How to Listen to Your Body
This should be so simple…. Why is it so hard?
You’ve had the suitcase open on your bed for the last half an hour as you try to make some decisions. Do you want the red bathing suit or the blue one? A sundress for the evening or the fun romper you never wear? You throw clothes in just to pull them out a minute later. After 45 minutes of trying to pack for a simple overnight trip, you’re exhausted.
Or what about this situation.… You’ve purposely emptied your calendar when a friend calls asking for help with something at the kids’ school. It’s not going to take much for you to help. But it will take up part of the day you’d cleared for yourself. What she’s asking isn’t interesting …there are a lot of other people she could get to do it… (she told you that herself). There’s no pressure. But you’ve spent hours debating whether or not to lend a hand. Somehow it feels impossible to decide what to do.
Can’t Make a Decision
Sound familiar? Situations like this come up all the time with the women I coach. Invitations come in and they don’t know what to do. Simple choices like what to pack for a trip, or what to eat for lunch feel really hard. And forget about making a life change like leaving a job or starting a family. They get paralyzed for months or even years when it comes to the big stuff.
When decisions feel hard, the women I work with say things like: “I feel totally stuck” or “I don’t know what to do”. It’s like they forgot how to make decisions for themselves. Unfortunately, the longer it goes on, the more self-doubt sets in. With all that doubt, self-confidence totally disappears. Now, making any decision, even a simple one, is almost impossible.
Your Body Knows
The good news is, I don’t believe them when they tell me that don’t know what to do. I mean, I believe that they believe that they don’t know what to do. But I don’t believe them because I know something they don’t.
Deep down everyone has an inner compass that always points towards their Authentic Life. The compass I’m talking about is your BODY. In the book Finding your own North Star, Martha Beck PhD literally calls it your Body Compass. You could also call it your intuition or your inner guidance. It’s not so much what you call it but what’s going on that’s important.
Mind / Body Disconnect
When you’re feeling stuck and indecisive, there’s usually a disconnect happening between your mind and your body. Most of us were taught to make decisions with our brains. We’re taught to think things through and be rational, logical, thoughtful decision-makers. It’s a great idea but our minds take things pretty far pretty fast. They see a ton of possibilities and they can spin out on any one of them. They can consider so many sides of the decision that they go into what some folks call “analysis paralysis”. Overthinking. A busy mind completely ignores the body.
The solution to that “I’m stuck”, “I can’t decide”, “I don’t know what to do” feeling is to get into your body! As I mentioned before, your body has deep intelligence and always points towards your most Authentic Life. When you slow down, get centered, and LISTEN to it, it will give clear direction for which way to point your life. Keep listening and it’ll help you make any decision you need to make.
Listen for your Body’s Guidance
I love the idea of letting your body guide your decisions. But most of us have no idea what that actually feels like. Our bodies send us messages all the time, but we don’t know how to read them. Again, we were taught to think not to feel or sense. And we were definitely not taught to act on the subtle nudges we feel from our intuition.
One of my favorite parts of coaching is simply teaching folks how to listen to their Body Compass so it can guide them home. It’s easier than you might think. It just takes an initial tuning of your Body Compass. Like tuning a radio dial so that you can hear your favorite song, when you tune your Body Compass you’ll finally get messages loud and clear.
Try This:
To tune your body compass take a few minutes to play with this. It’s less science than art so let yourself explore.
Stand up and shake out your body to let go of any residue from the day
Next, remain standing and get centered. Place a hand on your heart and one on your belly and notice your breath. Take a few breaths until you feel that you are present and open, ready to go forward
Imagine someone you know walking into the room and saying: “I have some bad news” Visualize them as clearly as you can and let those words really sink in… “some bad news.”
Notice how your BODY responds to those words… did your throat tighten? stomach drop? palms start sweating? what are the physical sensations you feel through your whole body.
Write down whatever you noticed. You’ve just found your NEGATIVE body compass reading.
Now let that go. Again shake your body. Shake off the negative feeling.
Stand still and breathe until you feel neutral again.
Imagine the same person walking into the room and this time saying “I have the BEST news!”
Visualize them as clearly as you can and let those words really sink in…. “the BEST news!”
Notice how your body responds to those words…. did your heart lift? Your pulse quicken? is there a light, bubbly feeling inside? What are the physical sensations you feel through your whole body?
Write down whatever you noticed again. You’ve just found your POSITIVE body compass reading.
Now let that go too. Shake it out and come back to yourself.
YES & NO
What you’re looking for is your body’s natural NO and natural YES. The sensations you felt with the negative and positive responses are the way your body tells you YES and NO. And when you know that, you can lean into your body for guidance on absolutely anything.
So, if we go back to the example of packing for a trip, instead of overthinking, you could ask your body for help. Once you drop in you’d hold up the sundress and the romper then feel for the most positive response in your body. That’s the thing you wanna put in your suitcase. Or the other example about helping out at school - pause, take a breath and imagine the two possibilities then lean into the one that feels like a YES. Notice that this might not be the one your mind says will be the best for your image, or friendship, or for the school…. You want the one that feels the best in your body.
Aligned Decisions are Necessary
I’m not gonna say that this is easy. A lot of the time what your body says and what the world want from you will not be the same thing. It can feel hard to make the aligned decision and stick with it. We’ll talk more about that in an upcoming post.
But I believe that making decisions from your deepest knowing (which lives right in your body) is more important than ever. The world is SO loud right now. There are a million competing voices saying “you should do this” or “don’t do that”. If you can’t drop in and listen inside, you’ll be swamped by the voices outside. Then you’re frozen in indecision while your life feels like it’s passing you by.
Your Body Compass is a starting point. When you feel overwhelmed with the noise from outside or when you feel stuck and you can’t decide what to do, come back to your body.
Settle in. Listen and sense. Your inner guidance is just under your skin. It will point you home to your most Authentic Life.
All you need to do is listen.
The book I referenced above is: Finding your Own North Star: Claiming the life you were meant to live by Dr Martha Beck
The exercise above is a co-mingling of teachings by Dr. Martha Beck and Dr. Constantina Rhodes. (two smart intuitive women, woo-hoo!)