Listen to Your Body: Know Your Body’s Intuition

Listening to Your Body's Signal

When your body needs food, you feel hunger. When it needs hydration, you feel thirsty. And when something is wrong in your body, you feel pain or discomfort. 

So it makes perfect sense that when things are out of balance and address what it needs, your body is going to react in a myriad of ways to get your attention. 

But if you're having trouble getting those messages, what can you do?

1. Slow Down

This is rule number one when it comes to listening to your body.

If you're always trying to do too many things at once, you're simply not going to have enough time or silence to hear what your body is trying to say.

Unplug from life. Turn off the screens. Disconnect with the busyness.

And if you must do something, go to a yoga class. Just skip the one with the loud music and rapid movement. Find a traditional class where they encourage stillness and going within. 

When given this opportunity, the body will respond.

2. Build a Meditation Practice

One of the single most effective ways to learn to listen to your body is to start a meditation practice. Think you can't meditate? 

Like anything else, it gets easier with practice. And you don't have to start big.

To begin, simply find a comfy place to sit. Sit in any way that you choose. Then set a timer for a realistic amount of time you're willing to sit there. Maybe 3 or 4 minutes to start. 

Close your eyes and take in a few deep inhales, letting them out slowly. Then starting at the tip of the head, take a scan of the body all the way down to the toes.

During this scan, take mental note of areas of tightness or stickiness. Are your shoulders stiff? Maybe your hips feel tight. Is your head heavy or your belly too full?

When the timer is done, jot down what you were feeling. It might surprise you how much your body tells you when given the opportunity to be still and quiet.

Now imagine how much awareness you'll gain if you do this every day.

3. Opt for Mindful Eating

When you are truly physically hungry, your body will tell you what it needs.

Unfortunately, too many of us don't wait until we have that sensation. Instead, we eat a stack of onion rings or a bag of candy to fill our emotional hunger. And then we're left feeling heavy and lethargic.

So wait until you're actually hungry. Chances are that your body will choose something that will sustain you rather than exhaust you.

4. Relax and Practice Breathing Exercise

When you breathe deeply, your body sends a signal to your brain to calm down and relax. In fact, breathing exercise is one of the best ways to lower your stress. So when you are feeling stress, sit down and try to breathe slowly and deeply. When you try to relax you are allowing your body to provide you with mental clarity, have a better sleep, improve immune system and also digestion. 

Why Listening To Your Body Is important?

Our physical and mental health matters. It's typical to feel aches and pains, although this is common we always find a way to treat it so we can move on and get back to our routine. That means you are not listening to your body, you are just trying to silence the symptoms at that moment. There is always a better way to manage our health. 

Focus on the symptoms that actually make you feel. Take note of how life gets affected and try to figure out how to target this to make it better inside and out. Pay attention to what the symptoms trigger. Sometimes those common aches and pains are signals of underlying health illness. When it comes to health, prevention is better than cure.

Take It Easy

In order to listen to your body, you need to slow down or be still long enough to hear what it has to say. 

Then, once you learn to listen for the messages and respond accordingly, you'll be amazed at how much better you feel.

It's really that simple.

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