The body is something I wonder about daily, and teach about regularly. I wonder about what it needs, how it’s doing, what it’s trying to tell me. I think about how it interacts with other bodies, and how it is a portal into Something Greater.

Over the years there has been no end of things to learn about when it comes to the body; from anatomical and physiological information to the very immediate and direct experience of being in my own body as I feel what I feel and intuit what I intuit. All the while learning to take better care of it, and to listen to it ever more closely.

My experience with all of this has been that the body is one of the greatest teachers of all times. Often, a very exacting one. What I mean by this is, you cannot BS your body. It’s far too wise to be taken in by the mind and all of its machinations.

Lately, I have been experiencing a new awareness that has been calling me into an even greater understanding of this most miraculous, confounding and ultimately, inspiring relationship.

I will call what has been happening, “The symptoms that arise not so much from a physical basis but as a way to keep you in the here and now.” In other words, sensations built to keep you at home inside of your own form when you would otherwise not be inhabiting your body at all.

Leaving ourselves is something we all do when we put things into our bodies that don’t work or stay up long past it’s signals for sleep or watch things on the screens that frighten and enrage us. You have to be outside of yourself to put up with that. Otherwise, you would stop.

Back to what I’ve been noticing. I started to see there were times I was having transient sensations that seemed to have no physiological basis that I or my practitioners could identify. I am versed enough at this point in my relationship to my body to know that it can take time to discover root causes to bodily expressions. Something I am no stranger to. But this was different.

And while I know some would go straight to fear, believing there was some lurking and hidden malady going undetected, I know it’s not that either.

I also know how powerful our minds and emotions can be when it comes to creating symptoms in the body. A basic biological Truth that has long been either overlooked or pathologized in our culture. As in, it’s all in your head.

But it’s not that either.

What this has felt like is whenever I notice myself off in some made-up scenarios in the mind, some negative or wishful thinking that things were otherwise or some indulgent and destructive walk down the memory lane of the past, my body will do something to get my attention. It could be a twinge. Sometimes I’ll bump into something or drop something.

It seems a plausible hypothesis to me that we need reminders to keep us in the here and now. The only place by the way that the body exists. So while the mind can go traipsing off into the future or the past, the body is alway here, and I think it wants nothing more than our minds to be here too. So what better way to get our attention than through a little discomfort?

Because here’s the thing. As soon as we experience the discomfort, guess where we are? Back in the present moment tending to whatever is happening. We have all had that experience of something hurting and how it pulls us right to where it hurts. Back into the here and now of the body. Our bodies are wise enough to know exactly how to get the attention of the mind. It’s like a partnership where one partner knows exactly what buttons to push to get the other to pay attention.

So while there are many, many things to consider when the body is not well, I’m adding to my list of considerations that maybe there are times when what I am experiencing is my body nudging me to be here. It’s way of saying “Use me as an anchor. Return to me and I will teach you about being here. Then we can be together where the wholeness you most yearn to experience resides.”

Every day we get to decide the quality of our lives based on one thing, and one thing only, our thoughts. As the old adage goes, your thoughts create your beliefs, your beliefs create your habits, your habits create your actions, and your actions create your life.

But in order to make use of this reality, we must first know what it is we’re even thinking about to begin with. This is not as easy as it sounds.

We have on average 60,000 thoughts each day, with the vast majority of them being negative, what we have been thinking about for years, and here’s the kicker, aren’t even aware of. Our thoughts being so “comfortable” and familiar to us, that we are mostly unconscious of what is going on in our own minds. Other than maybe, we’re not so comfortable after all.

In other words, not only are we often unaware of what we’re thinking, we believe all, or most of our thoughts, to be fact. Whether that thought is about who we are, who others are or how the world works; insisting that the thoughts we think, are in fact, the truth. Even when our current lived situation may be pointing to another reality entirely. Even when our thoughts are creating suffering.

This past week I caught myself in one of these places. Struggling with a lingering cough for several weeks, in a moment of rare clarity over this, I realized that with the exception of a few select moments, I have been locked in a very old, very habitual thought pattern without even knowing it. Every day for weeks now, I have been thinking the same version of the same thing over and over again.

In my world, what I think about manifests itself in my life. In this case, being the health of my body. Specifically, an unwanted cough that keeps repeating over and over again; wearing me thin on many levels and being driven by my repetitive thinking.

What was I thinking about? What has my mind been locked on? The fear that if I cough around other people, they will be disturbed and that I will be made to pay somehow for their disturbance. My thoughts have been telling me that to disturb another is to risk negative and even dangerous consequences of some sort or another. Maybe they will form an opinion of me I don’t feel is true. Maybe they will aggress on me with a cutting word. Maybe I’ll be kicked out of the relationship, or even emotionally annihilated.

I know this last part may seem overly dramatic. But it’s not. To the psyche that was forged in childhood, where all of our beliefs around safety, survival and belonging are formed, to fall out of the good graces of another, i.e the grown-ups in your life, is to risk everything from disapproval to the fear you won’t be loved or cared for.

