Your body is always sending you signals (read: ALARMS). We just tend to stop listening:
Sitting at your desk too long? Neck feels strained, back feels sore
Driving in the car? Hips get tight, lower back feels stiff
Eat something that didn’t serve you? Tummy feels “off”, body feels bloated
Looking at Social Media? You might start feeling sad, envious, bored, irritated… for no apparent reason.
Hungry? Your tummy rumbles, you might get short or feel a slight headache
But are we listening?
There are teeny tiny messages that your body is telling you at any given moment. Now it’s time for us to pay closer attention and learn to put the puzzle pieces together.
Here’s an example (a personal one I might add!):
“If I eat something at night that has vegetable oil in it (or has been cooked in vegetable oil), when I wake up in the morning (without fail) I feel a bit “yucky” just under my ribs in my tummy.
It is a VERY specific feeling (a hard one to describe!), but I know it when I feel it, and I KNOW what has contributed to it!
*** This is the KEY! ***
Tracking it back to something… there is always a cause, reason, or antecedent“
Once we begin to pay closer attention, we can then PAUSE when we feel the messages (or ALARMS as I like to refer to them).
- Sometimes the Alarm arrives as we are in the middle of the activity as a request for change. Alarm sounds: move now, stop doing that, change position, etc. Immediate relief!
- Other times, Alarms arrive after the fact – such as in my example above. Though these alarms can’t help us in the immediate moment, they serve as a stark reminder of the consequence of certain choices, behaviours, or encounters. The message is to avoid “it” in the future.
Take some time to notice your Alarm, then track back to the reason it is going off.
There is no Right or Wrong here.
Just paying closer attention and making micro-adjustments as we go along our day.
