It was several years ago at an AEDP training that I found myself, once again, seated in one of those typical conference chairs designed for average-sized male bodies. As someone 5 feet tall (4'11" on my driver's license), I perched awkwardly, legs crossed tightly, tucked close beneath me, rotating from left to right like a hinge, trying to find comfort. I leaned forward, then back, quietly performing a choreography of dissonance. A chair like that was always uncomfortable, yet always tolerable—because I wasn’t there as a body, but as a brain.
At the time, I thought of my body as a vehicle for my learning, a container for my soul, a tool that carried me from concept to concept. It was natural—I had years of experience shaping my body to be invisible, especially in spaces where achievement mattered more than embodiment. Whatever my body felt—ache, fatigue, compression—was background noise, static.
A colleague sitting beside me noticed my small frame in the oversized chair. She casually checked in with me, and without trying to fix anything, returned from the class break with a shoebox. I was stunned by how simply my ‘shortage’ could be resolved. As my feet finally grounded, I felt profoundly seen and cared for. It startled me into awareness: my body had been silently enduring for years, a neglected companion in my pursuit of knowledge and grades. How long had I been treating my body as irrelevant? How long had I left it behind and alone?
My reflection didn’t end as my body kept finding opportunities to emerge. A couple of years ago, I joined a BIPOC SE training led by Efu Nyaki. The virtual course held about 50 participants, and she began with a long, intentional check-in, asking each person’s name, location, and something about their surroundings. Internally, I was impatient: ‘I came to learn about SE, not about my classmates’ middle names and houseplants!” With pen in hand, brain sharp and ready, I waited for the ‘real’ teaching to begin. But instead of theory or technique, I was met with what felt like trivia, anecdotes, and fragments of lives.
Just as my patience was thinning, my irritation—the uneasy burning sensation on my skin—cracked open an a-ha: maybe this was the teaching. My impatience itself was the very disconnection I was called to heal. To orient to space, to be with each other, to arrive fully, not just cognitively, was the lesson. In that realization, something loosened. My shoulders dropped. I saw how easily I abandon my body when I’m expected to use my brain. As if only one part of me was allowed to show up. For the rest of that class, I wondered with trepidation and yearning whether the invitation was actually calling for something fuller: there is space for your entirety.
My performance-driven disconnection from my body has deep roots. One is that, growing up in Taiwan, I went through two national examinations—one for high school and the other for college. That meant, for me, that my entire six years of adolescence were dedicated to studying. Studying until midnight, on weekends, even during family trips—my body became a test machine. Although I was good at it, even now, I still occasionally have dreams where I panic when I face an exam paper with no idea how to answer (Yes, it is Math). Later in life, I realize that during every exam, I was laser-focused, holding my breath, driven to deliver the correct answer as quickly as possible. My nervous system slipped into micro, repeated freeze responses—survival mechanisms disguised as academic discipline.
It has been a long, winding road to reconnect with my body, and the reunion hasn’t been purely sweet. I began noticing various sensations: tickling, tingling, little signals surfacing when I sat too long. I started to learn the somatic distinctions between hunger, pain, and boredom as I tried to eat, and between joy, relief, and satiety as I became full. The awareness was disorienting, the numbness confusing. Turning toward the very part of me I once abandoned requires patience, curiosity, and lots of grief.
This journey makes me wonder: perhaps the essence of ‘body positivity’ is not simply about redefining beauty standards, as they remain social constructs we can endlessly argue about, or celebrating what our bodies can do for us, another form of over-instrumentality. Rather, it is about cultivating a relationship with this one and only physical existence we've been given.
Through my own reconnection, I realize that I am always loved by my body—by each cell, fiber, and every inch of my flesh and blood—even when I don’t listen to it. Every breath liberates me and grounds me simultaneously. My body humbles me.
When I sit with clients now, I carry this knowing along with two yoga blocks to support my back. I notice when someone arrives only from the neck up, when the brilliant mind works overtime to distract from what the body holds. I pay attention to our breath, posture, and the subtle cues that signal disconnection or resistance. Sometimes it’s the smallest shift—a shoulder drop, a deeper exhale—that signals a return, a whisper: Welcome home.
*To read the full text in Chinese, please click this link.