Listening to your body

Everyone will tell you, in a sports class, in therapy, in the sauna: “You really should listen to your body.”

If you then look around you see people hearing their bodies, but not listening. Sometimes they are only hearing it when the body starts to scream. Listening is something else.

When you hear someone talk, you may hear noise or notice sounds. When you listen to you pay attention, and chances are what you are listening to makes sense to you and has meaning. Hearing can be accidental, listening is not. Hearing music is what happens when it is in the background. Listening to music is what happens when you put in on the foreground, and appreciating it, not trying to explain the music.

Asking yourself the question “Why do I feel this sensation” is not the same as listening to you body. Listening is better described as “What am I feeling”.*

How does it feel to be motivated, or energized? How many different ‘tastes’ of tiredness can you feel? Have you ever listened on purpose to caffeine hitting your system? Are you moving away from something or moving towards something? What are you feeling when you feel recovered?

*When you find yourself struggling with the question “I don’t know what I am feeling.” remember that this is different then “I feel nothing”. It is about wanting to ‘know’.  Here is something that will either solve it for you, or give you an even bigger problem: You do not have to ‘make sense’ of your sensations. They are ‘sense’, there is nothing left to be ‘made’.