Having a Body is a Long-Term Commitment

The title pretty much says what I have to say about this subject.
So, yeah…. Thanks for reading. Talk to you next time.

Eh, I suppose I should say a bit more. There’s no substitute for committing to having a solid relationship with your own body. I don’t mean this in some happy-clappy “you’re perfect the way you are” kind of way. Your body is definitely not perfect, and you’ve definitely been ignoring some things that you should not have been ignoring. All of us are that way.

We are born into a long-term relationship with our body. We had no choice about that. There were no contract negotiations, no discussions or consults. Our bodies come with requirements to maintain that relationship. That relationship being, of course, life.

There is a saying about relationships- “Communication is key.” Honestly that’s not really helpful, because we tend to think of communication as conscious and verbal. If a relationship gets to the point that you have to talk about it with the other person, there’s probably already serious conflict and problems.
However, if we add the maxim “Most communication is non-verbal” to the “Communication is key’, now we’re getting somewhere useful.
Your body communicates (almost) entirely non-verbally. There was one time my brain screamed at me “BAIL OR DIE (expletive deleted)” when I skidded into a hairpin curve on a mountain road while cycling. That got my attention and I bailed, otherwise I would not be here writing this blog post.
Which gives credence to my point, if verbal communication is required to maintain a relationship, things aren’t going very smoothly.
Our bodies communicate mostly through pain and emotional disturbance, and boy is that annoying.
Annoying, but effective. If we pay attention… Pain is the hardest thing to ignore, and it’s basically impossible to argue with. We can blunt it, ignore it, and try to cut it off. But we can’t argue with it.

Our bodies send many non-verbal cues (a.k.a. pain) about our health. Something as simple as tension or annoyance with certain sounds or smells can be a signal.
What do we doe with those signals? That’s the question.
The answer is either something or nothing. Sounds obvious, but we usually put off even making the decision to address or ignore our body signals.
When you’ve been working in one position for 45 minutes and the tension in your neck and back are building up, how often do you ignore it and think “I’ll get up and stretch in a minute…” Then another 45 minutes go by and the signal (pain) comes back even stronger.
On any given week half of my patients are office workers with neck, shoulder, and back pain with numbness and tingling in their arms and/or legs.
If they responded more often to that signal to stop compressing their carpal tunnel or their sciatic nerve, they might not have to pay me to get them out of pain.
Something to think about.
Or ignore the cues from your body and keep me in business…