On Dreamshaping: When the Body Speaks, Listen

Mark McNease

Our bodies are often the first to tell us when something isn’t right, when something needs attention. They begin speaking to us almost as soon as we find ourselves in this strange environment we call our lives: they tell us we must breathe within moments after emerging from the womb; they tell us we must rid ourselves of waste, first with the abandonment of an infant, and later with the control we’re taught and that eventually determines much of how we function in the world. Our bodies tell us when change is upon us, in stages that can be as frightening as adolescence, or as sudden as a broken bone, or as marvelous as a first sexual response.

Our bodies are constantly speaking to us. Unfortunately, we often refuse to listen, believing we know better than our bodies, or being unable to understand what they’re telling us, or simply denying the truths they speak. Bodies are wild and natural, and taming them sometimes comes with a very high price. But we can begin to hear what they tell us, and by taking their advice we can live a freer, easier existence less burdened by pain and uncertainty.

Not long ago I found myself unable to lift my right arm above my chest. I’d been working in a deli for several years, transferring heavy boxes from pallets to carts, flipping fryer baskets filled with chicken I’d fried because I was paid to. There were other repetitive motions I’d been doing as long as I’d had the job, and then, one day, my arm told me it had had quite enough. Pushing back against this information, as we tend to do when a body part first rebels, I kept going … and my arm kept hurting more, until finally I couldn’t lift it. The pain was intense. I imagined being unable to ever use my arm again, which was the sort of overreaction that comes with having a body. I finally made my way to an orthopedist, who diagnosed the problem as some combination of a strain and possibly a fissure in my muscle. He prescribed an MRI and told me to stay out of work for two weeks. I did as I was told, having very little problem taking the time off when “the doctor told me to,” and within a few weeks I was back to normal—whatever that is.

This is a vivid example of the sort of communication my body attempts with me on a regular basis. When my legs hurt after a long walk, the reason isn’t because walking is bad for me! It’s because I’ve been carrying a lot of extra weight for a lot of days and nights. My desire to be thinner may seem like vanity, but it’s just as much a desire to stop suffering needlessly. I don’t have to be forty pounds overweight! And addressing this longstanding issue, while partly a wish to be more attractive to myself, is more significantly about responding to what my body is telling me.

Smoker’s cough? Stop smoking.

Looking for the perfect hangover cure? Stop drinking.

Constipated, inexplicably tired, anxious, stooping, sleepless, stressed to one limit or another? Listen to your body.

It’s understandable that we can react with fear to what we think our bodies are telling us. Who doesn’t assume a grave prognosis when we go to the doctor looking for answers? It’s as natural as gasping for that first breath, terrified there will not be enough air left for another, and another, and another until we take our last. But denying our body’s messages, or pretending they’re not speaking to us at all when in fact they may be shouting, is an invitation to harm and frustration.

Begin to hear your body. Be quiet with it and let yourself learn its language. You are its first and truest friend. You are the one it longs to communicate with. And when it asks you to pay attention, let nothing be more important than understanding what it has told you. When we become the best interpreter of our body’s language, we begin to live in partnership with it, and to trust it will never lead us astray. We may not always like what it has to say, and sometimes what it tells us will be devastating, but we will listen carefully. The answers are there, and in those answers is the opportunity for peace, acceptance and change.

Dreamshaping Copyright MadeMark Publishing