Listening to Your Body - A Way of Mindfulness

Photo by the author

Listening is an art. Have you ever tried to listen to yourself? Have you listened to your body? Perhaps we do a number of times. That is why we feel the need for rest, medicine and food. Very often we don't listen to our bodies. Our physical body is not that which is out of us. I am also what my physical body is. Our body and soul are one part of a whole. They are very much part of our lives.

Our creator has blessed us with a human body which makes us to exist and have our being. Through our body we do our work, earn our living, showcase the beauty and pray with it. Our mind cannot say to the body I do not want you, get away from me. You are not beautiful, I hate it, etc. What we have as a body we must live with it. 

Prayer exercise of thanking for the body parts

There is a beautiful exercise which helps to pray to God. You sit for prayer and meditatively begin to recall each part of the body beginning from the toe to the head. You name each part of the day including internal organs which you don't see and thank God for giving that particular part of your body. Recall the things that body part can do for you. What it would have been if you did not have that body part. While thanking God feel blessed now because you are able to do such and such a thing. This prayer exercise makes us to thank God for the preciousness and irreplaceability of each part of the body.  

Listen to your body and feel the ease

Listening is a gift. By listening you will be better equipped to deal with the situation. Just a day before I went through doctor's knife for eight hours I wrote a blog post An Awareness of Suffering in Your Own Body. The more I listened to my body and its suffering better equipped I was to face the new reality after the operation. It was indeed a tough decision. We need to talk to various parts of our body which are suffering. The more I speak to my body better I feel and at ease with it. I can talk to my body if I am able to listen to it. Often, people suffering from terminal or chronic illnesses go into depression or sudden loss in hope. Generally, we describe such situations where a person hasn't still come to grip with the situation or not ready to accept his or her condition of disease. You must have heard your acquaintances saying "I do not know what is happening to me?" Probably, if the person in distress with ill health could listen to his body then he would better able to manage the whole situation. This would lead to better management of the situation of his body. 

Listening strengthens you

One of the toughest elements in my illness was lack of inability to understand what was going on in my body. As days and months passed by I began to read and understand the illness and reason out the situation in the body. Thus I understood what my body was going through. The more I said no to the symptoms of the illness more distressed I would become. The more I resisted to accept what was happening in my body, greater the desolation I encountered. I realised that I cannot go on like this. I began to reconcile with the fact that my body is sick but not my mind. My colon is terribly damaged but not my thinking. This kind of awakening helped in a great way in understanding the disease in my body. I began to listen to my body. When you suffer, you suffer alone. Moreover, I tried to bring that part of the body in a particular way into prayer, offering to God all that pain and suffering entails and as a person I carry with it.

Mindfulness begins with your body

Perhaps it would be good to grow in one's understanding of his or her physical body. God has blessed each person with a unique composition of body which creates a distinct personality. All the more better one understands the various needs of the body by listening to it. This would enable a person to keep oneself sane and treat one's body humanly; be human to your body; be gentle towards your body. Don't entertain the thought that your body is causing you to guilt or sin unnecessarily. God loves the sinner and dislikes the sin. A right attitude towards your body will save you from callous calculations that have been taught by your formators or mistaken and unhealthy spirituality. By hating your body you would be inviting the Satan into your life. If a person has problem with his or her eyes, the best thing would be to see the symptoms or problems the eye is going through and how one feels with it. Listen to your eye. Once you know the problem or symptoms see a physician or ophthalmologist and find a solution to fix it. 

Mindfulness has become new fashion in our technocratic world. Learning to be mindful and attentive has been talked about in most of the training centres. Often this mindfulness is centred around in controlling or awakening your mind and not your body. It is not enough just be mindful of what you are doing - thinking, seeing, hearing, tasting or smelling (panchendriayas - 5 senses) but also mindful of what you are with your body. Listen to the needs and desires of your body and see how best you can deal with it. I cannot be somebody if my body is not made that way. I need to listen to my body. Only you and you alone know your body and what is going on in that body. This would save you so much from mental agony, anxiety, fear and uneasiness. Finally, you will be blessed with so much joy, peace and acceptance of being what you are and what your body is.

- Olvin Veigas, SJ,

18 September 2020