Please welcome Abigail Steidley, owner of The Healthy Life, LLC Life Coaching Services and blogger of The Vagina Dialogues as guest blogger for this week. You can read Abigail’s bio at the end of her post.
Pain and illness are ways the body sends important information to us. Think of pain as an email or text from your inner, wise self. Before you get angry at your body for sending such a strong message, realize that it’s been trying to speak to you in gentler ways. The body is the conduit for all wisdom from our wiser, higher self. It will nudge you with emotions, physical tension, and sensations. If you’re not listening, it has no other recourse besides pain and illness.
For me, even after I understood this concept, the hardest part was decoding the message. I would fume, arms crossed, as I tried to find a way to glare at my body. I even yelled at my own body, saying “I’m listening! I hear you! But what the hell are you saying? Don’t you speak English?”
As a coach, my primary job is to help others decode the messages held within the pain. Generally, this involves quieting the mind chatter and learning to tune into all the physical sensations happening in the body at any given moment. After a short stint of stillness, you’ll find that yes, the body does speak English. In the quiet stillness, aha moments and revelations happen.
After much of this work, though, I can tell you the common body message themes. Most people’s bodies are sending messages about the following:
Learning to nurture yourself instead of push yourself
Learning to love yourself unconditionally
Learning to release the constant pressure you’re putting on yourself
Learning to be gentler with yourself
Learning to consistently check in with the body so it doesn’t have to shout
Learning to honor and feel emotions
Learning to recognize the power of thought and begin to think intentionally
Learning to focus your awareness on yourself first only then are you truly effective and helpful to others
Learning to develop inner joy
It’s so easy to just ignore these messages, but take a moment to ponder this idea: The body/wise inner guide finds these concepts so vital that it sends a strong message you cannot possibly ignore.
Indeed, if you were to take the messages above to heart and focus on studying them daily, you would find every aspect of your life unfolding in new, easier, more joyful ways. You would be astonished at the good, loving experiences you would begin having. Just ask any of my clients, for they are all doing the homework from this same lesson plan. The small, personal details in each body’s message may be different, but the general class outline is definitely the same.
These lessons are a life’s work, but I’ve never studied a more interesting curriculum. It’s a fun life’s work, and it doesn’t take long before the benefits arrive. It just keeps getting better.
In the following weeks, I’ll be talking about each of the messages/lessons in turn. Stay tuned!
Abigail Steidley is a Mind-Body Health Coach and author of The Vagina Dialogues (http://vulvodyniacoach.wordpress.com). She writes about her personal experience utilizing a mind-body approach to get relief from IC and vulvodynia.
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