Learning to listen to your body when it says Yes – even when the world or those around you say No - is so important, and powerful. Learning to trust in your body and the connection you feel with your body over your mind when it comes to making decisions is what today’s episode is all about. I’m so excited to dive into this today.
Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast and more.
Broadcast: April 16, 2021
Duration: 17:18
Here’s a snippet…
How I felt in my body.
One of the reasons I want to talk about this is because of a recent personal experience of mine… Which was to say Yes to a proposal of marriage with a beautiful human who I hadn't known for very long. I feel that my conviction in the Yes has come about as a result of many years of experience in trying to trust in my body. I want to share with you my process in terms of ascertaining how I felt in my body and how I made this decision in the moment to say Yes to Andrew, but also in doing so, give you more confidence in your body and the decisions that you make.
Let’s start with human design.
So I'll preface all of this by saying that a couple of years ago, I kicked off some studies in human design. Now, if you've not yet looked into human design, I urge you to do so. Just go to mybodygraph.com. It's free. Just pop in your full birthday, your city of birth and the exact time you were born. And you ideally need the exact time. Plug it all in, and it essentially gives you your energetic blueprint. Now this energetic blueprint helps you understand what you're here to do, how you are here to do it and how you should energetically engage with life. It was just so powerful understanding what I'm here to do, how I'm meant to respond to life – it’s markedly impacted the way in which I make decisions and how I show up every day.
Energetically correct decisions.
So I think one of the most valuable lessons for me was how I’m to make energetically correct decisions and how I learned to trust in my body not my mind when it comes to making these decisions. So to give you an example, some of us will make decisions based on a quiet ping, a quiet knowing. Others will make a decision based on our true gut feel, like an explosion that feels like a blatant Yes or No. Some of us will make decisions based on our emotions. So whether we are on an emotional high or low, and those of us are meant to make decisions when we are balanced, when we are on an even keel. So we should delay making a decision until we are down from a high or up from a low. Now, when we don't listen to our bodies, I think you'll agree that many interesting things can happen. I'll give you an example. A few years ago, I was in a relationship with a guy that wasn't serving me. There were red flags. From the outset I chose to ignore those flags, ultimately because of a sense of dependency I'd developed in this guy who was supporting me through a very difficult, personally challenging time that had been a little bit traumatic and he had proven during this time to be, or what felt like, a bit of a backbone for me.
I chose to ignore my body.
So during this time together, I had experienced some pretty minor panic attacks that I'd never experienced previously and some sort of lingering anxiety. I think many of you will agree that often anxiety comes about because of repressed emotion that we are refusing to deal with and process. But what also happened that was quite interesting was that I started developing lingering neck pain. So this guy lived 45 minutes out of Melbourne. And I would develop this neck pain that meant that often I couldn't really turn my head much to the left and it was pretty excruciating. During this time, I found a traditional Chinese medicine doctor who lived near me, who I would go and see every few weeks to try and rectify this neck pain, but also to support this anxiety that I was feeling that I had been choosing to ignore because I felt that I needed the strength of this guy in my life. Now, basically what happened is the relationship ended and the pain disappeared. And I recall this Chinese medicine doctor saying to me: ‘This man… He’s bad for you. Now he's gone. You'll be healthy.’
An instant Knowing.
So, going back to my mention earlier around my decision to say Yes to Andrew when he proposed very early on in our courtship. This was a really fascinating experience because I have had enough experience in relationships with others across my life to know when something feels great, when something feels okay, when something feels mediocre. But from the very moment that I met Andrew, when we met for a coffee, it wasn't necessarily with the intention of us forging a romantic relationship. We were meeting to see whether or not we could be companions and he could be like my adventure buddy. I'm sure he won't mind me saying that I didn't have the sense that Andrew was necessarily ready for a relationship at that time. I went and met Andrew for coffee and for both of us there was a very instant knowing. We had a coffee, we went for a beautiful walk and at the end of the walk I walked away and I said to a friend of mine, ‘Regardless of what happens here, now I truly know what it is that I want. And that man is an example of everything that I want in another human being.’
Then, we started falling in love.
From that day on, we started falling in love, pretty rapidly. And within a couple of weeks, I think it was day 15, Andrew proposed. I got a sense very early on from others that there was quite a lot of judgment around my decision to say Yes. Because how would you know, how do you know someone within that amount of time? How can you possibly know that you want to spend the rest of your life with someone after only spending what was a pretty intensive two weeks with them? But in my body, all I needed to trust was my feelings, and how I felt within every cell of my body.
So on the day that Andrew proposed (and it came out of nowhere), for many days I'd been falling in love. And I was checking in on my body every day, asking myself, ‘How am I feeling? How does this make me feel? Is there anything to be worried about? Are there any red flags?’ I was just scanning. And on this particular day when he proposed, I don't think I'll ever forget what happened. Andrew proposed on a beach in Port Melbourne.
I paused. And I scanned my body.
I distinctly remember having this incredible sense of knowing. But I also remember scanning my body from my head through to my toes. I was doing this really quickly. Are there any red flags? Is there any feeling in your body that's saying it's too soon? You don't know enough about this man? But there was not one cell in my body in that moment that told me there was any cause for alarm, or that I was moving too fast, that we were moving too fast, that this was crazy.
All that I got was this powerful YES From every cell of my body. There hasn't been any moment where I've gone, ‘What am I doing? Or what have I done? Or what are we doing? Are we crazy?’ You know, I'm late forties, Andrew's early fifties. There is a point where you do get a far greater sense of knowing I think.
It's been a resounding Yes ever since.
In fact, it just grows and grows every day, but the purpose really in my core message here is that it's important that we get out of our logical mind. If I'd been in my logical mind, I would have found reason to say No. Likely because of conditioning I've received across my life, or I may have said No because of people's judgment of me. But instead, what I chose to do was trust in the power of my body and the way that I feel in my body. And that is one of the most powerful ways in which we can make a decision - but in order to do that, we have to make sure we continue to connect with our body and trust in our feelings. Don't discount them. They are there for a reason. The red flags are there for a reason. Our anxiety is there for a reason. Our uncertainty, our constant questioning, it's all happening for a reason. As is the powerful Yes when we feel it in our body. Thank you for being here.
