Serve Your Body

My body is screaming at me today. It was screaming at me yesterday too, and while I could hear it, I wasn't really LISTENING to it.

For that, I am sorry. I slipped up. I regressed in my learning.

Every time my body shut down in the past, felt paralyzed with pain, or went haywire and completely dysfunctional, I would feel betrayed. Angry. Frustrated. Let down.

But now, I can see that it was ME letting my body down. It was me betraying the trust my body had put in me as its sole steward and protector.

I was not listening and so I failed to nourish and care for my body. I was not listening and so I robbed it of the rest and restoration it so desperately needed. I was not listening and so my body started protesting with more subtle symptoms like sleeplessness, dull aches, frequent colds, allergies.

Still, I did not listen and so my body began to protest even louder. And louder. Until finally it realized that all its protests were landing on blind eyes, deafened ears, an ignorant mind, a large ego, and a closed heart and so it did the only thing it could do:

It shut down. It boycotted me because I was careless with it. I starved it of love and attention and so it decided to starve me of everything I was ever focused on (read: distracted and mislead by).

Well, today I am different. I am a slow study in this regard but I am finally learning and gradually changing. I see with more opened eyes, listen with inquisitive ears, think with a mind that's transformed from having experienced years of living with a chronic disease, view myself and my situation with a smaller ego, and feel compassion and love for myself with a thawing heart.

As I lie here, in bed, in this darkened room at two o'clock in the afternoon, highly aware of the way my body is screaming at me with pain and discomfort, I am not angry or frustrated.

I am listening.

"What are you trying to tell me?" "What am I doing that hasn't been serving you?" "What do you need from me right now in order to start healing again?"

And our bodies, in their infinite, innate, and ancient wisdom, will always tell us.

We only have to listen.