Hillary McBride wrote a beautiful and needed book that I have recommended to dozens of people. It often read like a lighter version of The Body Keeps the Score (which while an important and good book can be a difficult read for some) to me, which I appreciated.

If this is your first entry to Dr. Hillary McBride, we are thrilled for you, and you will be so glad for her gentle, intelligent and kind education on moving toward a new way of being in our bodies. Think you don’t have body issues? I’m sure you love someone who does; and I’m certain you will learn valuable self kindness techniques from this treasure of a book. Far from self help, this is full of evidence based education, but written with a narrative engaging style. I look forward to reading it multiple times to learn all I can!

What an excellent, thought-provoking book! I loved the wisdom that Dr. McBride shared with us in this book. Each chapter centered around a different topic related to our bodies and embodiment, be it the history of how we became disembodied, the role trauma has played in how we see our bodies, spirituality, sexuality, etc. I really appreciated how the author blended deep research with personal anecdotes. This made what could have been a heavy book relatable and gentle. I think this would be a great book to read with friends or a small group, as there were reflection questions and practices to try at the end of each chapter. I read this book slowly, over a couple months, and can see myself returning to a chapter or two in the future as it is relevant in my life.

Also, I do want to note that a book about bodies, in our culture, seems like it should be a book for women. Though this book was written by a woman, it is a book for men and women. The examples shared are from both perspectives, so I think both genders could benefit from this book. Another thing to note is that though the author is a Christian and her faith is a theme throughout the book, this isn't evangelical at all and some chapters do touch on issues of how faith and misinterpretation of the Bible/cultural issues have really harmed people.

I am glad I read this book and will recommend it to others, personally and professionally.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for the advanced eARC. All opinions are my own.

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.

This book is a wonderful accompaniment to a healing journey. It is written with compassion and grace.

Dr. Hillary McBride is a clinical therapist. In this book she brings together research, the experiences of others and her own experience to deal with the topic of how we view and treat our bodies. The quality of our lives change as our perspectives on our own bodies change. This book brings intriguing thoughts and insights to embodied living. One of the things that I've enjoyed while reading it are the questions to consider at the end of each chapter. I found it to be an interesting, thought provoking read. #theWisdomOfYourBody #NetGalley

5 stars for content and depth, 4 stars for writing style. Very academic and less spiritually focused than I expected. Took me a long time to get through it because the writing style is so dry. A lot of focus on politicalization of the body and social justice issues, which may be a turn off to some readers but was nonetheless important. A lot of helpful embodiment practices for making peace with the body and being more in tune to the connection between body, mind, and spirit. I wish there had been more attention to the theology of the body and the goodness of the imago Dei, but I don’t think this is the author’s theology.

This book covers a variety of different topics and implications for life, addressing different ways that people can move into a deeper sense of embodied living and work through negative beliefs that they have about their bodies. At times, I felt like the author tried to tackle too much all at once, and that some of the heavy topics didn't get their due, but the range that this book covers will make it helpful for a variety of different people, since she isn't focused on just body image, or just sexuality, or just chronic pain, but covers all of these and many other topics.

Although this therapist writes to a predominately female audience, she also includes some examples from male clients and some applications for specific struggles that men are likely to have based on their upbringing and the social messages that they receive. I appreciate that this book isn't just about women's issues, and is more holistic than that. She also does a good job of writing from a Christian belief standpoint without making the book inaccessible to people who don't share her beliefs.

I enjoyed this book, and it gave me a lot to think about. I certainly didn't agree with everything that the author said, but she wrote in a logical and clear way, explaining what she meant by things instead of just making assertions and moving on, as many authors of body-focused books do. I appreciated her reasoned approach and gracious tone, and since people can easily take or leave what does or doesn't apply to them, I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in the topic.

