By Ingrid Ward, West Auckland, New Zealand
My body began speaking to me very loudly from an early age with symptoms that included a blocked or runny nose, lots of itching in various parts of my body, and digestive disturbances like diarrhoea and bloating. But I can hardly ever remember these reactions or symptoms being put down to food, except for the hives being blamed on a certain variety of apples and the swelling of my lips and mouth on eating crayfish: when my body spoke that time it was listened to immediately, as the reaction was severe. That was the last time crayfish was eaten, as to eat it again may have had a rather scary outcome.
In the 1950’s when I was growing up, food intolerances or allergies weren’t spoken or written about very often, so there was very little information to help people know about the intricacies of their bodies, and we certainly didn’t get taught much about the body at school. You just ate the food that you were presented with and anything that the body tried to tell you by way of subtle (or not so subtle) messages was likely to be overridden, as most then didn’t understand that food could be the issue behind many of the body’s ills.
So on I went eating what I was given without question and not surprisingly the suffering, along with the messages from my body, continued. I can remember suspecting that milk was the culprit behind the runny nose and excess mucous issues, but milk, in this little country of 10,000 dairy farms, was considered to be liquid gold and essential for the strength of our bones, and to say you didn’t want to drink it was almost sacrilege. Those bottles of warm milk that waited for us at school every day were my worst nightmare with my body speaking so loudly after each one, not just with nose issues, but with headaches as well. With the continual nose issues and sore throats, my tonsils finally gave up and at age eight they were removed, but I continued to drink milk and so my body kept talking. I have a feeling that I slowly began to accept that everything I was going through was actually normal, so I stopped talking about it.
Then there was the regular Sunday afternoon headache that I know now came from the cream that was placed in huge dollops over the special Sunday dessert. The messages usually began several hours after the ingestion of this eagerly awaited delight, but it was ignored as jelly and cream was too lovely to cast aside.
The digestive issues, including regular bouts of diarrhoea, were more often than not put down to contracting a ‘bug’. The only reason for this that my very puzzled mother could come up with was that I was not washing my hands enough, but having to wash my hands every five minutes was not something that a young child wanted to do, so I didn’t. I know now from the knowledge and wisdom I have acquired over the last 17 years that this digestive reaction came from the gluten in the bread I ate, but that discovery was a long way off.
And the itching! Oh, that continuous scratching until my skin was raw from being raked by my finger nails, itching which my body was trying to tell me was from sugar! But who would want to give up the sweet stuff? After all, everyone else was consuming it so why shouldn’t I? Mind 1 – Body 0!
Looking back, I can see that there were times my body struggled under this continual abuse as I was regularly stopped in my tracks with an illness or disease. That makes sense as it would have been exhausted trying to process products that it couldn’t deal with so it had to stop me somehow to recharge, but sadly its wisdom continued to be overruled by a mind that had its own agenda; a mind with a high IQ that was considered to be a marker of intelligence.
It wasn’t as if the people around me were un-intelligent either. Just like me, they hadn’t been brought up to understand their bodies, just as those before them also hadn’t been. The doctors that I saw regularly were naturally considered to be wise and so we expected them to have all the answers to our questions, but none seemed to know how to decipher what my body was trying to say. In retrospect, that was understandable as the fact that certain foods could cause health issues probably hadn’t been a part of their training.
…
Over the years I had a moment or two when I began to get a sense of what my body was telling me and took dairy, or bread, and sometimes a little of the sugar out of my diet, but even though I started to feel a whole lot better, it didn’t take long before they found their way back in again, usually as a result of what was going on in my life. The dairy, gluten and sugar-filled food had become a comfort, a way of numbing myself and a way of filling up the emptiness that I was living with and, without the food, I didn’t know how I would be able to exist.
Then at aged 50, I finally got it; I had one of those light bulb moments that turn your life upside down. I came across a book that could have been written by me: the story of a woman’s life that totally mirrored mine, and the moment I finished it, I did not hesitate to change the way I was eating, and what I now know to be my true intelligence, the intelligence of my body, was given full reign. Out went the dairy, the wheat and the sugar, and over the next few months, up went my energy levels and the quality of my health, and slowly, but surely, down went my weight. I could almost hear my body sighing with relief! It was finally being listened to.
But although much happier than it had ever been, my body was still whispering in my ear and it wasn’t until the gluten was finally removed and I began to address the many emotional issues and the exhaustion that were behind my eating patterns that my body’s whispers became less and less. These final pieces of the puzzle were supplied when, in 2005, I began to attend presentations by Serge Benhayon, founder of Universal Medicine.
These presentations contained bucket loads of light bulb moments, as well as many confirmations, especially around the foods that my body had tried for years to tell me that it couldn’t deal with; finally I was listening to what I now know to be true intelligence, the intelligence of my body.
I know without one iota of doubt that if I had been brought up to know my body as I know it now and how to understand its messages, to respect it as the all-wise and wonderful vessel that it is, my life story would read very differently and that would have been so very welcome. But as the saying goes: “Better late than never.” Now I know that by finally acknowledging the innate wisdom of this amazing body of mine, I no longer allow myself to be led astray by my wayward mind.
With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.
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Medicine and Serge Benhayon 
Beautifully summed up Ingrid: “With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.” Our responsibility is to treat our body with the greatest honour and respect so that this is indeed possible.
A great idea Doug. As parents we can pass onto our children of course but what about teachers at school…there is so much that we could enlighten children about and I do know some teachers who are doing just that, however it is not general practice and more could be communicated on this subject.
Every day we are each of us bathed in a richness of wisdom unsurpassed by any measure of seeming wisdom we may adopt in its place. That we insist on moving in a way that shuts us off from this wisdom is not the fault of the wisdom itself but the very deliberate mechanisations we put into place to have us live the reduced form of intelligence we have accepted as our norm because it offers us a certain level of comfort and security, albeit at the expense of us fully appreciating, feeling and accessing that which we are already bathed in.
When I read this blog I hear the voice of a very wise woman and a very wise body!
Gosh, the reminder of school milk and that intense feeling of nausea at having to drink it and even worse after drinking it, and equally after having clotted cream piled over desserts and having a similar feeling is a pretty intense memory. But I can remember encouraging my own children to eat certain foods they didn’t like thinking that they were good for them. We do know as children what our bodies want and dont want – how honouring it would be if we listened to their feelings and accepted that they did indeed know what they were telling us.
I remember when I was at school and about 9 years old, there was a girl who did not eat chocolate. We just could not understand how someone would not eat chocolate. She said she would get a headache if she had one and we just thought she was the most unlucky person on earth. Eventually she ‘overcame’ that ‘problem’ and joined the rest of the chocolate eating population. I wonder how she is doing now.
The wonderful thing is Ingrid, that you eventually did listen. For so many people this doorway never even opens in this life.
Every day I celebrate the choice I finally made to listen as if I hadn’t I know that I would have been extremely unwell by now. I have proved to myself that the quality of our lives can change by making different choices, but all around me I see so many choosing to stay with the choices they have always made and as a result the ‘doorway’ you mention, stays firmly stuck shut as well.
Many times we blame a cold for our runny nose but in truth it is the food we have been eating, Likewise I realise now there is a sugar hangover, we don’t have to drink alcohol to suffer from this, a few pieces of cake, biscuits desserts or even sometimes a large helping of sweetened fruit salad is all it takes.
Regardless of a mind with a high IQ it is the body that has all the answers. The wisdom of the body knows what supports it and what does not and although I have reacted badly to those that have given credence to the mind over the body I now understand energy, how it works and the bigger picture. It sometimes amazes me what can come through another to try and disturb the truth of what I am presenting!
To me this is huge and shows just how much work needs to be done as you were not taught as a child to listen to your body (because the adults had not been taught that .. no blame here) but years later this is still happening, If not getting worse around the globe. ‘I know without one iota of doubt that if I had been brought up to know my body as I know it now and how to understand its messages, to respect it as the all-wise and wonderful vessel that it is, my life story would read very differently and that would have been so very welcome. But as the saying goes: “Better late than never.’ We need to all work towards a point where ‘better late than never’ will never be used again regarding our health, wellbeing, understanding, awareness or anything in fact because we are so connected to our awareness from day one and are truly supported by others with this throughout our life.
Yes I would love to see the words “better late than never” become obsolete, for the simple fact that our children are raised to know the beauty and the fragility of their bodies from day one. It may take a while but I am sure that with a commitment to heal ourselves first the ripple effects will be huge and so very welcome.
I hear ya on this one. My body has told me far more than a doctor has in terms of what it needs and more importantly, what it doesn’t need. And that’s frustrating sometimes because many of the foods I love just don’t make me feel good. And it keeps changing too – things like crisps or sweet potato that I could eat a few years ago do not have a good effect on me. On the one hand annoying, but on the other it’s amazing – and the fact that I respond to the latter makes me amazing too.
I love the realness you share with here Nick; the frustrations and annoyances, as your food choices change, but at the same time your awareness that it’s actually amazing that you are finally listening to your wonderfully wise body. And yes, I can feel your amazingness from here!
We have been on this planet now for a very long time, longer than most people think and you would think we would all be by now in tune with our bodies and know exactly what we can and can’t eat and why we would want to eat to harm ourselves or consume alcohol etc, but the mind is a powerful thing if left unchecked and our spirits revel in tricking us into what keeps us from connecting with our souls, so we do need to look behind our cravings if we do want true quality in our later years.
When we get into the energetic root causes, the emotions that are held in the body to be healed, then our lifestyle choices can change and stick. It’s then not a struggle or requiring of willpower but naturally we make healthier, more loving choices.
The messages from the media of our body are a very strong advertisement for how it calls to be cared for and it is our own responsibility to listen.
The thing is we aren’t brought up to understand our bodies as the author has stated, so it’s not so much as us being unintelligent but there is an element of common sense missing these days.
The body holds a great wisdom within, and is constantly communicating with us, the problem is we choose not to listen or ignore it, yet there is something magical being offered to us, and it pays to be all ears.
Imagine having a conversation with someone where you shared the answer they were after, but they just ignored it and blathered on for 20 years or so while you just stood there! This is in effect how we tend to be with our body. But it’s never to late to stop and hear in full what it has to say.
I love the analogy Joseph, it simply makes sense, but at the same time it almost makes me cringe for that is exactly what I did, what so many of us do. When I think of the time I spent ignoring my body it doesn’t make any sense at all but to have finally come to understand how it is endlessly ‘talking’ to me and that I can actually do something about the messages brings common sense firmly back into my health equation.
Great analogy Joseph … Even though we may not listen, it – Our Soul, Our love never ceases to give up on us… and when we do stop and take a step towards it, this quality of love takes 10 steps towards you.
Even after years and years of abuse our bodies never stop communicating with us, lovingly guiding us home.
Once we start listening to our body, we begin to notice that it does not stop showing us that there is always more and more self-love to discover…
The power of what is seen to be ‘normal’ and healthy in the best interests of society oozes here. There is a quiet force that comes at you when something that is part of the beliefs of society are challenged. The wisdom of the body holds all we are as precious and with its wisdom will support us toward whole health. I love what you have written here Ingrid and how you have exposed the ‘accepted’ ways of the past.
And it is that “power of what is seen to be ‘normal’” in society that comes straight at you when choosing to make a change in the way you are eating, drinking and living. And for me it came from those closest to me which at the time really puzzled me as I was making the changes to improve my health and well-being. Looking back now I can see that they were simply being challenged, uncomfortably so, as to how they were living.
Our bodies are the wisest and most wonderful friends we will ever have. They are so very worth listening to for what they have to say is priceless beyond measure.
Yes Ingrid, the presentations of Serge Benhayon offer many light bulb moments and confirmations, I too have experienced them and they are literally life changing.
‘ My mind is brought into line’ so the soul can come through.
There the true intelligence is lived.
‘ My body spoke, but I didn’t listen… for a very long time ‘ yet it is incredible how when we do start to listen the body soon responds and says thank you.. I have found.
I love how you say how the presentations of Universal Medicine contained bucket loads of light bulb moments, these presentations are gold and always deeply honouring of the wisdom of our body.
It’s true, it’s never too late especially when we take reincarnation into the equation…
There are so many books and philosophies in this world that seem to be beneficial – but none that make listening to your body’s sensitivities no.1, unlike Universal Medicine. Then you wonder why you thought other approaches would ever work – when your body is designed for you to listen and to read it. The body’s philosophy is beautiful but uncomfortable at times to receive.
I so agree Joseph that “The body’s philosophy is beautiful but uncomfortable at times to receive.” And once upon a time I would have tried to avoid the uncomfortableness at all cost as I didn’t want to make the changes I could feel were being called for. But finally, I have come to understand the immense wisdom and the healing that is being offered in these situations and instead of ignoring the messages I now listen intently. I mightn’t always understand the message straight away but with patience and my deep commitment to my body eventually I know I will get the answer.
Yes, agree, and what this shows is that our body is, first and foremost a body of love, so anything that is not loving to it, will stand out like a sore thumb
The mind can be a dominant force over the body if we allow it to be, and that’s the point: it’s always our choice to decide what we give our focus to: the mind or the body? Both are constantly communicating: the body has the whole of our interests at heart, whereas the mind, a useful tool when we use it in the right way – so often overrides the body.
