something to correct, or trying to optimise what may actually be asking for nourishment and care.
Sometimes tending may lead us to exactly the same choice that a health hack would.
We might go to bed earlier. Change our movement practice. Eat differently. Spend more time outside. Seek nurturing support. Do something that helps soothe and restore our nervous system.
The difference is in the quality of the relationship from which that choice emerges.
Is it coming from a desire to fix and resolve, or is it coming from a place of care and acceptance? Are we getting closer to our body or further away - looking at it from the outside in?
Turning towards our bodies with presence, care and compassion
In somatics, we make room for the body and the felt experience we are having, without immediately deciding that anything needs to change.
We learn to attune and to listen.
Interoception is our capacity to sense what’s happening within our bodies. It gives us access to the quiet, moment-to-moment information of our inner world: tiredness and energy, hunger and fullness, tension and ease, activation and settling, pleasure and discomfort, expansion and contraction.
To the subtler sense of I don't want this. I need space. I want more of that. Something here feels pleasurable or feels off.
The more we listen, the more body literate we become.
We begin to learn the particular language of our own body. How depletion feels in us. How we know when we have capacity. The early signs that we are overriding ourselves. What nourishment feels like. What brings us ease, pleasure or aliveness.
But tending also asks us to respond to what we hear.
To rest when we recognise depletion, where we can. To nourish ourselves when we're hungry. To move when our bodies long for movement. To protect a boundary to preserve our energy. To reach for connection. To ask for support. To create more space for the people, places and experiences that replenish us and bring us alive.
Perfection isn’t required here.
But each time we notice a cue and respond with care, we are cultivating a deeper, more trusting relationship with ourselves.
We are saying: My love, I’m here, I’m listening. What you feel matters.
This is how we begin to build self-trust.
External knowledge can sit alongside that relationship. But I believe it’s important for it not to replace it.
Technology can then become something that supports body literacy and intimacy rather than replacing it.
A way of meeting ourselves with more presence, attunement and care, of becoming intimate enough with our own inner world to listen for what will nourish, resource and support our flourishing.
Because the lens through which we see the body shapes how we meet it.
How we meet it shapes the relationship we cultivate with it.
And our relationship with ourselves is the ground from which we meet the world.
How can I support you?
If you are curious about coming into this deeper relationship with yourself - to lay down some of the holding and striving, replenish your nervous system, reconnect with your body’s wisdom and find your way back to what feels nourishing and alive, Tending the Self, my private somatic journey for women might be the perfect place to start.
And if you are considering training to hold women with this quality of presence, depth and attunement, The Wisdom Within™ Somatic Practitioner Trainingis a seven-month professional certification and personal embodiment journey into women-centred, regenerative somatics. A deeply experiential training in learning to listen to the body, trust its innate wisdom, and cultivate the conditions in which women can heal, transform and flourish.
You might also be interested in:
Beyond Healing: How Somatic Work Opens the Door to Expansion
Why Women Deserve Somatic Approaches That Honour Their Body, Cycles and Lived Experience
The Edge of Burnout: Listening to the Body Before It Shuts Down
Somatic Practices to Support You When You Feel Drained, Flat, or Numb
The Missing Piece For Women To Feel More Rested, Radiant, and to Embrace Their Fullest Potential
