22. What Does It Mean to Trust the Body? How Can I Listen to the Intelligence Already Living Inside Me?
Short Answer
I grew up in a culture that trusts the mind more than it trusts the body. When, for example, I feel emotional pain in my heart, I immediately go up into my head and think: “What should I do? How can I get rid of this pain?”
For most of my life, I trusted my thoughts much more than my body. Through Nonviolent Communication (NVC), mediation, relationships, dance, and healing work, I gradually discovered that my body already knows so much about life, healing, cooperation, and relationships that my mind often has no clue about.
My body is constantly speaking to me through feelings, emotions, sensations, tension, relaxation, tears, exhaustion, aliveness, and countless other signals.
One of the biggest shifts in my life has been learning to experience feelings and sensations not as problems to solve, but as precious messages from the body. Hunger points to a need for nourishment. Tiredness points to a need for rest. Sadness, fear, hurt, loneliness, or joy also carry important information about what matters to me and what life is trying to care for.
Increasingly, I trust that the body already knows how to heal. Just as my body heals a cut finger without instructions from my mind, it often knows how to digest grief, fear, pain, and difficult experiences. The more I resist the messages coming from my body, the more I tend to suffer. The more I welcome these experiences, the more they naturally begin to move and heal.
For me, trusting the body does not mean rejecting the mind. It means learning to listen to the intelligence that is already living inside me. My body is not the enemy of my spirituality. It is one of its deepest expressions.
More Personal Answer
For most of my life, I trusted my thoughts much more than my body. If I had a difficult feeling—for example, depression—my immediate impulse was usually to go up into my head and think:
“What is wrong with me?” “What should I do to solve this?” “What should I do to get rid of it?”
This approach carries the assumption that the brain knows more than the body. I grew up in a culture where the mind is often trusted more than the body.
My way of understanding feelings and sensations is that they are messages from the body, signaling that something is important to me. Feelings and sensations are communications coming from the body, directing me to take care of needs—to take care of precious qualities of life. For example:
- Hunger (a feeling) is how my body tells me I need nourishment (a need).
- Tiredness (a feeling) is how my body tells me I need rest (a need).
And it is the same with emotions that are more relational in nature. For example:
- If someone shouts at me, I might feel hurt. That hurt may be telling me, for example: I long to be treated with gentleness (need), or I want care (need), or I want my intentions to be understood (need).
- If a friend takes distance from me, I might feel sad. Sadness is how my body tells me: I long for friendship (Need). Or I want to be close to people. (Need)
- If I feel insecure before giving a speech, that insecurity may be how my body tells me: I want to be appreciated and welcomed into the human tribe. (Need)
The Body Speaks Through Feelings and Sensations
Then, slowly, through Nonviolent Communication, Mediation, Relationships, Healing work, and life itself, something began to change.
I started noticing that my body was constantly speaking—not through words, but through sensations, tension, contraction, relaxation, warmth, tears, trembling, exhaustion, aliveness, openness, pain, and gentle movements.
And increasingly, the more I followed the messages my body gave me—even when they were sometimes the opposite of what my brain, or the voice of “should,” was telling me—the more I discovered how intelligent this voice is. How incredibly subtle and wise it is in navigating relationships and caring for me, for others, and for life in ways my brain had no clue about.
This changed my life profoundly.
“Feeling, There Is Room for You”
One small practice became very meaningful to me. When an unpleasant sensation appears, I sometimes say internally:
“Feeling… there is room for you to be.”
Or:
“Sensation… you are welcome here, to do the work you are already doing.”
When I experience an unpleasant feeling such as pain or depression, my tendency is to become scared and immediately go up into my head and think:
“Shit, what should I do to solve this or get rid of it?”
Slowly, I realized that beneath this thought were more fundamental fears—fears about welcoming the pain or the depression:
“But what if I stay depressed or in pain forever?”
“What if I become overwhelmed?”
“What if I even go crazy?”
I call these the three “Oh FOC!” (a play on the expression “Oh fuck!” 🙂): Forever. Overwhelmed. Crazy.
Over time, I became familiar with this reaction. And eventually, I can return to simply: “Feeling… there is room for you to be.”
Then something very surprising often happens. Instead of becoming bigger and more dangerous, the sensation begins to move gently.
