The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living

by Hillary L. McBride

From the host of the hit CBC podcast Other People’s Problems comes an invitation to unlearn the lies about your body that make you feel less-than, and to learn to love the home where your life happens

In The Wisdom of Your Body, clinical therapist and award-winning researcher Dr. Hillary McBride offers a pathway from disconnection to embodied living by making peace with the living, breathing story of who you are. Packed with illuminating research and stories from her work and her deeply personal journey of healing from a life-threatening eating disorder, a car wreck EMTs thought she wouldn’t walk away from and chronic pain, McBride offers meaningful insights about why our relationship with our bodies matters for the quality of our whole lives. A specialist in embodiment practices, McBride shares truths and tools to help you embrace the whole of yourself and, in turn, experience your life to the fullest.

This book will show

· how to unlearn the lies about your body that hold you back from the life you were meant to live

· practices for reclaiming your body—and your life—from stress, trauma, appearance ideals and the expectations of others

· how to access the healing that is written into your DNA

· tools for regulating your emotions through physical awareness

For anyone who has ever felt unsafe, unloved or insufficient in their own skin, McBride offers a better path toward health and true acceptance. This is an invitation to live a better story with your body and to come home to the gift of yourself and the wholeness that has been there all along.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology, Health, Mental Health, Spirituality, Counselling

Audible Audio

First published October 12, 2021

Reviews

[Dolly · Rating 2 out of 5]

there are few things I hate more in this life than being suckered into a book as a marginalised person, only to have it turn around and be Christian at the end. Believe what you want, but Christianity and in particular the Bible are not safe spaces for many peoples bodies, especially for women’s bodies or queer/ trans bodies. The end of this book felt really weird and I couldn’t even finish it.
Two stars for the first half of the book which made me feel present in my body, but shame on the author for using it as a chance to Bible bash vulnerable communities and bodies.

[K.J. Ramsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Wisdom of Your Body is relentlessly kind. Hillary McBride has given us a rich gift, both in offering some of her own story here and in offering insights from research that become practical and palpable. The author’s skill as as clinician carried the book into my heart with compassion, and her artistry through metaphor and storytelling brought the words alive in my imagination. An excellent, accessible book, that I’ll be recommending to so many of my own clients and readers.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read my full review here: https://www.elizabethrosswrites.com/e...

For those who are especially curious on restoring their relationship to their body after purity culture, I believe this book will be an incredible tool in your healing journey. Her chapter Pleasure and Enjoyment: The Sexual and Sensual Body was filled with practical information. I especially enjoyed learning about sexuality through the lens of Dr. Dennis Dailey’s Five Circles of Sexuality.

This book is not meant to be the ultimate source on embodiment, healing from traumas, or even embodied faith. Instead, it is a powerful, well researched, articulate reminder that all bodies are good bodies and that this reality has implications for how we treat ourselves and others. I recommend this book to helping professionals such as therapists or social workers, but also to spiritual directors, leaders of faith communities, survivors of trauma, or anyone looking to be at home in their body.

[Niki Henderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh I tried… she seems to be very knowledgeable and did a ton of research but holy what a dense book… I dreaded picking it up.. too much talking in circles, too much bible and too much like a text book all things I do not enjoy … and if I had to read “if you remember back in chapter 3” one more time I was going to throw the book! No I don’t remember anything from 3 pages ago let alone 3 chapters ago…

[Natalie Hewlett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished on New Years Eve, and the best book I read in all of 2021… possibly ever.

Take your time with this one. It asks you (sometimes overtly and sometimes involuntarily) to stop and take time to really sit with what you are reading. So much came up for me throughout this read, and it invited me into curiosity and patience with myself.

I imagine this will be one I will read once per year… an invitation to come home to myself again and again and again.

Thank you, Hillary McBride, for this masterpiece. It is a gift.

