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Follow Your Body Compass

 

The body knows. When we don’t listen, things can go haywire. I just recently learned to pay attention to the signals, but then I let my mind talk me out of it. Mayhem ensued. Here’s what happened.

Scheduling a series of dentist appointments for my son had been difficult. The office was jammed. They got a cancellation and called to offer a sooner date. For no apparent reason, a tightness seized my chest. I clearly heard the word DON’T. I dismissed the warning, telling myself, you’re being lazy— just go and get it over with.

On the day of the appointment, a torrential downpour came out of nowhere. Three kids at two schools waited for me in the mess of traffic and flooding. I somehow had to collect and drop off the other kids at home, then haul our butts to the dentist across town.

The high schoolers gamely ran out to me in the rain, avoiding the longest line. But at the middle school, traffic stood still. Luckily, the rain had let up so I called my youngest son.

“Can you walk outside school so I don’t get stuck in there? Jax has an appointment in a few minutes.”

“Where do I go?”

“I’ll see you when you come out the entrance. I’m just sitting here in my car. Don’t cross the street.”

Two minutes later, traffic began to move and the sprinkles turned back into buckets.

My son was nowhere to be found and I was being sucked into the carpool gauntlet.

I called him on his cel, shouting frantically into the phone.

“WHERE ARE YOU??”

I couldn’t hear or see him anywhere. Knowing he wouldn’t return to campus under any circumstances—not to save his computer, leather shoes, or notebooks in the light nylon backpack—I slipped out of carpool using the bus exit and crept along the rain soaked road, searching.

There he was, across the street, clutching his backpack protectively to his chest, his once carefully neglected skater hair plastered over his eyes. I pulled over and rolled down the window. Rain drenched me in a flash. He dashed across the street and yanked open the door.

I’d like to say this was the point at which I apologized for asking him to meet me out there. Instead, I said this:

“Why did you cross the street? I told you not to cross the street. Give me your bag.” I rifled around the soggy notebooks, pulled out his dripping computer and wiped it off on my pants. I flipped it open and the dead battery sign flashed on the screen.

“Did you leave your charger at school?” I scolded.

He stared out the window, looking miserable and cold, raindrops running rivulets down his face. He didn’t speak to me. And who could blame him. Instead of a concerned mother, he’d found a hysterical shrew.

Finally on our way, I muttered a lame apology and dropped him at home. His brother and I and made it to the dentist 30 minutes late. Even still, we had time to spare before he was called in due to all the other late patients who’d been stuck in the storm. I’d have had plenty of time to pick up my younger boy at school, safe and dry.

The next morning, I offered a better apology, still not great.

“About yesterday: I’m so sorry for putting you in that situation and for how I reacted. You didn’t deserve that. I had a gut feeling I shouldn’t have taken that appointment, but I didn’t listen to it. You suffered the most for my mistake. I hope this experience will help us both to listen when our bodies are trying to steer us in the right direction.” (A better apology would have delivered the life lesson another time, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.)

If this is a touch too woofor you, check this one out: Marie Forleo, author of Everything is Figureoutable wrote about it in her newsletter this week too. She said her body told herto sell her house. She kept hearing get out…get out…get out for like three months. If you’re skeptical like my older son, assuming she’d simply made a smart Covid Times real estate decision, forget it. She’s got millions. This is her dream house. She called her real estate agent and put it on the market.

She explained that decades of experience have taught her to trust that voice, no matter how bad it looks on paper. She believes that we all have the ability to access a source of higher wisdom within us.

So. How do we do that?

Remember when I said I had just recently learned to listen to my body? I learned a technique called the Body Compass.

Martha Beck teaches that the mind and heart communicate through the body, the one medium they share. The body constantly sends the mind messages about our decisions. The bummer part is that we are socialized against listening to our own signals and conditioned to replace them with all the shoulds of our culture. Trying to gain acceptance out in the world and meet everyone else’s expectations takes us far away from the truth inside, sometimes silencing it entirely. We end up worrying far more about what others think we should do than what we knowwe should.

Lucky for us, there is a method that unlocks body wisdom and it’s available anytime.

 

THE BODY COMPASS

If you do this exercise just once, you gain useful information that will always be available to you. When you have a few minutes, get comfortable and run through these three body scans: neutral, positive and negative.

1. Neutral body scan

Relax in a seated position. Feel your feet on the ground, your hands resting on your thighs, your head above your shoulders. Starting with the soles of your feet, go SLOWLY, ask yourself how do your knees feel, how do your thighs feel, what do you feel in your pelvis, how’s your gut?Allow your attention to linger on each part of your body and breathe. Slowly work your way up, noting all the sensations without any judgment. If you feel nothing, that is also information. There is no right or wrong here.

2. Negative body scan

Bring to mind a negative experience you have had. Not the worst thing ever, just something you didn’t enjoy. A bad job, living somewhere you didn’t like, an argument with a friend. Think of that situation and engage your senses. Remember the sounds, smells, textures. Sink back into that memory. Then scan the body again and look for how it reacts to the situation. Start with the feet and go all the way to the head, searching for sensations in the body as it responds to the bad memory. Identify any tingling, heaviness, tension, pain without judgment or attempts to influence the feeling.

Next, name the sensation— it can’t be just “bad.” Mine is tightness in my chest. It’s a specific feeling that will show up when you consider something that is not right for you.

3. Positive Body Scan

Next, think of a great thing that has happened to you. Something simple, not a lot of social input because that can trigger our social self which just wants approval. Choose something in nature, with a pet, any peaceful moment. Immerse into the memory, feel the air, the physical sensations of that good thing, smell the air. Then do a body scan. How does your body respond to this happy memory? Go from the feet all the way up, out the hands. Take a deep breath and get a sense for the whole sensation—give it a name.

4. Take Your Compass Out for A Spin

Consider the items on your To Do List. With each task, check in with your body. Now that you have the references, you can go down the list and note whether your reactions are positive, negative or neutral. Using your references, you can now become aware of when you are moving into a situation that is not meant for you. When you notice how the items on your list make you feel, you have some choices to make. Maybe you want to stop going to PTA or something. 🙂


5. Watch Your Language

If you are like many of us and having a hard time tuning in to your body’s messages, try this. Stop using the phrases I can’t or I have to. There is no situation in which those two phrases are absolute. If you say instead, I choose not toor I choose to, you communicate that to your body. All it does is shift the mind, that something that is being imposed on you is STILL a choice. You still have some freedom. Just this one minor shift has been known to CURE DEPRESSION, it is that powerful. You might be living in a prison with the door wide open. Shifting language just that subtly will allow the body to more easily communicate it’s truth to you.

And that’s how you use the most reliable, most sophisticated tool you have to head in the direction of your best life.

Once you start paying attention to your body compass, you may be amazed to see how strong the signals are when you are turning towards something that is not right for you versus when you turn towards something that is perfect for you. And PS. when you hear it, don’t do what I did. LISTEN.

When we tune in to the clear messages inside and follow our true path, we get the sense that it’s all going to be okay.

Love,

Elizabeth

WRITING PROMPT: Have you ignored your intuition and come to regret it? Or do you listen like your body’s faithful servant? I’m interested!

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