I have come to realise how powerful and very deceitful our mind is, always trying to convince me to eat something that I don’t want to and the tools it uses are my favourite foods of the past, foods that no longer have a place in my diet. But my awareness of this trickery is very high these days and there is no way that I will subject my wonderful body to the stresses and strains I use to put it through on a regular basis, and in return my body thanks me in many ways.
We talk more and more these days about the fact that listening is an essential part of the full cycle of communication. Our bodies ‘speak’ very clearly to us… all we have to do is refine our listening and response skills.
It’s definitely first all about the listening Matilda, and I know that I for one had developed a very selective hearing. It was like I was hearing the messages from my body but there was a huge barrier between hearing the messages and then making the choice to respond to them. Once I realised this was what I was doing the next choice was to address the barrier. That has taken a little longer but it is one work in progress that I am fully committed to and block by block the barrier is being dismantled.
It is extraordinary the lies we have been told about milk and the industry that has developed around those lies. As more and more people recognise that dairy is not good for their bodies the industry will slowly decline. Already small farmers are being overwhelmed by large conglomerates and making less endless profits as they compete with prices. They are putting a lot of effort into producing something that our bodies don’t actually need.
This article is a great reminder for how there are so many cases and situations where it seems the right and natural thing to refer to an expert about how our bodies are behaving – often in ways that are contra to how we would like them to behave – and so there can be a seeking for help to get back on track. But what I often find in these situations, and how you have beautifully explained, is how there can be an assumption that the expert has everything all figured out, when the reality may be that they are knowledgeable yes, but do not have all the answers. And as much as another person can be helpful and offer support, ultimately and at the end of the day, our bodies are our own responsibility and in that comes our willingness to listen to its communications.
It has taken a while but finally I know that I have the most trusted expert at my fingertips, and that expert is my body. The wisdom this wonderful vehicle of mine is always sharing is endless, although at times it takes a while to understand what it is saying. But I have also learned that with the commitment to listening and a lot of patience the answer is eventually revealed.
There still is this attitude that food intolerance and allergy needs to be cured, that somehow there is something wrong with us to be showing some kind of reaction, and that we have to eat anything that gets fed to us to show our appreciation. The body is not being afforded the care and regards it deserves from its own perspective. We keep trying to control it when its intelligence far surpasses our reasoning mind. It is so much simpler to just listen to what it has got to say.
Thank you Ingrid – every time I re-read this blog there is a deeper awareness of the ‘light bulb moments’ of where things can be refined and re-defined through new choices.
Yes those tantalising feelings in our mouth can be so seductive, easily leading us away from the fact that this particular food or drink is not what our body is wanting. These days I ask myself whether 10 seconds of pleasure in my mouth is worth two days of feeling miserable and most of the time the answer is no. If it is yes I know that something in my life is needing to be looked at, and usually it is the fact that I am tired. That is one eating trigger that I am still working on.
This is a brilliant sharing because I’m sure we can all relate to what has been written.
And how often do we ignore the messages from our bodies and over ride because the offending food or liquid to our bodies tastes so delicious in our mouths that for the relatively few seconds that we can taste it in our mouths we are willing to put up with our bodies telling us clearly that it is intolerant to the substance or liquid just eaten. I know it has taken me a while to accept this.
listening to the body is a great way to begin to trust ourselves
Thanks Johanne, I hadn’t though of it like that,
but it really does – each time we listen to and act upon what our body needs, we’re building trust with ourselves. It can be basic self care stuff, but whenever we listen to and actually act on what we’re feeling, we’re giving ourselves a strong message that we’re worth taking care of.
A great sharing Ingrid. If only we were taught to truly honour and listen to our bodies from a young age we would be living in a totally different world. How did we miss this very vital connection to true health – our bodies have always been the vessels of truth which we have conveniently ignored.
We have so many symptoms going on in our body and often just do not pay attention to them, (I speak for myself here) it completely undermines our health and wellbeing to discount the signs our bodies share with us, bloating, brittle nails, headaches, sinus issues etc…are not normal they are saying something…are we listening?
I was having this conversation with my neighbour in the lift this morning he has recently been recovering from a bad back and we talked about not listening to the little signs our body gives us, we both noted that these little signs can often be ignored – we came to he conclusion if you ignore the smaller signs it sets us up for a bigger sign at a later date – in conclusion it is always far better we listen now!
I found it was those little signs that were easier to ignore, probably because I was hoping they would go away. Unfortunately that wasn’t always the case; they only got bigger until they couldn’t be ignored any longer. So how amazing it would be to raise our young ones to take instant notice of these little but very important signs, to share what they are feeling with us and for us to honour what they are sharing. How their lives would be very different as they grew, supported by this foundation of body awareness.
Our body speaks volumes constantly… makes me wonder how we go for so long ignoring it.
Ignoring is the fine art of ignorance, yes?
True true, if we didn’t spend our days ignoring our bodies we would all be wise beyond our years.
Yes I agree that our body is our “true friend”, a fact that every child ought to be introduced to from a very early age. When you think about it honestly, we normally treat our best friends with love and care, but for some inexplicable reason we do not treat our precious body in the same way and then we wonder why it begins to gently ‘complain’. If we were to treat our body in a very loving way I have a feeling this loving care will also flow naturally into the way we treat our friends and family. Definitely a win-win situation.
From experience I know how amazing it feels when I do listen to my body. When I do this consistently it feels so simple and I feel so joyful. It is true love.
Food is not our enemy, ever, knowing ourselves and being willing to understand what causes us to eat foods that affect our body is the only true way to begin to change old habits.
Very true Leigh, we can blame the chocolate or ice-cream, we even cut out foods from our diet but does these movements truly support the body or are we coming from a form of control to make us feel better? I have certainly disciplined myself to not eat certain foods because my mind has thought they were harming but I have found that this way of being has been equally as abusive to eating the foods in the first place! The control may look good on the outside but what is actually going on in the inside? Unless I address with absolute honesty how, why and what I am feeling when I eat especially certain foods in my diet that I know are harming then there is never going to be any true healing that will support my body.
I love your reply to Leigh, Caroline, and I can totally relate to what you have written. What stands out for me is the fact that unless we address, in total honesty, exactly what is happening in our body nothing will change. I know that I became a master at ignoring the messages that my body was giving me as the thought of giving up certain foods seemed way too hard. But I too have learned that if there is no honesty there is no space for the healing the body is asking for.
Well pointed out Leigh, it’s interesting how we make food the issue but it’s the thoughts, behaviour, and momentum before we actually put hand to mouth and actually what type of food we choose to put into the hand to feed ourselves, e.g., comfort food, numbing food, that pairs up with whatever momentum we may be in. Address this and food doesn’t become the issue.
All the answers we are looking for are within and it is through listening to the intelligence and wisdom of the body I connect to soul.
To keep speaking to an audience that has made itself deaf is indeed an act of love. Such love is in every particle of our body – a reminder of who we are and where we come from.
Indeed it is but the body knows we are not deaf in truth so it will lovingly remind us time after time never giving up on us.
Very true, we are not deaf, we simply have our hands on the volume control.
I love how our bodies are always there giving us reminders to return to living the love that we are. Slowly these nudges get bigger and more extreme until we stop and listen. Or we can choose to bury them further and ignore them. But as soon as we open up to the possibility and fact that we are indeed love then the body shows us where we are not being love and so is a great friend, one we live with 24/7 if we so choose for it to be, and even when we fight it, it never gives up on us!
Yes we can bury `these nudges` really deeply and ignore them but the reality is, they never go away. In fact they will often get bigger and more impactful on our body. I have the ‘scars’ from many issues in my body that I ignored for a long which are still having an impact on my health today. I can’t turn back the clock and begin again but at least I can bring the deepest care to my body now, nourishing and nurturing it with the quality of care it deserves.
The beauty is we do not need to turn back the clock. I have had so many times I wished I could do that rather than face and accept the consequences of my actions. But the more I embrace them, the more I see they are there to show me where I have not been loving and so will not make the same choices again. It is like I am constantly given moments to assess all areas of my life and say no to old patterns and choices and yes to the love I know and feel within.
Boy Ingrid, your blog brings back many not so pleasant memories of similar digestive distress I willingly endured as a child eating copious amounts of milk, bread, cheese and ice cream, growing up in dairy farm country myself. Looking back on it I can feel just how much my lack of self worth at the time contributed to me almost accepting the pain and agony of how my body responded to these foods as the norm, or even worse, that I deserved it. I can thank Serge Benhayon for inspiring me to deal with these emotional issues and now listen to my body’s messages much more attentively.
It is widely accepted now that food could be the issue behind many of the body’s ills – and it has become big business especially in the gluten and dairy free sector, however with the huge sugar content still in these alternatives it is clear the willingness of the individual to listen to the body’s messages (and the willingness of the food industry to cater for this!) is not really there yet, revealing our widespread, ongoing tussle with what we like to put in our mouths, and how we want our bodies to feel.
There are so many companies that have jumped on the “gluten free, dairy free” bandwagon in an attempt to keep up with public demand but the products that many of them are producing are usually full of a great deal of sugar, and a lot of the time chocolate, making the product not in the least healthy. Consumers need to become so aware of reading labels because sugar is being hidden under so many different names which is very confusing to most – and so the addiction to sugar continues to be fed.
From personal experience I know how ‘addictive’ sugar is and how utterly squiffy it sends my entire system, body and thoughts totally out of whack and unable to hold a steadiness that I now naturally know to be my true state.
“With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.”
Beautiful and well said, the more I am learning to listen to my body, the more honouring and sensitive I allow myself to feel and the appreciation that comes from this is very well worth living.
In my teenage years, I never liked drinking beer but liked spirits. Or, more accurately, I retrained my body to accept the burning feeling of the differently flavoured alcohols as something that was enjoyable. I managed my self-abuse to my body for 30 years. It is never too late to listen to our bodies, no matter how long our sabbatical was.
I can totally confirm that it is ‘never too late to listen to our bodies’ but of course beginning to listen in the early years of our lives would save us a whole lot of pain and discomfort. And the most wonderful thing is, you don’t have to make huge changes in your diet to make huge changes in your life. Once you make the first choice to take an honest look at how and what you are eating your body is there supporting you, unconditionally, all the way.
Our body gives us such clear messages. It’s strange how we mainly override them and choose differently. It’s almost like we are programmed to self abuse. And then we pretend we don’t know the cause of an illness when we get sick. It’s a really big game.
Yes, it is strange Rebecca, in fact, it simply doesn’t make sense but that’s how I, and the majority of humanity have lived for so long. And yes again, it does seem like we are ‘programmed to self-abuse’, consistently so. That’s when the question – I wonder why? – needs to be asked and to be carefully considered. It will only be when we start to understand the why that our health and our lives will begin to heal.
Our body has no problem communicating. It is the most consistent and persistent reflection of that honest level of communication in our lives! Yet we over-ride its communication with equal consistency which when you look back is completely illogical because the changes to mental and physical health once the communication is listened and responded to are life changing.
I now find even if I eat a little too much (which I do quite often because when I eat I find I go into spirit, or my mind takes over) I feel really bloated and not nice even though I eat a lot less than I used to. My body these days is a lot quicker in letting me know when I have been listening to my thoughts instead of listening to my body.
So often we make it about the food, but this line cracks that open, “and I began to address the many emotional issues and the exhaustion that were behind my eating patterns that my body’s whispers became less and less.” This is where the real gold is.
Yes Sarah, this is when I could really feel that I was finally beginning to understand the ‘why’. And as I delved deeper into the why the more the truth was revealed, not that pleasant to see at times, but oh so valuable and definitely not to be ignored.
Our body is the most loyal friend we could ever have throughout life. For who else would stand with us and never stop communicating to us despite the fact that we are ignoring what is being said?
I am sure that if we treated our family and friends in the very disregarding way we treat our body it wouldn’t be too long before we ended up very alone. The fact that we treat ourselves in such a harming way begs the question – why? It is not until we begin to make sense of the why that our continual abuse of our very precious body will slowly start to be dismantled.
Our bodies are very insistent with their messages. We only have to listen and follow their lead. As we become clear there can also be thoughts in the mind guiding us back to the things we are “missing” If we fall for these thoughts we soon know it for this way leads us to missing ourselves.
I love the idea that we are our own doctors. And what a great service we can offer – avaliable 24/7, writing our own prescriptions and instant follow up as to how our healing is going. So I wonder why we so often look for someone else to fix us when the power to do so is in the messages our body is always giving us.
What I have realised is our body never stops speaking to us. We may listen and adjust something, and then as we continue to lighten and evolve, our body again communicates to make further refinements and adjustments. It is a forever deepening relationship we have with ourselves, and one that assists with deepening our self-love. Our body never gives up in showing us there’s more.
There is a tendency that we can listen to the body when it is screaming at us, like I had a long episode of low back pain last year, but when we have recovered and the messages are a whisper.. a dull back ache after a long car journey, my response tends to be less caring. When we listen to the whispering messages all the time, we don’t need the loud ones.
I love the idea of us writing a prescription for our own medicine Johanne. It places the responsibility for our health care firmly in our hands with the choice to make that prescription as healing as we possibly can, every single day.
