The body never lies

You meet a person for the first time. Everyone’s raving about him and how he’s built a successful empire with a business model he designed.  And yet, for some reason, you feel uneasy about the whole thing.  There is something about that business model that is not in sync with your own inner compass, your integrity.  Everybody’s doing business with him, so would you do too?

We have been conditioned to weigh the pros and cons of a situation before jumping into it.  To think and use our brain to process information and make sense of it.  Often, we come up with decisions based on pure rationalization and logic dictates we follow that, even when we feel quite the opposite.  Events confront us everyday that make us doubt if we’ve acted on the right decisions.

My previous job as a business teacher in an international school in The Hague included mentoring a group of students.  It was at times heartbreaking to see some of them so tortured at their business studies.  Asked if they were really interested to pursue their marketing courses, they say yes but everything about their body language gave them away.  It was as if they were trying to convince themselves more than me. So why did they go ahead and choose a business course?  Because it was what their parents wanted for them.

So they drag themselves everyday to school, lacking in motivation and their marks showed it; out of sync with their truths. Because some of them would rather study fashion design or photography.  Oh, if only they could follow their hearts even if it meant risking their parents’ disappointments.  What follows is a string of depressions and unexplained illnesses, feigned or real.

A regular check-up with the optometrist turns into one of those introspective moments that make you examine closely the consequences of your actions.  Of seeing how you push yourself, your body into overdrive until you collapse from exhaustion.  It makes you realize that maybe you should have paid attention to that constant irritation with the lenses in your eyes.  Then maybe it wouldn’t have turned into an inflammation in your inner eyelid had you given it the needed attention right away.

We’ve read enough articles telling us to quiet our brains because that non-stop chatter tunes us out to the other parts we should have been keenly listening to instead. Sadly, we don’t pay enough attention to what our bodies tell us. When we feel pain, what do we do? We push it aside and ignore it until one day the pain becomes unbearable and that’s the only time we run to the doctor.  We prioritize work and meetings to fill up our days, social events at nights and online surfing in between.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer, author of The Invitation, wrote:

“I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself.”

Society has enough demands on you that you should stop feeling guilty if you don’t attend that networking event or volunteer for another charitable cause because your loyalty should be to yourself first.

Learn to heed your body and tune in to what it’s telling you.  All the languages it speaks: the sinking feeling at the pit of the stomach, the pounding heart when you’re in a dark alley, the physical gnawing pain at the lower rib cage, the ringing in your ears, or the discomfort running through your veins when you’re in the company of someone or in a setting you are not particularly interested in.  Most importantly, yield in to it and take action when it speaks.

TR Duncan, a dear friend and a lovely being inside and out, who has taught me much about compassionate, non-violent communication, succinctly puts it:

“Getting into our bodies and having the capacity to articulate what our needs are is a life gift at any age.”