Listen to Your Body
Your physical body is setting a boundary for you.
Your physical body is the last frontier in the boundary of the map that is you. In choosing this card you have crossed a boundary on this frontier that sets your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual being. You failed to listen to and acknowledge your inner self and the message it has for you. Your body is now communicating to you through its signals of emotions and pain. Your body speaks – it speaks as loudly as your voice. It is always in communication, in dialogue at all times with your brain or your Higher Self and your inner core, sending information that enables you to adjust to your environment and keep you safe.
The body acts as the outer frontier of a constantly expanding conscious-ness. Its information comes in the form of impulses from your feelings and a desire to act. These impulses are reminders of the base settings of your identity (the values that give you a sense of self ) and are signals directed to-wards setting your boundaries through self-acknowledgement and self-care. These boundaries form the borders and foundation of your core identity. At the simplest level the impulse sends you reminders such as ‘go visit your parents, you are tired so have a rest, don’t listen to them, you are full’. At a more complex level the impulse of the body may tell you not to trust the person you are dealing with. If you listen to and act on the information, you experience flow.
There are times, however, when the man on the ground in the trenches the body – is not listened to by the upper player in the hierarchy – the brain. The body from the frontier, its message and the information from the ground is not acknowledged. Your inner self, lacking the skills or awareness is unable to act and therefore overrides the very real information that is being given by the body for its care. In this case, when the signals of the body, such as its emotions (and its pain levels), are not heeded, the body continues its pressure to be heard by creating a diversion. Initially the diversion is a slight discomfort perhaps in the form of a headache. If the inner core/brain does not acknowledge these signals (such as its need for rest, or a desire to respond to your emotional reaction to a criticism from a friend, colleague or family member) the intensity of the diversion will increase.
An example of when this might happen is around the boundary of trust. It goes something like this: you feel an impulse from your Higher Self – fuelled by a lack of trust in a colleague’s ethics – signalled via your feelings. The feeling (in your gut) signals the need to set your boundary regarding the use of your ideas and the need to protect them from being stolen. Rather than act on the signal and setting the boundary, you rationalise the lack of trust by saying to yourself that your fear is an overreaction because it is unlikely that the person would actually steal your intellectual property. And so you put off addressing what has now become a product of your ‘imagination’. The truth of the body, however, will not be silenced and its signals will escalate. The next time you are called upon to engage with the colleague you find you are not open and feel uncomfortable around them – signals via your feelings that the lack of trust is fully alive and in this moment foremost in your mind. The result is the meeting is not as effective as previous meetings. If you continue to ignore the impulse from your Higher Self and do not set your boundary (in whichever way you feel will honour the situation) the signal is further amplified. At the next meeting you may now experience a severe migraine headache to match the significance of the boundary your Higher Self wishes you to set. Each pain or emotion in your body is a signal and its severity will reflect the emphasis that your Higher Self places on the boundary you must learn to set.
Sometimes in receiving this signal – in particular when your body is in crisis – you are being told by your core self that you harbour a misunder-standing about who you are. You may have a mistaken sense of responsibility for something that is not yours to bear. For instance, you are (or may be) carrying the ball of guilt, judgement and shame passed on to you from your parents, emotions that are not yours and do not reflect the real you. In this case your sense of self developed in your early childhood was poorly formed and your body is presenting the doorway for you to update yourself with healthy boundaries that can guide you and keep you safe.
To understand your inability to acknowledge and respect the boundaries of your self-care, go back to your childhood. Think of a parent/caregiver as having the role of being a coach or trainer. Their job is to be in the child’s corner and prepare them for the ring. They help the child decide when they’re ready to enter the ring. Then, when the child enters the fight they are able to bring all the skills and knowledge that they require because they have had the proper training. Their parents taught them well. When the bell rings to signal the end of a round and the child goes into their designated corner their trainers/parents are there to give them a stool to sit on, the water they need and a rub down to restore their muscles. They sit down and rest as the parents/trainers continue to coach them. They tell the child, ‘well done you’re doing a good job’. When the bell signals the start of the next round, the child fighter gets up refreshed with new knowledge of what to do when they go back out into the ring.
In your case your parents were lost and unaware of their proper role. They left you to train on your own so that when you enter the ring you are fighting by yourself. In your early childhood no one told you what to do and how to do it. So you keep fighting blindly because no one in your corner reminded you what your skills are and how to approach this business of life. With no guidance you have nothing to help you in forming your own boundaries, nothing to create the soft cushion, no rubber sports mat to fall against and know this is the floor. Instead you have been falling for many years down a hole hoping that one day you will find who you are.
With this history as your guide you struggle to understand the signals of your body. When you receive knowledge from the outposts of your outer frontier by way of an event that your body has taken note of, an event such as when you are belittled or criticised by your friend or you can’t sleep because you are worried about a conversation, etc., you do not yet have the skills to know what is happening at the boundary line – a boundary within you that was set incorrectly. This is a boundary you did not know about or it is in the process of being formed. If you override the impulse to set your boundary you essentially cross your own boundary by not setting it. Instead of setting the boundary, you let someone else set it for you giving them permission to tell you who you are. It is like having the marauding hordes at this frontier of your identity – someone else will take over your sense of self, your land. You will experience an internal conflict every time you ignore your body’s signal by saying nothing, by eating an extra muffin, by not doing any exercise or any other compensatory behaviour. This inner conflict will increase its intensity of pain from your condition, from your self-criticism or from your cold, until eventually the body will take over the business of setting the boundary for you. Your body will manifest a condition to make you now pay complete attention to this particular boundary of asking who you are. Essentially your body takes over where your emotional self has not done the job cleanly or clearly.
Your body is crying out for help. Listen to its messages and trust that your body can guide you back to love. Trust in this journey. Let your body (Higher Self ) be your guide. It is time for your body to be free of what it has carried; its messages of pains and wounds, the misunderstandings, the misperceptions, the pain you carry about yourself.
Start your process of awakening to the power of your body’s guidance by the awareness of your basic needs. When you start listening to your body you will find that its guidance is clear. Information on your body’s basic requirements, such as nutrition, hydration, relaxation, exercise and mental stimulation, is given constantly. Then move your attention to your pain, aching ankle, nosebleed, a tummy upset, a sore hip or throat, flu or virus. Start exploring this impulse from your inner core. Start talking to your body to find out what the front line wants you to know. Maybe it wants you to take time out. Most of all it wants you to become aware of the inner core that sent you its regards so that you can connect to your core, Source, and experience flow. Embrace your growing awareness of your sense of self, no longer frozen at a fixed time in life but expanded into the consciousness of love that you deserve. Acknowledge the front line – constantly expanded – has only one message and that message is love.