Paying attention to our body by way of how it responds in life, to food, to stress, to lack of sleep (as a few examples), is like our body writing a prescription for medicine.
Just imagine if you will…Kindergarten classes of the future… Where listening to your body is the theme, and the connection with this bearer of true wisdom is celebrated.
I can relate to this, I spent a lot of my adulthood being detached from my body and not listening to its messages, those years are starting to shift the other way and I started listening to my body for some years now…the change is….well simply stunning.
I remember sharing thyroid stories years ago with a lady who had undergone surgery for a hyperactive thyroid and she was complaining that it is hyperactive again. I realised from our conversation that she hadn’t changed her lifestyle one iota so to me it wasn’t surprising it had come back. My thyroid has gone back to normal with no surgery and has stayed that way, but there is another aspect fo life that I have not paid attention to: a prolapse.
I had surgery over a year ago and felt great. I was under strict instructions never to lift anything heavy ever again and not to push when going to the toilet. I was very good – for a whole year but recently have been feeling strong and forgot to take care, i.e. stopped listening to my body. So now it is shouting again with a further prolapse. Big oops, back to tender care ASAP. We need to listen and be very tender with our bodies – they do not lie.
‘With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one’ The body is an incredible teacher.
The only true ‘expert’ when it comes to all matters food, is our body. It took me a very long while to come to truly know this and instead listened to everything that was presented by endless ‘experts’, meanwhile my body was giving me one wise message after another. It never ceases to amaze me how my life turned around simply by listening to this wonderfully wise vessel that has supported me for so long.
‘With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one,’ yes when our body does the leading and is listened to, the mind aligning with the bodies wisdom instead of going off on it’s own tangent regardless of the body harmony and balance can be restored.
Looking back I can see that life would happen and then I would get sick, it was not until recent years where I’ve started to really look at my part in how I am living, to look at what I am doing, how I am caring for myself that I realize my body did indeed warn me of getting sick – long before I did and had I listened I may not have got sick. But sick to me now also means feeling dull, not alive and not vital. Things that I would use caffeine and sugar to get me by in the past but today by not using these allow me to be more honest with how I am living.
Can you imagine being in a relationship where one person didn’t listen to the other? Can you imagine the tension and disharmony between those two people? That’s what it’s like when we don’t listen to our body and that is what we walk around and move in.
This is such a great analogy Nikki offering so much to ponder on. And reading what you write I can feel how I lived and moved in that tension, in fact there probably was never not a moment when I wasn’t. To begin to listen to our body may not be easy to begin with and coming to understand what it is saying may take even longer, but in the end, it is the most valuable of commitments to the vessel that supports us in every moment; life-changing in fact.
When I was ill with various illnesses, there were many occasions when my body spoke to me, but I would counter the messages with something I had picked up in a magazine in the dentists or doctors surgery. I read this, so it must be true mentality. Now I discern the source of the answers to my questions.
Listening to our body is not something we are brought up to do in fact we override all its messages and live the way we want but something magical occurs when we connect to our body and treasure all it offers us and Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine lead the way in opening up who we truly are and the quality and responsibility of our choices on our health and well being reconnecting to our body and the amazing power and beauty that unfolds.
Gosh Ingrid… its so good that you finally started to listen to your body… the same for all of us as well!.
I love this article. It is an ongoing invitation to build a respectful and loving relationship with my body.
Even though I love the wisdom of my body and what it shares with me, I still do things to it that I know it won’t like/will be harmful. It is the human spirit’s way of being defiant, of not being obedient to the pull to be in harmony and oneness. Self-abuse (overeating, staying up late etc.) is an attempt to turn down the volume on the voice of the body, which would otherwise clearly tell us how to live in every moment.
The amazing thing is that when we stop doing the things to be defiant from our spirit is that our body and the connection to so much more is still there patiently waiting and the moment we say, ‘I’m ready’ it says ‘let’s go’.
Our body, truly is ahead of the denial or dismissal game we tend to lead with. If we paid more attention to it, appreciate, love, regard it, then it makes me wonder really just how far more intelligent we may be as a race of people.
We all know what works for our bodies and what doesn’t, it’s just about how much we surrender to that. Something that’s still very much a work in progress for me!
In my late 20’s after tests, due to feeling exhausted all the time, it was detected that I was allergic to gluten, diary and other foods. I was told to cut out gluten, wheat and diary for 6 months and after 6 months I would be fixed and could eat these foods again. Ridiculous, but at the time it suited me to believe the doctor so after 6 months I went back to my old diet and over a period of time my symptoms came back, but this time I masked them with alcohol and drugs. I knew exactly what was going on but chose to ignore what my body was telling me.
We write things off so quickly as being this or that and ignore the true communication from our body and all that it is offering. I recently have had a cold type virus and I am surprised at how much it is telling me about how I have been living, moving and expressing up to now. Although I would have preferred not to have got a cold, it is truly appreciated that I have.
I wonder if, being asked more often when we were young, (be it in our home, or in primary school) the types of questions around ‘how do you feel?’ that we would become adults far more connected with our body and hence develop a greater sense of awareness – As awareness is a very supportive tool for life, health and wellbeing.
“How do you feel” ought to be a question that children are asked from young and the answer honoured, not swept aside as adults often do. And in my experience this question cannot be asked too soon as I have found that children often struggle to put their feelings into words, which I sure will begin to change once they are given the space and the support to express freely.
The truth of our body and all it offers us and how it speaks to us is so beautiful and the love is amazing, if only we were brought up to listen to it. Now we have Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine showing us the truth of all we feel and know and another way to live lovingly with ourselves and the all.
It is funny to realise that having a hangover is also a way the body is communicating with us.
It’s puzzling but shocking at the same time, Christoph, as in that hangover we are being offered such a huge message. Unfortunately as uncomfortable as a hangover can be the next time alcohol is offered most will instantly and conveniently forget the message the body had previously given and the next drink is consumed before it has a chance to be remembered. We as a humanity certainly aren’t respectful of our wonderful bodies but then at the same time wonder why they inconveniently ‘break down’ every now and then.
“With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.” I had never appreciated the enormity of the potential of living by the impulse of the body so that the mind could follow in line until I heard Serge Benhayon talk about it. It has been a complete revelation for me, but understanding it as I do now, it makes total sense.
This shows how our body is a constant communicator and can truly reflect where we are at. It is not about being against our bodies but working with our bodies to respond lovingly and tenderly.
The body never considers it too late to start listening to it so neither should we, in fact the body always respond amazingly to being honoured and cherish irrespective of how long we have not done it for in the past.
This is so true Elizabeth. Our amazing body is always waiting for us to make the choice to begin to lovingly care for it and when we do it is instantly there in all its amazingness to support us. I didn’t begin to make these loving changes until I was 50 and I could almost hear my long-suffering body cheer very loudly. Since then it has been my biggest cheer-leader with every new loving choice that I make.
It is astonishing how ignorant we are about our bodies and the messages they are giving us; to treat diarrhoea or a runny nose as just a thing that happens without relating it to our lifestyle and the food we eat is something that humanity needs to change. We need to understand that whatever we choose has consequences.
I’m aware that it’s possible to allow our cravings to guide us. But what if we were to check in with our bodies to discover if we are truly hungry or not? Sometimes a craving can be present due to a tension in our lives or because of something we do not want to feel. If we deal with the tension or allow ourselves to feel the feeling, we may find that we do not actually need food. Then again, the craving may be true. We may actually need what we are craving. Only we can know this, and we can use our body as a guide.
I agree that most people see food allergies and food intolerances as a curse and therefore try to ignore them, as the thought of having to give up eating a favourite food is seen as way too hard; it’s all about the taste in the mouth not the long-term effect on our body. The only problem with this, as I know too well, is that the body does not stop communicating and eventually we may be brought to a grinding, and often very uncomfortable, stop, which will be appreciated even less.
The difference when I let my body lead as opposed to my head is remarkable – in connection to my body I have access to a worldly wisdom that is way beyond the capacity of my brain alone… this is inspiring and humbling, allowing me to feel my place and part in life.
Yes, exactly. One works, the other …
Food allergies are often seen as a curse, even though at the moment it seems to be more of a hype to eat gluten free, as we are not able to eat everything we would normally eat and well gluten-free replacements just don’t taste the same! But if we make it about how we feel in our bodies the choices to honour our bodies sensitivities is more simple and easy. It is also a constant process because I found my body changes with what it can handle and what it can’t handle all the time. So as soon as we know to listen it is a constant adjusting and experimenting of which foods feel good and which don’t. And this can change with the day.
If we were brought up knowing that our body is our best friend and to never lose connection with it, as it is our rudder through life, how much more empowered would we be and we certainly would be ‘fit for life’.
We can often push ourselves through many things, push ourselves to be better, push ourselves to achieve things and yet in that we override our body. Its the little day-to-day things that we ignore that have the power to determine the quality of our life and health.
When you first come across the possibility that things like gluten, dairy and alcohol might be bad for your health there’s kind of a moment of ‘oh yeah – I always wondered how it was good for a cow with multiple stomachs, and ok for us with 1’ – to me it shows how we actually do know but our investments in these lies make us dishonest. If we just get open then and ready to review everything – we’ll get to the truth we feel underneath. Thank you Ingrid.
Our body is always in communication with us but often we ignore it because we do not want to take responsibility for what it is telling us, so then it has to speak louder and louder (often in the way of a cancer or some other illness) as it loves us so dearly and never gives up on us. We often do not see these illnesses as the gift they truly are.
That’s the wonderful thing about our amazing body Mary-Louise, it never stops talking to us. We may, in some cases, not like what it is saying but as you say, if we refuse to listen to the messages they will only get louder and bigger and we eventually will be stopped in ways that we will like even less. To come to a place to appreciate these messages is the difference between living a life in fear and living a life in joy.
yes once we appreciate the messages, our body is the same as a best friend, one that we trust deeply and know they have our back and will always be there to support us.
We live in fear of illness and disease without doing anything to change the way we are living, we don’t want to take responsibility for our choices or give up on having our desserts. If we listened to our bodies, none of us would be smoking or drinking and our diets would look very different.
We have never been taught about whole body intelligence and when I heard what Serge Benhayon was presenting on having a whole body intelligence it made complete sense that this is what is required for us to be living in unity and harmony with ourselves and everyone.
I agree, as I had the same experience and what it showed me is that the whole body intelligence is always accessible just we have been so programmed to not listen to it and ignore it. Then when someone presents in a way that comes from the body our body immediately responds and it can be felt and acknowledged.
The intelligence of the body has a language that communicates through its responses to our choices of how we live.
Love the title Ingrid, we often don’t listen to what our body tells us, until we have no option than to stop and listen, and then wonder why it took us so long to actually listen to all the common sense our body is telling us.
The body always talks, we just don’t listen when our needs are running the show.
I so agree Caroline that “most of us know very well what is good for us”, so then the most valuable answer to discover is why do we live in a way that ignores this knowing? What is it within us that rears up and denies the truth of what we feel even though how we are living is making us sick? Such a life-changing answer that will be and probably a different one for each of us.
The body speaks loud enough for us to hear under all circumstances, we do not really need to learn to listen to it as most of us know very well what is good for us and what not, what we need to look at is why we override this knowing and why we at times willingly sabotage ourselves and choose those things we know will not feel good in our body afterwards.
Yes, this is a very good question, what is it that means on one day we can so easily eat the wrong foods without any care for the impact it has on the body. I know for example that if I let my body get cold or I don’t get the rest I need then I am more likely to end up eating foods which I know will leave me feeling pretty rubbish the next day.
Agreed, we do know, we do listen, we simply choose to override. How often would we prefer to feel we are at the mercy of unknown reason, a victim, rather than the perpetrator of the choices that result in the ill we have in our lives?
It does not seem to make sense that we go against what we know. Only through understanding that we are energy first and foremost and that our choices are being governed by energy, can we start to look at what lies underneath and discover the true mechanics of making choices.
SO agree! We can go round and round trying to understand and even justify or defend, but the moment we take a step back and understand there is energy at play long before there is movement or behaviour it makes sense.
Much of the changes I have made in my life were inspired from my body and the building of self love, for it takes self love to say,’ i do not want to feel that way anymore so I will no longer choose this or that in my life’.
Learning to live in true and loving relationship with our bodies is the key to our lives and opens us up to so much more than we can imagine. A real and honest sharing and learning that is inspiring for us all.
I have found it amazing at how loud the body does actually speak. When you listen, it is very loud and clear.
Our bodies can speak in many ways. Not only to tell us what foods suit us or what kind of exercise is supportive , but also to tell us what does not feel right or true in life. If we find ourselves in a situation that is abusive or completely unfair we can feel this in our bodies. Our bodies are a beautiful marker and guide for anything in life.
Yes I have definitely learnt about the qualities of patience, understanding and love from my body, as it has shown and continues to give unwavering, unconditional support.
Working with and listening respectfully to my body’s intelligence and sign-posting, I am rarely unsure about decisions these days, from the every day foundational caring ones about food, what to wear, when to go to bed etc. to the once in a while decisions about work, education, travel etc. Life is simpler and clearer now that I have a relationship with my body and realise its wisdom as a guide.
