Listen to your body

Imagine this.

A scientist takes a computer chip and implants it into an ape.

The computer chip is consciousness, it has an awareness that it is alive, and it is inhabiting the ape.

The chip can control the ape by moving the limbs, controlling its breathing, and using its vocal cords.

But the chip is so self-centered, it only thinks of itself.

It thinks so much it forgets to feel.

The connection between mind and body has tethered.

The ability to truly feel deep love, appreciation, happiness, all vanished with this incessant narrator.

But what if we could bring back this talent, this innate skill we all possess but have habitually overridden with thoughts.

This is awareness.

But sometimes, the ape still reacts to its surroundings, it gets overwhelmed.

The computer chip doesn’t know how to deal with these emotions and so it turns to the familiar acts of avoidance, through alcohol, drugs, and any other crux it has used in the past to suppress those emotions.

The ape calms down, just like a child calms down if you lock it in a bloody room.

But if you talk to that child, if you listen and give him a hug, the whole situation changes.

Too often in society, we demonize our bodies.

I have done this all my life.

“Emotions are useless, they get me no-where”.

But what if all my life I was treating that ape, the little kid inside of me wrong?

The ape is trying to tell you something, it’s trying to be heard.

But all I used to do and I’m sure you do too is drown that voice away in another layer of instant gratification.

Instead, computer chip, yes you, feel everything your body is telling you. The explosion in your belly, the tightness of your chest, the constriction of your throat.

And ask, with love and kindness- “what are you trying to tell me?”.

Listen.

Don’t interrupt.

Don’t try and change it. Just notice it and listen. That little kid hasn’t been heard in years.

Once that kid has had his say, then you get to choose how you act on that advice.

But now it’s a win-win. You’ve listened, the emotion has subsided and now your body is back fully in your control.

You can either act on that advice or not. Simple as.

But this time, it will be for the better, rather than the choice you and I made in the past of telling it to shut up and doing something else to hide the pain.

It’s telling you something, maybe it’s about time to listen.

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Photo by Chris CurryonUnsplash