When you book a room at a hotel, you look for accommodations that will make your stay feel as comfortable as possible. Having a fridge and microwave in the room may be important to you, maybe you prefer to be on the first floor, no matter what your needs or desires are, there are ways to make sure you feel your best when traveling. But what about at home? In your body? How do you make space for the things that you want or need in your everyday life? This may look like having extra pillows in bed, keeping water in arms reach, or doing modified movements during a workout. On the other hand, you might be someone who isn't sure about the ways in which you accommodate your body or you simply don't. Listen to this episode as you explore those thoughts and feelings.
Welcome back to Inner Warmup where your inner work begins. My name is Taylor Elyse Morrison, founder of Inner Workout and you, as always, are our expert guest. Thanks for being here. Let's get it started with an activity to get you a little bit more connected to your body. So what I want you to do is to take your index finger and your middle finger and find the back of your neck and use those two fingers to give your neck a little massage. I will admit, this exercise today is entirely self serving, I somehow got a kink in my neck based on how I slept last night. And so I found myself doing this throughout the day and thought that it would make a good way to kick off the show. When you're ready, you can stop and bring your hand back down to your side. And we'll get into today's conversation. So the conversation and the the question I want to talk about today is how do you accommodate your body? How do you accommodate your body?
And I have to admit, as I was preparing for today's episode, I realized that I had some weirdness both in the past and even today that I'm continuing to dig into around this idea of accommodation. Like sometimes I will be doing a workout class or a yoga class, and I don't want to take a modification. And that probably comes from some internalized ableism. Honestly, sometimes I personally can think of bodies as having the centerline of what a "body" should be, how it should be able to function. And as someone who does this work, I think accommodations and modifications are lovely and valid and necessary for other people. But for me, I want to bring myself back to that center line. And if I'm being honest, I want my body to have the function and capabilities even beyond what the norm might be. And so as I reflected on this idea of accommodating my body, it felt a little weird. It feels a little weird sharing this with you. But that's what this podcast is for. It's where inner work begins. And sometimes it's like holding up a mirror to yourself.
So I realized I had some weirdness around the word accommodation, and I wanted to make sure I was grounded in what the word actually means. And to my surprise, the first definition is "to provide lodging or sufficient space for". So you think of this as like hotel accommodations when you're traveling, what are your accommodations? But also, if you remember, in last week's episode, I talked about thinking of our body as a home, not as a machine and so I loved thinking of the idea of accommodation in this way, as it relates to our body. How can we make sure that there is enough space for all of us, all of our physical selves and everything that we need? And then you can couple it with the secondary definition, which is "to fit in with the wishes or needs of". Another thing that I liked about the secondary definition is, before, when I'm at my worst, when it comes to relating to my body and creating accommodations for my body, I am trying to make my body fit into what I think the norm is, what I think the level of performance should be. But when we look at accommodation, that second definition, it's asking how can I mold the situation? How can I mold the circumstances to fit into what my body needs in this moment. So it's entirely flipping things on its head, which was such a refreshing perspective and reminder for me.
If I want to be in a loving, supportive relationship with my body, and I want to view it as my home, I want to make sure that there's enough space for it. And I'm creating spaces where it can thrive rather than trying to make my body shrink to fit standards that aren't serving it right now. So in my own life, as I thought about what this looked like, a few things came to mind. Things that I'll be honest, I'm not doing perfectly right now. I'm trying to eat less dairy. I realized that my body doesn't love dairy and so I'm being a lot more mindful of, oh, this has cheese in it. At home, we don't really have dairy around the house. I will say we did go apple picking and I'm going to make a buttery apple pie but this is not our norm. But yeah, we've got pretty much dairy alternatives for everything. And that was a big step for me. And now we're getting to the place where even when I'm not at home, I'm starting to be more aware of it.
The second thing that I'll share is, there are certain movements that really over the past couple of months, I've started taking more slowly. And in certain classes, there are things that I can do that are really fast paced, I feel like I can keep up. But I grew up dancing, wasn't the kindest on my knees and my hips. And there are some things, especially one legged motions, like if we're doing lunges and stepping back, where I can feel those knees, my knees being a little bit unstable. And so now I'm getting better at knowing okay, we're going to take this slowly, I'm going to make sure that I feel stable in the movement, rather than trying to keep up the pace with the instructor. And that's a huge step forward. For me as someone who can get a little bit competitive and fitness classes. Even though mostly I do at home workouts, I can still feel myself wanting to be at the same level as the instructor. Again, trying to fit into what I think a standard should be, rather than craft my movement practice to make sure that there's room enough for me and for my body's needs.
Another thing that came to mind was now we're shifting into a different season, but especially in the summer, I have to be really mindful of the heat and that I'm getting enough sleep. Otherwise, I'm really prone to migraines. And so looking at the weather, even just feeling in my body, ooh, I could see how in a few days, this could turn into a migraine, I need a good night's rest tonight, I need to make sure that I'm chugging water, it doesn't always work out. Sometimes I still get the migraines, but I'm getting a lot better at making those accommodations for myself. And then the last thing that came to mind, which is something I didn't really consider an accommodation before, but it is. I like to make sure that I always have a blanket handy. And when I'm visiting my parents, when I'm visiting my in laws, when I'm visiting people I care about, I always know where the throw blankets are, I always know which ones are for decor and which ones you can actually snuggle up under because I tend to be cold. And I can't always ask people to turn up the heat for me but I can make sure that either I'm wearing layers so I can be comfortable, or that I know exactly where to go so that I can be warm enough, especially as the months get colder. So those are some of the ways that I make accommodations for my body. Everything from working out to what I eat, to being aware of the temperature in terms of heat, and cold. Those are some things that came up for me. I want to extend the question to you now. How do you accommodate your body?
And if you like me have some reactions to that idea of even accommodating your body. Maybe that's where your reflection starts today. Maybe you just start with thinking, why does it feel so weird for me to consider that I could change my environment to better support my body. Okay, over to you.
Thanks for taking the time to reflect with me. If anything came up for you that you want to share, you can always shoot us a DM on Instagram at Inner Workout. And if this episode resonated with you, we'd love for you to take a screenshot and share it on stories or just send the link to a friend. That's how this show really grows as people telling other people about it. We will be back next week. Until then I want to say thank you for your time and thank you as always for your expertise. Take care!