Ingrid what is great about this is that it shows us all that we’re fully aware of what is going on for us, fully aware through our body of how we live of every single interaction and choice we make and its impact to help us evolve or delay. Our choice is if we are honest and truthful about what we feel and then do we respond or try to cover up that feeling.
I totally agree DN that we are all “fully aware of what is going on for us” but make the choice to dull this awareness as the other option calls us to make changes in our life that often seem way too hard. It makes me realise that to ignore something that is true we have to call in a huge force to counteract what every particle of our body is so clearly and undeniably communicating.
Imagine if we all grew up knowing that our bodies constantly speak to us and if listened to can guide us to health and vitality in all aspects of our life. Instead we are generally parented and raised by society to dismiss and ignore these messages so we can fit in.
At some point in life, there seems to come a time when you make more and more of a choice to pay attention to the body, that is, checking-in with its wants, its needs, signs and symptoms rather than stay stuck in the ideals, beliefs, pictures and expectations that come from the head governing the body.
Sometimes I can believe that a situation is too much, too painful to feel and so despite my body’s alarm bells to not ignore it, I do. But when I feel everything as it comes and not mentally control what I am or should be feeling, nothing is ‘too big’ to handle as my body is fully equipped to feel and give super simple directions towards harmony.
I read an article recently where it said that the only reason to not eat gluten is because you have been diagnosed with coeliac disease, otherwise its ‘bad’ for you to not eat it. The question I have to that is, why do so many people feel so much better for not eating gluten. I know that’s the case for me as well as many other people. Which means that many people are beginning to not only listen to their bodies but honour what their bodies are telling them despite what is being told to them.
I too have heard and read this and wonder why this is still being touted as the marker for gluten intolerance when it is obvious that so many are being affected to various degrees of discomfort. When I shared my digestive history with a gastroenterologist a few years ago he asked if I had been tested for Coeliac disease at any time in my life, and the answer was no. That simply shows that the medical profession is still, in the main, allowing themselves to be blinkered from the truth that is right in front of them in the health conditions of their patients.
I would say we are all living blinkered (choosing to be unaware) of our bodies’ wisdom, so the medical profession’s approach is simply an out play of what we have chosen. Interesting though that at a recent hospital conference about nutrition they were saying that diagnosed cases of coeliac are sky-rocketing and they use gluten-free flours in their kitchens for thickening sauces etc.
It is from the stillness within that we are able to truly listen, hear and understand everything even beyond the limitations of the temporal senses.
Its great to know that our bodies are always speaking to us, to all of us, there is no one whose body doesn’t speak to them, its just up to us how open and willing we are to respond to what we hear. My experience has been that a number of things get in the way and when I am willing to look at those I am able to listen to my body with more clarity.
Our bodies are truly amazing and the key to who we will be, literally. Surely we can take a moment and tune into what it is conveying to us all of the time, it’s the least we can do, and why wouldn’t we want to spend as much time as possible with us in our amazingness.
It requires some humbleness to listen to the body and even more so to honour the wisdom of the body. It is a spiritual sacrifice, i.e. the spirit surrenders its attitude of supremacy and arrogance it holds towards the human body and is willing to recognise that the body is due to its composition of particles a vehicle for the divine communication it (the spirit) usually intends to avoid and deny.
I love the two levels of humbleness talked about here… the first to listen to the body and the next to honour what it shares… we can hear and see truth, but do we then respond accordingly?
And my body is ‘still whispering in my ear’ – great reminder to listen closely to everything the body reflects to us.
true Jenny and I have found there are always more refined layers to listen too and the more I go there the more the immense wisdom of the body is revealed, or rather the more the body becomes clear to be a vessel for the universal wisdom that we can thus have access to.
The body can communicate to us about so many aspects of our lives where we are taking on the tension and situations of life which impact our natural harmony and balance.
I really love this learning too Ingrid with the body it is deeply inspiring every day and I do not need to be asked to learn I want to voluntarily as it is really too amazing. Our body has the answers and the re-training back to listening to its wisdom is beautiful.
It’s great that there is more awareness now regarding food allergies. Gone are the dark ages where we did not link our symptoms to what we were eating. It is common knowledge now, and allergies such as gluten and dairy intolerance are widely accepted and catered for. It is up to us to notice and listen to what our bodies do not need, and now we are supported by a growing awareness from the health industry.
It’s great how even if we ignore our body for a long time it still responds if we choose to start taking more care of it, it’s never too late to re-kindle a more loving relationship with our whole body and is something we can continually develop and refine.
I know without doubt from my own experience Fiona that “it’s never too late to re-kindle a more loving relationship with our whole body”. I am absolutely delighted that after 55+ years of treating my body in a very disregarding way it has still responded so amazingly to the changes I have made to what and how I eat. Yes there are a few issues in my body left over from the years of disregard but even those are becoming less of an issue the more I deepen my care.
‘My Body Spoke, but I didn’t Listen… for a very Long Time’ yet when we do start to listen and act on what we feel the body responds very quickly as it is always working to be in harmony.
It is amazing how loud our body can be and is when we choose to listen yet how much we can still overide it – why because we can! I do love how responsive it is though and how much it is actually on our side and has always been.
These days it is so obvious when I override my body’s wise messages but this is how I lived for so long. I am finding that the more I connect to my body, the more I hear and the bigger the next message if I ignore the first one. And to think that we have spent so long not realising that out body “is actually on our side” not the enemy we have treated it as for way too long. Crazy when you put it this way.
It sure is crazy that our body is not our enemy. Like you the more I work with my body the more it can support me to be and live the love that I am. It feels a bit like doing no exercise then expecting to be able to go for a long walk or lift some weights and not feel any exertion – which is not realistic yet gradually build up the body and then it feels that almost anything is possible!
I know when my husband and I began to listen to our bodies about what and how to eat in a way that felt supportive, to stop eating bread was more or less considered impossible, like you’ve said how could we live without bread? It took a while to adjust our lives, to stay with what we felt but the response of our body was very clear and not eating bread has never been an issue anymore.
This blows apart many of the ideals and beliefs in the food industry. They simply are not true when the body is clearly showing the ill effects of the food we think is good for us. And not just good but essential even for a healthy diet!
My body spoke too Ingrid, from an early age it was always telling me I was off track but not until I crashed at the age of 25 and was forced to stop, did I start to listen. I see this a lot around me and for many others it is the same, not until the body comes to a full stop do we start to listen. How different would it be if we were educated in a way that listening to our body and honouring what it is asking for us and thus being self-caring would be our natural way?
It is rather sense-less that we have to have a ‘crash’, an enforced stop moment, before we actually begin to ask what is going on in our lives. By the time we are brought to a stop some of these issues that have brought us to this usually uncomfortable and painful place are very challenging to heal as we have ignored them for so long. I agree that this disregarding way to live would definitely not be the normal way to live “if we were educated in a way that listening to our body and honouring what it is asking for” started from a very young age.
yes and you know, I even would say we do not need to be educated in that way as it is our natural way, we simply need to stop teaching our young to override their feelings by imposing ideals and beliefs upon them.
I love these points of inspiration when we consider what it will be like when it is natural in our parenting and education to support children to stay in relationship with their bodies, to listen and honour what they say.
What a difference it makes when we just listen. Our body will continue to talk to us, so honestly – and from that, we can make a very simple choice. Respond or react. Only recently I could feel the depth of sensitivity my body is feeling lately, and I was eating foods with a lot of oil.And I would quickly feel unwell, but because this was what I ate ‘normally’ – I pushed through until my body threw up the food. So I simply sat and listened to what was being presented, switched my food to oil-free options, and I have since felt so very different. Such a simple lesson.
The consequences of not listening to our bodies runs far deeper than health conditions. Our bodies can help us to steer our way through life and make choices and decisions that are true. If we do not listen we can end up way off track and waste a whole load of time through delay.
This is so very true Rebecca. As our body is our vessel for life how we treat it is going to impact on the quality of how we live. As you say it’s not just about ‘health conditions’ but it is about ‘choices and decision that are true’ as well. It makes sense that if we are abusing this precious body of ours in any way, whether it be with food, excess exercise, continual stress and so on, it will not be able to support us in the loving way it can when we are treating it with deep care and respect.
Indeed. Take care of our body and listen to it and we have the best friend we could ever have as it will tell us everything that we need to know.
Most small children have chesty coughs and runny noses, it is interesting how it has not been linked with anything other than bugs and viruses. We all know what we put in our bodies affects how we feel and the body responds. It would be a great study for an evidence based trial to see whether children not eating dairy have the same issues. Raising this awareness in the body for children early in their lives would be very helpful for them to discern and notice how they are feeling.
Our stubbornness and refusal to look at what our bodies are clearly communicating is quite something. I have felt this in myself very strongly, wanting to ignore loud messages only to put myself and my body through huge discomfort.
Headaches, digestive issues, bloating and itching and so much more that we accept as normal when really it is not and simply our body telling us what we are eating and the way we are living is not true for us. A beautiful turnaround in your life that is inspirational and brings a great healing and wisdom.
Yes when you talk to people about the body issues that you mention Tricia it is obvious that most consider them to be normal; they are simply what comes with eating some foods. When you suggest that their body might be better off without them you are often greeted with a look of horror as there is no way that giving up these foods is an option; life would not be the same without the chocolate, the ice cream, the lollies etc. I used to be one that thought exactly that but I have discovered, delightfully so, that life is a whole lot more enjoyable when you eat in harmony with your body.
Yes, it took me a long time to truly listen to my body. Even though I had been listening to some extent [too much exercise is not good for me, too much alcohol is not good for me], I still did not get it.
It took much pain [messages from my body] to realize I needed to stop. slow down.
It has taken me years of consistent checking in with my body to slow down my momentum. Very challenging but key to healing my physical and emotional issues.
Thank you body, for being so patient!
My body spoke, and I didn’t listen either until I found myself in hospital. I was surprised but really it was no surprise as my body had been trying to get my attention for sometime and the only way it got me to really listen was to stop me from walking for a while and give me a scare.
That is one big loud stop moment Rosie, but I know that what you experienced is unfortunately not a rare occurrence, and I am sure that most people would also be as surprised as you were. A ‘how did this happen?’ moment, as if it just happened, whereas in truth the issue had been signalled by the body for quite some time, but ignored. The scare we get in these situations is an opportunity to take a long hard look at the way we have been living and to know that we have a choice to begin to make changes but of course if we do it is totally up to us.
Funny enough, after I got better my doctor at the time said I could get back to life and continue what I was doing. I had to laugh at that and say, oh no way… I am not doing that again because for me it was a wake up call to change what and how I was doing things.
It’s a bit like we have a scale of importance in terms of what we listen to with our body, an extreme food reaction or something like cancer and we listen immediately, but perhaps the key to not reaching these serious points is to listen to the more subtle everyday things our body communicates with us.
Love the title Ingrid, it says it all. It wasn’t until after I completely gave up dairy and stopped having a constant need to clear my throat, which I was so used to doing I didn’t even notice it had stopped until one day I realised that I wasn’t doing it anymore and knew without a doubt that it was because there was no dairy in my diet. I also suffered from itchy arms and tried everything, every type of cream and treatment that the doctor and alternate medicines suggested with little relief before it would come back with a vengeance and that continued on up until I began attending the presentations put on by Serge Benhayon and from these presentations have become more aware and more responsible for the way I am living, which includes what I put into my body. Since choosing to have a low carb diet and have very little sweet foods, plus deal with my emotions and held hurts the itchiness has completely dissipated. “Now I know by finally acknowledging the innate wisdom of this amazing body of mine, I no longer allow myself to be led astray by my wayward mind.”
Beautiful “With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.”
That is a gorgeous line Amita, thank you for capturing it, it says it all really.
I remember the bottles of warm milk at school. Yuck! I spent most of my childhood in a foggy haze due to being made to drink milk. When I dropped drinking milk years later I found a new and welcome clarity. If our body doesn’t need something it has the same effect as a drug. .
I had not eaten chocolate for years and was given a gluten and dairy free chocolate truffle. I cut it into quarters and tried a piece. It melted in my mouth and tasted pretty good so I took another quarter but something in me was saying this might not be such a good idea. I didn’t eat anymore realising it was the sensation and the associations that were tempting me. Very soon after this I felt the onset of a niggly headache and I knew it was from the chocolate. I felt a hardness in me, a sharpness and a coldness. I was no longer connected to myself…all this from half a tiny truffle. I love experiences like this though because they supports us to totally renounce a substance that we know without a doubt does not support us in any true way at all.
Not just with food but with so much in life we will override what we know regarding what is good for us or not in order to follow what our brain is telling us rather than our body – Our body is where true wisdom resides and will keep us healthy as well if we listen to it; so beautifully shown in this blog.
I love the light bulb moments when something comes together, It’s like suddenly everything the body has been saying makes perfect sense, and I want to go ‘duh’ .. that is so obvious..how come I didn’t understand that before! Then it is great to appreciate what now makes sense and feel it in the body.
What you offer – that what we eat has an impact on our health – is well known and acknowledged. But what you offer takes it further and says, there are simply foods that many of us eat that we should no longer eat. Some of these are staples of our diet that many eat every day. So its time to consider, based on your experience, my experience, and that of many others, that our so called normal Western diet, needs significant review.
