How We Have Strayed from Listening to Our Bodies

We live in a world where we are taught from a young age to ignore our bodies. Children are some of the most intuitive people in our society, yet overtime we train them to mute the messages their body is sending them and excuse their intuition.

We have come to be so distracted by pressures around work and success; drive for productivity; our phones and social media; and the “go-go” culture of North America that we may completely miss what our body is trying to tell us.

We push just a little bit longer on a road trip before we stop to use the bathroom. We engage in fasting, pushing back on our hunger as long as we can. We go the gym even when exhausted after a long, strenuous work day. We stay up late to fit in “just one more episode” when our brain really needs to sleep.

If you think about each sensation you experience in your body, all of them could be considered a “message to decode”.

For example:

Bloating could suggest digestive concerns (like constipation, gut sensitivity or gastroparesis), hormonal fluctuations (like menstruation), fullness, and many other physical factors.

Hunger & Fullness

Hunger and fullness are bodily messages — ones our world has really targeted with a stamp of negativity.

The basis of hunger is to communicate the need for refueling.

However, everywhere we look there are people being celebrated for their “willpower” and delaying eating. For some, the sensation of hunger is rewarding or an accomplishment. For others, their ability to tolerate hunger may be what sets them apart from others.

Somewhere along the way, we reinforced the idea that acting on hunger or our cravings is bad for us.

The basis of fullness is to communicate our fuel has been topped off and we are ready to stop eating.

However, we tell kids to stay at the table until their plate is empty — even when they’re claiming to be full. We eat in front of the TV or our phones, distracting us from how full we are getting. For some, they restrict their intake during the day which leads to binge eating at night — they may eat faster than normal, which does not allow their brain to communicate their fullness ‘on time’, leading to overfullness.

Exercise & Exhaustion

When I ask my clients other reasons to exercise — aside from controlling appearance, shape and weight — they are often stuck on what to say. It has become something used to control the way our body looks to others, more than a functional instrument we live inside.

Exercise is meant to feel good — both mentally and physically.

In fitness culture, a common saying is “no pain, no gain”. While minor soreness is to be expected after some forms of exercise, pain is probably not what is best for our body. Pain is typically a message from our body that something is wrong.

We may push ourselves to the point of dread or exhaustion; our routine is no longer stimulating our brain, or it is overworking our body and using up all our energy. We could listen to our body and incorporate an unplanned rest day, or switch up the type of exercise we are engaging in to find it more stimulating again. Instead, in these moments we often push ourselves to exercise anyway, otherwise we feel like we are failing. Sometimes exercise takes time and energy away from other areas of life that are also good for us — like social connectedness or getting enough sleep.

Body Respect

You may not love or agree with every person on this planet, and yet you still show them respect. We do not need to like our body to treat it more gently.

I like to think of listening to our bodies as a form of “body respect”. We show up for it with the things it needs to function well — like hydration, rest, nourishment, movement — without being rigid or critical. We don’t treat it differently based on how we’ve eaten or what we look like — how we feel about it does not change how we take care of it.

Body respect is an ongoing practice that we manage throughout the course of our lives. It is an interactive relationship — the more we show up for our body, the more it shows up for us.