Which is why so many of us, without even knowing it, are enslaved by our childhood beliefs about who we need to be. Unless, of course, we choose to pay attention to what we are thinking about and consciously update those thoughts to reflect what we really want.

If this makes sense to you, create a new habit of thinking by catching your thoughts across the day while asking yourself a question or two. What am I thinking about right now, and why? What does it remind me of? Is this thought true? Is it even mine?

I will say that when you tap into those thoughts that feel like your safety is at stake, like my fear thoughts that a cough will disturb someone enough to make them want to hurt me somehow, there will be resistance to being with that thought.

Deep in our own psyches, at a very unconscious level, is the belief that some of the thoughts we think and the behaviors we engage in, are what has kept us alive, safe, belonging and able to fit in. And on some level for many of us, this idea would not be untrue given our past circumstances.

But at some point, maybe we are at a place where we can begin to deeply question if it’s true that coughing is dangerous, and whether or not it is still worth it to manage yourself to keep another from being upset.

Personally, I am coming to the conclusion that it’s worth the risk to challenge something that keeps me trapped in a false sense of safety. Not to mention how at odds it puts me with my own body and my right to exist exactly as I am. No matter what anyone else might think.

Each morning, I begin my daily practice in exactly the same way. I sit. I literally just sit. I breathe. I look out the window. I might sip hot water. But basically, I sit and do nothing as I allow myself to be exactly as I am. Whatever that might be. Sad. Unwell. Frustrated. Inspired. None of it matters as I do the most profound thing I will do all day; sit and do nothing.

What would possess a person to do nothing? 

The discovery that when all the mud settles, the mud being the difficult and troubling thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations threatening to take over, a sense of spaciousness washes over me; creating enough space for me to see, clearly and effortlessly, what is real and what is true.  

From this spaciousness, a greater connection to my body and its truths becomes available to me. This means that any problem I have, any solution I am seeking, or any balm needed for my broken heart or suffering body, is there. Always.

I first discovered this practice when my mind would kick into high gear in an absolute frenzy over everything I needed and wanted to get done after my kids had gone off to school. My mind hounded me about how much I had to do and in what order, how fast, and how well. It was maddening. So much so that I couldn’t settle into yoga or meditation because the demands of my mind were that intense.

Initially I sat, doing nothing, in protest. It was my way of saying to the thoughts, I want out. I am not playing anymore. I will not negotiate with you. 

And then, at some point, what began as an exasperated refusal to participate with an agitated mind, turned into a portal transporting me to a whole new universe I didn’t even know was accessible with so little effort. It turns out, I didn’t need to hack my way into the ease and peace I was seeking. It was already there.

Letting the mud settle does take time and some getting used to. Some days, it only takes a few minutes for everything to settle down. Other days, it takes a lot longer. But even on the days my mind pushes me to get going, to do something for god’s sake, I know better now. I know that in doing nothing, everything I have ever hoped for will show up when given the space it needs.

So sit back. Keep your feet on the Earth. Feel the warmth of the sun or the coolness of the air. Let your breath be where you put your attention. Breathe in a way that allows your body to be big enough to include all of what you are experiencing in this moment. 

Think of a candle melting and allow yourself to flow down in the same way. Follow that image over and over and over again until you feel weighted in a pleasant and settled way. When you feel like the mud has settled, even a little bit, notice what reveals itself to you by way of what is real and true in your body in this moment.

A little caveat. To the busy, stressed out, divided, and fear-based mind this practice can feel like a death. It is. But it’s only the death of things that needs to go anyway. The death of anything you would be better off without; like all the ways that your mind is unfair and unkind to your body as you unnecessarily fret over imagined problems. So when the mind screams and screams and starts rolling out all the heavy artillery around what a slacker-loser you are for not doing more, nod your head and continue to sit, knowing that when all the mud settles out, you will be left at home in your own body.

This blog was excerpted from my book Trusting Your Body: The Embodied Journey of Claiming Sacred Responsibility for Your Health & Well-Being 

If you are interested in purchasing the book from a site that donates to local book stores, please go to: Bookshop.org

Otherwise, it can also be purchased on Amazon

Out on a run this morning through new fallen snow, it occurred to me that we are at that time of year when so many people’s well-intentioned resolutions begin to fade and fall away; leaving many of us convinced that we are weak and without willpower. That we are incapable of making lasting change.

As someone who now finds herself in the position of having made many changes over the years that not only  stuck, but that also got richer, deeper and truer over time, I spent the run wondering why that was so. The wondering took me all the way back to being twenty-five years old and thirty pounds overweight. To a time where I hated myself for being “fat” and for the cruel ways that I was treating myself.

At some point I just got so fed up with the diets, the use of food as medication and the way I felt about myself, that I made two radical choices. To get rid of the scale, and to figure out why I was using food to beat myself up with. It was scary to let go of the scale. Without that constant external number policing me, it felt like things might get even worse. More out of control. That without that constant reminder of either my failings or of the longed for number, I wouldn’t know what to do.

But that’s not what happened.

