Dear First name / friend
Your body always knows. Whether it’s what we should eat, what we should wear, even which partner to be with or which car to buy.
The question is: Do we listen?
We have an inherent wisdom in our cells that holds information of our ancestors and ancient survival skills. We have part of our nervous system and immune system located in our heart and gut, and it sends us valuable hints (in the shape of physical sensations) all the time. Without listening to that wisdom, our decision making becomes overly rational and therefore incomplete. Our lives become unbalanced. We overlook important (basic, meaning essential or even existential) needs and we will have to deal with the consequences eventually.
Listening to your body is not an esoteric practice, but a biological necessity.
When I first learned to meditate, my body never wanted to sit still. I always felt the urge to bend, twist and even shake my spine. Of course I was given a set of rules that demanded me to be still and/or only move certain parts of the body. I struggled with it immensely, I didn't know how to do it and the worst part was, it was distracting me from the thing I was actually trying to do: meditate. For a long time, I felt like I was never going to be able to sit still, let alone enjoy it. I felt so much less than, I doubted a lot how I could even teach yoga and meditation, being so “flawed” myself.
It all changed when I finally started listening to the messages my body was sending me all the time. I started experimenting with letting me move how my spine wanted to. Sometimes ending up moving in weird ways on my meditation pillow, forgetting completely what I actually wanted to practice. Other times noticing, that when I called myself gently back to stillness at the right moment, it actually worked. So after a long period of trying out different things, trying to find a way to become still, asking my body what I should do, trying to sense within what was needed... it started to happen every now and then: I sat. I enjoyed. I meditated.
Finally I could start enjoying what I wanted to experience so badly: a meditative state. I finally felt like I belonged on this pillow. I finally felt like I entered the space everyone was talking about. Where you find calm and being centered. It felt like coming home.
But in order for that to happen, I had to let in that moment of freedom, of following instinct and intuition and giving a bit of space for the need to move. A bit of space for me, for my body's needs, for my inner information. At the same time, it was also about finding the exact moment to turn back to discipline and the ancient technique. It was about building that bridge and finding that connection.
What was needed, I realized, was the conversation happening on the inside, with my inner wisdom, and the balance between my (situational) wisdom and the learning from deep truth that was studied for millennia. Those conversations became my key tool to finding my way to meditate and finally benefit from it in a deeper way - including a deeper sense and experience of aliveness, connectedness and happiness.
Listening to your body and your inner wisdom can open doors for you. Doors to an experience of life (not only meditation, but really anything) on a deeper level, to a richer, more satisfying and more complete version of your life. Being in touch with your innate sense of what is needed and useful for you is such a powerful (and in my opinion necessary) tool that takes you right into the driver's seat of your life. And that doesn't stop with meditation. It's just a place where it could start.
Where in your life are you listening to your body regularly? When it comes to food, clothes, rest, decision making...? Are there any areas of your life where you would like to have a deeper conversation within, with your body and it's wisdom? Where you wished you could listen more?
What could that look, or better said, FEEL like?
At this stage of my own meditation re-invention process, I am giving myself some time again for this intimate conversation between me and my body.
I am exploring different ways of listening and offering my body paths to stillness. I play, I observe, I experiment.
If you are curious to hear more about that journey, I will talk about it more in depth in my upcoming podcast episode, dropping next week. I would love for you to listen (deeply, haha ;-) and invite you to sense into what's in it for you.
Thank you for reading, listening and being a part of this.
