Your body is not a project
Welcome! I’m so glad you’re here
For most of us, exercise has been framed as a means to an end. Something we do to the body in order to change it. Make it smaller, stronger, more acceptable or out of fears for health, aging, and fragility. We learn to view our body as something we must constantly optimize or control and almost never something enjoy, inhabit, and just be.
Whether you found Attuned Exercise through a friend, a post on social media, or your own search for something different, I want to say this up front:
You’re not behind for struggling with these things. You’re not broken or lazy.
You’re just human and you’ve very likely been given a very limited story about the value of movement.
Let’s start with this one idea:
Your body is not a project.
That might sound obvious or it might land somewhere deep, in the part of you that’s tired of treating your body like a never-ending fix-it plan. (I’ve been there too with the ‘ooof’)
We internalize fitness culture messages because they’re all around us, and imbedded in wider systems of gender roles, societal values and body control. They sound like “No pain, no gain,” trash about “beach bodies” and nonsense like “Earning your food” and the endless tracking of steps, calories, etc.
But what happens to us when the body becomes a project is we disconnect from it.
You stop listening, you override your needs and push through your signals. You actually distrust the body’s messages and focus so much on outcomes that you forget how to feel.
This leads to cycles of shame, burnout, sometimes injuries, and also ongoing resistance. Which makes sense in a system that has deeply failed you. Of course you know the benefits of exercise, of course you want to (or want to want to) exercise. If that’s you, there’s another path to explore.
What if movement didn’t have to be a performance, a punishment, or a project? But instead a way to practice coming home to your body, reconnecting, practice care, and establishing a new relationship.
That’s the heart of what I call attuned exercise:
Movement that’s based on freedom and attunement, not control. A version of exercise that that listens, responds, adapts and helps you feel more like yourself. This isn’t about never challenging yourself or not working hard at times if you like that sort of thing. It’s about knowing why you’re moving, and choosing to do so in a way that’s aligned with care rather shame.
When you move from attunement and a foundation of self-compassion you begin to trust your body again, to reconnect to joy and presence and to rebuild your inner compass of self-caring, resting, and playing.
This version of exercise is for everyone who wants to move in a different way and especially for people who are coming back to exercise with some baggage, are healing from burnout or perfectionism, or who want to move their bodies in ways more aligned with the other areas of growth and unlearning in their lives. This work isn’t about following a new set of rules, but about rebuilding a relationship with your body and yourself, releasing the beliefs that have kept us small, and burning diet culture and toxic fitness culture to the ground.
Thank you for being here. Truly.
You’re allowed to move differently.
You’re allowed to begin again.
You’re allowed to be a whole person, not a project.
- Martha
Attuned Exercise is still in its early days and if this message resonates with you, I’d love your help in sharing it. This project grows best through real human connection.