This fascinates me enormously.
Because when I look closely, I notice that feelings do not stay exactly the same for very long. They shift. Move. Transform.
I like the word emotion. They are in motion.
The Difference Between Resisting and Allowing
One thing I repeatedly notice: resistance creates suffering.
For example: if fear appears and immediately another voice says: “I shouldn’t feel fear,” then now there are:
- the original feeling,
plus - resistance to the feeling.
And often, the suffering is related to the resistance. The feeling itself—fear, for example—is simply an emotion. When I allow the feeling or sensation to be there, it is a living organism. It moves in a super delicate and gentle way. It changes. It serves life.
The Body Already Knows How to Heal
Everything the body does is in service of healing.
For example, if I cut my finger, I do not need to heal the wound. My body heals it without the intervention of my conscious brain.
Or if I feel tired, I do not need to do much. I simply need to rest—to sleep—and my body restores its energy.
My role is mostly to create supportive conditions and not interfere too much.
Increasingly, I experience emotional healing in a similar way. The body often already knows how to release, integrate, digest, cry, shake, rest, reconnect, and soften.
Yet many of us learned to interrupt these natural movements. We received messages such as:
“Don’t cry.” “Be strong.” “Calm down.” “Stop being so sensitive.” “It’s time to move on.”
And gradually, we may stop trusting the body’s natural wisdom.
Trauma and Distrusting the Body
Sometimes the body carries traumatic memories that lead to reactions such as panic, terror, overwhelming memories, or intense activation.
And honestly, when sensations become overwhelming, turning toward the body can feel extremely frightening.
So trusting the body does not mean forcing myself to welcome feelings and sensations too quickly.
It means slowly rebuilding a relationship with the body. Gently. With enough safety. Enough support. And a pace that fits.
The Body Often Knows Before the Mind
Very often, my body knows something before my thoughts do. For example:
I may say, “Yes, everything is fine,” while my stomach is tight, my breathing is shallow, and my chest feels heavy.
Or I may think, “I should continue this relationship,” while my whole body feels contracted and exhausted.
This does not mean that the body is always “right.”
But increasingly, I experience bodily signals as valuable information. The body often reveals incongruence, dishonesty, hidden fear, unspoken frustration, hurt, exhaustion, or truths that have not yet become fully conscious.
The Body and Authenticity
One thing I repeatedly notice is that authenticity creates relaxation.
For example, when I finally say something honest, or when I am understood in my truth, my whole body suddenly exhales and relaxes.
And when I repeatedly betray myself, something often contracts. Tension accumulates, numbness appears, energy decreases, or anxiety grows.
I increasingly experience the body as longing for truth—for being in reality as it is.
The Wisdom of Slowing Down
One thing the body repeatedly teaches me is this: slow down.
The mind often wants immediate answers, certainty, solutions, clarity, knowing, and control.
But the body often moves much more slowly. Like nature, it has its own pace. Trees take the time they need to grow; you cannot rush them.
And honestly, many of the deepest insights in my life did not come from thinking harder. They came through silence, walking, breathing, aching, resting, or simply through the passage of time.
Trusting the Body Is Not Anti-Thinking
One thing I want to clarify is that trusting the body does not mean rejecting thinking.
The mind is precious too: Analysis. Reflection. Understanding. Discernment. Language.
For me, the shift is not about choosing the body instead of the mind. It is about including the mind with the body.
Because many of us became disconnected from our bodily experience and started living almost entirely in concepts, stories, judgments, and analysis. To trust the body is to include it again—to return to a way of living that integrates both forms of intelligence.
Not body instead of mind. But body and mind, working together.
The Body and Mourning
One of the deepest places I experience trusting the body is in mourning.
When grief comes, the mind often wants:
“How long will this take?”
“When will I be over this?”
“What should I do?”
But the body mourns in its own timing. Sometimes through: tears, anger, rest, shaking, emptiness, or hugging.
And increasingly, instead of trying to rush the process, I trust: the body knows how to digest painful events. Just like digestion after eating. It needs time.
Returning Home
Today, if I had to summarize what trusting the body means to me, I might say:
My body is my spiritual guide. It carries life’s intelligence. And I love it so dearly.
It is my access to spirituality. It is my religion.
Not perfect. Not always clear. But deeply connected to life.