This is part 2 of
a Saturday-long Conference I attended with Adam Young
and a guest speaker for the month of MARCH. This one was entitled:
"Understanding What Your Body is Telling You." I will be breaking this down in parts. I am attending one of these
on the first Saturday of each month for a year and taking notes for my
own references.
1. Your body is speaking to you. The Wisdom your body holds is incredibly important in healing from trauma and growing into who you are. It speaks to you through physical sensations. Throughout the day, your body is experiencing different physical sensations. That is what it means to be an embodied human being. You may not be aware of those sensations. Or, there will be other times, you are all too aware that your body is experiencing those sensations. If you are afraid of snakes, your body will probably start exhibiting physical sensations when you see a snake. Fear is an emotion. But it is first a particular combinations of different bodily sensations. Every emotion (sorrow, fear, anger) is first a combination of bodily sensations. Sadness is a unique combination of physical sensations that lets you know it is sad.
Bodily sensations examples might include:
- lump in your throat
- racing heart
- trembling
- fluttering in your chest
- knot in your back
- butterflies in your stomach
- tightness
- constricting in your throat
- heaviness
Some people experience anger with a tightening in jaw and a rising heart rate. Another person might experience this with tightening fists.
All of these sensations tell the truth of your present experience. Your body is a truth-teller! It's a trustworthy prophet from within!
Most of us have been trained to think our body is separate from us. But if you are listening, it will tell you! Do you listen to the sensations of your body? Are you getting the memo? I know I speak from my personal self when I say that part of my Christian upbringing, taught me that my body was sin and that I needed to rebuke any thought or feeling that didn't feel "right."
Caveat: this does not mean that your body always proceeds the world accurately. If you have a history of trauma, you might perceive fear when you shouldn't be afraid. But the body isn't lying! It is telling you the truth about your story instead of the truth about the present situation. It is telling you: I am afraid of this due to a previous trauma. Pay attention to that!
It seems weird to turn toward a sensation in your body and say: "What do you want me to know?" If you welcome the sensation, it will speak to you. Are you trying to power-through? There are parts of us that we are neglecting and ignoring. It probably is a part of you that needs curiosity, care, and tending.
"What are you feeling in your body right now?" is one of the greatest questions Adam asks in his therapy practice. Scan your body and notice any sensations that you are currently experiencing. Notice that.
NOTICE THAT!
If you feel a tightness in your chest, can you take a minute and just be with it. Notice it! Notice that is an invitation to listen to the story that your body is speaking. Anytime you are exploring your story -- whether in counseling, in group work, or with a friend or a spouse -- the smartest and wisest entity in the room is your physical body. And he isn't even talking about the brain. Your physical body!
Attune to the physical sensations in your body and just notice what it is like to really FEEL that tightness in your chest or rock sensation pressing down in your chest. Can you welcome it like a guest at the dinner table? The sensation will often reveal more truth. The sensation will speak!
"If that sensation could talk, what would it say?" As you let the sensations in your body speak, they will uncover the truth of your story. Here are some examples:
- "Stop silencing me, Mom!"
- "I can't bear this any longer."
- "I can't breathe deeply."
- "It would just scream for hours."
He gives an example of Tiffany, who anytime she had a conflict with her mother, her mother would say, "You are the most ungrateful kid I have ever met." As she conflicted with her mother, she would find her voice would be lost and she couldn't speak. Tiffany expresses disappointment and Mom blames and accuses. As Tiffany recounts this story, she actually feels a constriction in her throat. He invites her to feel into that constriction in her throat. If that constricted feeling could talk, what would it say? "It wouldn't say anything. It would just scream stop blaming me for everything, Mom." Adam and Tiffany could have talked for hours and not gotten to where they got so quickly by listening to her body. All the talking, wouldn't have revealed what Tiffany's body revealed so quickly. So here's what you can do:
- What are you feeling in your body right now?
- Notice that!
- If that sensation could talk, what would it say?
Your body knows things that your brain has difficulty accessing.
- "Listen to your heart"
- "Trust your gut"
These phrases are getting at understanding that the places that your heart and your gut are places of knowing. Just like your brain is a place of knowing.
"Our heart and our gut offer insight, intuition, and wisdom that the third brain, the enskulled brain, can act on."
Begin listening more attentively and frequently to your KNOWER.
