"Tune into your body": What DOES that mean?
On a surface level, you probably know that your body mirrors your emotions.
If you feel nervous or excited, you may feel ‘butterflies’ in your stomach. If you feel tense, your teeth may be clenched and your muscles tensed. If you feel love, you might feel your heart beat a little faster.
But there might be times when your body is talking and you’re just not listening.
Let me go back a step. As cells in your mother’s womb, without instruction, your body developed. As a baby, you instinctively understood hunger and knew how to feed. As a child, you fell and cut your knee and, within days, your body healed itself. You are a miraculous being with an innate intelligence.
The complications come as we grow up. Our minds get involved and muddy the waters. Experiences leave their mark, memories are stored and we learn to adapt to our surroundings. Aiming to keep you safe, your mind draws on experiences from the past to make decisions in the here and now. Often that’s a split-second decision that you have absolutely no conscious awareness of. But, each time that happens, that stored information in your brain is driving your behaviour based on the past.
You are literally living in the past.
Image: Erin Telford
But your body might be telling you something else.
That intelligence intuitively knows the right decision, the answer or the best step forward for you. And it will be telling you too.
Emotions are the language of the body - the job is learning to listen.
Very simply, how you feel about something tells you how on or off-target you are. If you feel joy, love, excitement, calm and so on, it’s a big old nod of encouragement. If it feels ‘off’ in any way, your body is giving you a clue.
This isn’t to say you should run from anything that feels a little bit scary or challenging or uncomfortable. As they say, growth is on the other side of fear. The trick is to listen to it. Is the scary feeling because you’re stepping out of your comfort zone or is it the wrong move for you?
It may be a new idea to you but try to ‘tune in’ to that mind-body intelligence. Begin by choosing a quiet and private spot, and take a few slow, deep breaths. Start by actively feeling the feeling - and turn it up, like a volume control, to intensify it. Where in your body do you feel it? Place your hand there: what is it you need to know/do/say? What is the right next step for you?
Now, listen.
Instead of making decisions from the past and out of habit, you’ll be making choices from a place of intuition. And the more you do it, the more you trust yourself.
You don’t need to turn to anyone to help make your decision. You don’t need a book or a guru or a course or to ‘find yourself’.