Good point Heather, even if we follow the norm for what would be considered healthy food, our bodies are telling us that is not it either. It would be wise to reconsider all we have taken on about what is ‘good’ for us and what is not and there is no better adviser in that exploration than our own body.
There were so many times in my younger years, when I would eat something and then afterwards would not feel so great, but I never put it down to the type of food I was eating. It wasn’t until I met Serge Benhayon and heard him talk about foods and how they can and do affect us that I began to put two and two together! Crazy, but true. Sometimes it can be so obvious what affects us in our lives and we completely ‘get it’ when they are spelled out to us, but until they are we so often live life being incredibly unaware. And all because of what we are energetically aligning to.
‘With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.’ Ingrid, I love how you express the simple harmony that can exist when the mind is brought into line with the wisdom of the body.
This is such an endearing blog. The puzzlement you experienced growing up about all your symptoms is almost comical even though it’s tragic. I love the clarity you have come to now through a new awareness and listening to your body. What a relief!
I did chuckle when I read what you have written as I can now finally look back in joy at what was the story of my life. I was originally a little embarrassed at writing what I had experienced, feeling that I may be judged for not having had this ‘puzzlement’ figured out for such a long time. Then I realised that I would not be the only one who had gone, or was still going, through something similar and it just may support them to know that there is another way to live just as I was supported by the book that I read, and of course, the presentations of Serge Benhayon. For me, reading about another’s lived experience is gold, as are Serge’s teachings.
It’s a beautiful example of how we can think that our bodies are out of control, that they are a totally different entity to us, and there is nothing we can do about the symptoms that they are displaying, or do anything to prevent them. When we finally understand that our bodies are an expression of how we are living, the choices we make, and the emotions that we buy into, we can have a feeling of ownership and connection to our bodies that enable us to take command and have a say over what they will experience and whether they will be healthy or not. A completely different way of living that helps us to feel empowered.
Our body has such wisdom, yet we go to great lengths to override its messages. When we learn to listen and honour its messages our health can transform.
It really doesn’t make sense in any way that we, who class ourselves as intelligent beings, “go to great lengths to override” our body’s messages. In fact some of us actually champion the ignoring of these vital messages simply to see how far that we can push our body, a body that is actually ‘breakable’. Yes our body is very patient but there will come a time when it says very loudly ‘that’s enough’. Often that is the wake up call that is needed to wake us up to the amazing wisdom of our body.
So beautiful to read your journey with your health that many can relate to in their own way and the remarkable turn around in your life by truly listening to your body . A real inspiration and joy to read the commitment, responsibility and simplicity needed and very refreshing.
The title of this blog feels very close to home. So often we are given the same reminder again and again and it is when we are willing to listen that we get to feel the impact of why we have ignored for so long.
The more in tune I become with my own body, and act on the messages it is giving me, the more it pays me back with true support. I am learning to love my body as if it were my friend, and what a beautiful, deeply loyal and loving friend I am discovering it to be.
I’m discovering that I’m in relationship with my body. Like all relationships, it’s a good idea to listen, surrender and nurture what is there.
So often we override the body’s signals but with a deepening sense of self-worth and self-love, it becomes much easier to listen to it.
I too “am learning to love my body as if it were my friend,” and I have loved learning that it is the best friend I could ever have. So just imagine how different our lives would be if this was learned when were young and we were then supported to develop and nourish this relationship as we grew. I have a feeling that the global statistics on the state of our health would look a whole lot healthier than they do now.
Definitely ‘better late than never’ and I am touched and inspired on a daily basis by my body’s patience and willingness to communicate with me.
Our bodies are communicating constantly and tell us all we need to know – thank you Serge Benhayon for bring a deeper awareness to what that truly means.
It is really great to know the truth about these foods like dairy, gluten and sugar because even though we might feel it in our bodies without the full understanding of what these foods do in our body it is hard to give them up. Growing up I knew someone who had gluten intolerance and was not able to eat bread, at that time I thought I was lucky to not have that because he looked very unhealthy and white. Yet now I do not eat gluten, dairy and sugar and I feel not unhealthy at all – eating a varied diet of delicious foods. I realised we have to let go of the whole lot of pictures around what is the way to eat to be able to truly listen to the body and let that define our diet.
We start listening a little bit, then start hearing and realizing a little bit more, then recognise that there is so much more to become aware of, so much more to heal and let go of… – a never-ending process of learning and surrender.
Our bodies know in great detail, what is needed very specifically for us in any one moment, so if we pay attention to this, we can be much more honest when we choose to ignore its promptings and then reflect back on our choices.
Wow this experience is probably not uncommon – except how much attention do we really pay? How much responsibility do we really
Want to take to say ‘actually – I know this way of living does not support me any longer’ – can we actually let go of comfort and allow the body to be listened too?
Ingrid, I find it hilarious how you talk about there being a battle between the body and the mind – and the score keeping we can put in there! And this is so true! But what I also find is interesting is that the mind will do things for its own purpose, where as the body when its choices are honoured, it always takes everything else including the mind into consideration. The mind wants to do its own thing regardless, but the body will offer a way to include all. I wonder which one is the wiser one to follow?
Our body does communicate with us constantly, and so it is about learning to tune into this very wise and simple vehicle of ours to have some guidance in how to proceed. When we do this, what unfolds is usually beautiful, simple and supportive. Unfortunately we have a tendency to over-ride what is ‘too simple’ and we can get drawn to making things complicated or over-riding what we know to be true, and this is the learning as it comes always with consequences, not in a way to be mean, but in a way to learn responsibility in full which in itself is blessing and a healing when we really ‘get it’ and put it into practice (the key words here being putting it into practice!).
Beautiful, Henrietta, I like this… it is not just about realising that our bodies communicate with us endlessly but also about breaking the patterns of ignoring and/or over-riding what they say. I understand and appreciate more and more that in my body I have a wise and gentle ally that is only too willing to support me every step of the way.
Whilst science can offer us some guidelines for what is ‘healthy’ to eat and in what combination and timing, it does not make sense that everyone requires the same food for their bodies and their particular daily routines and lifestyles.
Well said Jenny – there is no diet that is a script that suits everyone. It is about always tailoring it to the person’s needs and their body responses.
My body is speaking to me loud and clear today with a period pain unlike any I have had for many years. It is showing me that my choices over the last month have been far from loving. It’s great that my body speaks so loudly, and it’s a reminder of why I actually do want to look after myself in an honouring way.
Many years ago in my twenties I was in the military and worked on the flight line around jet engines running every day. At the insistence of my wife, I had my hearing tested. After my tests, I just happened to be seen by the chief doctor of ENT clinic. He told me my hearing was excellent and asked if my wife was the one complaining the most and I replied yes. He said it was a common selective hearing loss. We tune out on purpose certain things… do we do this also when our body talks to us?
The beauty of listening to our body and our inner knowing connected to says everything and makes absolute
sense of our lives what we know and feel . Taking for granted symptoms and ignoring the signs our body shows us is very different to living with true responsibility love and care.
Your blog demonstrates that when we do pay attention to our body, that it responds back in such a positive and health benefit way.
“With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.” This part here Ingrid is key, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one.
The messages from the body are a constant learning for us to listen to them, I know I have ignored them in the past too, but I am learning, the sooner we listen to them, the better.
So it is possible that as we live so we die then we take these conditions and addictions we have with food to the grave, which would simply mean we return next life and replay the same situation. So it lovely to read that it is never too late to change as you have shared Ingrid.
A great support to read your words Ingrid, it makes it so clear how everything we ingest is affecting us manifold and thus how much it either makes us suffer or supports our vitality.
It’s amazing how easily we can allow the mind to rule, and it’s not that we’re stupid, it’s just that we can be so locked into a picture, be it taste or how it makes us feel for an instant, but ultimately the body speaks and eventually we do listen; and when we do we are asked to look to the underlying issues which cause us to eat in the way we do, for food is the end point and often used as a way to not feel what we are feeling.
What an amazing feeling when we do actually stop and listen and honour what we know is true. For me Serge Benhayon showed me a way to see the momentum in which I had been living away from who I am, and bring about choices that lead to supporting and being all of who I am.
My body is reminding me as soon as I go into drive by my back aching or my feet hurting. As soon as I let go of the hardness I am holding myself in and breathe, I can literally feel the hardness in my face melting. How amazing to support the body so it can do this. I just need to develop my way of being in the world so I don’t take on tension in the first place!
I am discovering that there is a delicate natural balance in the body that is very easily negated with poor lifestyle choices – but the experience of this naturally harmonious state is really quite delicious – and hence very supportive of making new choices. The pleasure of a bar of chocolate for example lasts for a few moments – but the harmony of a body in its natural state is there constantly if we choose to work with it.
It was the absolute knowing that a few moments of so called pleasure in my mouth was not worth several days of dis-harmony in my body that held me steady as many around me attempted to cajole me into having ‘just a little bit’ of chocolate, dessert and many other of my old favourites. And when I began sharing this knowing, those who were doing the cajoling would be stopped in their tracks as they could not deny the truth of what I was sharing. Lived experience is something that not many can deny forever.
“Then there was the regular Sunday afternoon headache that I know now came from the cream that was placed in huge dollops over the special Sunday dessert.” Isnt it interesting that even something that has as regular a pattern such as a weekly headache that occurs after eating certain foods or repetition of some behaviour, that we seldom clock that these ‘patterns’ might just be what are triggering the symptoms? I used to get a migraine every Monday evening after my piano lesson, but at the time I never put it down to the stress and anxiety that I used to go through to get to my lesson and added to that the enormous pressure that went with it to ‘do well’. Our bodies are masters at telling us something is not right – it’s up to us to tune in and respond.
“…My Body Spoke, but I didn’t Listen…” This is an important point, as it shows us just how we have two places we get directive from… either our thoughts or from our body… Now if our thoughts were aligned with our body, and we listened to them when it responded to what we do to it, then it is safe to assume that we would most likely not have a dis-eased body… which then raises the question… where do our thoughts that come into our head come from if they are not generated from our body?…
Learning to listen to our body is the most amazing revelation after having spent quite a few decades completely ignoring the depth of wisdom offered. What I am realising is that every moment I am being offered a new opportunity to let go of my will-fullness and allow the flow of life to change to one of being in harmony and love.
I have this playful and what has turned out to be very profound thing that I do on my daily walks and that is to let my heart lead the way on the route I take… the more I do this, the more this lead is apparent in the rest of my day from the simple decisions about what to wear for example, to the bigger decisions about jobs, travel and being purposeful in the world… all super cool.
Who do you listen to; our own knowing of what’s true vs. what we are told is ‘correct’ by society? And worded slightly differently; choose to conform, or risk standing out by doing something differently to the crowd?
Listening to our body gets more precise, the more we practice this lost, forgotten art we all possess. We become fully aware of the world around us and anything that affects us externally or internally. Could it be, this is a simple and fun way to live, in the chaos we are surrounded by.
I too love and appreciate how ‘listening to our body gets more precise” Steve. And the precision grows as we reconnect even more to that inner knowing that we have always had but had discarded somewhere along the way for whatever reason and from this growing connection the more natural the listening and responding becomes. To live in this wise way definitely simplifies life and living therefore becomes a lot more enjoyable, …and maybe even fun!
“I know without one iota of doubt that if I had been brought up to know my body as I know it now and how to understand its messages, to respect it as the all-wise and wonderful vessel that it is, my life story would read very differently and that would have been so very welcome.” And wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if all children were brought up to know and understand this for themselves. No doubt our rates of illness and disease would look very different to how they look today.
I love your blog Ingrid and all you share so honestly and how you have come to listening to your body and the far cry away we have come to as a society today with what is normal taking over our own knowings by our choices. Very inspiring.
It is amazing how much our body speaks to us but how little we listen overriding all we feel and looking outside ourselves seeking answers. Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine brings the truth back to us all with the energetic factor and the wisdom of our body and all we feel back to our lives with integrity and love beyond all else in this world.
The body’s intelligence far outweighs what the mind alone can produce for the particles within our body are aligned to a far greater natural order and flow that we could ever imagine, remember or recall.
Learning to live from the impulses of the body, it is stunning that it has an intelligence which is far grander that that if the mind, but isn’t rewarded or readily confirmed by the temporal every day existence we live in.
We build an amazing relationship with our bodies when we are younger, receiving and accepting all of its senses. When we get told to override that is when we start to go downhill in terms of living the tenderness and playfulness of a small child.
It is so cool to have this opportunity to talk about our body’s communication and the wisdom on offer… all we have to do is awaken ourselves and listen.
When we go down to the smallest bits of what makes us, the cells, they don’t have a brain and just do what is required. When outside forces cause problems, others rally to help without being told. Where did we get the idea we could improve on this system, Oh yeah, that thing between our ears!
Ingrid your blog to me sums up medicine of the future – we all need to understand that we are in constant communication with our bodies. The fact we are given chance after chance to get it right highlights the absolute love God has for us.
It would be so amazing to know that in the future this is the ‘medicine’ that will be accepted as normal and it will come from knowing that we are “in constant communication with our bodies” and our bodies with us. But of course with that comes self-responsibility, accepting that with every choice we make comes a consequence. And I love the fact that we are offered so many opportunities to make different choices, which of course will have different consequences.
