Are You Listening?

What would happen if you gave yourself the opportunity to stop and listen to the messages your body was sending you? What would you hear? What is that tension telling you? The tightness in the neck or back, the knot in your stomach, the headaches? What information has been given to you that you fight like hell to ignore?

We all ignore our bodies to one degree or another. There’s no escaping this unless you grew up in another culture.

And in case you hadn’t noticed, the longer and more intensely we ignore the signals that our bodies send, the bigger they get, eventually culminating in discomfort, pain or disease. 

Sometimes we ignore the signs and symptoms because we’ve simply been conditioned to do so. We’ve been taught to sit in the chair until our work is done. Ignore basic human needs like food, water and using the bathroom all for the sake of productivity. Culture would prefer it if we just pretended as if we don’t have bodies at all. 

We tolerate. A lot.  Can that be useful? Yes. There’s a certain amount of stick-to-it-iveness that we would all want in order to care for ourselves, our families and communities. There are times that we have to rally and push through. But we’ve made this the primary approach to our work and our lives and our health is suffering because of it. 

So what can we do? 

We can start becoming more aware of how we feel. Instead of ignoring those sensations you can start actively scanning for them. This would put you in a position of being more conscious and mindful of your body. Of actually being in a relationship and in conversation with your body. Perhaps even being a little more friendly towards it.

Try it now. Scan your body and see if there is any tension. Maybe you have pain or stiffness. Maybe you feel numb inside. Maybe you just need to eat or move a little. Wouldn’t it be nice if you just paid a little bit of attention to what you need and then acted on it?

I believe that doing this inevitably brings forth a certain compassion for ourselves. I’ve found that eventually this compassion leads us to choose ourselves and we start putting our well-being first.

We can't get to well-being if we aren't willing to listen to what our bodies are telling us.

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