Re-learn the skill of listening to your body
It was a real meditation win for me last week.
You see,
I was out for lunch,
Building a connection with a new person and things had been going pretty well,
Until they opened their mouth and said something,
And a ginormous red flag appeared like a mirage from behind their extremely aesthetically pleasing head.
It was interesting,
Because not only was it glaringly obvious to me (took me long enough),
But I felt an immediate knot in my stomach.
Apparently,
This is gut instinct.
My thinking brain was carrying on like everything was fine,
Because shockingly,
That’s my go-to response in almost all of life,
But my body knew differently,
As Besser van der Kolk would say,
My body knew the score.
I chose to listen to her message,
And I changed my people pleasing behaviour,
And I spoke up,
I even used the words 'red flag' in the face of a red flag,
New me who dis?
You see,
Sometimes our thinking brains aren’t quite as quick, clever or intuitive as our bodies.
Our brains change in response to repeated habits,
Repeated thought patterns,
Such that when we link together say,
Red flags and subsequent trauma bonding and sex,
Or feeling anxious and eating a cookie,
That begins to be the go-to pathway for our thinking brains,
And we repeat these behaviours without a second thought.
What’s cool is,
As we start to notice that,
We can change it.
Our bodies are incredible beings that can actually sense our feelings,
Even before our thinking brain has caught up.
The problem is,
We’re so used to over- or under- exercising,
Following external food rules of calories, macros and ‘should eats’,
Being perpetually busy such that we don’t stop in the moment to acknowledge our own existence,
Feeling uncomfortable or changing our bodies to satisfy (or detract from) the male gaze,
That most of us don’t even know what it feels like to exist in our bodies anymore.
If I asked you,
What does anxiety feel like to you?
Where does it show up in your body?
What would you say?
What about grief,
Where do you feel that?
Uncertainty?
Love?
Excitement?
We have to come home to our bodies if we want any chance of regulating our feelings,
And if we can’t regulate our feelings,
We’ll forever struggle to regulate our habits,
And our thought patterns,
And our health.
There are some things we can do to come home to ourselves,
Most of which you’d rather sacrifice to hammer yourself in the gym,
To finish just one more piece of work,
Really to do literally anything else,
Because these things involves sitting with them,
Your body and your feelings,
And that’s a daunting little thought, isn’t it?
These things include yoga,
Meditation,
Body scans,
Mindful breathing,
Mindful movement,
Time in nature (without your weekly dose of My Therapist Ghosted Me).
I personally love a body scan,
In fact it’s been the subject of my meditations this week,
Because it asks you to look for sensations in each part of your body,
And you start to recognise things you never knew existed,
Like the muscles round my eyes are always tense and my chest likes to start the day with a slight crushing feeling,
Even at 630 in the morning.
The benefit of this?
Aside from saving your heart from the red flags?
Is that this shows up when you get the drive to emotionally eat, too.
Take yesterday,
When I swear I was craving pizza at 10am,
And no,
No hangover was involved.
That craving said to me,
You need something Emilia,
Listen to me.
That something in the past would have been pizza,
Since that's my old thinking brain loop,
But what did my body say?
My body said I needed all my soothing activities first,
So I did my stupid meditation,
My stupid yoga,
My stupid walk for my mental health,
I ate my stupid chickpea casserole,
And then I ate my chocolate digestives too,
Because after all of that,
I still wanted the comfort of a tea-seeped warm chocolate digestive or 10 melting down the back of my throat.
I listened to my body and that’s what she showed me.
This is one reason ETPHD coaching bring you exclusive yoga and meditation sessions to our clients.
You must stop ignoring your body,
She deserves you to listen,
You're a team in this world.
