The Simplicity of Listening to Your Body
By the time something has manifested as an ‘issue’ or ‘problem’ in your life it has already had an interesting life span. It has enjoyed life as a thought, an intuition, a gut feeling, a gentle nudge or a quiet whisper. How many times have you had an inkling about something that turned into a fully blown problem? When you just knew something was going to go pear-shaped?
Is it possible that many of your problems could have arisen because you didn’t listen to yourself?
The quiet whisper that originates with your Heart (your wiser, all knowing self) and is delivered by your body in the form of a ‘gut feeling’, emotion or symptom, is unfortunately something that you've been trained to dismiss, ignore or override.
In my client sessions I can safely say that ‘not being heard’ would make the ‘Top 5 Hit List’ of stress triggers and childhood wounds. When you think about a stressful memory from your childhood, like the time you felt sick but you were forced to go to school, you may recall feelings of sadness, frustration or anger. At the very root of this stress is something extraordinarily simple – you didn’t feel heard.
You want your voice, your feelings and your needs to be acknowledged, respected and valued. But when you don’t feel that others hear you, you’re left to make many dangerous assumptions: you’re not worth listening to, you don’t have anything important or valuable to say, you’re not important, your opinion doesn’t matter, your needs aren’t important, your feelings are insignificant or invalid, you’re just not worth it…the list goes on.
In fact, ‘not being heard’ could be the very foundation for many of the faulty or limiting beliefs you have about your self-worth.
But here’s something interesting. While you can spend hours in therapy trying to heal the self-worth wounds that result from others not listening to you, you might be missing the most stressful thing of all: your failure to listen to yourself.
You see, while a parent or authority figure ignored you in the past, the problem is not that they ignored you, the problem is that this how you learned to ignore yourself.
If your voice, your intuitions or emotions were dismissed, ignored or overridden, then this is what you learned to do. This way of relating to yourself has been ‘installed on the system’ so to speak and is playing out over and over again.
To make matters worse, you’re probably trying to change this program and resolve the stress of not being heard (and its related self-worth issues) by trying to make others listen to you. Are you having tantrums and demanding that people respect you? Are you pleading with others to listen to your opinions? Are you demanding that they be sensitive to your emotions? And…when they refuse to do any of this, are you feeling even more angry and frustrated?
The solution is simple: start listening to yourself.
Hearing yourself is healing yourself. When you are prepared to listen to your gut feelings, when you are prepared to stop dismissing or overriding your uncomfortable emotions, when you are prepared to respect your voice, you’ll find that you can heal whatever problem is going on for you.
You’re taking an important step towards changing the program. YOU are consciously deciding that your voice is worthy of being heard. This simple act of listening to yourself is an act of self-love, self-respect and self-compassion.
When you perform this loving act of listening to yourself, you’ll find that it doesn't matter if anyone else hears you.
How annoying is it when you answer someone’s question and they ignore it? Or they reject it as ‘wrong’? How often do you want to scream “WHY ASK ME THEN?!!”
This is exactly how your Inner Child or Body feels when you fail to listen to its needs, emotions or guidance. For example:
MIND: “Body, what would you like to eat?”
BODY: “Pineapple 🍍”
MIND: “You can’t have that. You’re a Blood Type O. The book I’m reading says it’s no good for us”
BODY: 😔
You’ve just failed to truly listen to your Body, you’ve rejected its needs and dismissed its desires. When you realise just how much YOU are not listening to yourself, it’s quite difficult to continue telling other people off for not listening to you. Humbling.
Getting better at listening to yourself.
Receptivity
Listening is a receptive state. Stephen Covey once said that most people don’t listen with an intent to understand but with an intent to reply. Often you’re not fully listening because you are thinking – in the form of judging, analysing, seeking solutions, recalling memories or thinking about how you are going to reply. Being receptive is a Yin energy of passivity and we often judge passivity as lacking power, so we avoid it, believing we need to direct or project (Yang energy) in order to be powerful. It's time to start practicing being powerful in your passivity. The ability to hold a space of non-judgment, of innocence, detachment and curiosity and to allow information to flow to you is a state of vulnerability, it is a state of totally trusting yourself and it is immensely powerful.
Openness
Accompanying receptivity is a state of openness – of listening without judgement, assumptions or preconceived notions. You simply can’t listen openly if you presume to already know the answer. I remember a Kinesiology teacher once saying “if you’re no longer surprised by the results of your muscle testing you may not be doing it properly.” True openness means listening without overlaying what you think you hear, what you think you should hear or what you want to hear. Approach listening with innocence – like you’re about to hear something you have never heard before and prepare to be surprised.
Connection
How can you tell if you're in a receptive state and openly listening? By simply noticing how you feel. Do you feel connected, content and in synch with yourself? What is your body telling you? Remember the Body (child) is an aspect of your consciousness that speaks its own language – it is not a construct of the rational mind, so resist the urge to assume or even ‘make up’ what you think the Body is saying. Just listen. No thinking is required. When you have listened you will feel connected, grounded and in harmony. Simple. When you haven’t listened openly, your body will definitely let you know!
Taking responsibility for your value.
When you heal yourself through hearing yourself, there’s a good chance that you’ll stop needing others to listen to you in order to feel important or worthy. You’ll feel less irritated when others don’t listen because you can see that their inability to listen to you is NOT PERSONAL.
And here’s three questions to help you release the personalisation:
1) Do I trust that what I say is important, even if no-one else but me hears it?
2) Am I truly hearing myself and honouring myself?
3) And am I prepared to release other people from the responsibility of valuing me by listening to me?
HAPPY LISTENING!
Want to refine your ability to truly LISTEN to yourself from a place of clarity, curiosity and compassion?
This is EXACTLY what KINESIOLOGY SELF-TESTING can do. Join me for an in-depth 2 Day Course learning practical skills that will revolutionise your relationship with yourself and your body.
APRIL 12th & 13th in BLACKWOOD