8 ways to learn
to listen to your body
BY NAOMI ARNOLD | 21/11/2014
About two years ago, I was the fittest and strongest I had ever
been. I was smashing the beep test, my running times were fantastic, and my
lifts at the gym phenomenal. I was super proud of myself. I had never been this
fit – and I was working my butt off to stay that way. My ego loved it, and I
wasn’t going to let her down. I was eating clean and rigorously exercising
for approximately two hours per day.
However, during this time, I experienced many injuries, I often
got sick, I had insane urges to binge and then purge through severe exercise,
and my period was MIA for almost a year. My body was screaming at me that it
wasn’t happy. I ignored it – until I no longer had a choice and was forced to
listen.
We often hear people say that in order to be healthy, we should
listen to our bodies. But what does that mean? How do we do that? This blog
post will share eight ways that you can start ‘tuning in’ to your body.
1. Keep a journal
Journal writing can be so therapeutic and can really help you
learn more about yourself and your body. You can find writing prompts for
keeping a journal in my Huffington Post articlehere. Alternatively, to really zone in on learning to
listen to your body, here are three body specific prompts that you could
consider using:
·Write down at least one
thing that you can do to nurture and care for your body that day e.g., a
massage, pedicure, early night, drink lots of water.
·Write down at least one
thing that you are grateful to your body for that day e.g., helping you stay
awake in that boring meeting, giving you just enough energy to run around after
the little ones all day, helping you through that gruelling workout.
·Keep track of what foods
you eat, exercise you do, and your energy levels – not to count calories or to
make yourself feel guilty – but to delve into how you feel before, during
and after certain practice. Do you feel heavy after eating certain foods?
Do you have more energy and clarity after doing certain activities? Does
going for a run make you feel like you’ve just cleared the clutter from your
brain?
2. Start to take note of your warning signs
Our bodies send us warning signs when they’re beginning to
feel the pressure. I know that personally when I was over training, some of my
warning signs were sickness (ever had a damn cold that haunts you?),
niggling or reoccurring injuries, feeling lethargic, and difficulties with
sleep. Other less subtle signs included shutting off my period, mood
swings, nose bleeds, and headaches.
If we listen, our bodies have a way of telling us when we need
more or less of something. When we learn to pay attention to the signs, we
can give our body what it needs.
3. Meditate
A great way to learn to listen to your body more, is to start a
meditation practice. You can use the below simple meditation steps to
listen to your body.
·Sit in a comfortable
position, with your feet firmly planted on the ground.
·Take a deep breath in.
Pause. And then release your breath slowly out. Repeat three times.
·Starting at your toes and
making your way up to your crown, scan your awareness through each part of your
body. Really live in each part, focusing on how it feels, and what it needs.
·Once you’ve reached the tip
of your head, take a deep breath in, and a slow audible breathe out.
·Wriggle your toes, roll
your shoulders, gently tilt your from head side to side.
If you have a notebook or journal nearby, write down what you felt
during your meditation while it’s still fresh in your mind. Did your
hips feel tight and perhaps need you to do some opener stretches? Did your
eyes feel heavy and maybe need an early night? Were your shoulders stiff and
need a massage? Keep a note and commit to yourself to start giving your body
what it needs.
There is a free guided meditation audio in the Freebies library that
you can use for this purpose..
4. Do yoga
On my journey to learning to listen to my body, discovering yoga
made a world of difference. As I paused in each pose, I could feel tightness in
certain body parts and freedom in others, I could feel my mind resisting
what my body wanted to do in fear that it could not do it, I learnt to focus on
my breathe and live in the present moment, to scan and readjust certain body
parts as they called out to me.
If you are yet to try yoga, I highly recommend that you give it a
go. Just like a gym or a personal trainer, there are all different types of
teachers and yoga practices. So don’t try one teacher or class and think that
represents the whole world of yoga. Try a few – experiment – find a
teacher and practice that suits you.
If you can learn to feel comfortable and actually enjoy the mind –
body connection during yoga, you will learn so much about yourself and your
body.
5. Eat mindfully
Intuitive or mindful eating is another great way of listening to
your body. It involves creating a healthy relationship with your food, mind and
body and learning to become the expert of your own unique body. This is
such a big topic in itself that it warrants a full blog post. However, for
the purposes of this article, here are four tips to help you eating
mindfully:
·Switching off the TV and
other distractions whilst eating so that you can be fully present
·Being consciously mindful
of whether you are hungry before, during and after eating – and letting this
hunger drive your food choices
·Before eating, asking
yourself “will this food sustain me or exhaust me?” (in fact, this is a great
question to ask yourself before doing anything really!)
·Being aware of whether you
are eating out of physical hunger (because you’re actually hungry) or emotional
hunger (e.g., because you’re bored, sad, tired)
6. Slow down. Stop. Be aware. Tune in to your feelings
If you’re anything like me, you are SO busy and are juggling a
ridiculous amount of balls. Naturally, we then don’t have time to pause and
listen to our bodies. Sometimes, the most simple way of tuning in to our needs,
is to just stop. Pause for a moment. Breathe. Go within and ask yourself how
you are feeling. During particularly busy and stressful times, I find myself
doing this in the strangest of situations – like on a toilet break or in the
shower. Sometimes you have to get creative with finding the time to pause and
listen to yourself.
