Trust Yourself By Trusting Your Body
Cat Cuevas
Head of People and Culture | DEIB, People Operations and Talent Development Strategist
One of the biggest challenges that even the most confident women I know face is trusting themselves.
In today's post, I'm talking about how to deepen trust in yourself by tapping into the brain process that is responsible for your sense of direction, ability to dance, and your sense of self.Everyone experiences self-doubt.
A question I’m frequently asked is: how do I tell the difference between my intuition and everything else – especially when needing to make a big decision? How do I learn to trust myself?
One way to strengthen your ability to trust yourself is by exercising proprioception. Proprioception is your sense of where your body is in space – relative to other body parts, and without visual aid. It is involved in motion, balance, and spatial awareness.
In particular it has to do with our limbs in relation to our trunk – how heavy they are and how much effort or force it would take to move them.
Without proprioception you wouldn’t be able to drive a car, type on a computer, or be able to unhook your bra without seeing what your hands were doing!
Let’s practice our proprioception right now. Without looking, see if you can sense where your toes are. Now try sensing the top of your toe versus the bottom side of your toe.
Here’s another way to practice – close your eyes and extend your right hand over your head with your palm facing inward. With your left hand, hold your pointer finger out and try to touch the palm of your right hand, above your head.
Tuning into proprioception can help you trust yourself because you are tapping into an inherent sense of trust that your body uses every single day.
Your body knows where your arms are, your legs are and your head is at all times. You’ve developed a sense of trust in your body to do everything from put your lipstick on to removing a shoe without looking.
It is vital to our day to day lives, and here’s an interesting note: proprioception informs our sense of body ownership – the idea that our body belongs to us and not someone else.
Without proprioception, we’d feel profoundly lost. The next time you are feeling lost, disempowered, confused or unsure…get grounded by tapping into your proprioception.
Try one of the activities we just practiced, dance, or do something physical to feel more confident and to own your space.
This is just one way to exercise your embodied leadership and reconnect with your wise self. The best part – it’s an easy and fun way to hold a tiny revolution and reclaim your body as yours.
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