Listening To Your Body For Lasting Wellness
It’s time to turn down the volume on the voices in your head
Our minds are unbelievably loud. We’ve been taught to believe that our thoughts control our body. When you want to grab the TV controller, your mind directs your hand to lock onto the device and press the button. When you want to leave the room, your mind directs your body to stand up and walk out.
With the exception of life-saving reflexes, like pulling away from a hot stove, we’ve been trained to largely ignore our bodies.
No pain – no gain
Eat everything on your plate
Suck it up
Push through that, keep going
You can’t rest until the job is done
Walk 10,000 steps
Drink 8 glasses of water a day
We ignore our physical pain. We keep eating even when we are full. We push ourselves through emotional trauma and physical limits. We deny ourselves rest. And we buy into externally prescribed standards of what is “good for us”.
Little of this makes any sense. No one outside of you knows how your body feels better than you do. But when was the last time you checked in with your body?
Our modern screen-oriented lifestyles are encouraging us to live in our heads/minds more and more. And yet, listening to your body is one of the most important things you can do on your journey to wellness.
Let’s dive a little deeper into this idea of listening to your body for wellness and some ways that you can reconnect to what your body is saying.
What does listening to your body mean?
Listening to your body means pausing your overactive mind and reacquainting yourself with the signals your body is sending all the time.
Where do you feel discomfort?
What parts of your body are tense?
How fast are you breathing?
How does your heartbeat feel (Yes – when was the last time you paused and felt your heartbeat?)
The line drawn by modern medicine between our physical health and mental health doesn’t exist. You can take a pill to control a headache without getting rid of the cause, and thus just postpone the time until your next headache flares. You can go on every diet out there and never sustain weight loss, if you’re not addressing the interplay of your mind and body in creating the weight gain to begin with.
More and more science is confirming what many ancient cultures knew and practiced: your body and mind are intricately connected to create your wellbeing. Treating a symptom only provides temporary relief. Treating the cause requires a deeper understanding of how our minds and bodies are connected.
The problem is we have stopped listening to our bodies. We keep missing half of the story.
Listening to your Body
Medically, we understand the concept of listening to our bodies. If you sprain your ankle, it hurts and you can’t walk normally for weeks. Your body has clearly signaled your mind to change how you walk.
The thing is, our emotions live in our bodies too. When you experience love, you get a series of sensations throughout your body that accompany that hug from a loved one. When you experience anxiety, a whole set of physical symptoms comes along too. You may have a dry mouth, an upset stomach, a frog in your throat, sweaty palms or nervous shaking. Most of us get these big ticket connections.
New research is showing us more and more that even our food, and our gut microbiome, are likewise feeding into our emotions and wellbeing. You can check out this 2019 post in Science for a very readable explanation of how researchers discovered that the gut bacteria of people with a high quality of life differs significantly from the gut bacteria of people with anxiety and depression. Gut bacteria composition is associated with your diet. Your diet is often linked to your emotional wellbeing and what you choose to eat.
Since it may be impossible (and impractical) to determine whether your mental state created your physical one or vice verse, it is better to focus on making sure we are listening to our bodies, and not just our minds, when deciding what we should do next.
How to listen to your body
Tuning into your body on a regular basis can lead to greater physical and mental wellbeing. With practice you can learn to connect to your body in just a few minutes, and reap the benefits of the signals it is sending to you which may otherwise remain under the radar of your busy mind.
1. Quiet your mind = control your breathing
Close your eyes and pay attention to how you are breathing. Then take control of your breathing by using a regular pattern.
Examples of common breathing patterns that quiet your mind include:
Taking 3 long, slow deep breaths;
Using the 4-7-8 breathing pattern: inhale for 4 counts, hold for 7 counts and exhale for 8 counts; and
Box breathing where you use equal counts for each stage, such as inhale for 4, hold for 4 and exhale for 4 counts.
Use whichever breathing pattern works best for you to experience a sense of calmness and to bring your awareness into your body.
2. Tune into your body
What happens in your body when you put your mind on pause?
With your awareness now on your breathing, explore what parts of your body are calling your attention.
Do you have tension somewhere? Pain? Discomfort? For example if you came into this exercise feeling frazzled or anxious, where are those emotions being held in your body?
And equally important, if you are feeling happy and content, where do those emotions live in your body? Where is 'feeling happy’ located? What parts of your body respond to happy thoughts?
It is important not to rush this part. Often parts of our bodies behave like screaming children. It’s only after the loudest voice is quieted that you realize there is another issue that needs your attention.
3. What does your body need?
In this state of awareness in your body, what does your body need right now?
With your mind on pause now, you may realize that in fact you are hungry, thirsty or deeply tired.
That tension in your neck and back could be telling you it’s time to walk around or do some stretching.
The nervous shaking may actually need you to more vigorously shake out your body.
Things your body might need:
Do some gentle stretching
Try self- massage to eliminate tension
Have a warm shower and let the running water soothe you
Take a walk in nature – just 15 minutes can reduce indicators of stress
Play with your pets
Take a creation break: try art, baking bread, journaling, music or dance
Get some rest
Eat nutrient dense food – like avocado, nuts, or high-quality protein
Drink fresh water
Continue this body check-in break and make it a mediation session
Practice self observation
Anyone can learn to listen to their body in a quiet meditation room with no distractions. It’s another thing to learn to listen to your body in the thick of crazy everyday life.
Self -observation means recognizing when your mind is spinning out and knowing that your body is being carried along for that ride.
It means connecting the dots between your headache and the fact that your body really needs to step out of this situation and move more, or that you really need to give your eyes a rest from the screen you’ve been staring at for hours.
It can mean eating when you feel hungry, and giving your body nutrient dense foods instead of high-sugar junk that will cause you to spiral further out of control.
And it can mean learning to trust your body’s signals when you need a drink instead of following a generalized anecdote of how much water your “should” drink.
For me, my stress invariably lives in my right shoulder and that tension spins off into my neck, jaw, head or back in terms of pain. But at the core source is my right shoulder, and just treating the other pain points doesn’t resolve the problem.
And when I am particularly happy or passionate about something, my hands float like birds. I have to make a conscious effort to not speak with my hands when excited (or just be me and let them fly!).
Regular breathing breaks throughout the day are the perfect way to re-train yourself to listen to your body.
My success mentor, Tracy Litt, encourages us to make these breathing breaks a priority, even setting alarms on our phones to remind ourselves to pause, quiet our minds and tune into our bodies. You can check out her proven methods of creating lasting change and achieving success at her upcoming January SuperNova event or listen to this week’s podcast about SuperNova here.
Self observation, and our ability to identify where in our bodies our emotions live, is fundamental to creating wellness and having the energy to live your best life.
You can learn more about your Mind-Body-Food Connection by subscribing here to The Naturalized Human
In 2024 – I will be completing the MBF Connection series on each of our senses for paid subscribers, as well as providing some growing food deep dives on seed saving and gardening. I hope to see you here regularly this year!
I made the mistake of not listening to my body and I paid for it dearly this summer and I know better - have told clients for years to do this - this is an important topic
Intuition. Self-love. Self respect. We talk about these things, but most of us never check in with our physical parts and see if they are telling us anything.
"Tuning into your body on a regular basis can lead to greater physical and mental wellbeing. With practice you can learn to connect to your body in just a few minutes, and reap the benefits of the signals it is sending to you which may otherwise remain under the radar of your busy mind."