[Hannah Gordner · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started off very rocky. The first three chapters discouraged me almost to the point of not continuing, because they mainly consisted of the scattered ramblings and subjective opinions of the author. I’m glad I continued, however, because the second half of the book proved to be far more rooted in science and research and was overall grounded. If you ask me this book should either be chopped in half or read back to front.

[Bailey Cowen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes it took me three months to read this book, healing happens in weird and slow ways and we can only hold what we can hold. That being said, I’d recommend this book to anyone, shout it from the rooftops, read this book.
Our bodies are good. They are strong, and gentle, and wise, and kind.
After being raised in a (beautiful but broken) faith tradition that at times can a little bit (or lotta bit) preach a message of disembodiment and vilification of the inner voice, this book was like the permission slip I needed to practice kindness and curiosity. Why would we ever speak badness over what God has proclaimed Good?
Grateful for this book, deeply.

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book for a book club and though I was definitely interested in the subject matter, I can also say that I most likely would not have read it on my own after seeing the particular group of people chosen to blurb the book (because they are writers who I know to be in a very different place with their faith and theology from me). Had I started it, I certainly would have put it down very early in the book. I have so many frustrations and disagreements with the book that I don’t know how to succinctly summarize them. Dr. McBride and I would have significant disagreements when it comes to theology and hermeneutics- even the fact that her faith was mostly compartmentalized to one chapter near the end was very disorienting for me. My work on my relationship with my body over the past 7-10 years comes directly from a foundation of believing that my body is good, created by God with intention and care, and part of honoring God is trying to live in an integrated way that honors my bodily existence while not idolizing or obsessing over my body. Also fundamental to my faith and understanding of the Bible is the reality of sin and the goodness of the boundaries God has set for me with my body and all other aspects of my life— I believe that these boundaries are designed for my flourishing as a human being. I do not believe my body and desires are sovereign or that they are unerring as long as they don’t harm someone else. Early in the book, Dr. McBride writes, “We experience physical freedom when we pay attention to our desires and needs, and when we are willing to challenge any social, familial, or religious beliefs that conflict with those desires and needs.” This is her underlying framework for relating to the body; to me, this describes the deification of self. She wrote negatively of the Bible’s teachings against “the flesh” throughout the book while waiting until near the end of the book to provide any relevant context for the Greek words used in the New Testament or consider what is meant by this word within the larger framework of Scripture. John Mark Comer had a far better treatment of “the flesh” in his recent book Live No Lies. On top of all these concerns, I was distracted to the point of extreme frustration by the litany of liberal buzz words and de rigueur Marxist language. I would not recommend this book to anyone and found Tara Owens’ book, Embracing the Body, far more instructive, thought-provoking, and helpful. The useful pieces of this book were largely concepts that I had already been exposed to elsewhere leaving me with few to no meaningful takeaways.

[Amy Lee Corr]

Recommended for bodies that have kept scores and minds that feel “too self aware for therapy”

[Bobbi Salkeld · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book! Read this book! Read this book!

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great primer on embodiment. The things we have been taught to believe about the mind/body divide are so engrained and can be so harmful! I found some chapters much stronger than others though this is definitely related to my own interests and knowledge. There’s something to learn here for everybody. I particularly liked the chapters on trauma, feelings, pain, and spirituality. I love reading books like this because I’m simultaneously applying my learnings to my own life and thinking about how to incorporate them into my work as a therapist.

[Alexandra Chubachi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually 4.5 stars. There were a couple chapters I scanned because I’d read similar info before, but the rest hit me exactly where I’m at and was beautifully written.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oof. Tl;dr - liked the psychology in the middle, didn’t like the cultural and theological applications on the bookends.

I loved everything that echoed what I discuss and learn with my husband (MA counseling) and counselor (trained in somatic experiencing).
I turned my mind into pretzels trying to see how her hypotheses meshed (or didn’t) with my worldview.
I groaned at cursory coverage of topics better treated at book length (see My Grandmother’s Hands or Talking Back to Purity Culture).