I really appreciate the communications my body gives me on a daily basis. When I am struggling with something my body confirms it, when I have let it go – it confirms it. If ever I am in a flux of doubt all I have to do is simply connect to my body and listen to what it is saying.
Well said Doug – ‘We can fool the taste buds but we cannot fool the body…’ A few moments of pleasure on those taste buds but all too often, a lifetime of discomfort – if not worse – for the body.
The wisdom of our body is really amazing and yet we continue to eat what we are given and live in a way society seems to dictate to us but when we truly listen to our body we get to feel the truth and see there is another way .
We are brought up to believe that milk is the cure-all, and vital for our development as children, and yet there are more reports of allergies to dairy than ever before. It makes me wonder how many people suffer unnecessarily with dairy and gluten in their diet – it is time we started listening to those little signs the body is producing and just maybe some of our illnesses we are putting up with will start to improve.
Your blog shows us just how much our body gives many chances and opportunities to identify when something does not agree with us.
I have to say I love the last paragraph of this blog. It is a possibility we should all embrace and take as our start! The wisdom of one who has walked before us….”With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.”
This is a great illustration of the fact the body never stops trying to communicate and that we start to doubt the communication because the reflection we are getting from outside us is living in a way that doesn’t know how to listen to our bodies on this level, therefore confirming the ignoring, suck it up and just get on with it mentality. “I have a feeling that I slowly began to accept that everything I was going through was actually normal, so I stopped talking about it.”
“It wasn’t as if the people around me were un-intelligent either. Just like me, they hadn’t been brought up to understand their bodies, just as those before them also hadn’t been. ” Yet they / we never really realised that our body is giving us messages all the time. Once I understood this I felt astonished I hadn’t clocked this one before – or had I – but didn’t want to be responsible……
It’s interesting how the culture of society at the moment teaches us that if we have anything wrong with our body then we need seek outside assistance – doctors, medical profession etc, but not to review how we are living and all the components that make up our life – our diet, sleep, our thoughts and quality of life. I’m definitely not against seeing a doctor, but what if we played our part too and took responsibility for the fact that things happening in our body could be a way of it communicating behaviours we may be carrying out that do not work for it anymore.
Absolutely, and this very informal “normal” is perpetuated in all levels of society, I’ve even been told by doctors that certain pains and problems are “normal”. That simply doesn’t make sense to me.
What you have written is so true Jane but what a sad testament to the society we live in when treating our bodies with such disregard has come to be accepted as normal. Unless these so-called normals begin to be dismantled and replaced with a true way of living we will not see any changes in the escalating health statistics; humanity will simply keep on getting sicker, which definitely is not a normal way to be.
As a society we’ve accepted lower standards of how we feel about ourselves and the world instead of looking more deeply as to why we have misery, depression, obesity etc of epidemic proportions. Something is definitely not right about the way we’re living, as our global health statistics show us, and our bodies will keep telling us until we notice and make changes.
It is amazing how we rely on books and doctors to tell us what our bodies have been telling us for years. Once we open up to those constant internal messages we can learn instantly what we need for greater vitality and health.
Absolutely Carmel. This is the greatest piece of awareness and education we could ever be given. The body will then tell us the rest.
This is such a beautiful example of the wisdom our body offers us. It is a constant barometer of how we are choosing to live, whether through the way we move, the foods we eat, and whether we are observers of life or we absorb and take on emotionally what is going on around us.
Thank you Ingrid, it’s a very relatable and relevant blog. It’s true that in the past we didn’t know how to understand the body and food intolerances, but another part of this are the beliefs we have about food – that dairy and gluten are good, heathy, essential, etc. These types of beliefs are also a part of how we override what the body is telling us.
Every little niggle is indeed a message.
‘Over the years I had a moment or two when I began to get a sense of what my body was telling me and took dairy, or bread, and sometimes a little of the sugar out of my diet, but even though I started to feel a whole lot better, it didn’t take long before they found their way back in again, usually as a result of what was going on in my life.’ – You have pointed out something really crucial here, and that is how much we are affected by what is going on in our lives. My experience is that if we allow ourselves to be run by emotions, without the willingness to deal with the root cause of these emotions, it is very easy to use food to self-medicate to numb ourselves away from the hurts or whatever it is we are feeling.
How long have human beings been around for? How long have we known the simple truth of living life with our heart? And yet how many wars, incidents and events have we let happen in between? We have ignored our bodies for centuries, collectively. But today and every day we have a possibility to come back to what is true. So many of us could relate to what you share Ingrid but wow what if we all changed our approach as you describe here? The change to our world and society would be huge. We can all know Love if we are ready to choose truth.
It goes to show that we know all along that our body is communicating with us, and very loudly at times. The arrogance of overriding and dumbing down great advice is our problem.
I used to get chronic heartburn but continued on eating and drinking whatever I liked because I got these magic pills that would take the heartburn away. After stopping gluten, dairy and alcohol the heartburn stopped as well and I haven’t had it for years now until recently it has returned to tell me once again that there are things I now no longer can eat. My local Indian takeaway does this amazing lamb, saag curry that is pretty divine but just recently has given me heartburn, I had to do it again thinking it might have been a one off but sure enough heartburn again so it looks like that is off the menu along with various other things I think I love but my body obviously doesn’t now, and tells me in no uncertain terms.
It is amazing how when we are prepared to pay attention and listen, our body will give us the signals.
It seems that at all times we are supported and nudged according to the level of commitment we have chosen. The more I pay attention and build a foundation that takes into account the reflection I am offered, the more refined the messages and the call for attention becomes.
It is amazing how we use science to limit the abuse to ourselves! We will consume copious amounts of alcohol, by sticking to one poison, ensuring there is not a high level of sugar in it, and drink lots of water at the end of the drinking session to limit the hangover. We are field-testing repeatable scientific methods for damage control to our self and using the body as our litmus paper.
When I decided to stop consuming gluten/dairy/sugar/caffeine/alcohol, I remember people saying to me..’oh, you must be feeling amazing’, and you know what? I wasn’t. I was exhausted. Without all these substances propping me up, I had to really feel where my body was at and it needed a really good lie down! Since then, the vitality is returning but it was a fascinating insight into how we truly are.
Our body is a source of wisdom we have that constantly offers up-to-date tailor made feedback about what is going on and we cant escape it, because we live inside it! The fact that we are up to ignoring such wisdom that is so in our face, shows clearly our relationship with truth and wisdom as well as the unintelligent intelligence we are actually running with.
We have become so accustomed to the more subtle reactions of our body that we do not consider it to be a message from our body anymore. Bloating, gas, feeling heavy or tired is pretty much normal. Once we realise this is actually our body telling us it has a hard time digesting certain foods the conversation can become very revealing and a perfectly tailor made diet will be communicated to us.
Ingrid I remember being caught in the trap, the trap of a body that was in pain, one that I punished to get me through the day, the one I would look at in disgust of not being “handsome enough”. The list could go on and yet all the time my body was there in love, showing me and supporting me to be all that I am. It showed and shows me what love is all truly about and the depth of care that is needed for me to be me.
A beautiful line you have shared DN, thank you “my body was there in love, showing me and supporting me to be all that I am. It showed and shows me what love is all truly about and the depth of care that is needed for me to be me.”
A real understanding of the beauty of taking responsibility for our bodies and the smallest symptoms that effect us and what we are eating and what choices we are making that is so different to how we have been brought up and are. A real awareness of this is much needed and so obvious and simply makes sense when we become aware of all that is really going on energetically and the gift our bodies show us constantly.
I remember a number of conditions I had with my body when I was younger – nothing considered serious (constipation, a blocked nose every morning, period pain etc.), but they were all dismissed as normal, so I dismissed them too and learned to manage the symptoms even though I would get frustrated with them. Nowhere was it in my conscious awareness that it was the choices I was making and the diet I was eating that was contributing to them. How awesome therefore to have someone come along and bust this wide open allowing me to make the choice of greater responsibility with my body as my yardstick for guidance.
Symptoms are not a nuisance but an opportunity to address what is causing it.
This is so beautiful “With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.” Just appreciating this is awesome.
My body has been speaking to me for a long time too and I am listening more and more. What I am also learning to do is to let my whole body speak to the world, by feeling it as I speak so that every cell is expressing, not just my mouth and my brain.
Our bodies rejoice when we start to listen to them and they get chattier the more we do; an amazing unfolding relationship.
Until recently (inspired by Serge Benhayon’s presentations) whenever a problem would arise, all I could think about was how to fix it. Asking myself about how I might have contributed to the situation, observing what the scenario showed about life and reflecting on what lesson this offered for me were not on my radar.
It is clear to me that on the whole we have a lot to learn about true wisdom and responsibility.
I’m not sure how much ground-breaking awareness has been embraced with food allergies and intolerance.
The area of health I work in doesn’t seem to connect stomach upsets and diet, yet when I hear the symptoms I can feel what would be very supportive. It is 2017 and yet we could still be 1950’s in our awareness. What have we been creating in the past 67 years if people are still living with diarrhea and stomach pains along with other symptoms?
There is a light globe moment here – thanks Ingrid. Itchy skin and sugar! I’ve never connected these two – nor has anyone else when I’ve mentioned it. Perhaps I not mentioned or asked enough people/questions which is very possible, as it’s only a minor thing that seems to pop up every now and then. Yes to feeling it was food related but never thought of sugar. It’s time to consider sugary foods that aren’t the obvious characters in this category.
It took me a while and regular painful scratch marks on various part of my body before the light bulb turned on for me too Sandra. In fact, it was probably one of the last messages from my body that I figured out. And it just wasn’t processed sugar it was also most fruit. That was a hard one to accept in the beginning but once the fruit was removed and the urge to scratch began to disappear and the scratch marks began to heal I knew that there was no way I was going to dispute the wisdom of my body anymore.
What a great moment this is when our mind surrenders to the wisdom and truth of the body. It’s like weights are lifted off and shackles dropped.
It is so true that living with that emptiness can only be temporarily filled with stimulating or dulling foods, substances and activities. All the while we are missing the fullness, joy and vitality and living from who we truly are.
Universal Medicine has inspired me to deepen my relationship with my body and 10 years on I am constantly amazed at the bodies ability to discard, to heal, to respond and anticipate, indeed if we allow it we are living with a supreme awareness that offers unending support.
A brilliant blog for me to read this morning, showing us all categorically the innate wisdom of the body. Too much recently I have been allowing “myself to be led astray by my wayward mind”. It’s a simple choice of continued connection and commitment that then turns us all into professors of life.
Love that Otto “It’s a simple choice of continued connection and commitment that then turns us all into professors of life.” Professors of life that’s what we truly are.
I too remember the day of having a carton of milk at school every day – how misguided we have been when our bodies are communicating to us so clearly that our minds are not acting in our best interests.
‘My Body Spoke, but I didn’t Listen… for a very Long Time’ yet as soon as we do listen and start to make changes our body responds very quickly, a bit like driving with the hand brake on when we don’t listen.. and then when we do the ease and flow that comes.. when the hand brake is off.
Yes our body does respond very quickly when we start to make loving choices, even though how it responds can be very challenging as it begins to release the toxins that have built up as a result of many years of our ill choices. I can remember this phase very clearly but there was no thought of slipping back into the old choices as I knew with every part of me that the healing of my body was now my number one priority, one that I was committed to 100%; nothing was going to sway me.
Our body is a true marker for harmony – helping us to see the effect of what we put into it – both physically as food and drink and more energetically in terms of emotions, so that we can be more aware of the quality of living that is true for us.
Fiona great what you share, we will only get out the quality of what we put in. If we put in nourishment and nature we will receive true support and love. If we indulge and add emotions we will receive the heaviness and out of balance.
The body speaks volumes to us all of the time. But most of us from an early age have learned to shut the voice down or at least mute it or turn it on the smallest volume possible so that we can carry on with those things that do not support the body! This is so counter-natural! And then the even crazier thing is that when we finally cotton on to this ‘mistake’ then we have to re-learn how to listen to the body and hence re-learn something that was so natural to us when we were first born! But it is well worth going through the re-learning! I am still re-learning each and every day and this deepens my relationship with my body and hence the listening returns in greater capacity and it is like the volume button of the body is gradually restored!
This highlights that its never too late to start listening not only to our bodies, our inner heart and our inner knowing. We are consistently given opportunities every moment of everyday to stop and listen and they never stop coming even if we choose not to listen. This is incredibly beautiful.
Ingrid its amazing that you are now listening to your body, so often we can go many years ignoring our own bodies powerful messages, the message of this blog is loud and clear – if we don’t listen to our bodies its to our own detriment.
To me what you are sharing here Ingrid is very profound
“With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.”
By listening more to my body and less to my mind I have turned my life around completely, finding another way to live that is sustainable and so full of joy everyday.
Great to feel the true way to be with our bodies as expressed in the final paragraph here Ingrid. It is all about us having a body in which our Soul can express on earth and this knowing will come from the body first, then the mind.
Yes absolutely true Micheal this knowing will come form our body first and then our mind. It is our body which is the true vehicle for our soul to express through.
We all know what it feels like to not be heard. There is a sense of being dismissed, ignored or not worth it. But do we really consider that we are doing this to ourselves well before we ever do it to another?
