baseline assessment reveals how comfortable you are in your own skin. While my main goal is to help you develop a better relationship with your body, awareness of where you stand now is the first step.
Please engage your curiosity and suspend your judgment as you answer the nine questions in the “BQ: Body Intelligence Quiz.”
BQ: Body Intelligence Quiz
Is your current relationship with your body friendly, or does it feel uneasy or unsettled? Take this nine-question quiz to find out. Don’t overthink your answers. Just circle the number that best expresses your quick “first hit” response.
1. When you think about your body…
Is your first impulse to feel appreciation for it?
Or do you judge yourself and mostly notice things you want to change?
2. When you engage in a typical daily activity…
Are you more likely to trust that you know what you are doing?
Or do you feel fearful about the outcome?
3. When a stressful situation arises…
Do you calmly and clearly problem-solve the issue, the way you might talk it over with a friend?
Or are you more likely to get confused and anxious?
4. When your body’s natural needs and urges arise for sleep, food, fluids, sex, and elimination…
Do you feel at peace with those needs?
Or are you at odds or in conflict with your body?
5. When you are stepping into something new in your life…
Do you feel supported by your body?
Or do you feel it betrays you by putting the brakes on?
6. When your body has physical issues and/or you become ill…
Do you have clarity and understanding about the nature of those issues?
Or do you feel confused and unsure about their origins?
7. When you slow down and turn your attention inward…
Do you feel deeply connected to your body and its needs?
Or do you feel detached, as though you are watching someone else?
8. When someone tells you something about yourself… Do you trust your own inner reflections and what you know to be true? Or do you automatically accept what they have said because you do not know what is true for yourself ?
9. When you are in action, thinking and doing in your world…
Are you in easy partnership with your body?
Or do you see your body as something you have to control — masterfully riding it until it does what you want?
Add up your circled numbers for all nine questions. If your score is low (under 18), you probably feel pretty comfortable in your own skin under most circumstances. If your score is between 18 and 28, your feelings of connection to your body are probably more variable. If your score is on the high side (28 or more), your relationship with your body may not be what you want it to be, but rest assured you are not alone.
Whatever your BQ score, we all live in a culture where disconnection from the sensations and signals of our bodies is rampant. The latest research on trauma and healing — which is spoken about so eloquently in The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk1 and In an Unspoken Voice by Peter Levine2 — shows that the natural first response of the body to traumatic challenges in life is to prepare to fight or flee.
If that is not possible, we tighten down, go into protection mode, and often numb out completely. Simply put, when we are helpless to stop a traumatic event, we shrink down inside or emotionally vacate the premises, freezing or dissociating, and we may even go into complete paralysis.
Once the initial trauma is over, these innate responses don’t always pass. Instead, they may haunt us for years. The brilliant navigational system of our body may be deeply compromised.
This wonderful, innate system includes the following parts:
Our heart’s capacity for inspiration, compassion, and joy
Our gut knowing
The powerful engine of our pelvis
The metabolizing capacities of our limbs (particularly our legs and feet)
The steadiness of our bones
These parts of ourselves are designed to work in partnership with one another — and with the triage areas of the brain. When unresolved trauma is lodged inside, blocking the way, the ability of this exquisite system to share its wisdom and strategies may no longer function properly.
No submarine could operate without its sonar, no driver without maps and signs. Yet most of us arrive at adulthood with many of our inner signal readers numbed out — or totally blocked.
Is It Safe or Dangerous? Pleasurable or Painful?
Dr. Stephen Porges, in his landmark work The Polyvagal Theory,3 talks about how humans operate optimally when we feel safe and connected to the world around us. His polyvagal research and theory have brought to light how healthy vagus nerve function is what helps us feel happy and connected to life.
The vagus nerve regulates the entire “rest-and-digest” part of the nervous system — the parasympathetic branch — stimulating everything from the salivary glands in the mouth to the beating of the heart to full digestion and elimination — in other words, from one end of the system to the other.
When the sympathetic part of the nervous system, the “fight-or-flight” impulse, is operating, it suppresses the functioning of the parasympathetic branch and the vagus. From an evolutionary perspective, this helped us outrun the tiger.