Your Body Believes You

Your body responds to every thought you have and it believes you. Your body does not lie. It responds to your emotions that are stirring up inside of you before you actually realize what you are thinking and feeling. Dis-ease is not an external thing that happens to us. Physical symptoms remind us to pay attention to our body and discover what person, situation or life event is affecting us.

Your body is a messenger. Listen. Pay attention to the messages. Your body is your friend. Treat it the way you would treat your very best lifelong friend. Love your body - it is yours for life. Find out what messages YOUR body is giving to you.

At times we treat our body as if it is not part of us. For a moment of pleasure or purposely to dull our conflicted and stressed out mind, we may eat, drink, inhale or inject substances that over-stimulate, suppress, or clog up our bodily systems. We often push our self to keep going when our body is begging for rest. We ignore our aching muscles and continue working or playing sports until injury strikes. Most of us would never consider putting the wrong type of gasoline in our automobile or an inferior brand of detergent in our washing machine. Why then, do we so often neglect to give our own body the food, rest and love that we know will enhance our health?

Food is the fuel of life. Without adequate nutrients, our mind is unfocused, we become fidgety, irritable, and tired. Without good enough nutrition, we are not able to function at an optimal level. It's that simple. Knowing the essential value of food, why do we often choose to not nourish our body?

For some of us, some of the time, food is our only friend, our solace in times of need. Food can look good, smell good, taste good, calm our emotions, and comfort us. For others, food can be our way of hurting our self, damaging our body, proving how tough we are, or gaining control over something. In extreme cases, such as anorexia nervosa and bulemia, our relationship to food can take over our life, interfere with intimacy, and threaten our very existence. For others, chemical substances such as alcohol, recreational drugs, and prescription drugs can become our favorite food, interfering with the health of our mind, body and spirit.

Exercise, movement, rest, relaxation, and sleep are essential for maintaining our health. Our body is a finely tuned machine and needs to be treated as such. All the parts can work well throughout our entire life. However, just as a machine requires proper care, oiling, checkups, part replacements, and to not be overused or abused, our body also requires adequate care throughout our life.

And the most important way to care for our body is not to merely eat healthy food and exercise regularly. We need to feed our body the thoughts and encouragement, kind words and healing affirmations. We need to fill our body cells with loving tenderness and the cells will smile back by working together to perform their individual and joint tasks effectively.