As I try to make sense of embodiment and reject dualism and come to a right understanding of my existence, I’m looking for a book that encompasses the psychology and nails the theology. This wasn’t it. McBride (from what I’ve picked up) is great at her field - the psychology. Her theological approach, however, too greatly differs from mine for me to consider her a reliable authority or synthesizer. I value reading things I disagree with to clarify what I believe and understand others, but, for myself, in this area, I need someone I can trust before I can wrestle with someone I don’t.

//As a side, wholly recommend counseling and working on being present in the body. Anecdotally, it has been beneficial for me as an individual and in relationship with others.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

It felt like this book was what I’d been missing my whole life. I’ll be rereading this one many times throughout my life too. It might be one of the best gifts I’ve given myself. I wish I’d learned all these things when I was much, much younger. The good news is that it’s not too late for me, even at my age. I’m excited to start a loving relationship with myself (finally!).

[indy · Rating 4 out of 5]

this made me consider the ways i was raised (sheltered, uber-christian) and how it impacted the way i saw myself growing up. it gave me tools to start considering as i'm now in my 20s and beginning to adopt body neutrality and understand what that means at this current point in my life and what it'll mean further down the line.

[Allie M Carmichael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will totally read this book again (and again and again and again) because I think the content of this book will take some time to fully sink into how I operate. But gosh, such important work.

[Haley Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

TWOYB invites its readers to explore the body not as a project to be improved, but as a living archive—an autobiography written in skin, posture, breath, and sensation. With deep compassion and precision, the book breaks down the Western myth of mind-body separation, revealing how this divide fuels inter and intra disconnection, shame, and self-surveillance (i.e. Self Objectification - where one internalizes the observers perspective as a primary way to view the self).

It asks the reader not just to consider embodiment as a concept, but to feel it—to live within rather than beside their body. Embodiment becomes one of our greatest acts of resistance to the colonial legacies living in nearly every crevice of our language, perceptions and experience.

This book doesn’t shy away from the complexity of inhabiting a body—be it disabled, chronically ill, or adorned with social capital but burdened by internalized judgment — and provides real tools to practice embodiment in these difficult spaces. It’s a necessary companion for anyone learning to see their body not as a problem, but as symphony of cells — buzzing with the quiet reminder that the body is, and always has been, home.

[Karly Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is rich with helpful practices to assist us in coming home to our bodies. It has encouraged me to make repairs with my body and to change some of the ways I talk to her. This book has influenced my therapy practice as well, and I’m grateful to be able to pass on wisdom from this book to others in their healing journeys. Hillary makes research accessible, readable and applicable to daily life.

Hillary’s work challenges the Western relationship with the body as “normative discontent” and encourages readers to examine and be critical of the context in which our bodies live, rather than our bodies themselves. She encourages the development of a gentle, curious and kind approach to our bodies that aids in the development of an integrated, trusting body relationship.

[Claire Carnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This made me think a lot differently about the relationship between mind, body & spirit, the way 90’s purity culture has affected women now, and the importance of listening to body cues just as intently as you would a close friend.

“Each of us was reminded that emotion itself is never the problem, the problem is the stories that keep us apart from each other, create conditional belonging, or require us to shove things down in order to stay connected.“

“We try to avoid the challenging things that we experience in our bodies, but in doing so we sacrifice the good, the beautiful, the rich.”

“If Christ has no body now but yours and mine and ours, it makes it very hard for us to live in a culture that keeps asking us to forget the bodies of the poor, the bodies with disabilities, Indigenous bodies, Black bodies, bodies with addiction, bodies that are elderly, non-binary bodies, and every body that does not seem to fit within our rigid cultural system of what is ideal. This is disruptive, and it is meant to be. —->

Remembering that we are bodies, and that bodies are Holy, is meant to stir in us the need to craft a social structure that protects and celebrates all bodies. Our human bodily system is meant to fold like an arm around a torso to protect precious organs; we added the body are collectively meant to act in service and protection of wherever is in need, as they are vital to our collective flourishing and liberation.”

