Listen to Your Body Because Your Body Is Listening to You
Our emotions are our compass
As originally published in Change Your Mind Change Your Life on Medium.com.
Image: francescoch on iStock
“If you don’t make time for your wellness, you will be forced to make time for your illness.” A famous quote, I believe by Joyce Sunada, that is as true today as ever before. And yet so many choose to ignore our innate guidance system. I used to be one of them. But what we may choose to ignore, our body will not. Here are the four main components I use to honour the mind-body connection.
Listen to Your BodyOur physical body is a reflection of our emotional state. But I also believe the reverse is true, as they are innately connected. When I feel strong physically, I feel more confident mentally and emotionally. In any event, both elements have been essential to my healing journey.
Prevention is better than cure, but life happens and sometimes we need our body to remind us to get back on track.
It’s no secret that there are two main components to physical health — nutrition and exercise.
The 80/20 rule is popular and states that weight loss results from 80% diet and 20% exercise. Whatever the percentages are, there’s no question both are essential for overall wellbeing.
With all the possible diets and exercise fads, it’s hard to know where to start, let alone what’s best for you. We are all bio-individuals, so what works for me, may not work for you. And that’s the problem with all the general food, dietary and exercise information out there.
Here are two hacks to help.
Component 1: Diet
Our microbiome is as unique as our DNA and so decoding it can tell us exactly which foods fuel us versus drain us.
I always thought I had a healthy diet, but as it turned out, I was consuming so many foods that were harming my gut instead of supporting it. I wrote about this in detail in “Unlocking the Mind-Gut Connection: A Path to Better Health.”
Decoding our microbiome sounds difficult, but during my healing journey, I came across a very simple, efficient and effective way to do so.
Through a simple blood, stool and saliva sample, taken with an at-home do-it-yourself kit, Viome Health Solutions can analyse our microbiome and identify our personal superfoods, foods to enjoy, foods to minimise and foods to avoid, as well as provide personalised supplements, probiotics and prebiotics if required.
In full disclosure, given my results after focusing on my superfoods, I am now a Viome affiliate so receive a small commission from any sales that come through my link. You can also access a discount code here.
To me, this is a no-brainer if you want to skip the confusion and frustration of fad diets, the trial and error of so-called super foods, or the lengthy process of an elimination diet.
Component 2: Exercise
I was lucky enough to discover running at an early age. I was sent to boarding school at 13 and struggled to fit in. Sports, and running in particular, were an outlet and a sanctuary for me. Running was the only place I felt safe and free. And it has stayed with me to this day.
But I realise not everyone is lucky enough to love sport or movement. And so many force themselves into doing exercise they hate, commonly running or HIIT, because they feel they “have to.” Inevitably, the lifestyle change is unsustainable and often backfires.
As I was training to become a hypnotherapist, I came across a fun and simple exercise that will help you identify what works for you. Because once again, we are all bio-individuals, and to make sustainable lifestyle changes, we must all find what’s best for us. “How To Find a Workout That Will Work for You” describes the exercise in detail.
Your Body Is Listening to YouPain is emotion stored in the body. This is how our body alerts us to unresolved issues.
And if we don’t listen to our body when it whispers, the louder it will begin to scream.
I’m all too familiar with negative emotions. I’ve experienced plenty throughout my life in response to life situations. From bullying to sexual abuse. From injuries to chronic pain. From betrayal to the death of loved ones.
I was brought up in environments where suppressing emotions equated to being strong. But in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Suppressing our feelings will only lead to weakness in the long run.
My body broke down in the form of herniated discs in my back, a brain seizure, chronic fatigue, vision deterioration, low blood sugar, brain fog, short-term memory loss and more. For many, it’s a chronic disease, or they become accident-prone.
Not everyone can afford therapy, but that doesn’t mean we can’t move through, and past, our demons.
Component 3: Self-parenting
Desires come from unmet needs. And we have all experienced the hurt of unmet needs.
Self-parenting is a tool anyone can use to help work through negative emotions. It has the power to not only give us a deeper understanding of ourselves but to transform our negative reactions into constructive responses.
“The Most Valuable Self-Care Tool I’ve Learned” dives into self-parenting in detail.
Brené Brown once said, “You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.” Self-parenting can help us walk inside our story and own it.
Component 4: Meditation
Meditation has been around for centuries and, in recent years, much has been written about the plentiful benefits of meditation. But contrary to popular belief, meditation is not about healing — it’s about changing.
“You Don’t Meditate To Heal. You Meditate To Change.” explains why.
If we want a future that is different to our past, we cannot continue to believe what we believe and feel the way we feel today. We must choose new beliefs and elevated emotions.
Our emotions are our guidance system and determine the frequency we emit, because everything is energy. The better we feel, the higher our vibrational frequency.
First, we have to change. Then, our lives begin to change.
We must feel healthy before we can heal. We must feel wealthy before we can be rich. We must feel loved before we can attract a loving relationship.
If we keep focusing on what we don’t have, we are living in lack, expecting something outside of us to make us whole.
We must feel whole because we are whole. And when we feel that, we live in a state of abundance. And when we live like that, the life we desire must manifest. It’s physics.
It’s About Progress, Not PerfectionThe mind-body connection seems so obvious to me today that I sometimes forget how different I was only a few years ago.
But that’s the beauty of evolution. Once we transform, we can’t go back. We keep moving forward instead.
The more I move forward, the more I feel a sense of belonging to that which is beyond this 3-dimensional world. And that provides comfort because I don’t feel like I fit in here a lot of the time.
It’s a sense that I have nothing to prove. That everything is temporary. That there’s so much more than what our senses allow us to perceive.
Wherever you are on your healing journey, always remember that YOU ARE ENOUGH.