Mind and Body

Should we always listen to our body? There is a famous saying ‘listen to your body, it knows best’. Is that the case always? What if someone told you, that is not your body who needs to be listened to? The body speaks for what the mind thinks or fears or chooses to suppress. So if for example, your mind does a thought that stresses you out, then your body instantly will try to adapt to the coming ‘threat’. That means the physiology of your body changes in order to ‘flight or fight’. Bumping heart, increased breath rhythm, sweaty palms, increased blood travels to leg muscles. The body system responds perfectly right in order to rescue you from the threat. You are so lucky having such a responding system. What if the mind gives the ‘threat’ signal too often to the body? Then the sympathetic nervous system gets excessively aroused. What happens next is several psychosomatic symptoms. Among them is the feeling of exhaustion. That is one of the cases that listening to your body and staying out of an exercise session ‘feeling too tired’ choosing to stay in bed to rest, will only feed the cycle of stress- > tensed body -> fear -> stress-> exhaustion.
Breaking the cycle by going for a walk or a training session, you balance your hormones and a signal back to your brain that there is no threat. Nourish your body as you have no other. It is your own and only home for your mind, soul and body.