This Is What Happens When You Start Listening to Your Body
Are You Ready to Trust the One Who’s Been With You All Along?
I used to scoff at the idea of dating myself. What a silly, New Age thing to say.
“I’m not dating someone because I’m dating myself right now.”
Barf.
Except…
It turns out that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.
As a yoga teacher and intuitive writer, I’ve been circling the idea of being “more present” in my body for years. But after my life imploded a week before I turned 30, I thought—what the hell—it might be time to go all in on a new way of living.
So, I started meditating and journaling. I did somatic releases and fascia releases. I tried EFT tapping to process old emotions. I worked with a spiritual coach to let go of old wounds. All of it with the goal of being more present in my body.
Unfortunately, what I found wasn’t very pretty.
My body was on the brink of rebellion:
I had crippling anxiety before every major life decision.
My feet ached from plantar fasciitis, which showed up the day after my boyfriend of seven years moved out.
My family curse, hypothyroidism, was slowly robbing me of energy and making it impossible for me to lose weight.
My right shoulder ached constantly which made it impossible to practice yoga—the one thing that was keeping me sane.
Looking back, I’d say my relationship with my body definitely qualified as toxic.
I was like the partner who says they’re going to change but never really does. Or maybe the one who gaslights their partner into thinking they’re the problem.
The problem is, I’d bought into the propaganda that your body and your emotions are separate. I thought, this is just how life is: your body complains, and you deal with it.
Anxiety, foot pain, autoimmune diseases… these were all just a part of life.
Right?
But thankfully, around age 30, something inside me rebelled against that belief.
I didn’t want to ache. I didn’t want to be 30 pounds overweight. I didn’t want to be anxious all the time.
I was ready to change, I just need to figure out how.
Luckily, I happen to know a lot about modalities that link emotions and energy to the physical body—i.e. TCM meridians, chakras, archetypes, and Human Design.
All of these systems talk about a deeper connection between the mind and the body. A reason for the pain patterns, discomfort, and dis-ease.
Sometimes, I’d even feel that connection for myself.
Like when I journaled about the pain in my shoulder and wrote, “I feel like my responsibilities are slowly crushing me.” Was that just a metaphor—or was my body speaking to me?
I know most people believe the messages from your body (i.e. the aches and pains, the diseases, the health issues that come out of nowhere) are random. That any patterns are just coincidence. That all medical issues can be traced back to diet, genetics, and other real-world causes.
But I’m not so sure.
Mostly because, when I really started to listen to the messages from my body, I found that all of my issues fit into a bigger overall pattern:
My anxiety was strongest when I repeatedly denied the whispers of my intuition.
My plantar fasciitis appeared when I started to walk a new path in life—stepping away from the life I thought I should have, and toward one that lit me up.
Hypothyroidism kicked in only after years of holding in the words I longed to say.
The ache in my shoulder grew as I struggled to carry more than my fair share of the burdens of the world.
When I really tuned in, I realized the answers had been there all along. I just hadn’t paid them any attention. My body was holding onto the answers I wanted so badly.
I just had to learn to listen.
My healing truly began when I tuned in to my body.
And the work didn’t stop there.
My body guided me to meditation and journaling for my anxiety, to PT and acupuncture for plantar fasciitis, to a gluten-free diet for my thyroid… and all of that was necessary to start the healing process.
But there’s more to a relationship than troubleshooting after the fact.
To truly be in relationship with your body, you need to show up for it in real time.
You can’t just show up after months of no contact and expect everything to go back to normal. You need to show up every day, listen, and act on what you hear.
That’s the only way to build trust.
And trust, as we all know, is the foundation of any good relationship.
Rebuilding trust with yourself doesn’t happen overnight. It happens in many small moments, in the way you show up for yourself every single day.
And we aren’t meant to do it alone.
Our relationships are a mirror of our relationship with ourselves. The patterns, the avoidance, the ways we ignore our own needs—they all show up in how we connect with other people, too.
As a newly single 33 year old, casual dating has provided a weirdly helpful lens for me to improve my relationship with my body.
Dating shows me where I still struggle to trust, to listen, to stay present with myself. It also taught me how to trust the messages from my body.
And so, despite the cringy-ness of sharing about my romantic life online, I’m going to tell you about a couple of my most recent first dates.
Dating in Real Time
First dates are almost always terrible and I’ve learned not to expect too much.
For one thing, you are both nervous and uncomfortable. It really doesn’t matter how confident you are as a person, meeting a prospective romantic partner for a pre-planned activity is a weird thing to do.