What happened was, as soon as I made the choice to stop policing myself with the scale, some internal “weight” lifted. I felt freer. Over time, a new kind of relationship began to form with myself where less and less was I turning to something outside of me to tell me whether I was good or bad. The less I was in the habit of thinking in those terms, the better I began to feel. The more I began to trust myself.

The self-trust that began to emerge after I ditched the scale, provided the foundation for exploring why I was using food the way I was. Not from a punitive place, as in “There’s something wrong with me,” but more from a place of recognizing that there just had to be a reason why I was doing what I was doing.

And there was. As a matter of fact, some very good and sane reasons why I was doing what I was doing.

Though it took a long time to get to it and to unwind from it, all along the way, I was learning how to be in relationship to myself where I was moving towards something, as opposed to away from something. In other words, instead of trying not to be overweight or hating on myself, I began to turn towards learning about myself and what it was that I needed. What it was that had been missing and that had been driving me to do what I was doing with food.

The more I moved towards myself (as opposed to what I didn’t want), the better my life became.

Which brings me to why so many of our intentions just do not work. When we see the diet or the program as something short-lived and separate from who we are and how we will live beyond a particular time period, we define ourselves according to something fleeting and in the direction of what we are trying to move away from. In essence, whenever we are focused on “the scale” as opposed to putting ourselves in the position of being with ourselves, understanding how it is that we tick, what we need, what is not working, we will never feel integrated enough to follow through with the very best of our intentions.

As long as we are in relationship to ourselves from a distance where we are imposing something on ourselves as opposed to knowing ourselves, we are tied to what we do not want. From this place we are at war with ourselves as we avoid dealing with the underlying reasons of why it is so difficult for us to care for ourselves. In so doing, we leave the most important parts out; dooming us to fail because we are not all there or all on board.

But when we begin to get interested in ourselves and why we do what we do, not only do we get the “results” we want, we come to find that the results pale in comparison to what is possible in our lives. For example, all I wanted all those years ago was to lose weight. Which happened only when I stopped trying to coerce myself. But that was nothing compared to the way that my mind and emotions began to change to the positive and to what was possible. To the way that my life has taken me on a decades long journey of exploring what it means to feed myself and others in life-affirming ways. And to the deep, deep understandings I hold about myself; who I am and what it is that makes me tick.

All because I decided to ditch my scale.

As we begin the New Year with the best of intentions, if we hope to be “successful” at whatever we are resolving to change, we must become intimately aware of what is motivating us. Especially when it comes to resolutions that include the body.

For example, if our resolution is to lose weight or to exercise more, and the underlying motivation is to control the body, force it into looking a certain way, or if the unconscious sentiment behind your actions is fear, loathing or disgust of your body, your intention will be doomed from the start. This is not something a lot of us tune into because this is not what we think about when it comes to making changes in our bodies.

Whether we know it or not, we are deeply influenced by the western perspective based in invasion and control (think surgery, pharmaceuticals and all of the programs that seek to exert dominion over the body). But is this actually what our bodies most need, or what it is that brings them into balance? When we are willing to pay attention, we see that the answer has to be no. Look around at all the failed attempts to cure lifestyle-related illnesses by this approach, and it becomes obvious this is not what our bodies most need in order to to be well.

The truth is, you are one, whole living organism with every single part of you touching and affecting every other part of you. There is nothing going on in your mind that your body doesn’t know about, and nothing going on in your body that your mind doesn’t know about. When we deny or ignore the inseparable and seamless reality of who we are when it comes to our bodies, we miss out on more than we can imagine.

If this is true, and for just a moment imagine that it is, do you think you can trick your body into something? Do you think you can deny it what it needs and it won’t notice or care? Do you think you can hate it or be afraid of it and it won’t know how you truly feel about it?

Deciding to go on a diet is easy. Committing to a new program is nothing compared to what it takes to get to know how you actually feel about your body, and what it is that drives the choices you make. Make no mistake about it. It is a gigantic, lifelong endeavor to find your way back to recognizing that how you feel about your own body, and what you do to it, is how you feel about all of life. Including your own.

Ultimately, how you feel about your own body is how you feel about yourself.

This is deep and potentially scary to contemplate. It is no small thing to come face to face with the realization that how you feel about your own body reveals your sentiments towards yourself; how valuable or precious you believe you are. Or not. 

And that is why you cannot B.S. your body. Because it is you, and you, know how you, feel about you. Even if you have lost track of this consciously, somewhere deep inside is the knowing of when your actions come from a place of love, and when they come from a place of trying to get yourself to conform based in reasons that are less than loving.

So as you step forward this year, or any time you are looking to make a change, check in with yourself asking “What is driving this desire for change?”

It’s important to note that we sometimes do make a change out of fear, like when we get a scary wake-up call related to health. While the fear may be the shock we need to jumpstart a much needed process, at some point, it will cease to carry you forward in a life-affirming way if that remains your sole focus.

While arduous at times, learning to value yourself will always win out over behavior modification. Meaning, that while the body might momentarily seem to be submitting to the stick of the “carrot and stick approach,” it will be short-lived, unsatisfying, and worst of all, missing the very point of your existence.

If this resonates, you might consider checking out an upcoming program I’m offering called The Healer Within.