What do we mean by body awareness?
Body awareness is a phrase that is appearing more and more often in conversations about wellbeing and health, yet it is not always clear what it exactly means.
For some people, it brings to mind exercise or mindfulness. Others associate it with yoga or simply paying closer attention to the body.
At Soma Anima, we use the term in a broader sense.
Body awareness is the ability to notice and understand what is happening within our own bodies. It is about becoming familiar with physical sensations and recognising how our bodies change throughout life.
This awareness begins in childhood and continues to deepen over time.
More than anatomy
Learning about the body is not the same as becoming aware of it.
A young person can learn the names of different body parts and understand how puberty works, while still finding it difficult to recognise what is happening within their own body as those changes begin.
Information provides knowledge, while body awareness is built through lived experience.
As young people move through childhood and adolescence, they begin connecting what they are learning with the changes they are noticing. Knowledge becomes something they can relate to through their own lives, rather than something they have simply been taught.
Knowledge and body awareness support one another, but they are not the same thing.
Why body awareness is important
Growing up involves constant change.
Bodies change throughout childhood and adolescence, bringing experiences that cannot always be explained by facts alone. Body awareness helps young people connect what they are learning with what they are experiencing, allowing new knowledge to feel relevant to their own lives.
It can also help young people talk about what they are noticing and feel more confident asking questions when something is unfamiliar.
How body awareness develops
Body awareness does not appear overnight.
It evolves through everyday experiences and through opportunities to reflect on what is happening within the body. When young people are encouraged to notice change without judgement, they gradually build a stronger understanding of themselves and become more familiar with the ways their bodies change over time.
Like any form of learning, this unfolds gradually.
The Soma Anima approach
At Soma Anima, we believe body awareness is an important part of sexual education.
Understanding anatomy and sexual health, including puberty, provides an essential foundation. Alongside that knowledge, we believe young people benefit from connecting what they are learning with their own experiences as their bodies change.
For us, body awareness is not another subject to learn. It is a way of connecting knowledge with lived experience so that sexual education becomes something young people can relate to, rather than information that exists only in a textbook.
