I did my best to look after my transport system, of course. I'm a responsible car owner, too- regular oil changes, tires rotated and balanced, new hoses and belts as needed.
It annoyed the hell out of me that in spite of my dutiful care, my transport system kept developing problems. Allergies. Chronic conditions like asthma. Irritable bowel syndrome. I treated each one. I avoided "bad" foods. Pumped corticosteroids into my lungs. Sought out supplements, exercises, treatments, medicines that would stave off the misery or end the symptoms. I wasn't very happy with my body, making me do all that.
I grew obese. So I dieted, fasting one day in fourteen, reducing my total intake, and virtually eliminating fat and sugar from my intake, replacing them with 'healthy' stuff like fat-free, artificially-sweetened cookies, diet soda, and fat-free sour cream.
I lost a lot of weight, then became an exercise junkie to keep it off. I was at the gym a minimum of five hours a day, by the time the madness finally crashed and left my endorphin-exhausted, energy-depleted transport system more unbalanced than ever.
I just assumed the random chance of genetics had issued me a dud. Kept taking care of it the best I could, and concentrated on the "real me" that lived inside the bonebox at the top. Fighting the jerkbrain. Trying to strengthen the parts of me- spirit, soul, whatever term seemed to work best- that kept motivating me to continue living, continue fighting on, toward the light.
Then I acquired a new ally.
A couple of years ago I came up with an injury, a painful back/hip related pain that nearly immobilized me. And the healer I connected with did a great job of helping with the condition. But she also did something else: She kept asking me what my body was telling me.
WTF?
What, after all, can one's body tell one? "I'm hungry. I'm horny. Stop doing that, it hurts. Do more of that, it feels good. Time to sleep." As far as I was concerned, that was pretty much the limit of my body's vocabulary.
But this healer, who'd done so much for my pain, seemed to think it had a larger vocabulary than that-- deeper, and broader. And she turned out to be right. It hasn't been easy to learn this new language. The signal is complex, and teasing out specific messages can be a challenge.
Here's the surprise I got, when I started actually listening: My body is complicated, way beyond the mechanical functions of physiology. All the systems are interlinked, and they affect each other in ways that continually surprise me.
AND, my body is in a relationship! Who knew? It's not just transpo for my brain. They have a much deeper and more intricate relationship than I ever dreamed. My body knows more about what's going on in my mind than I do, sometimes. It tries to tell me, and now that I'm listening, I've been making strides toward health in leaps and bounds. (And this is just the beginning. I haven't even been at it very long. Wow.)
At first, I used to worry about "false messages." After all, misinterpreting what I thought my body wanted had gotten me into trouble, in the past. Plus, I just wasn't sure my brain could grasp and interpret accurately what my body was saying, and get it correctly into my conscious comprehension. Because, well... jerkbrain, after all. It's been trying to kill me for years.
But it turns out that the body seems to know more about what's going on with my brain, than the other way around. Gradually I'm getting to where I have a pretty high confidence level.
Just recently, I experienced a complete and useful exchange.
For several months I've been recovering from a nasty condition colloquially called "frozen shoulder." Docs know it as "adhesive capsulitis." One of the frustrating things about it is that there's no single, clear, A-results-in-B type cause. There are any number of "contributing factors" that may influence it- injury, disease, prolonged immobilization, and so on. But basically, it just happens.
So this morning I reached down to put something in the wastebasket, and my brain noted that I am definitely recovering. A few months ago, I would not have been able to make that precise motion- reaching- at all. Even a few weeks ago, it would have produced a discouraging amount of pain. This morning, only a slight twinge.
As I started thinking about that recovery, I was doing that kind of mind-body awareness (there aren't really words to describe it) that constitutes me 'listening to my body.' And it told me this:
"You're doing way better with reaching."
And I realized it wasn't talking about the kind of reaching that muscles facilitate.
A person's reach should exceed their grasp. But when you keep reaching in the wrong direction- objects of desire, gratifications, unearned rewards, control over the uncontrollable- and you fail to learn from denial and failure, again and again?
You have a reaching disorder. Should I be surprised that this disorder mirrored itself in my body?
This knowledge "clicked" into place in a way that told me I had made a good and useful connection in understanding how my mind and body interrelate.
So my new insight is: It's not what you think.
It's not what you 'feel,' (in the sensorium) either.
It's the place where they come together. That's where I'll find the useful information, and it's up to me to listen, and use it.