“All inhales and exhales are doorways for the Divine.”

[Dana Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

That poem at the end wrecked me. Hillary is the goat

[Jacy · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a yoga teacher I was very interested in the premise of this book. I am very disappointed. I read enough to know that even if the rest of the book was great I wouldn't like it. This book tackles too much and makes too little sense. In places it's definitely untrue. Try "The body keeps the score" or books on Yoga or any body positive book instead.

[Avory Faucette · Rating 5 out of 5]

My relationship with my body is a living thing. At the age of 37 it feels warm and familiar and conversational, but it is also a relationship that has been through the trenches—animosity and frustration in my teens, disconnection and estrangement in my 20s and early 30s. It is a relationship informed by comments directed at my body, but also messages about bodies in general, and influences that may not seem directly connected to embodiment at all—my desires as shaped by living under late-stage capitalism, my academic focus, narratives of what it means to be transgender and what it means to be successful and what it means to be human.

I say “relationship” because I experience my body as having its own personality, its own means of communication, that is a part of me but also not the “me” I experience as the subject in conversations with my body. Working with my body in this way has been healing because it gives me the chance to affirmatively claim my body as someone I want to be in relationship with—not just because I have to, but because I have learned to see the way we can nurture each other and cultivate a sense of belonging within the system of self, whether or not we are being affirmed or held by those outside of it. So in some ways it may seem that I would disagree with psychologist and researcher Hillary McBride’s fundamental lens in this book: the idea that you ARE your body. And I do find that lens a little challenging—for some of us, particularly with complicating factors like dysphoria, it may not feel particularly liberating.

But at the same time, I’ve tried the approach of “self as mind” as a strategy for gender self-determination, and it didn’t really offer me honest ways to process my pain and work through the complexities of embodied experience. It also tended to mask the pain of living as a neurodivergent person in a brutal capitalist world so that I didn’t see how burnt out I was, nor how much I relied on others’ approval, until my body was actually screaming at me. Although I’d frame it more as “I am, through my body,” engaging in practices similar to the ones McBride explores here helped me to re-engage with my body, but also to connect with my own truth, recover from mental exhaustion, and experience the world as an integrated system, a “self” with multiple ways to communicate, sense, process, create, and recover.

This book is quite a gem, as it brings together threads from an array of disciplines that you would otherwise have to discover on your own, with really accessible explanations and a focus on starting right where you are, working with your body and not simply trying to mentally understand or explain it. McBride offers practical tools and relatable stories from her own experiences both working with clients and personally struggling with disordered eating and a traumatic car accident. But she also centers the cultural context for why embodiment can be so hard, showing how the worldview of a separate body and mind serves exploitative agendas. And throughout, she provides examples for how to have the kind of conversations with the body I’ve found so helpful, as a gentle way to build and repair relationship.

What is particularly notable about this book in comparison to others I’ve read on the topic is that while it does cover things you’ll find in a lot of feminist texts about beauty standards and body image, it gets both more philosophical and more concrete in using a somatic approach to creating a direct loving relationship with your body and exploring the body through a number of lenses, including sections on trauma, pain, sexuality, spirituality, emotional experience, and systemic oppression. McBride packs a lot in here, from emotional regulation to models of sexual response to the difference between immanence and transcendence in our understandings of the divine to epigenetics and how trauma needs to be processed in the body. She explores many different frameworks so that you can zoom in on areas of particular struggle, and the prompts and exercises at the end of each chapter go beyond surface-level. While I love a lot of the authors she sources and would recommend their books for a deeper dive, it’s nice to have a one-stop shop!

