Your body is sending you messages, and it’s time for you to start believing it.
When I ask people to stop and think about the most important relationships in their lives, most bring to mind significant family members and friends, and some would think about their relationship with God. Most people would skip right over their relationship with themselves. And that’s a shame! After all, you’re with yourself 100% of the time. If people do consider their relationship to self, it’s often in terms of thoughts and emotions. While these two things do provide people with a good bit of information, I’d like to discuss one often untapped piece of your relationship with self: one that, when cultivated, provides an astonishing amount of trustworthy information about your life and the world around you.
Trust your body.
Your body is communicating with you often. And it’s time to cultivate some trust in that so that you can get the most out of this untapped resource!
The care cues our body gives are pretty familiar to us. With the exception of some major medical issues, our bodies tell us when we need food, water, rest, how to dress for the temperature, if something is scolding hot, etc. These care cues are super helpful and prompted out of our unconscious drive to stay alive.
Beyond the body’s messages of how to take care of ourselves, the body is also giving us information about things like emotional safety, other people’s intentions, which choice to make, and more. The problem is that we don’t often cultivate trust in this part of our relationship to self in order to get the most out of these messages. But that’s a problem with a solution!
For some of us, the messages of our body go unnoticed but never truly stop coming. I’d liken it to a radio playing in the corner of your bedroom, but it’s covered in dirty laundry. All it takes is addressing the issue that’s muffling the noise and you’ll be enjoying the music again in no time.
The more you attune to and trust in your body’s cues, the richer the information you’ll glean about your life and the world around you.
A simple case study:
- When I was younger, I attended a large family reunion. I met an older relative there who I immediately got an awful feeling about and didn’t want to be around. Years later, my dad mentioned that relative and all the predatory behavior he had engaged in. I did not know anything at that time of the reunion, except my body did not feel at ease in his presence.
- How did I call it when I was so young?
- The best way I can describe it is this: My body knew something that my brain couldn’t explain yet.
I have hundreds of examples of this, and I bet you do, too.
- As a teenager, there were peers whom I just couldn’t stand to be around, but I couldn’t explain why. I didn’t trust them for no obvious reason. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve watched these people from afar, and my initial hesitation has proven right. They’ve left a trail of jobs, spouses, and friendships in their wake.
- Have you ever met a new person and felt confused after you walked away? Like something was up with them but you couldn’t quite put your finger on it?
- In adulthood, I’ve known a few people, both personally and professionally, where I can only describe that I felt like I needed to take a shower after I talked with them. Weird but true! I felt like their manipulative strategies physically got on me.
- Do you ever spend time with a family member and notice how tense your shoulders are when you leave? Maybe you catch yourself grinding your teeth? Or you get a headache? What’s up with that?
- Sometimes, I just feel like I get slimed by someone’s weird boundaries, alternate view of reality, or expectations of me. Some of y’all know exactly what I’m talking about, even though it’s hard to put into words.
- Have you ever spent time with somebody and, upon leaving, felt like you could immediately take a nap? They completely drained your battery because your alarm bells were going off the whole time!
- Even in reading this, do you intrinsically know what I’m saying is true? Or is your BS reader going off? That’s your body talking to you.
- Want further evidence? This interesting study from 1997 showed that people’s intuition shows up in bodily form (in this case, palm sweating) before their brain catches on to certain patterns and scams.
This is the secret: the more you listen to it and trust it, the louder it gets.
Like the radio in the corner of your room, the music never stops playing; you just can’t always hear it. This bodily sense (discernment) only gets stronger if you cultivate it.
The benefits of trusting your body:
Yes, your body will tip you off to situations and people with whom you don’t need to engage. But check this out: the converse of this is also true. (And I really love this!) When you are around people who you can genuinely trust to love you and have your best interests at heart, your body will relax in their presence. Your mental clamor will slow down. You will be holistically at ease.
Your body is more than the vehicle to carry you around your life. It is a great source of intuitive wisdom to keep you safe– relationally and otherwise. You may not be right 100% of the time, but I’d rather trust it and be wrong occasionally than not trust it and wish I had. That’s the truth!
Consider your body your most trusted friend.
Cultivate trust in your friend. It is a great source of intuitive wisdom to keep you safe– relationally and otherwise. You may not be right 100% of the time, but it’s better to trust it and be wrong occasionally than not trust it and wish you had.
Normalize not having to justify your bodily sense of knowing. Just trust it. You may not even have all of the information right at that moment, but often, you get the bodily sensation immediately and then find out the missing information later.
Start checking in with your body more.
- When you have a business meeting, see how you feel physically after. What is your body trying to tell you?
- When you have dinner with old friends who know and love you, check in to enjoy the feeling of well-being you experience when you’re with them. Are you at ease? Slowed heart rate? Slowed thoughts? Deeper and easier breaths? Just pay attention to it!
Trust this process once in real-time, and it’ll make you a believer for the rest of your life. Try me!
Your body will show you who is safe, who loves you with no strings attached, and who is talking out of both sides of their mouth.
The more you listen, the stronger the communication with your body will get. As you cultivate this relationship with your body, the attunement and trust that you’ll build in yourself will surprise you!
