13 Jun 217 0  

We go through our lives treating our bodies as if they are tools we use to do our daily chores. We never stop for a minute and give it a chance to speak. We don’t take our time to listen to our bodies and what it is trying to say. We only do it when we fall ill and in pain, only to recover so we can go back to our ordinary lives and continue to treat our bodies like machines.

Months ago i was going through a terrible back pain, and after a lot of examinations and various doctors, i learnt that i had to undergo a spine surgery. The shock wasn’t just that, not even the amount of pain expected till i recover, nor the recovery journey that might last for more than a year. The real shocking part was when the doctor told me that I would have to identify where exactly my pain was located each day and tell him about it in order to make the right recovery plan. So I suddenly realized that my improvement is tightly linked to my ability to notice what part of my body exactly is aching and describe its intensity precisely to my doctor in the hospital. 

For the first time in my life, I was totally responsible for my body, and only I was responsible for my recovery based on how accurately I know and listen to my body. Not just listen to my body, I have to report its communication to a doctor daily in a hospital, or i don’t properly recover and live the rest of my life in pain. 

After realizing and embracing my situation, I started seeing a psychotherapist to help teach me to listen to my body. I was so estranged from my body that I needed a third party to help me communicate with my own body. I started committing to the sessions and learning how to listen to each part of my body, as well as noticing how the pain feels like and its intensity. Not just that, but also give an accurate description of my pain to my doctor. I was improving day by day and getting better each day, till the day before my surgery. I panicked and I lost the ability to listen to my body. I tried and tried, but all I got was noise! I tried to calm myself down, tried again, and listened carefully one more time. It worked, and I had my surgery. It was the first time in my life to let myself experience pain to its fullest, and also embrace it instead of running away from it. It was the first time in my life to manage to focus during the pain and realize its intensity and its exact location, so I accurately reported to my doctor and started my journey of recovery. 

After leaving the hospital, my new talent improved, and I could listen to what my body wants to eat, what it doesn’t and what food it needs to help recover. I was surprised when my body asked for minced meat, as well as lettuce. I had stopped eating it for years until my body asked for it. I could enjoy it with no hard feelings. I discovered that my body asked to sit, sleep, or walk a certain way in order to be comfortable and not in pain, and when I complied I actually felt better and my pain diminshed. It was another happy surprise to me. When I listen and comply with my body, I actually get to rest and feel refreshed.

Two months into my recovery, my body started asking for certain food, and rejecting other food I used to love. I also realized that I suffered from emotional eating. I used to eat according to how I feel, not what my body needs. I began a new chapter in my life and started to read about emotional hunger and sensual eating, while maintaining my efforts to listen to my body everyday. I do fall into the traps of emotional eating when I'm too sad or angry, but I get back to my senses and listen again and feed my body what it really needs.

So, in a five months journey that is not yet over, I realised that bodies talk, send messages, and ask for what it needs to be healthy and comfortable. I realized that we don’t need to get sick to notice the needs of our bodies. Listening to the voices of our bodies is the least we can do to the body that’s been carrying our souls and enabling us to be who we wish, out of love and appreciation not out of fear. Listening to our bodies would tell us more about ourselves and answer questions that we’ve been wondering about for too long. The journey is as long as I shall live, and I still have a lot to say in the next article. Stay tuned.