7. Trust and foster your intuition
Historically, I’ve been a head person. Someone who thinks things
through, considers every angle, and often experiences paralysis by analysis.
This year however, I’ve been conducting a little experiment – and have handed
the reins over to my heart or intuition. I’ve been going within, asking myself
what feels right, and then saying “thanks for protecting me brain, but I’m
going to let my heart handle this one”. I’ve been blown away by the results not
just in my personal and professional life – but also in my ability to pick up
on cues from my body. You see, our mind often works from a place of “I
shoulds” whereas our intuition usually comes from a softer and more gentle
place, truly connected to what we most need.
8. Start a self-care practice
Some of us are great at creating exercise and meal plans for
ourselves, however not so great at looking at our lives holistically and
thinking about what we need to care for ourselves. This often includes things
like Me Time, pampering, and most importantly – rest and relaxation. It is in
these times of self care and rest that we can find ourselves connecting to our
bodies and our needs. Developing a self-care practice can be highly beneficial
for your health and sanity.
I hope that this article has given you some ideas on what you
can do to practice tuning in to your body. The more you practice, the more
clarity you will find on what health means for you, what works and doesn’t work
for your body, and your own unique path to wellness.
Please tell me in the comments below, what are you going to do
this week to try and get more ‘in tune’ with your body?
What Does "Listen To Your
Body" Actually Mean?
November 15, 2013 —
16:38 PM
Share on:
We hear this all the
time: Listen to your body! We should follow how we feel,
right? But what does this really mean? And how do we do it?
Maybe I feel like
eating cookies instead of going for a run right now. Good, this is a plan I can
follow! But I thought this was supposed to get me healthy. And as much as I
love cookies, I'm pretty sure my cookie-tarian diet isn't going to get me
there.
So now what? To what
kinds of feelings am I listening? Maybe physical feelings, like stomach pain
and tired feet? Or emotional feelings, like worry, doubt, or indecision?
There are two layers
of feeling at work here. One is feeling in your body, your core, your nature.
The other is your surface psychology, imprinted on top of it all.
Following our
psychology—our mind—can certainly keep us busy. We run about collecting all
kinds of information and advice. We think it's critical to proper
decision-making! But sometimes the decisions don't come. We get trapped in
worry, self-doubt, second-guessing. And if we do make decisions, we don't
believe in them enough to let them live.
Luckily, there's this
other kind of feeling. It's not paralyzing, it's activating. And strangely
enough, it's a bit closer to the pain in your belly!
You've heard of
trusting your gut? It's good advice! So how do you know when your gut is
talking to you?
How can you tell the
difference between your intuition—the part of you that creates an
avalanche of healthy and inspired acts—and the part of you thinking about how
to find that part of you?
Stop thinking about
it, for a moment. You need to get quiet. You need to get sensitive, to you.
That feeling in your
body is where you'll find your intuition, and your capability to act. You
already know it's not on your shelves of how-to books, or waiting for you in
the next guru-convention. So it's time to look somewhere else.
Your body is sending
you messages, core, gut feelings, all the time. You don't need to reason them,
logic them, or intellectualize them. You just need to act on them.
When your foot hurts,
you pick it up and give it a squeeze. Stomach ache? Rest your hands on your
belly. Unsure what to eat, say, work on, or create? Take a very deep breath,
relax, feel, and then do it. Just like giving your foot a squeeze: don't think
it, just do it.
Your body pays
attention to you. It thinks you're important! If you've spent a whole lot of
time ignoring how you feel, just bulldozing along - your body has probably
decided you're not interested in listening to these lines of communication. It
hits the mute button. That's OK, you can turn your volume back on.
Here are 3 steps to
get you listening and moving easy in your body and life:
1. Slow it down.
When a submarine is
running all ahead full, it can ping away with sonar, but it won't hear much of anything.
It's making too much of its own noise! We're about the same.
Don't worry, you'll
still be able to pick up the pace when you want. We all have plenty of practice
in this department. If we want to slow down enough to hear something, we need
to practice this, too.
2. Relax and breathe
deep.
When you breathe normally, you don't create
unusual sensations in your body, so this readily translates to virtually no
sensation at all. Breathe as deep as you possibly can, even when you're not
running up a mountain, and you'll have something new. You'll feel. It will be
interesting!
Remember to relax.
When you're stiff and tense, you'll just feel stiff and tense. You want
something more than that. Use your inhales to expand and feel into everything
you've got. Use your exhales to soften everything you can feel.
3. Move without
thinking or deciding.
Let your breath do
this for you, and practice first in your body. When you're relaxed, your inhales
will give you a lift, and your exhales will make you more movable. So let it
move. No decisions required, just breathe and go along for the ride.
Practice this with
your body. Now practice it with everything!
Just breathe, give it
time, and watch what happens. Your body is already re-wiring itself, based on
exactly what you're doing, right now. You're making you!
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