Hi Reader,
I just recorded a podcast episode about learning to listen to your body's language—and it starts with a story about my son that makes more sense of this whole "listen to your body" exploration than what most adults can muster.
Listen to the full podcast here.
Or keep reading for the story below.
Last night I was putting my son to bed and we were playing our usual game—the kissing monster. I give him a thousand kisses all over his body and he looooves it.
After 15 minutes, I said, "Okay babe, you're jacked up. Let's take a moment and I'll give you soft, gentle kisses."
So I'm doing that and his whole body is tense, prepared for the tickling that is (inevitably) coming.
He thinks I'm going to tickle him because that's one of the ways that we play—I trick him. I tell him I'm not going to do it, and then (surprise!) I do it. And he loves it.
But, this time, I was serious. It's bedtime.
Yet his body was anticipating the familiar.
So he says to me, "Well, how come I trust that you're not going to do that, but my body is telling me that you are?"
My response? "Declan, always listen to your body."
Your Body Cannot Lie
In that moment, my 5-year-old son noticed the difference between "my mind believes you, but my body doesn't."
Why?
Because his body's primed for what has happened every.single.time that I have said, "I'm not going to do that," and then I do it.
That's a "small" example. But it's a profound example because it was a moment for him to notice the difference between "I know something" and "my body in this moment is telling me something else."
This is the one thing I wish my son takes as a life lesson from me: your body never, ever lies.
It cannot.
It is literally designed to process the signals that are moving through it.
One of the ways to hear what the message is is to learn how to speak the language of the body.
Which is something that no one has taught us.
We're Taught to Ignore What Our Bodies Tell Us
In a highly intellectual culture, we are taught to "use our words" to process what we're feeling (enter: therapy for life).
But, your body speaks in a language that is different than the language of your intellect.
Your body speaks in metaphor.
We're not taught to live a life from metaphor. Even though a life lived from metaphor is far more powerful. It's far more enriching. It's far more natural to what we are as human beings.
Because we're not what we've been taught we are.
We are so much more than that.
One of the ways to discover that is to begin to connect with the intelligence of our bodies. As opposed to:
- Overriding the sensations and disconnecting
- Analyzing to understand
- Numbing to avoid the discomfort
- Playing nice to not shake up the status quo
- Busying ourselves to not notice
- Trying to control and manage the outcome
- Making our world smaller and tighter to manage
- Seeking clarity with our intellect when the body is screaming
- Talking about it forever (55-minute hours for the rest of your life)
- Medications, meditations, vacations ...
All of it an effort to move away from the truth of the body. Because it's uncomfortable. Like a skin that we don't want to wear yet cannot escape.
And at the end of the day? None of these away-from strategies are going to lead to where you want it to lead.
Why?
Because your pain is seeking to deliver a message.
Learn to Speak Your Body's Language
Your body has been trying to get your attention for a long time. Pain is one of the ways in which it communicates. Pain has a message for you.
The question is: are you ready to listen?
If so, that's why I created the Pain as Portal workshop to teach you exactly how to do that.
How to decode what your body is telling you.
How to ask the right questions when symptoms show up.
How to finally hear what your pain has been trying to say.
In this live workshop, you'll learn:
- How your body speaks in metaphor (and how to employ your intellect to ask the right kinds of questions to decode it)
- The specific questions to ask when pain or symptoms appear
- How to stop overriding your body's intelligence and start listening to it
Because your body isn't broken. It's speaking. And it's time you learned to listen. Start here.
