I used to not trust my body. I was a slave to my overactive rational mind that said I needed to exercise more, eat less, do more, be more.
As a child, you trust your body. You may be so caught up in playing that you don’t want to listen to it, but you still trust it. You’re hungry, you eat. You’re tired, you rest. You want to play, you play. This is no adversarial relationship with yourself, there is simply congruence. You say what you mean. You feel what you feel.
You learn to manipulate as you get older as you start to see that some behaviors give you rewards and approval and others give you punishments and criticism. You start to shape your life to feed that fix you get when you receive positive acknowledgment. You notice you get more approval when you look a certain way so you start to manipulate your body to conform to this new standard. As such, you turn off your body’s guidance system and bow down to your rational mind. Thus begins the complications. Your body is the true mind and it will guide you to your perfect state of being if you’ll allow it to but you’ve placed your faith in things outside of you – this process or prescription for what it takes to look a certain way. It is not only betraying your body, it also betrays your spirit. You are so consumed by all this manipulation that you have lost your joy. That spark that once shone so brightly inside you has faded to a mere dim flicker.
You want it back but you’ve lost your way. You abandoned yourself and placed your sense of worth outside of you. As such, no matter what you do or what your body looks like, you’ll never be satisfied.
The way back is in. You have to regain your trust in your body and in yourself. You have to become intimate with your body like you would a new lover, asking with genuine curiosity- What do you desire? What do you fear? What turns you on? What stirs you up? What soothes you? What excites you?
And then, you must listen deeply with no agenda and you must trust what you hear, no matter how crazy it may seem. Your body doesn’t lie. It knows. It will guide you to states of optimal health, ecstasy, creativity, and tranquility.
The more you cultivate this deep trust in your body, the more confident you feel as you realize you have the best guidance system on the planet. Everything you desire is right there, within you. Now you see, it always has been.