The Body Aware


Have you ever noticed you’re more attuned to certain parts of your body while others seem to fade into the background?

Or perhaps you struggle to feel connected to your body at all?

In today’s fast-paced, mentally driven world, it’s not uncommon to lose touch with our physical selves. Much of our focus is on processing thoughts—replaying the past, planning the future, or juggling work, family, and digital distractions. Often, we only tune into our bodies when discomfort or pain demands our attention.

This disconnection can lead to diminished body awareness, making it harder to interpret the signals your body sends. Over time, this may contribute to physical imbalances and even impact emotional well-being.

Anatomy Trains Structural Integration (ATSI) is a specialised form of bodywork that targets the fascial system to improve movement, posture, and overall body function. By working with connective tissue, ATSI also enhances the body’s sensory systems, fostering a deeper, more integrated sense of body awareness.

What is Body Awareness?


Body awareness is your ability to perceive and understand where your body is in space, how it moves, and the internal sensations you’re experiencing. This awareness is processed by the somatosensory system, which gathers information through several key sensory mechanisms:

  • Proprioception: your sense of where your body, its segments, or joints are positioned in space without needing to look.
  • Interoception: the ability to sense your internal state, such as hunger, breathing, pain, and the sensations of your organs, like your heartbeat.
  • Vestibular Awareness: the sense that detects the movement and orientation of your head in space, coordinating balance, posture, and eye movement.

Together, these systems form a comprehensive map of your body, enabling confident movement and emotional balance.

Why Body Awareness Matters

  1. Enhances Physical Health

Body awareness helps you recognise poor posture, repetitive strain, or improper movements before they lead to pain or injury. Being attuned to how your body moves enhances stability and reduces the risk of falls or accidents, especially as we age. Early recognition of tension or discomfort may prevent chronic pain.

  1. Supports Emotional Regulation

Your body and emotions are deeply interconnected.
By tuning into how your body feels, you gain valuable insights into your emotional state and can better manage physical symptoms.

  1. Fosters Greater Mindfulness and Presence

Body awareness anchors you in the present moment, reducing overthinking and enhancing your focus. The simple act of noticing your body’s sensations can ground you, fostering a sense of calm and clarity often described as “being grounded.”

How Can You Improve Your Body Awareness?


  1. Mindful Movement

Practices like yoga, Pilates, Tai Chi, resistance band exercises, and even walking can increase body awareness. The key is to pay attention to how your body feels in different positions—what parts are engaged and which parts feel “quiet.”

Try the Following:

  • Do you have a dominant side? What happens when you explore movement on your non-dominant side?
  • Can you build the same level of awareness in less-dominant areas?
  • Recording yourself on video can reveal surprising insights about your movement.
  1. Breathwork

The breath is a window into your physical, emotional, and internal state. When relaxed, the breath is deep and nourishing; each exhalation sends a wave of relaxation through the body. Stress often causes faster, shallower breathing in the upper chest, which may also manifest as tension in the shoulders.

Try breathwork (such as diaphragmatic breathing):

  • Notice how your body responds—does your chest rise? Or does your belly expand?
  • What is the internal felt sense (introception)? Where does the breath go? 
  • Can you following the breath through the noise and down into the lungs?
  • Can you expand the ribs from within?
  1. Body Scanning

A body scan is a mindfulness practice, often used in techniques like Yoga Nidra, that increases awareness of different body parts while calming the mind. Start at the tips of your toes and move upward, noticing sensations in each area.

One recommended resource is Ally Boothroyd’s Yoga Nidra channel: Sarovara Yoga on YouTube.

  1. Proprioception Tools

Tools like soft prickle balls can help build awareness in “quiet” areas of the body.

For example:

If your heels feel disconnected, stand on a prickle ball, gently rocking back and forth. What is your awareness like now?

To increase awareness of a specific leg, use a tactile tool (even a paintbrush!) to stimulate that area during a body scan.

How Does ATSI Help Body Awareness?


ATSI focuses on the fascial system through fascial touch and client movement. This can help enhance the sensory systems in the body and increase body awareness and connection.

Fascia is a three dimesnioal interconnected collaganious fabric that surrounds our muscles, bones and organs, it gives them form and support. It also houses the trillions of cells in our body, some of which build and maintain fascia depending upon the demands that are placed upon it.

Poor posture, injury, physcial stress or repetitive movements can remodel the fascia over time, affecting support and function of the fascial system. Poor body awarness is a common symptom of this effect.

ATSI can help support and develop your body awarness in the following ways:

  1. Increases Proprioception

Fascial touch and movement stimulate sensory nerves embedded in the fascia, muscles and joints, enhancing the maps within your somatosensory system.

  1. Reveals Habitual Patterns

ATSI sessions can uncover unconscious movement and postural patterns, helping you to develop intentional and efficient patterns of posture and movement.

  1. Supports Nervous System Regulation

Gentle fascial touch can calm the nervous system, balancing your fight-or-flight (sympathetic) and rest-and-digest (parasympathetic) responses.

  1. Encourages Fascial Remodeling

Fascia remodels itself based on demands placed upon it—both functional and dysfunctional. ATSI supports healthier fascial remodeling by reducing tension, improving fascial glide, and restoring your natural alignment.

The Path to Embodied Living


Body awareness is a powerful tool for improving physical health, emotional regulation, and overall well-being. By reconnecting with your body’s sensations, you can prevent injuries, understand emotional states, and anchor yourself in the present moment.

Anatomy Trains Structural Integration (ATSI) offers a unique, holistic approach to fostering body awareness. By working directly with the fascial system, ATSI addresses both the physical and sensory aspects of the body, promoting proprioception, improved habitual patterns, and supporting nervous system regulation.

Cultivating body awareness can be a transformative journey. Whether through mindful movement, breathwork, body scanning, or proprioceptive tools, these practices open the door to understanding and inhabiting your body more fully.

Combined with a movement or bodywork practitioner, these methods can empower you to move with greater ease, balance, and intention.

Take the first step toward rediscovering your body’s potential through some of the exercises above or Book an ATSI session today and experience the profound benefits of an integrated, embodied life.

Thanks for reading,

Lewis