Hearing the Body Talk

Recently when reading my serialized mini-memoir The End Creeps Closer a friend asked to know more about how I listen to my body’s guidance to know when continuing medications and other treatments aren’t good for me. She wanted to know more about not doubting and second guessing the somatosensory language of intuition and being confident enough in understanding to base medical and other important decisions on the body’s guidance. This is my attempt to explain.

First a few disclaimers. I can only articulate my personal process. Your mileage may vary. In my world, understanding the meaning of somatosensory (bodily-felt) signals is a practice of spiritual hygiene. It’s also like learning an extra-verbal language, like reading facial expressions, or understanding what your four-footed companion is trying to tell you.

Listening To Your Body

Your body’s language will have its own voice. That voice will speak through sensations that may not be the same as mine. Listen for yours.

Tune In.  Get in a quiet place. Turn off all external stimuli. Sit or lie down comfortably. Close your eyes and focus all your attention inside your body. Try focusing on the belly first. Ignore the mind. Ignore anything that comes to you in your familiar verbal language (think of the familiar as a narcissistic toddler, jealous that your attention omits them for a little while).

Open Awareness.  Without any judgment, notice the sensations in the belly. Is there a sense of calm or turbulence there? Is there a straining or is there comfort? What other sensations do you notice? Spend several minutes just noticing without classifying in any way.

Give Gratitude.  Take a few moments to send genuine gratitude to your body’s voice. Maybe try thinking thank you when you exhale, and I am grateful when you inhale. Breathe as slowly and deeply as you can. Make it a meditation.

Deepen.  Continue this slow deep meditative breathing, and change the message to I am listening on the in breaths and out breaths. Allow yourself to notice any sensations happening in any other part of the body.

At first when learning to hear the body speak it may test you like a teenage lightning bug with ADHD, flitting here and there, giving a slight itch on an eyebrow, then on the back of the head, and next on a knuckle. Maybe you’ll notice other sensations – sudden nasal congestion, a tingle on the bottom of the foot, a heaviness under the clavicle. Let your attention follow wherever the lightning bug goes and notice if any sensation changes. An itch might become a tingle, a heaviness might seem to melt away, etc. 

Do this noticing and breathing practice every day for as long as it takes for the body to be eager to speak to you when you tune in. Then try to notice when those sensations are coming to you when you aren’t intentionally listening. When receiving the sensations, remember to acknowledge them with at least one inhale / exhale giving of gratitude.

Meaning Making  

Now of course the point of this practice is to start to use it to gain answers, understanding, and wisdom for decision making. The process for setting up your personal system of meaning making is much the same as training a pendulum to give you binary information. Here’s what I mean by that.

1.    Ask your body to give you a sensation that it wants you to recognize as a yes or other kind of confirmation. Pay attention. This may be a new sensation somewhere in the body you haven’t noticed speaking up before. It could be an overall feeling of strength or groundedness. It could be a sense of heart happiness. Ask often enough so that the sensation becomes familiar to and trusted by you.

2.    After your body’s yes has been reliably established, ask it to give you a sensation that it wants you to recognize as a no or other kind of disconfirmation. Like before, pay attention. Repeat the asking until your body’s no sensation is established. It could be as subtle as an evaporation of that heart happiness, or as clear as a rumble in the belly. Overtime, you may develop a sense of right knowing when the body means yes or no without any specific sensations. But that happens only when you have developed the listening practice. This could take months or years.

3.    Practice asking for the body’s opinion on simple things like should you have Chinese or TexMex for dinner, or would your body like to go for a walk or sit and read. Strengthen the energetic language by using it often. Gradually flex this vibrational muscle on more significant questions.Remember to keep the questions in the yes/no realm. This is the best way to increase your understanding of the body’s voice.

Doubting and Second Guessing

Doubting and second guessing are functions of an anxious mind and a heart that isn’t trusting the unusual and unfamiliar. Ironically, these functions are more familiar to us than is the body’s somatosensory vocabulary. They masquerade as voices trying to keep us safe, but all they do is foment confusion.

Once you are proficient at talking and listening to your body’s language, you can ask it if your doubt is justified or a misguided knee-jerk reaction. Use the process outlined above. When you find the anxious mind presenting thoughts of second guessing, thank the mind for wanting to protect you.

It’s important to do this because without assurance that you heard the warning, the second guessing mind will just crank up the volume on its fears. Then ask the body if you need to reconsider whatever previous decision it has helped you make. Take your body’s advice as the more legitimate.

Building Confidence 

At some point, this process – if you have practiced every day like your other hygiene practices – will become automatic. It’s so much on autopilot for me that all I needed to do when confronted with medical treatment decisions is to close my eyes, take a deep breath, and notice what the body is saying. It hears me asking before I’ve formed a question in verbal language.

Additional Point of Reference Everything in the universe has a vibrational frequency. When talking about the body’s voice, it’s called a subtle energy. Every kind of medicine and treatment also has a subtle energy vibration. Pharmaceuticals are a dense, heavy, low toned type of vibration. Flower essence remedies, homeopathy, and other forms of so-called alternative energy medicine have a looser, lighter, higher toned type of vibration. Hugs and massages are high harmony vibrational frequencies. Surgery has heavy, disruptive, disharmonious frequency.

What we’re doing when we ask for the body’s opinion on a decision is asking what options harmonize best with our body’s own complex vibrational energy. Yes answers tell us what is for our highest good because it creates harmony with the universe. No answers tell us what is not in our best interest because it creates disharmony, which in the long run manifests as disease.