Learn How to Listen to Your Body

Learn How to Listen to Your Body

Familiarity breeds contempt, or so the saying goes. Well, when it comes to listening and connecting with the body, many people are ignorantly unaware. It’s often a case of just getting used to yourself and how you feel by taking notice of what your body is trying to tell you. If you feel you are out of touch with your physical self or need to reconnect after an injury or illness, then you may need to learn how to listen to your body.

The concept of listening to your body simply means that you are allowing the physical signals to get through the firewall of your mind and penetrate your thoughts. Your body is a well-engineered machine and when things are not quite right alarm bells may start ringing. The question is: when they do go off, do you hear them? Often these signals are felt in the body in terms of physical symptoms and ultimately through illness and disease.

How do you feel?

Most people update not just their social media status but also their own running log book in their minds. You may wake up and inform yourself that you feel great, or that you feel bent out of shape, for example. Without turning into a hypochondriac it might also be beneficial to do a scan of your body with your mind too. Check in with old complaints and look out for new signs that register. Part of this physical check could be an emotional one too, as feelings affect the body hugely. If you’re recovering from an illness or injury this process is essential so that you can monitor your progress, albeit on an instinctual level.

Learning to listen

Ask any serious athlete about whether they listen to their body and they will without doubt say that they have to in order to be able to move forward and improve their performance. But how do you actually do it? Unless you’re in an extremely targeted training regime you are not necessarily going to notice small physical fluctuations and reactions. What you can do though is take time to sit quietly and allow your mind to focus on different parts of your body. Do this before you exercise – during and after too. Quieten the mind so that the body has a chance to be heard.

Why is it important to listen?

Part of recovery and rehabilitation is to be able to connect and listen to your body so that you can not only feel what the right level of movement is but potentially prevent further injury in the future. It’s all too easy to push yourself too far because your mind and competitive spirit is racing ahead, or simply because you’re just not responding to the physical signs. We’ve all seen people burning red in the sun, either blissfully unaware of the sunburn to come or simply not picking up on the burning sensation across their skin.

At the same time, an injury or illness can sometimes knock your confidence and make you over conscious. When you have a weakness in one part of your body, you might be overcompensating in another – and this can lead to instability and a lack of balance. In turn this can result in even more physical issues.

If you listen to your body now, what is it trying to communicate to you? How could this help you improve your lifestyle or recover from a setback?