Body Trust – Create a Great Life From the Inside Out

Can you really learn to trust your body? As the years go by, each decade brings new and unexpected changes. You move from adolescence to young adulthood, often experiencing acne and unexpected weight gain. If you are a woman, you may experience the reshaping of your body because of pregnancy. If you are willing and fortunate, you will eventually enter into the effects of maturity, including wrinkles and the pull of gravity. During your lifetime, your body will endure stress, sadness, grief, disappointment, and other emotions. You may bear the scars of abuse, illness, disease, or accidents. For some, the effects of a sedentary lifestyle, emotional eating, a lifetime of dieting, or poor nutrition leaves permanent physical damage. With all this going on, is it possible to trust your body?

The journey of trusting your body is not always easy to do. The good news is, even if you have not trusted your own body in the past you can learn how to do so now. Here are six powerful steps for learning to trust your body.

1. Call a Truce

How do you unite as a partner with your body? First, call a cease-fire with your body and decide to accept everything about your body in this moment. Things are the way they are. That doesn’t mean you can’t work to change things. It just means that until you call a truce, you are always going to be in a war between you and your body. In a war, you are fighting to stop what is going on, but never really working to move forward into something new. By calling a truce, you can begin to build a new, more enjoyable relationship between you and your body.

2. Listen to Your Body

All those emotions, aches, pains, tensions, and heaviness… they are all forms of communication from you to you. Without trying to get rid of your physical forms of communication, say hello. Bring a sense of interest and curiosity. Consider assuming the perspective that your body is a reflection of your beliefs and thoughts; therefore, be curious and investigate your body’s messages. What are you saying to yourself when you feel tightness in your shoulders, neck and jaw? What are you saying to yourself when your knees constantly ache, or your stomach is always in a knot? The key to listening is to allow your tension, tightness, pain, or emotion do the speaking. Don’t go above the feeling and analyze your situation from your head, but allow your feelings to speak directly to you.

3. Follow Your Intuition

Intuition is accurate information from your spirit. Your intuitive messages can come in a number of forms. You may hear actual words, see a clear image, or have a deep inner knowingness. Your intuition may communicate with you in the form of hunches, insights, Aha! moments, a feeling, a sixth sense, or various types of body sensations. For instance, have you ever had the experience of meeting someone who made your skin crawl? Learn to tune into your intuition and your body reactions. Doing so you can take actions that “feel right” and that bring positive outcomes into your life.

4. Your Body Reflects Your Thoughts and Beliefs

Your body reflects on the outside what you believe about life on the inside. For example, maybe on the inside you believe that life is not safe, or there is no hope of ever feeling better. Because of those beliefs, you may feel sadness, depression, anger, fear, or hopelessness. Perhaps you believe you are a bad person, unworthy and unlovable. Alternatively, you may believe that you should not dare to be unique, creative, or self-expressive. These self-limiting beliefs are often painful, and maybe you have attempted to feel better through too much or too little food, drugs, sex, busyness, or other addictions.

Begin to explore new ideas that include seeing how your body is not your enemy. Your body is not responsible for your unhappiness in life, and it does not make decisions for you. If your body is overweight, exhausted, without energy, worn out, it is not to be blamed for those conditions. It is merely reflecting the symptoms of a unhealthy thoughts, beliefs, and actions.

The really great news is that it is your body. If it is currently holding on to ideas of limitation or lack, it is because you have filled it up with those ideas. You can change your beliefs! Since it is your body, it would agree to hold any new ideas that you would offer to it. To change things, continue to do some housecleaning as you clear yourself of some old ideas about life and yourself, and bring in some new, updated, self-supporting ideas.

5. Practice Thoughts That Feel Good

Learning to trust your body may well be a process and an undertaking. But, it is a worthwhile undertaking. You have a right to enjoy your life and feel good here on earth. The only way that is going to happen is inside of your body. Learn to align with thinking the thoughts that feel good inside your body. Think thoughts that bring pleasure into your life. Take actions that bring meaning and satisfaction into your life. Ask yourself often, “Am I practicing thoughts and taking actions that bring me joy and confidence?” or, “Am I practicing thoughts and taking actions which bring me pain?”

6. Communicate With Your Body

When you trust your body, you are able to work in partnership with it, as opposed to fighting it or doing things to it. Allow for the possibility that your body’s purpose is to always move forward into a renewed state of health.

No one knows you and your body better than you. Don’t give complete control of your body to anyone outside of yourself. Be involved in your own health care decisions, stay true to your values, and make the right choices for you.
You can’t “will” your body to heal with your mind. That’s like cutting your arm with a knife and attempting to figure out how to heal the wound by thinking about it. What is most empowering is to give your body permission to heal itself.
Your body is intelligent. Renew your mind, body, and spirit connection as you rely on your ability of inner healing, instead of believing that only doctors know what to do.
Ask your body for its opinion of the food you are about to eat.
If you are sick, ask your body to bring itself back into balance. Listen for signs of how best to assist your body. For example, you may sense that rest, light physical activity, water, massage, herbal tea, laughter, crying, or even music would be most helpful.
Before taking medication, tell your body that you trust it to regain harmony. Then ask your body if taking a particular medication will assist the healing process.
Take action to alleviate stress. Stress and anxiety have physical consequences. In a state of stress the mind operates independently of the body, and there is no communication between the two.

Even if there are things about your body that you would wish to change, you still can learn to develop a trusting partnership with your amazing body. Trusting your body empowers you to experience a beautiful, wondrous life. Practice the ideas above and take action to regain trust with your body. You might be surprised at how much your body responds and loves you back!

Author Resource: Want to learn more about how to live consciously, love deeply, and laugh often? Come along with Annette Colby and learn the secrets to creating the life you’ve always wanted to live! Subscribe to her blog Divine Self! today.