Why “Listen to Your Body” Might Actually Be Bad Advice
First of all…
I love “listen to your body.” As a woman emerging from the cocoon of confusing dietary suggestions and appearance-focused “health” and “wellness” chatter, “listen to your body” has been a great source of comfort for me, a reminder of an inner “knowing” I’ve had all along and needn’t search for in any “What I Eat In a Day” or “How To Build Muscle & Lose Fat At The Same Time” article.
But for the woman still in the cocoon, for the woman still a caterpillar — still swallowing the narratives even though they give her stomach aches but not knowing how to stop — “listen to your body” is useless.
My body? The thing I am desperately trying to change at pretty much every waking hour of the day? The thing I want to be something entirely different than what it is, thereby neglecting and ignoring its existence entirely? How can I listen to something I am trying to manipulate away? My body is telling me two opposites all the time: eat pizza, f*ck it all… but also ew, these lumps. My body is telling me it hurts, but it still wants. It aches, but it still yearns. It’s full, but still feels empty.
When we start with “listen to your body” as a remedy for healing decades long generationally passed and culturally reinforced body ideals, we’re saying, “hey fly this spaceship— good luck!” We’re saying, “Nevermind your body is basically an inconsolable child with every right to be upset— just listen to it.”
“Oh, and if you can’t, you’re just not trying hard enough and you can’t sit with us blissed-out-organic-non-GMO-girlies in our matching sets.”
“Listen to your body” is not where we start. It is where we end.
We start with teach. Learn. Practice. Do. Try. Ask. Read. Fail.
We start with the work so we can live in the flow.
We start with the hard so we can be equipped for the soft.
If our bodies are to be the things to which we listen, we better make them trustworthy guides. And so this is where we begin. Not with the Listening, but with the Making This Body Something Worth Listening To.
Women sarcastically say, “ my body tells me to eat Chick Fil A” “my body tells me to sleep”. But beneath the sarcasm is just a Truth afraid to be seen. Maybe your body is telling you such things because it’s a toddler with not yet the skills to say otherwise. Maybe your body is telling you such things because it has not practiced another way of being. Maybe your body is telling you these things because its needs are so unmet.
Love it. Teach it. Educate it. Practice it. Then listen to it.
