The Easiest Hardest Thing

With all the demands of our crazy modern world, we are very quickly disconnected from our own bodies. Despite that we hear the message "listen to your body" on a regular basis... we may not know how or even what exactly that means!!!

There are myriad reasons why we become so disconnected from our bodies. We don't typically use our bodies for our work - we use our brains. We are often living a sedentary lifestyle with a lot of sitting, so we don't get the chance to simply BE in our bodies without distraction. We drive to get places, which further takes away an opportunity to feel what is happening in our bodies in a natural part of the day through simply walking.

And then the people who are telling us to get in tune with our bodies or listen to our bodies... well they can be annoying and come off as self righteous. Yes, I realize I may be including myself in that category!

Hopefully though I can introduce to you a simplified way to listen to your body that isn't quite as obnoxious and does not involved burning nag champa incense (because I actually hate incense!)

My radical point of view is that you can stop and listen to your body at any point in time and the only thing you have to do is slow down. Take a deep breath. What hurts? That is your body talking at the most basic level.

For me, I've been at my computer for about an hour and my back is hurting. I did a trigger point massage class this morning (where I laid around and let tennis balls dig into my muscles from beneath me - hurts so good kind of thing) and I felt AMAZING all day... and now I feel like that looseness is tightening back up while I sit here typing this.

Normally, we just ignore all this information, as I am doing while I continue to type this article. However, by simply stopping to NOTICE these details, I know that I should do something else when this article is done, and NOT write the next one.

What I do next is also simple. Take a short walk, get a drink, do five minutes of stretching, or whatever, it doesn't really matter, as long as we don't keep doing what is making us hurt. This is Body Wisdom 101. Stop doing what makes your body hurt. Simple, but not easy, in fact I've heard my clients say it's "the easiest hardest thing."
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