Here’s the thing. There’s no one right way, no one right system, that’s best for everyone, or even best for one person, whether in fitness, nutrition, or meditation. Despite this, everywhere you look there is a prescribed method claiming to be “the one”. THE diet, THE yoga method, THE meditation school. Nowhere has that been more obvious to me than the realm of pain management and healing especially for chronic health issues and injuries.
Talk to 100 doctors and physical therapists and more often than not they’ll all have a different opinion of what you need to do to get better. And boy can that be frustrating! For instance, with my TMJ jaw problem, at the beginning I went from doctor to doctor, each one with a different solution and often those solutions made me worse. Why? Because I wasn’t listening to my body… Now while I’m definitely finding inspiration from different sources and methodologies, I’m striving to listen better to my body to gently find what works best for me. And that, ultimately, is what mindfulness (or “bodyfulness”) is all about.
In the spirit of better mind-body listening, I’m embarking on a little experiment in personal data tracking. Each day for three months, I’m tracking my pain and energy levels plus mood morning and night as well as daily activities and food intake. Specifically, I’m looking for correlations between different activities on my pain, mood and energy as well as the impact of what I eat on those factors.
The intention? Besides some cool data that my analytics genius roommate will be bringing alive, I want to connect more with what is happening in my body right now. I invite you to join me and simply check in with yourself throughout the day. What are you feeling? What’s going on in your body? I’m amazed how often I’ll be holding tension in my body and won’t realize it until I check in with myself. And the first step to being the boss of your own body and finding what works for you is to become aware of what’s going on in the first place.
“To listen to your body and respect how it feels is a powerful act of self-love.” Sonia Choquette
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