The Wisdom of Your Body by Hillary L. McBride PhD is an important work for men and women alike. I am delayed in reviewing this book because it is not a quick read. This book’s words resonate with such life changing truth and it needs to read carefully and digested. I read this in many sittings and even now feel like I need to start over and read it again in order to do it justice. This is the first book that I have read from this author and I certainly need to pick up her earlier book. I highly recommend this book to everyone. I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher with no obligations. These opinions are entirely my own.

Hillary writes about neuroscientific research and the topic of embodiment with such balance. l don’t feel like I’m reading a textbook when I read Hillary’s writing. This book feels like a story, a compassionate love letter, and a narrative of her own lived experience in a body in a broken world. Trauma, body image, and dissociation from our bodies are such sensitive topics, but this book invites them to the table of discussion with empathy and care. Hillary gives prompts and questions at the end of each chapter for self-reflection which I LOVED. As someone who has spent years disconnected from her body - this book offers such wisdom and a healing balm. Our bodies are so damn smart. We’re on the same team.

🥺 I tearfully made my way through so many chapters. I’m a big fan of metaphors to describe concepts and this was packed full. Wow - I just don’t have enough words for this new release. @hillaryliannamcbride is a gift to the world - Congrats to her on this powerhouse of a book.

The Wisdom of Your Body is an excellent book, it is accessible, well researched, easily readable, and applicable.
Told through stories and research, McBride crafts a book to help people live more fully in our bodies. She addresses a wide range of topics: healing from physical trauma, feeling feelings, politicization of bodies, and sensuality and sexuality.

The chapters are laid out in a way where you could read them out of order, each chapter concludes with a practice or prompt to take what you read further.

Our bodies exist as part of us, but we are largely disconnected from feeling and trusting this part of ourselves. McBride brings light to areas we may need to heal from, grow in, and learn to inhabit. Highly recommend.

This will be a great addition to my therapeutic library. After getting through half of it I already decided that I needed to buy it as I was highlighting so much! As a clinician that works in the field of body image and disordered eating the terminology around embodiment vs disembodiment is helpful language to use when trying to heal a very damaged culture around our sense of self. I believe this will be helpful to many and I particularly like how she summarizes each chapter and gives you some suggestions on how to practice some of these tools on your own.

I would recommend this to fellow clinicians, clients and really anyone who has a body!

Thank you to NetGalley and Brazos Press!

Accessible and informative, a valuable resource for those working through self-care. A meaningful gift or a personal guide.

Fantastic, lucidly written and practical overview of the vital discipline of "embodiment," a healing modality that if widely implemented could do so much to repair our shattered world. Much, if not all of our inner suffering and intra-personal conflict can be traced back to the illusory line we draw between our minds and our bodies, as if they were two opposed entities instead of only two ways of manifesting the same reality. We have to get over this, and McBride, a survivor herself of life-threatening eating disorder, shows some of the ways that can bring us back to ourselves and our embodied world.

Even if you have a good relationship with your body already, I recommend this book. According to the research that Hillary McBride shares, many of us need to make more peace with our bodies.

“The body is the only way we have to move through life. Yet research about body dissatisfaction and body hatred shows us that the majority of us—up to 90 percent of those of us Western culture and in communities touched by globalization, inclusive of women and men—loathe our bodies.”

McBride goes into great depth about improving our relationship with our bodies, touching on physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects.

We can grow to be more aware of our body as a sanctuary instead of an enemy.

“Our bodies are constantly speaking up, telling us who we are and what it is like to be us. These signals tell us what feels good, when we feel alive, when to eat and sleep and cry, what is unsafe (or what has felt scary in the past), what matters to us, and how we are different from or similar to the person next to us.”

McBride includes a writing exercise at the very end of the book that is also fantastic: A Letter to My Body. She includes her own letter and it is profound.

My thanks to NetGalley + Baker Academic & Brazos Press for the review copy of this book.

I'm not sure what I thought of this book, to be honest. Grateful to receive an e-ARC but it wasn't what I expected.