You’re going to get a real sense of how our culture normalizes war with the body, and how important it is to simply learn to listen to your body’s story. What trauma is your body holding? Does it desire pleasure? Movement? Touch? What does that desire look like for your specific body? This approach may be challenging for some, but as McBride writes: "Change does not happen through trying to trick ourselves out of a story we have been groomed to rehearse through our developing years. Rather, transformation happens from the ground up: when we have a new experience of ourselves and hold our attention on it long enough for it to sink in."

While I will admit that in my personal experience, doing this work mentally did actually work somewhat—I moved from disordered eating to loving my belly, for example, largely through the “thought replacement” strategy McBride describes as ineffective—it took a very long time. And ultimately I relied on a certain degree of disembodiment to achieve the change, which ultimately caused its own problems! McBride frames embodiment as an experience of being fully alive, and in retrospect I can see how that mental approach of viewing myself as a brain in a vessel kept me from accessing some of the most beautiful parts of aliveness.

The approach McBride frames as curiosity, attention, sensation, and acceptance is a path to re-mapping self onto body that allows us access something truly divine, a kind of trust and belonging that no one can take away. Part of this is unlearning cultural scripts, but another part is learning to trust the body even if we don’t always understand it. When we see the body as a beacon trying to communicate with us, we can take that as an invitation, whether the invitation is to work with emotions in the body using some of the techniques McBride describes, to see pain as a message rather than an enemy, or to question the impact of unjust power structures in our lives.

This kind of reframe also allows us to be with what’s present, rather than focusing on goals and striving and trying to “fix” ourselves. This isn’t a book that bypasses the specifics that you might struggle with if you’re living in a marginalized body, grappling with pain and/or trauma. While McBride encourages us to come home to our bodies, she also offers ways to work with complexity and start small when we need.

While this is a solo-authored book, and thus there are limits to the perspective, McBride does make an effort to acknowledge many different experiences and the challenges they present. (For example, I felt very seen by a brief mention of how asexual spectrum folks might struggle to communicate need and desire for touch in a social context with a narrow understanding of how desire varies.) While you might also be interested in seeking out authors that go a bit narrower and more specific, I’d really recommend this book as a starting point for all sorts of people and body relationships, including coaches / therapists / healing practitioners who are looking for a good all-around recommendation for clients who are working on embodiment.

As McBride writes: "Regardless of our circumstances or what we have been told about bodies, remembering and reuniting with our bodily selves is a radical act to undo our need to earn our worth, helping us wake up to the fact that there is something sacred right here, in this moment, always present and always available. That connection to our bodily selves is available to us in every moment. We have always been embodied, but sometimes we need a gentle invitation to remember that."

This book is that invitation.

(ARC provided through NetGalley.)

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are books that inform, books that comfort, and then there are rare and sacred texts that transform. Wisdom of the Body is such a work—an incandescent guide that not only speaks to the intellect, but to the flesh, the breath, the soul. I offer it five stars, not out of obligation or convention, but out of awe, gratitude, and reverence.

From its first pages, this book challenges and invites with equal force. Each chapter unfolds like a meditation, rich with insight, tenderness, and courage. It does not rush to conclusions or offer easy answers; instead, it honors complexity, ambiguity, and the sacred mystery of our embodied lives. The author writes with clarity and poetic grace, making profound truths beautifully readable, yet never simplistic. Every chapter demanded my full presence—slowing me down, beckoning me to sit with its wisdom, to let it settle into my bones.

Of particular note are the chapters on sexuality and spirituality and the body—twin peaks in this mountain range of thought. The chapter on sexuality is an unflinching yet compassionate exploration, reclaiming it from shame and distortion, and instead grounding it in dignity, connection, and vitality. It allowed me to look at my own body and desires with a softer gaze, a more sacred curiosity.

The chapter on spirituality and the body is, simply put, revelatory. It calls forth a theology of touch, breath, and presence. No longer is spirit held aloft above the body; here, they dance together, inseparable, holy. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book—and yet it is only one thread in this richly woven tapestry.

