listen to your body

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Listen to Your Body

Listen to your body…What is it saying to you? 

Over the past four years, I’ve made it a practice to confirm and directly ask my body what is in alignment before I agree to say “yes” to anything, small or large. It is a micro practice in developing self-trust. Do I need vitamin C today? Is it in my best interest to work with this client or go on this trip? 

So when my friend, Karina, who almost died from a stroke 4 months ago, asked me to drive her to a week-long qi gong workshop presented by Kenneth Cohen at Esalen, with only a few days’ notice, I asked my body. 

My head was saying “No, you have responsibilities: a mindfulness training with daily practices, so many clients, a dog, a course worth of videos to record!”, but my body gave an emphatic, “yes” without hesitation. All the thoughts and worries were muted by trust in my body.

When discerning what to say “yes” to, I tend to ask, “What am I practicing in my life right now, and does choosing this option align with that? It took me years of somatic therapy and bodywork to shift me out of survival mode enough to listen, hear and trust myself. 

In deciding whether or not to go to Esalen, I recognized time in connection and community is precious. Time moving my body is essential to support vitality. And time off work will replenish and nourish me to be of better service and recharge me creatively to work on my course.

A phrase/prayer my teacher taught me called a One Command, helped me surrender and listen to your body. “I don’t know how my trip to Esalen works out with ease and grace, all I know is it does now. I am grateful and fulfilled.” 

Gratitude feels like floating in a calm ocean, fully supported.

The details fell into place instantly: the cost, the dog sitter, the clients, and the training in a more beneficial way than I could have imagined. The universe was conspiring to help me reprioritize in ways I’d been wanting to and got me to take a week off. Simply the decision to rest rather than work energized me.

Gratitude feels perfectly still, like warm air, hard to tell where my skin ends and the space around me begins. Like I am breathing the air and it is breathing me.

Once there, I cried multiple times a day from gratitude, for the time in sulfur springs along ocean cliffs, watching silver ribbons of light threaded through blue water, silhouettes of succulents, firs, and echium after dark. 

The clusters of cone-shaped purple flowers leaning into one another mirrored the visitors at Esalen huddled in intimate conversations under the stars. City dwellers were enamored with otters swimming only to discover later they were cooing over bodies of kelp. 

The car ride there with Karina, hours of endless laughter, was worth it. Laugh therapy written about by Norman Cousins in the 60s, was something I stumbled upon in high school and still believe it works. Laughter shifts energy and floods the body with endorphins.

I’m returning home expansive and full. I received a lesson in abundance and surprise. I judged Esalen as too expensive. Historically, I would find a course I was interested in, and then click off their website when I saw the price. I am already looking at when I can return. It felt worth it, surrounded by beauty, outside most of the day, cooked for, engaging in movement practices with a wise elder, having intellectually stimulating conversations, and building community.

On my last day in Big Sur, Karina and I went for a hike and I saw a patch of clover as we listen to your body. Even though many gardeners consider it an invasive weed, since I was a kid I’ve associated it with fairies and seen it as magical. Again, I said a One command. 

“I don’t know how I found a four-leaf clover, all I know is what I do now. I’m grateful and fulfilled. I looked down and immediately saw one. I held it up shouting, “No Way”, to the amazement of Karina, who also knows my teacher and has witnessed other unbelievable miracles conjured when I speak this phrase. It is a wonderful way to listen to your body. 

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© 2022 By Charna Cassell, LMFT. Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. MFC 51238.

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