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

by Hillary McBride

Publisher:

Brazos Press

, 2021

Overview

Many of us have a complicated relationship with our body.

Maybe you've been made to feel ashamed of your body or like it isn't good enough. Maybe your body is riddled with stress, pain, or the effects of trauma. Maybe your experiences with racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, ageism, or sizeism have made you believe your body isn't the right kind of body.

Whatever the reason, many of us don't feel at home in our bodies. But being disconnected from ourselves as bodies means being disconnected from truly living and from the interconnection that weaves us all together.

In The Wisdom of Your Body, Hillary L. McBride invites us to reclaim the wisdom of the body and to experience the wholeness that has been there all along, weaving together

● illuminating research
● practices to deepen your relationship with your bodily self
● end-of-chapter prompts and questions
● real stories from her work as a therapist
● personal narratives of healing from a life-threatening eating disorder, a near-fatal car accident, and chronic pain

Come home to your body and embrace a more compassionate, healthy, and holistic perspective on embodied life.

From the Back Cover

2022 Word Guild Award, Culture and Life Stories categories

Globe and Mail Bestseller List, November 2021 (Self-Improvement)

Coming Home to Your Body

Clinical psychologist and award-winning researcher Hillary L. McBride explores the ways many of us inherit a broken and unhealthy understanding of the body and offers a more compassionate, healthy, and holistic perspective on embodied life.

"The Wisdom of Your Body is the exact message I wish someone had given me thirty years ago. This book will help set people free."
--Jen Hatmaker, New York Times bestselling author of Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire and Of Mess and Moxie; host of the For the Love podcast

"A book offering profound healing and insight--the rare tome that can change not only individual lives but also our world."
--Mike McHargue, host of The Cozy Robot Show; author of You're a Miracle (and a Pain in the Ass)

"This book is an invitation to look deeper and to live a fully connected and embodied life."
--Morgan Harper Nichols, author of All Along You Were Blooming

"This might be the revolution for which we've all been secretly longing. The Wisdom of Your Body is a book I will be recommending to everyone."
--Sarah Bessey, author of Jesus Feminist, editor of the New York Times bestseller A Rhythm of Prayer

"It is the most important work of my adulthood to learn that I am my body. This book is the indispensable tool I've been looking for."
--Jedidiah Jenkins, New York Times bestselling author of Like Streams to the Ocean and To Shake the Sleeping Self

"Soulful. Joyful. McBride is the gentle and powerful voice that calls us back home to ourselves."
--Kate Bowler, Duke Divinity School; author of Everything Happens for a Reason

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Contents

Contents
An Invitation to Begin
1. Fully Alive: Exploring and Understanding Embodiment
2. How We Become Disembodied: Lies about Our Bodies and Finding Our Way Home
3. The Body Overwhelmed: Healing the Body from Stress and Trauma
4. Appearance and Image: How We See Our Body from the Outside
5. Feeling Feelings: Getting to Know the Emotional Body
6. You Are Not Broken: A New Perspective on Pain
7. The Body and Oppression: When Bodies Are Political
8. Pleasure and Enjoyment: The Sensual and Sexual Body
9. Holy Flesh: Reconciling the Spirit-Body Divide
10. Living as a Body: Embodiment Practices to Return to Ourselves
Epilogue: A Letter to My Body

Product Details

• Title: The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living
• Author: Hillary McBride
• Publisher: Brazos Press
• Print Publication Date: 2021
• Logos Release Date: 2021
• Pages: 288
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781493433896, 9781587435522, 1587435527, 149343389X
• Resource ID: LLS:9781493433896
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T23:45:39Z

About the Author

Hillary L. McBride (PhD, University of British Columbia) is a registered psychologist, an award-winning researcher, and a sought-after speaker who specializes in embodiment. She formerly cohosted The Liturgists podcast (averages 4 million downloads per year), hosts the Other People's Problems podcast, and has appeared on other popular podcasts. McBride's clinical and academic work has been recognized by the American Psychological Association and the Canadian Psychological Association. She has a private counseling practice in Vancouver, British Columbia. McBride is the author of Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image and coeditor of Embodiment and Eating Disorders. Learn more at www.hillarylmcbride.com.