The body is always giving feedback
Your body is always giving you feedback, the trick is how to listen and interpret. Our minds are so busy with to-do lists and overthinking and planning and all the mental chatter, sometimes you can’t even hear your body.
That headache that comes every afternoon at 2:00 pm, the minor cough you’ve had for three weeks, the heart racing when you wake up in the middle of the night. It’s so easy to miss these signals because our society is so go-go-go all the time. So you take some ibuprofen, drink some herbal tea with lemon, and take a sleeping pill at night. But these are all signs of the body telling you something isn’t working or something’s not right. Your body is always trying to get you back to balance.
This is where regular yoga and meditation practice comes in. Yoga is the practice of calming the mind so you can start to listen to your body. When you take the time daily to sit quietly, notice your breath and check in with your body, you start to recognize changes in how you feel and how you may be getting off balance.
The next step is to try to interpret this feedback. This also takes time and disciplined practice. Yes, it’s easier to take a pill every afternoon when you get a headache. Your head stops hurting and you can go about your day. But what if you started to try a few different things? Maybe your head hurts because you haven’t slept well in weeks, maybe you’re consistently eating too much sugar at lunch, maybe your job is stressing you out, maybe there’s some unresolved issues you should probably talk to a therapist about. Journaling helps you to see patterns in behavior that might interpret what your body is trying to tell you.
Trying a new diet? Keep a food journal, not to track what you ate in terms of macronutrients and calories, but to track how the food made you FEEL. Maybe dairy makes your digestion slow down which affects your breathing and your mood, so eating dairy makes you sad. Maybe eating that protein bar with all the sugar actually makes your heart race, making you feel anxious and jittery.
Ultimately, it’s your body, it’s your job to pay attention to the signs, understand what might be causing them and then take the steps to address the situation. Your body is always giving you feedback, and it can only do so much to keep your health in balance.