What is making you reluctant to listen to your knower? In my case, I know what it is! It is subtle teaching growing up that said that my body isn't trustworthy and that I just need to rebuke the things I don't like because they must be from Satan.
Many of us were taught to have a great suspicion of the human body. Our body is secondary to the soul. Our body is just a physical body for our spirit and soul and mind. That's the idea. Many of us who have grown up in a church context have received the message that our gut/heart/body are untrustworthy. We shouldn't let our feelings to guide you. We really have been taught "If I trust my feelings, my life will be a mess."
This was a common illustration from churches decades ago. Feelings can't be the caboose! If you want your life to go well, you need to put your faith in the facts of scripture rather than letting your feelings guide you. This was telling us not to trust our feelings. We were taught that our feelings were not a reliable guide. But the bigger message that we received that it's dangerous to rely on the wisdom of our bodies. Your body needs to get in-line with something else.
Various Bible verses were used to tell us not to trust our body. Proverbs 3:5 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your understanding." That was quoted to get us to distrust our own knower. We were taught that a real Christian ignores their intuition when it seems to conflict with the body seems to say something different. If you group up in these cultures, you may have a distrust of your heart-sense or your knower. But what this is telling you is actually to not fully rely on your own self. To also seek Christ. It doesn't say you should never listen to your body. It doesn't say that you won't know anything. It means to trust God! He may show you things through what your body is telling you.
Are you feeling RED FLAGS popping up everywhere saying, "Let's be careful here!"
You may believe that external authority (wisdom of others) is a more trustworthy guide than internal authority (your body). Part of being created in the image of God is that you have an inner knower. Internal authority is about trusting your inner knower. But both of these can be ways of knowing.
But many of us were taught that external authority is to be trusted over internal authority. Before you can listen to the truths that your body is trying to tell you, you may need to RESTORE trust in your body. We must balance our reliance on God with our own knowledge.
What sensations does even thinking about this evoking in your body?
Jeremiah 17:9 "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" Does this mean distrust your own feelings? And never to listen to yourself. No. This verse was written to a particularly idolatrous people in a specific time. Jeremiah had exhorted them repeatedly about the tendency of their hearts to prefer other gods to the Lord.
This doesn't mean that we are exempt from the warning in this passage. God's people were led by their hearts away from God before, and the same can (and does!) happen to us. We must watch our desires, our trust, and our security. But this verse does not teach us that we must be suspicious of our every thought or emotion. Context matters!
One of the primary points of the book of Jeremiah is that your heart is actually trustworthy. Jeremiah 31:33 says: "'This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,'” declares the LORD. 'I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.'"
Jeremiah's argument is that his heart is good. He is not saying he is sinless. There was no notion of sinless in the Hebrew imagination. He says: "Yet you know me O Lord. You see me and test my thoughts about you." His heart is not deceitful above all things. But we need to take what he says as a warning. Here are a few Psalms that tell us that we are not wicked to the core!
- Psalm 7:8 "The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me." This is not a claim to perfection or sinlessness.
- Psalm 18:20 "The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands he has rewarded me."
- Psalm 26:1 "Vindicate me O Lord for I have led a blameless life, I have trusted in the Lord without wavering."
The whole book of Job is on the premise that Job is good and has a heart for the Lord!
None of these verses are claims of sinlessness. No one is saying they are without sin. They are saying "My heart is good and trustworthy even though I do of course, sin!"
None of these Biblical writers believed that their heart was deceitful above all things and without cure. When a Bible verse (or any language!) is used to convince yourself not to trust yourself or not trust your body, you are in the realm of spiritual abuse.
One of the central themes of the New Testament is that your body has become the dwelling place of God. 1 Cor 6 says "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, who you have received from God?"
In ancient Israel, the temple was where heaven and Earth intersected. God's presence dwells there. Absolutely astonishing that Paul claims that the human body has become a temple.
OUR BODIES ARE NOT BAD!
OUR FEELINGS ARE NOT BAD!
WE NEED TO LEAN INTO THESE THOUGHTS AND HAVE CURIOSITY ABOUT THEM!
AND BE CURIOUS ABOUT THEM!
AND COUPLE THEM WITH WHAT JESUS IS TELLING US!
Your body is speaking to you. It is communicating to you. The things that your body are telling you are incredibly important and valuable when it comes to healing and growth.
Ask yourself this question: "I notice that my body may need ____."
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