Your Body’s Talkin’, Do You Know What It’s Sayin’?

Body language.  You know it’s an important aspect of communication.  There’s a lot that’s been written and said about how your body’s message can in fact speak louder than the words coming out of your mouth.  And knowing this, you’ve probably trained yourself to pay attention to the message your body’s conveying to others, and the messages you receive from other people’s body language.  But how closely do you listen to your own body?  This is a whole other take on body language.

You see, your body is a fabulous information source for you.  It can tell you when something’s wrong physically, it conveys needs such as hunger and thirst, and if you pay any attention at all, your body can even let you know when something dangerous is afoot.  I know for me there’s a way that my own personal spidey senses cry out “alert! alert!” even though I’m not completely aware of what the problem is.

One of the things I know for sure is that it can be really easy to ignore, or at least minimize the messages and signals that your body sends your way.  Body says your tired?  You push yourself through to do just one more task.  Body says your hungry?  Too bad, body, you’ve got to wait for another hour or so.  Feeling a little icky?  Well, there’s too much to do — let’s push through.

While it can be an exercise in stretching and growing to push yourself past perceived limitations, there’s also a way that ignoring your body’s messages for any length of time will end up working against you.  If, for example, you continue to push past and ignore fatigue, you will likely get sick.  And then, oftentimes, all that you gained by pushing through gets lost as you lose time anyway.  So is it worth it?  My personal sense is that it’s not.

I think the bottom-line is that it really does behoove you to pay some attention — actually a lot of attention — to what your body is trying to tell YOU.  And more than simply paying attention, you’ve got to listen.  Your body’s a pretty sophisticated and wise conveyor of information.  You could learn a lot.