“With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.” Beautiful and very inspiring Ingrid and so true . With the simplicity and love of learning to listen to my body also I am finding another way to live and be that makes all the difference is very beautiful and really makes sense and is well worth trying.
We listen to others to tell us what to eat, we read books with advice written by others with certain ideas about food and the body.
But it is OUR body, why do we need those instructions? Is it not more logical to re-connect more with our own body in what it really needs and to be open to what we sometimes want to eat away? Which feelings and emotions we like to bury with food?
I used to read many books about the body and what I should be eating but most of them left me more confused than ever. I felt that they were telling me what to do and not taking into consideration that my body was very different from everyone else’s body. That all changed when I picked up the book that came to change my life as it was written from lived experience, from the writer’s body, and I could feel the truth in every word. That is what inspired me to begin to look deeper into my body and into my life. The changes that then ensued as a result of the self-loving choices I began to make were nothing less than miraculous.
Our ‘ability’ to ignore or override the messages of our body is quite phenomenal when we consider that we are actually suffering some discomfort if not pain by doing so and even risking more severe consequences by not taking care of the minor ailments. It simply doesn´t make sense, especially when applying the intelligence or common sense we are so proud of. Obviously there must be a factor at play that is not spoken about or ignored just like the body´s messages otherwise the whole mechanism would be exposed for the stupidity and or abuse that it is. It is only when we are willing to take responsibility and applying a deeper care that the ignorance is no longer ignored, ie the carelessness admitted and honesty brought into the picture.
‘……in this little country of 10,000 dairy farms, was considered to be liquid gold and essential for the strength of our bones, and to say you didn’t want to drink it was almost sacrilege.’
Although I breast fed my 3 children, there comes a point when you wean them off the breast and onto the bottle, there are enormous pressures on mums to feed babies milk at this young age. I was made to feel like I was being very irresponsible because I chose to give them coconut milk instead, my children were clearly well fed chubby babies, yet I was made to feel that I was putting them at risk by not providing them cow’s milk.
These days pressures on mothers as to how they feed their babies is huge and very emotion laden. I can’t remember it being such a pressure when my children were babies and when I was unable to continue to breast feed either of them after a couple of months no one tried to make me change my mind. I instinctively knew that this decision was best for both of us. Then when it was obvious that they couldn’t tolerate the milk formula I had to make another choice and chose to replace it with a soy formula on which they thrived. I know that these days this formula is not recommended, but now in their 40’s they do not seem to have suffered from the only choice that was available to me at the time; a choice that I definitely made with their health and well-being in mind.
” Universal Medicine.These presentations contained bucket loads of light bulb moments”.
I found the same Ingrid and I also found myself saying at times ” I knew that “. The great joy of Universal Medicine presentations is that a lot of the time it’s just confirming what one already knows but was not allowed to express, or society’s way of living made what you knew look wrong.
I know how we can fight pain and illnesses, but the wisdom from the body is showing us how we need to live differently. When we can appreciate that it is supporting us, not letting us down, we can start the learning journey.
How wonderful it is to come to the understanding that our body is “not letting us down” when it gets sick or injured, but that it is actually letting us know that the way we are living is not harmonious and that it is ready, when we are, to support a return to our innate inner harmony. Living with this knowing and awareness why would we want to ignore even the littlest of messages as who would not want to live in harmony with their body?
When we take responsibility for our choices and the quality that we live in, we can really embrace what Medicine has to offer us and engage in our own healing as an equal partner with our health practitioners.
How many people in a doctors waiting room could fully embrace the title of this blog? Could the first step in treatment be the acceptance of our part of disregard in the process?
“I went eating what I was given without question and not surprisingly the suffering, along with the messages from my body, continued.” this speaks volumes to me, it confirms the fact our body knows amazing amounts and its up to us to listen, yet society then makes us doubt, question and ignore our body. We are the ones that setup society so in effect we are the ones that stop ourselves listening to our body.
It may feel for you that you were slow Ingrid, (you and me both) but you are listening now and that is the learning for us all, to listen more and more to the body. There is no need to look to the past at what we didn’t do but to know our wisdom in the present how we are living.
I feel that we can keep listening more and more intently to the body and that the more that we lean in towards the body to listen, the more that we will be supported outwards towards the all and the everything.
We can often see signs, symptoms and illnesses as an inconvenience, as our body fighting us or letting us down or just as a random event but what if our body is actually working for us, to help us to be more aware of something and is offering us a learning and a healing through communicating with us in this way…
Yes, the body speaks very loud, and the symptoms are clear when there is any food that is not being well assimilated. When those symptoms appear repeatedly is clear that there is something to change in our diet. It would be great that our doctors would start to talk about this. In any case the main part corresponds to us, which is listen to our body and make the final choice of letting go what is harming to it.
The body is actually very clear if we take time to truly listen to it but fact is that many people, including me, have chosen for a way of life in which the body is subordinated to the abusive mind that is void of any interest for the well-being of the body and only after its own pleasures for excitement in life.
This is not the first story I have read about major improvements in health by cutting out whatever food the person suspected was a problem for them. We really need to change that vague feeling we should act, to appreciating how amazingly tuned and accurate our bodies are.
If we really paid attention to every symptom in our body, and read it in a way that we would understand what it was telling us, we would undoubtedly take much more and true care of ourselves. And in doing so we would be so much more supportive of each other and the general state of the health of humanity would be very different.
Very true Sandra and reading your comment reminds me that this would also support us in feeling and being open to healing that which is in our body from things that have happened throughout our life, or even longer.
‘…a mind that had its own agenda; a mind with a high IQ that was considered to be a marker of intelligence.’ This is a good illustration of just how damaging our own supposed intelligence can be when it overrides every signal from our body to let us know that something is not good for us.
How liberating it is to eventually understand that the intelligence of the body totally out-weighs the highly lauded intelligence of the mind. In fact it makes so much sense that it is puzzling as to why it has taken most of us so long to finally figure this out, as the body has been giving us so many clues for the entirety of our lives.
There is the food we put into our mouths, the entertainment we suck into our bodies from TV, the sporting competitions we enter that put unnecessary tension into our bodies and many more things we ingest – much of it will create havoc and disharmony.
It’s interesting that the human mind can choose to overlook the obvious, i.e., that what you put into the body might just have an effect on it. Though I guess context matters – in the post-war era a decent supply of any and all food would have been a good thing; and the starving child will not care what he or she eats. I guess this is what happens when society is out of balance – though we could say the same applies today, and in a time of abundance in many areas of the world. We have much more awareness around food, but massive portions of our societies still choose to overlook this.
Changing our energetic momentum is absolutely medicine.
A gorgeous example of the body leading the mind, and not the other way around as the mind likes to think it goes.
‘by finally acknowledging the innate wisdom of this amazing body of mine, I no longer allow myself to be led astray by my wayward mind.’ Yes Ingrid, realising the enormous wealth and depth of wisdom that comes from listening to my body has brought the most incredible benefits in my life.
There is such an opportunity for playfulness in developing a listening relationship with our bodies; first up because it is a return to the purity and openness of how we were as children. Everytime I do listen in there are details and insights shared that are so supportive and inspiring.
Is there a person that can not say, they have or had lived their life by the title of this blog? What does this say, about the lack of responsibility in the world?
My body “told me” over 30 years ago that caffeine wasn’t good for me, in fact if I drank it I would be repeatedly ill. At the time that seemed like punishment and I was very distressed about it. Now I take such messages from the body with grace and appreciation knowing what a great compass to health these messages are.
I can understand your dilemma Ingrid as a young girl, saying no to drinking milk amongst all those dairy farmers would be similar to saying no to drinking beer in Ireland. You would have been a fish out of water.
Food intolerances, especially gluten, have been a major battle for decades in my life so I hear ya. I’ve begun to be able to digest my former trigger foods lately by healing my digestive system
Actually the body is asking us to be all of who we are; us choosing to be less is causing the disharmony that then leads to illness and disease. Hence the body is constantly giving feedback on how much or little we are living our true self, a message that we don´t necessarily like to receive when we are invested in being less. This may sound ridiculous thus we need to understand that being less means being identified by individuality and being the true self has no individuality.
“…address the many emotional issues and the exhaustion that were behind my eating patterns that my body’s whispers became less and less…. ” This demonstrates how there is a relationship between emotions and eating patterns.
I agree Johanne, there is undeniably ‘a relationship between emotions and eating patterns” and this I started to understand more clearly a few years ago when I decided to keep a journal of what I was eating and how I was feeling. Over a period of three months the correlation was confirmed giving me the starting point to break what had been a very ingrained pattern in my life. Eating when I am tired is still a work in progress!
I still find my self amazed how much more listening to my body there is and how easy it is to forget ignore and not notice the symptoms showing themselves again and again as the levels of toleration to things become more acute. Accepting things as they are is a very easy way of ignoring and not wanting to take responsibility for who we are and what our body is really showing us and the real gift this is. How amazing our body is and how beautiful it is guiding us to heal and correct how we are living and how we can really be with the simplest of loving choices making so much difference at whatever time in our lives that is.
The body never fails to amaze me what it presents and what mine in particular has had to put up with over the years with how resilient it has been to the abuse I have laid on it. The more I age and the more sensitive I have become though the less my body seems to be forgiving and is a lot quicker in letting me know when it doesn’t agree with something.
I too have noticed that my body is letting me know that something is not well a whole lot quicker than it used to…but in saying that I am wondering whether that is because I am so much more aware of what messages it is giving me; the more I deepen my awareness the clearer the messages seem. I love that this is what is happening at this stage in my life as I know that the more I care for my body, the more it will support me.
Its not just that food allergies etc. were not so widely acknowledged in the past, but also that we are all becoming more sensitive which poses us with a choice to be more open and let go of what is not truly working or to resist and dig our heels in and take the consequences.
I agree – disregard of the body is our greatest yet self-made enemy.
Even when we know better we can behave as if we wouldn’t know. The extent of ignorance we can go to is unlimited. The mentally controlled mind is unrestrained in what it is willing of coming up with as an explanation or justification. Whereas the body is simple, honest and straightforward in presenting that which is.
“Even when we know better we can behave as if we wouldn’t know”. This is so true Alex and simply goes to show the power of the mind if we allow it to run the show. It will come up with every excuse, every reason and every devious way it can to keep us away from our true selves…but the body always has our welfare at heart in every moment and in all the wise messages it offers us.
What I find fascinating is how I can listen and totally get something is not good for my body yet choose it the next day. Self love helps wth reducing the amount of harming foods I eat but I am a wee way off actually honuring my body.
Even though I listen to my body on a general scale there are still many moments in the day when I do not listen. It might be inconvenient or not what I want to do. But there is so much arrogance in this. If my body tells me the truth why would I not want to listen?
Thank you Ingrid. What you share here has reminded me just how intelligent our bodies are. We think our body is letting us down when we get ill but it is in fact the opposite – those symptoms that stop us in our tracks are moments that bring healing whilst at the same time ask us to look at how we are choosing to live.
This is a great point Jane, that so many of us “think our body is letting us down when we get ill but it is in fact the opposite “. I am sure that most of us have cursed our body at times for not functioning the way we expect it to or stopping us in our tracks with an illness. Crazy really when all it is doing is trying to get our attention. Well my body gets my attention very quickly these days, and if it doesn’t it certainly lets me know even more loudly that all is not well in our world!
It is staggering to see how our beliefs around food can rule our lives; as in when we believe something is good for us and our bodies are screaming no, it’s not.
I remember having to drink a tiny bottle of milk in the mornings at school as a young child because it was free by the government, it was totally awful, warm with soft creamed bits. I would retch having to drink it along with swallowing the fluoride tablet too. I thought it was the temperature and later on and as per TV advertisements (to not miss out) tried milk ice cold, again I couldn’t do it and wondered how on earth others were consuming it so easily!! I then migrated to trying dairy products, yoghurts (which I didn’t enjoy either)… double cream and ended up with a face full of spots. So that didn’t work. Once I stopped dairy, my face became clear and I felt lighter too.
It is so easy to ignore what our bodies are telling us, even on the most obvious ones because we don’t want to have to look at what is really going. I know I have in the past been very reluctant to be honest and take responsibility for what I have created and when I have it feels at times awkward to start with because I am feeling the back log of all that I had chosen to that point. But once that has been felt I feel like a bring new person.
“I have a feeling that I slowly began to accept that everything I was going through was actually normal, so I stopped talking about it.”
And here the benchmark of our slowly declining health begins……
The continual headaches, bloating, congestion, the ongoing discord within the body that becomes our everyday, our often acute awareness of its source becomes ground down and ignored……
Really is this is what we are prepared to call normal and intelligent?
Considering what we put the body through, it is not surprising that it has to get cancer or heart disease, and any number of illnesses to clear our disregard. Maybe if we were to listen earlier and to take heed of the symptoms, the result would not have to be so drastic, and a stop to the way we are living.
What are the ‘balanced diet’ and recommendations such as drinking lots of dairy milk for strong bones actually based on? How can you have such a blanket rule, taught to almost all children from an early age at school, when more and more people are showing dairy intolerance, reactions to sugars, sensitivity to certain meats or nuts etc. Are these random body mutations where they simply don’t have the right enzymes to break down these foods, or could these responses be telling us something about humanity’s relationship to food on a whole?