For another, people are almost always on their best behavior on a first date. You can’t help but try to impress the other person in the hopes of guaranteeing a second date.
With this in mind, I’ve started approaching first dates a little differently. At least once, I like to pause, tune into my body, and try to get an idea of how it’s reacting to the person I’m with.
Like this one breakfast date I had a few weeks ago. In my head, the date was going really well. The conversation was easy, we were laughing, we had a lot in common… and then I checked in with my body.
My arms were crossed, my legs were angled away from him, and my jaw was clenched. On the surface, everything seemed good, but clearly, my body didn’t agree.
Interesting.
Then there was my bowling/dinner date. When I took a moment to listen to my body, I found that I was leaning in, letting our legs touch under the bar… Clearly interested in him and what he had to say.
But then we left the restaurant and I realized I hadn’t spoken in over an hour. Had he really been talking about himself the whole time and I was into it?
Interesting.
So what do we do with this sort of information?
What is the point of reading our own body language in real time?
A lot of us are taught to ignore the messages from our bodies. We’re told we’re too sensitive, too emotional, too quick to judge. We’re encouraged to give it time, give it a chance—don’t jump to conclusions based on a vibe.
But I think our bodies know things before we are ready to admit them. They catch the small body signals that we aren’t aware of yet. They interpret the energy in the room. And they carry our memories—physical, emotional, energetic, even ancestral.
I’m learning that if I don’t take a moment to really tune into what is happening in my body, I might miss something important. I’ll convince myself that things are going well when they’re not. Or that I’m overreacting, when really, I’m picking up on something deep and real.
So, I’ve been experimenting…
Closed Off
On that first breakfast date—the one where my body closed off—I decided to play with it a little.
I told myself, We are safe here. I unclenched my jaw. Dropped my shoulders. Opened my arms a little. I took a few slow breaths and thought, Let’s just see what happens.
And my body responded. My posture shifted. I relaxed—not in an obvious way, but in a gently unclenching sort of way. And the more I softened, the more I noticed: the tension wasn’t all coming from me.
I wasn’t being dramatic or closed off for no reason.
Something felt off.
Maybe it was a lack of chemistry. Maybe he wasn’t attracted to me. Maybe he was nervous.
And my body picked up on it—even though my mind hadn’t figured it out yet.
By shifting my body in the moment, I was able to hear what was happening below the surface. I was able to hear the message from my body that things weren’t going as well as my mind seemed to think.
Our bodies don’t have a voice, but they do speak. In tension and ease, tightness and opening, leaning in and pulling away.
Each message means something, even if we don’t understand it right away.
That’s what it means to be in relationship with our bodies. It means listening even when it’s uncomfortable.
Then, once we hear what our bodies are trying to say, we get to decide how we respond. We can choose to soften or tighten. Stay or go. Stick with the discomfort or get the heck out of there.
But we can’t hear the message if we are too busy ignoring the messenger.
The breakfast date taught me that. It also showed me that our body language holds valuable clues to the deeper nuances of a situation. That my mind can easily override my body if I let it. And that when I am in relationship with my body, I can choose how I show up with more care.
But not every date is as safe as this one. And sometimes, our bodies messages are much more difficult to interpret.
A Little Too Familiar
Date number two was like that. From the start, I was really, really into him. On a physical level anyway.
We laughed, teased, and let our legs touch under the bar. When he went to the bathroom, the bartender winked at me and asked, “Is this your first date? It looks like it’s going well!” I agreed. It was going well.
As he walked me to my car at the end of the date, I knew I wanted to kiss him goodnight. And when we kissed under the streetlights in the parking lot, it was exactly what I expected. Sparks. Butterflies. My whole body was saying yes.
At least, at first.
But then as we continued kissing, I felt something shift. It started with a sick feeling in my belly, then a hollowness in my chest, and finally a deeply familiar, almost haunted feeling of “I think I’ve been here before.”
It was our first date and I felt like I knew this man from somewhere.
A few minutes later, I realized what it meant.
I know this pattern. I know this man. And I definitely was not safe here.
My body was initially attracted to him, sure—but it wasn’t the kind of attraction that leads somewhere good. It was the kind that pulls you back in to an old pattern. The kind that your body thinks is safe because it’s familiar.
And that raised a whole new question:
If I’m supposed to trust my body… then why did my body bring me here?
Unfortunately, our bodies don’t only hold wisdom, they hold wounds.
Our bodies recognize a pattern and call it safe—even if it isn’t. They are drawn to what they know—even if it isn’t what they need.
