The Body Is Not a Dashboard - From the Inside Out, Episode 5

Jun 29
2 min read

What this podcast episode is about

In a wellness culture where tracking everything (sleep, HRV, recovery, readiness) has become normalised and actively encouraged, this episode asks a simple but important question: Is this tool supporting my nervous system feel more connected and settled, or is it slowly replacing my felt sense with something external?

Listen to this episode

I share some of my own history with performance metrics as a competitive rower, and how I learned to override my felt sense in favour of external numbers. I talk about the difference between awareness and hypervigilance, and how constant self-monitoring can slowly tip the nervous system from one into the other... often without us noticing. And I talk about what optimization culture consistently misses - including how much of what we know about health and recovery is based on male-default data, and what that means for women navigating cycles, transitions and perimenopause.

I also talk about what Ashtanga Mysore practice offers as a counterpoint - a practice with no mirrors, no screens, no metrics, where the nervous system is invited to settle and the felt sense gets to lead.

To be clear: If a wearable genuinely supports you, that's a good thing. For some people, especially those just beginning to reconnect with their body, that data can be a genuine doorway in, a first way of noticing something they couldn't quite feel yet on their own.

The question I keep coming back to is simpler than whether to use one: Is this tool/device supporting my connection to my body, or quietly replacing it?