As someone on an embodiment journey—a path that has, over time, softened the sharp edges of disconnection and brought me into deeper intimacy with life itself—Wisdom of the Body has been a catalyst, a mirror, a companion. It has helped me name the unnameable, feel the unfelt, and honor the rhythms of my own being. It has illuminated the path not just to healing, but to wholeness.

This book is not merely read; it is experienced. It is lived. I will return to it again and again, not because I must, but because my soul longs to. It is the kind of book that listens as much as it speaks, the kind that stays with you long after the final page is turned.

Wisdom of the Body is, without question, a gift—and I, deeply changed, am its grateful recipient.

[Jessica DeWitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

My therapist recommended that I read this book. I can pinpoint some specific memories from childhood when I learned to loathe my body, to resent its shape, and treat it as something to punish and control. I've been pulling myself out of years of disordered eating, self-harm, and using exercise as punishment for over a decade now, but I still have a lot of work in embracing my body and treating it with neutrality, let alone kindness. Now that I have a daughter, this effort is all the more prescient, as I very much wish to not pass along a lineage of self-loathing and body shame.

That being said, I found McBride's book a comforting walk through embodiment and the social conditions that have bred disembodiment. Broken into topical chapters such as pain, feelings, and body image, McBride successfully accomplishes her goal of providing a footing for folks to fully inhabit their bodies. Although many of the topics she covers were not entirely new to me, I still learned quite a bit and appreciated being prompted to think about my relationship to my body in new ways. The parts that focused on Christianity resonated with me the least, but although I'm not religious, nor was I brought up in a religious household, I recognize that I have been influenced by Christian culture and am the actual embodiment of a family lineage that was most certainly influenced by Christian thinking. Anyways, very good primer on the topic! Glad I read it. I do feel better about myself having done so.

[Maggie Lytle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was incredible. I started following Hillary McBride after hearing her in a Liturgists podcast episode titled “Does Being Good Mean My Beliefs Shouldn’t Change” and ever since then I have been super inspired by her work. The Wisdom of your Body is such a necessary and healing read!!!

I found the chapter “Holy Flesh” to be one of my favorites. Growing up in a faith tradition that often taught me that my flesh/body was bad and that only my spirit was good often led to disconnection and complete ignorance of my physical body. I learned that western Philosophy and Gnostic religious thought heavily influenced this body and spirit divide, in addition to a patriarchal and settler-colonist belief system imposed on Scripture. I really liked McBride’s discussion of the writings of Paul and her invitation to revisit Greek and Hebrew translations to pull apart what Paul and other New Testament writers are saying. McBride writes: “When God and bodies seem antithetical, I must ask, what am I missing about God? What am I missing about love, life, and the messy, gritty, unpredictable unfolding process of faith?”.

Everyone should read this book! Also super rich chapters about bodies and oppression, trauma, emotions, and appearance. This book felt like a revealing therapy session and warm hug to myself all at once.

[Karagan Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Even when I am alone, you are with me”

Feels weird to rate this one…but I do think that anyone with a body should read this book

[Aubrielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent read recommended by my therapist. It's astonishing how disembodied we've become - collectively at a societal level, but certainly as a woman walking through the world, and as someone who has experienced traumatic loss.. all of these things move us further and further away from our own bodies. I so appreciated the expanded and contextualized scope of this discussion. Though Hillary McBride isn't trying to tackle all of the issues that drive us away from embodied living, she pays recognition to systemic issues such as racism, sexism, and ableism. Rooted within the reality of these contexts, she provides a very pragmatic perspective and opportunities for practical application and easy practice. Highly recommend!

[Rachel Croce · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been listening to McBride for years and have been anticipating this publication. Not at all disappointed. She does a great job introducing non-shaming ways of living in a body (and inviting the reader to get connected to ourselves within our bodies). Very trauma-informed and a great resource.

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an incredible listen. I went in to it not really knowing what to expect but it was somehow exactly what I needed to hear. This will be a reread for sure.

[Sav · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars