Attune to your body
Life has felt busier and busier – very full – and very busy. It’s been interesting and validating to be able to recognize the busyness in my body, first, before my mind gives in and acknowledges it. Becoming more in tune with my body has been an arduous process. At first, a few years ago, it was something that required me to have a structure and routine in order to tap into my body. It felt uncomfortable at times and useless at others. Nevertheless, I pushed forward with reminders and calendar invites to meditate, get still, write and engage in earthing. It was a little like “fake it ‘till you make”, if I’m honest. Then it became liberating and I was able to truly go inward upon command and ask myself what I needed. This opened up a whole new world, one which I had closed off for decades. This led to trusting myself and my intuition. Intuition was a foreign word to me. I had actually moved away from it in recovery from my eating disorder and substances. I was taught to not trust the initial ideas and feelings because those were rooted in bad habits.
The problem with this was that no one told me, or taught me, to find my true self and intuition. I went for decades believing I couldn’t trust myself without rumination and external guidance. I sought external validation from my work, appearance, status, and the illusion that I had my sh!t together. When I started to unravel this, it became clear that I didn’t trust myself at all and I didn’t know where to start. That inner voice was gone and buried.
I’ve said before that life is a lot of trial and error. This is exactly how I started to test my intuition again. I’d think immediately about my “gut feeling”, then I’d trust but verify it. I did this for a long time. I’ve finally moved further away from external validation to relying more on my inner voice. With this, comes listening to my body. I would not have been able to find my inner voice again if I did not have the ability to tap into how my body feels and responds to things. It’s a guidepost of sorts to everything in my life.
Today, imperfectly, I listen to my body and inner voice simultaneously. They work together to inform me. It’s beautiful! So as life gets busy or full or hard I can immediately sense when I need to get still and silent or move my body and it’s almost always a combination of both. My challenge isn’t with moving, it’s with stillness. I can be busy with the best of them. When things start to get difficult my area of opportunity remains in listening to my body and intuition to sit still.
As long as I’m open and listening, I’ll hear it.