Our bodies carry the memories of our past, and to be in relationship with them means interpreting what is a wound and what is real. Learning the language it speaks and discovering what each message means in context.
This date showed me that I still need to work on my relationship with myself. To see why I was attracted to someone who only talked about himself. To interpret why my body felt safe with someone I didn’t know just because he reminded me of someone from my past.
So, knowing this, we can ask more crucial questions—
How can we interpret the messages from our bodies?
Is there ever such a thing as a clear yes or no?
How do I learn to trust my body?
Finding Clarity
When we ask our bodies for guidance, we are often looking for a clear YES or NO. A direct answer to the question: Is this good for me or not?
But our bodies don’t speak in black and white and they can’t always give us a logical answer.
That’s why you can’t trust your body blindly, and why your body can’t always trust you.
And honestly? That’s why I say you need to be in relationship with it.
Anyone who has been in a relationship can tell you, it’s not about perfect communication or always getting it right. It’s about clear and honest conversation.
Your body doesn’t speak in words, but it does speak.
In sensations, in gut feelings, in old patterns and confusing signals.
Sometimes, what feels like a “yes” is actually an old pattern you’re trying to avoid.
Sometimes, a “no” is just an invitation to soften and deepen in the moment.
But if you aren’t in conversation with your body, you’ll never learn the difference.
So, yeah. Dating myself is going great.
And dating other people is too. Its taught me where I still have work to do, how to communicate with my body in real time, and when it’s time to stay/leave.
And most important of all, dating has taught me:
Trust doesn’t start in the mind.
It begins in the body.
Trust Begins in the Body
I’ve discovered that it takes just as much work (if not more) to build trust with yourself as it does with a partner or a friend—especially if you’re like me and you’ve been actively ghosting your body for years.
I think when we talk about trust, we imagine it’s something we just decide to do one day. Like we can gaslight our minds into trusting our bodies just by saying, “You can trust me now.”
But it doesn’t really work like that.
Because trust isn’t a thought, it’s a sensation. Trust exists in the way your belly softens as you enter a room full of people you love. In the way your body feels when you say “no thank you” to a second date with someone who makes you feel unsafe. In the way your energy soars after you eat well every day for a week.
For me, rebuilding trust with my body looks a lot like trying to get back together with someone after a messy break up. I ghosted myself for years and when I showed up again, I thought saying ‘you can trust me again’ would be enough.
But it isn’t.
Rebuilding trust isn’t just making promises. It’s about how you show up after the promise is made. You have to prove to yourself that you’re trustworthy—not just in words, but in actions.
That first date, I had to remind myself that a mental connection isn’t what I want. I want both physical and mental. A deeper connection that stimulates my mind while making me feel safe in my body.
The second, I had to actively pull myself out of the old pattern, breaking off the kiss and resisting the urge to text him later that day. Respecting my body’s warning that this wasn’t safe.
When you’ve spent years ignoring your body, rebuilding trust means proving—again and again—that you’re really here now. In every interaction, every date, every moment.
That’s what I’m trying to do now. I’m showing up for my body. I’m listening. I’m in relationship with it.
Because trust doesn’t start in your mind. It starts in your body.
In Relationship with Your Body
The relationship you have with your physical body is one of the most important ones you will have in this lifetime. And that relationship starts with listening to its messages in the moment.
Without that present moment awareness, you can easily find yourself going in circles.
If I had blindly trusted the physical “yes” my body gave me on the second date, I might have slipped right back into a pattern I’ve been trying to outgrow: getting swept up in physical chemistry and skipping over the emotional connection.
But if I hadn’t softened into the moment on the first date—if I hadn’t stayed with my body and gotten curious instead of shutting down—I wouldn’t have realized that the connection I thought we had was all happening in the mind. That something in me was closing off for a reason.
And those are my patterns.
I’ve started to recognize them—one that chases physical connection without depth, the other that feels safe in the mind but not the body. It’s rare for me to find both.
But I never would’ve seen any of that if I wasn’t paying attention.
If I wasn’t in my body, with it, watching how it moves and reacts and tenses and softens.
Because patterns don’t reveal themselves in your head.
They show up in your body.
And the only way to learn from them… is to stay. To listen. To be willing to feel it all.
And even though it’s silly and New Age, I’m so grateful I chose to date myself again.
To come back, again and again, to the one who’s been with me all along.
Until next time,
This Week’s Journaling Prompt:
What would it look like to prove to my body that I am trustworthy again? Not in words, but in consistent, embodied action?
And don’t forget to share this post with someone who needs to learn how to trust themselves again.
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