An important part of my clinical practice is that when it comes to your health, you are the expert on you. Underlying this is what I like to call ‘body wisdom’, but what does this mean and what does it have to do with achieving your health goals?

To me body wisdom means being really familiar with what your body needs so it is able to work at the best level it can physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Or put another way, knowing what food, movement, emotional balancing techniques, supplements, medications and general lifestyle tools work best for your own body … and which ones don’t.

These days there are so many books, blogs and websites dedicated to promoting a particular program, diet or lifestyle, with many passionately proposing that their approach is the one that will fix all your health issues. And perhaps there is an element of each approach that can benefit many people.

But we are all so individual that there is no such thing as a ‘one-size-will-make-everyone-feel-awesome-approach’. It just doesn’t exist!

And if we aren’t in tune with our own body wisdom, it can be confusing and frustrating to know which approach is the ‘right’ one for you to get your health back on track.

This is where connecting to your own body wisdom comes in.

Let’s use food as an example. If you are not in tune with your body wisdom you may not notice which foods or drinks make you feel bloated, lethargic, constipated [insert relevant symptom here!]

So you keep eating or drinking something not realising that it may be contributing to the very health issues you want to improve. But once you learn about the effect certain foods can have on digestive health and you connect with how particular foods make your own body feel, you can make food choices that work best for your body, not what works best for Mabel next door!

Using body wisdom is vital for being able to achieve and maintain the level of health you want – after all, you know yourself (and your body) better than anyone!