The Messages from your Physical Body

“The importance of listening to what my body is asking for.”

I am grateful when I manage to stop and listen to my body’s messages, to what my body is trying to tell me, in a kind and empathetic way. We aren’t taught to do so in this fast-paced, productivity-obsessed world. Instead we are taught to pop another pill, have another coffee, keep on going, have another drink, anything but stopping!

The vast majority of the time, do you stop to notice your body, let alone thank it when it does a good, seemless job? It is normally when it “fails us” (or do we fail it?) that we, often irritated, begrudgingly stop and curse it for being an extremely inconvenient time to let us down. But when, honestly, will it ever be a good moment for it to show signs of exhaustion, unhealthy patterns and neglect...?!

Thank you beautiful body for these signs and messages. In these moments there is CONNECTION, there is AWARENESS. Sometimes (or mostly) such messages are inconvenient, but without my body I am going nowhere.

In functional medicine, symptoms are considered not to be the enemy, but in fact signs of a greater underlying problem. They are valuable messages that can wake us up to necessary shifts that need to be made to bring us back into alignment.

Such messages can be used in Gestalt therapy. The physical, mental and emotional bodies are deeply intertwined and influence each other profoundly.