I have been slowly working my way through @hillaryliannamcbride’s book for a few months. I intentionally photographed this book with a pen because I’m not sure that I have ever highlighted so much in a book or made so many notes. This book is FILLED with such specific, helpful tools for the way that we think about our bodies, the way that we respond to pain, handle trauma, experience pleasure…the list goes on and on.

McBride’s dedication page reads, “For anyone who was ever told, shown, or made to believe that your body is anything other than sacred and wise.” So…to answer, “Who should read this book?” Everyone. EVERYONE should read this book. Not all of it will be applicable to everyone, and depending on your faith background, you may not agree with all of her ideas, but there is simply way too much here that is VITAL for us to learn to dismiss this book.

As someone who has had a very rocky health journey over the last seven years (the birth of my ten-pound baby boy did a number on my not quite 5’ self!) I’ve had so many negative thoughts and frustrations about my body, aside from the challenge of being a plus-size person in a community filled with thin people. This book is filled with healing for anyone struggling with body image issues, health issues, or chronic pain, and I fall firmly into all three categories. I’m going to use the characters I have left to share some quotes. PLEASE get a copy of this book and read it slowly.

👤 “Instead of changing our body, what we need to change is how we think about, talk about, and care for our body.”

👤 “My body is a sanctuary. A sanctuary is a sacred space—a place we go to encounter the Holy and sacred…the Holy Spirit is very much here—my body is a sanctuary, a mobile home of the Divine.”

👤”We heal when we can be with what we feel…turning toward our emotions instead of exiling them is what helps us move through them.”

There’s so much more to say! Particularly fascinating is her discussion of how we focus our thoughts of body image on appearance, not on the whole body. DM me once you’ve read this one!

There are plenty of books and articles related to changing the way we view our bodies. Most of us have grown up in a toxic culture where impossible physical ideals were imposed on both women and men leading to pain, abuse, depression, eating disorders, bullying and more. It's no wonder there has been a rise in authors pushing body positivity and, as someone who has suffered an eating disorder for over half of my life and counting,, I can say that honestly so many of those books do provide a certain extent of information but they all start to blend together. The advice seems removed most of the time and reading up on the topic can feel like getting a lecture from your doctor, leaving you overwhelmed and stressed.. That stops the second you open yourself to The Wisdom of Your Body.

Dr. Mcbride weaves together information and advice from everywhere from the latest phycological studies to ancient wisdom that, as a society, we have forgotten. Well researched, extremely personal and relevant this book just might be the spark that truly starts the revolution we so desperately need. The Wisdom of Your Body feels like it was written by someone who personally dove inside my psyche and extracted all the emotions and negativity that has been buried there for so long; This is an amazing accomplishment and something that honestly surprised me. The connection felt from this guide is one of the many reasons this book is so amazing.

I finished the book rather quickly because it is truly that well written and interesting; now I am re-reading it and going slowly, forcing myself to put the book down at times to truly reflect on what McBride has given us. This is the only way any self help book will help you change, and it is impossible to NOT reflect and relate. Now there is no excuse to not to give this ground breaking approach a true fair trial.

“... I have been looking for ways to weave myself back into wholeness, for thread to stitch back together the fabric of my life into something greater than the individual parts.” - Hillary L. McBride, PhD

I will be recommending this book to everyone for quite some time. Thank you Dr. McBride, for such a beautiful gift.

A special thanks to netgalley as well for providing an e-copy for me to read, reflect on, and share my honest unprompted opinion. It is with great pleasre that I can say this book is life altering.

I took my time reading this and found myself highlighting often- that’s saying something for someone who usually goes for fiction these days and downs a book in a day or two. McBride really knows her subject area and isn’t afraid to include her personal experiences. I felt affirmed and understood myself a little better after reading this.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I read this book slowly, and I'm sure I'll read it again because there is so much good information in it. I'd love to read it in a discussion group.