Great questions to ask, Susie, and how many more bodies have to speak up before we respond to what they are collectively saying?
We cannot miss that the body is telling us something but we can dismiss it for all the reasons we can come up with so that we don´t need to change what the body suggests us to change for the sake of our wellbeing.
Have you ever stepped barefoot on a tack or on a nail in a board? That then required you to remove it your self before you could do anything else! What if everything we did to our body that isn’t good for it, had a bigger voice that reflected the damage we were causing? The more we listen, the volume is turned down to the point all the body needs to do, is give us a whisper.
Ouch! Yes I have steeped barefoot on a nail and it really hurts! and I have also had moments where I listen to the whisper and I know straight away what to do next. It is clear as the pain from the nail, just no pain!
The beautiful thing about the body is that it never judges, if it is not listened to, then it simply finds another way to communicate the same thing. Always working for you and never giving up on letting us know the truth.
Yes and what I have found from my experience of not listening to my body, is it gets louder and louder until eventually I have to listen. It demands that I listen.
I have found that listening to the body can sometimes be hard, especially when we have this push or drive to do, and listening to the body would get in the way of this. But I have found that the body has a way of making itself heard, but speaking louder and louder until we have to listen, so really our choice is at what point we stop, or if we have to be stopped.
” but I didn’t listen… for a very long time…” But you did, and that has made ALL the difference… your blog inspires us all to listen, thank you!
And even if we didn’t listen for a very long time, from now on, we can. We can be the change.
Food intolerances are more and more common as are the fixes and the remedies. What we really need to do is look clearly as to what we are choosing, why we are choosing it and seeing how our body responds. The more understanding we have and awareness, the easier it is to make choices for ourselves.
‘These presentations contained bucket loads of light bulb moments, as well as many confirmations, especially around the foods that my body had tried for years to tell me that it couldn’t deal with; finally I was listening to what I now know to be true intelligence, the intelligence of my body.’ – I find it interesting that so many of us knew for most of our lives that something was not ‘quite right’, but not until Serge Benhayon came along and presented on whole body intelligence, did we join the dots and realise what the body had attempted to communicate to us all along. The level of awareness that this man’s teachings are offering, is absolutely ground breaking.
It is pretty crazy, how so often we will ignore symptoms in our bodies until they reach a crisis point and then we expect to get treatment from someone else that will stop or reverse the symptoms. But what if it came down to us and our responsibility for how we live our lives? This would change the whole nature of of health care and how we viewed it. Perhaps this wake up call for what is needed is not so far away.
“But what if it came down to us and our responsibility for how we live our lives?” If this is how we were raised, knowing that our health is our responsibility, the global health trends will then slowly begin to reflect this. Unfortunately, though this is not the case and most simply want to go on eating and drinking what they want to and to ignore what their bodies are trying to tell them. No judgment here though as this is how I lived for so long but now aware of what happens when you ignore your body for a long time, I know that I have a responsibility to share my lived experience. In the end though, it still comes down to the choice of the individual as to what they do next.
Truly listening to our body is something we are being presented with at a time when world health is at a crisis as is most other things and this is an amazing gift and knowing for us all from within with life and world changing opportunities.
You can walk into any doctor’s waiting room to view the results of not listening to our bodies. But, today there is another plague, from not hearing what our body is saying and lifestyle we are living that has caused the multi-symptomatic patient. Is this simply, all the result of ignoring what our body is always willing to tell us?
This is a great and very telling observation Steve. And the fact that we are not listening to our body’s messages, and often for a very long time, means that by the time we get ourselves to the doctors we are presenting with more than one symptom which makes it very challenging for the doctor as the initial issue is most likely to be buried under the more recent ones. Not a very responsible way to live but a way that many of us do and then we are puzzled when our body brings us to a grinding and often painful halt.
It is so important to look at our emotional issues that our driving our eating patterns and what foods and in what quantities that we choose to eat to not feel these emotions.
Our bodies hold innate wisdom, yet we too often simply just don’t listen. Listening to our bodies is really one of the most wise, honouring and evolving things we can do.
When you do start to listen to the body with foods and the influence of thoughts and how they affect your digestion, you notice so much quicker when these choices are not lovingly made, and the body’s talk can be very definite with some foods.
Funny how we can keep eating things that do not actually suit our body – our body clearly communicates this and yet we still over-ride this and go ahead with the food. Whether it is an extreme reaction or a more subtle reaction, I think we can all relate – I certainly can speak from experience where I have allowed my taste buds to take over the decision making rather than hearing how my body is telling me not to have more or not to have any of that particular food. So I would ask which intelligence is taking over here – the mind saying it has control over the body and can eat what ever it chooses? Or are we listening to the intelligence of the body which is communicating in very simple terms that something is not working? Food for thought!?
Clearly we are listening to a type of intelligence that perhaps is not so intelligent after all.
Oh those demanding taste buds – I know them well! And I gave in to their insistence over and over again, and then not long afterwards I would be wondering why. These days when those around me try to get me to have ‘just a little’ of something that I no longer eat my reply is: ‘Why would I have 30 seconds of taste bud pleasure in my mouth when my body will suffer from the effects for the next day or two?’ My taste buds are definitely not the ones making my eating decisions any more but they still try to convince me otherwise.
Food allergies and intolerances certainly were not as common as they are today. They were certainly around but not to the same degree as these days where most people have heard of them and if they don’t have an intolerance themselves then they would at least know of someone who does have one. It is still the body’s way of communicating important information to us! Thank you Ingrid for sharing your experience!
What I find incredibly beautiful about this aside from the amazing transformation that has taken place here, is how the body never ever fights even when under the strain of constant abuse. It never judges or tries to get its way, just simply present the truth.
It is interesting that when I find a food that my body reacts to, I tend to blame the food. It Is like I do not want to take responsibility, or feel that maybe it’s my body communicating something to me. A different way of looking at it.
Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine has supported me to understand that everything happens for a reason, and if you are open to it there are many levels of communication happening all the time.
Let’s go deeper into what all the increasing level of illness and disease that is happening in our world is all about. Where is our level of responsibility?
It is very worthwhile paying attention to the tell-tale signs from our bodies about our choices. I have found whenever I have listened and considered what was reflected by my body in a situation, I have always ended up deepening my awareness and understanding about life.
If I would have come across people presenting whole body intelligence when I was about 25 years old I would not have to suffer as much. Actually my body knew the way, but I was confused and did not listen. Instead I listened to the compilcated thoughts in my head, which were keeping me in some kind of comfort. In the end the choice is always ours. Nobody can change ones diet only oneself. But to get a confirmation to what we feel in our body in order not to fall for comfort, old beliefs or the jungle of diet ideals and beliefs is deeply supportive. I have found this in workshops presented by Universal Medicine. Most what is presented there is like a confirmation of something innate I anyway know or have felt in my body and this is like a healing given to me.
My digestive system used be a mess, but I thought it was normal. Bloating, sore tummy, constipation, diarrhoea, feeling too full,cramps you name it…I had it al, I ignored what my body was telling me for a long time. There did come a time when I did reflect, but it had gotten so painful, I in a sense decided I did not have a choice. Now since becoming more body aware there are foods and thing I would not allow in my life, because of how they make me feel. Body awareness is so vitally important to caring for ourselves and our health.
People often go into surprise, shock and ‘why me?’ when faced with illness or disease, yet if we stop and honestly look there is always a trail of signals alerting to the bubbling issue and prompting greater responsibility along the way. There is always always a very exact and specific order and pattern. Just because we ignore it, that does not change the fact. Nothing is ever random.
It is the body that needs to lead the way and not the so called intelligent mind in our head.
True intelligence comes from within as there we are connected with all.
To rebuild the connection within our body is the most healthy way forward.
Not only do I remember continuing to eat certain foods that I felt didn’t agree with my body, but I can also remember wondering if when my children complained about having to eat certain foods, or that they didn’t like them, whether it was because of how they felt after eating them. As young children our bodies will respond very quickly to anything that does not support them, but we continue to feed our kids with what we ‘think’ they should eat because it’s supposedly either ‘good for them’ or because it’s a ‘treat’. And over time our eating habits become so engrained that we no longer feel the consequences of eating something that does not feel good for our body.
There is a big difference between how something tastes in the mouth and how it feels in the body afterwards.
Its really lovely to read that you no longer allow the mind to dictate because you have built a solid relationship with your body. The more we listen and trust the messages from our body the more solid our foundation becomes.
The mind attempts to convince us that it is normal to do something when most people are doing it and that it is strange to do something when most people do not do it. But our bodies do not work that way, it does not say yes or no based on the choices of the majority, it is rather very specific about every moment and the messages imparted from the body always remind us we are love and that we can return to love deeper.
True medicine is us learning to listen to the messages our body is sending us.
Beautifully said Kathleen – so simple and true! And so this perhaps is the clue to true intelligence too!?
We can be incredibly arrogant when we think we have a high IQ and because of what we regard as intelligent think we have and know all the answers. Living in arrogance comes from the mind and abuses the body no matter how smart we think we are.
I was thinking about how your childhood allergies were not put down to food except for the extreme reactions. I realised that especially a few decades ago, no one would have even considered dairy or gluten to be suspects, as they were sold to us as being part of a healthy diet and therefore would not have come into people’s consciousness. Its amazing how strong the veil over our awareness is when things are normalised in society.
And in so many cases they are still being sold “as part of a healthy diet” even by medical professionals. One would think that with the mounting evidence that even doctors would begin to open to the possibility that a patient’s ill-health may just be caused by the food they are eating. Meanwhile the patients trust that their doctor knows best and continue to eat what they like while their body gets sicker. I trust that it won’t be too long before common sense prevails and the indisputable link between food and the health of the body is finally denied no longer.
The body is Home Base, be with it as often as you can.
We live in a physical form that has the capacity to communicate to us via a natural feedback system, the moment we step out of the universal rhythm and flow we belong to. Every single one of us that walks this earth has access to this communication, no exception. So why then do we have such alarming rates of ill health, disease, misery, wars, corruption and the like if these are all signs of discordance? The answer is in movement. As absurd as it may well sound we are masters at knowing how to move in a way that prevents us from hearing what is being communicated through the very cells of our bodies. This we do by aligning to an energy that is not the love that we are and then allowing this source to feed us the thoughts, actions etc. that then sees us choosing certain foods and behaviours that bludgeon our capacity to read the universal intelligence coursing through us.
It is like having access to the most glorious kingdom but being so busy moving from A to B looking for a key to let us back in that we cannot see it has been in our hands the whole time. A situation many of us can relate to on a temporal level as this is what seems to happen with the car keys when we are rushing with our arms full to get out the door every morning!
These very wise words of yours Liane stopped me and asked for a deep consideration. “We live in a physical form that has the capacity to communicate to us via a natural feedback system, the moment we step out of the universal rhythm and flow we belong to”. As I read them again I could feel the simple, but profound, truth that was being presented. And of course it does not just relate to eating the foods that we use to disconnect us from the incredible beings that we are, but to all areas of our lives where we are continually being offered messages every single time we step away from our natural universal rhythm, so disrupting the connection that is essential for us to be able to live in our complete fullness.
‘With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.’ This is true inspiration to make choices to be a vessel for light and love.
We keep finding more clever and more complicated ways of justifying our choice to ignore what we deep down know and can feel. We often have a moment of maybe this isn’t a great idea, but then we proudly forge ahead doing it anyway.
It is kind of ridiculous that we often need to have our back against the wall before we stop and re-assess our choices. But that is where humanity seems to be for now, and for each of us it is only a matter of time before we start seeing the fruits of our choices.
It’s beautiful when I choose my body to lead the way and not my mind. There can be a period where my mind puts up a fight but saying no, seeing the complications that arise, and then feeling how lovely it is when I accept the wisdom my body connects to, is so confirming to not allow my mind to race off and create all sorts of dramas.
It is undeniable how much our bodies communicate with us and equally incredible how much we refuse to listen
Anyone who has ever drunk too much alcohol knows all too well how well the body communicates and how easy it is to override what it’s telling us.
The amount of medication that we need to survive and to not listen to our body is incredible. We have things enormously back to front.
Im hearing more and more about people suffering from illness and disease all around me, what will it take for us to wake up and see there is another part to medicine which is not based on pharmaceuticals.
My body has bloated for most of my life so it may be time to start to listen to the orchestra and get off the band-wagon so life can return to a normal relationship with what I eat!
Absolutely Susan I have witnessed this too – even when our bodies are talking very loud to us in the form of illness and disease, we still don’t want to listen to the message…we prefer to blame it on the environment, our genes, bad luck etc rather than consider what we need to change about how we are living.
Or override that moment to feel the impact not long after in the unclear decision we make that may effect not only us but others as well.
Not only do we not listen to our bodies, we spend a lot of time and effort trying to silence them.
The more we tamper with the quality of our food, from how it is grown to the glorified processes we put it through, the more our bodies are going to object. We are such delicate beings and our bodies do very well on simple, fresh and natural, after all it is what they are designed to run on.
Doctors are still saying we should drink milk, even though there is so much evidence to prove that milk is harmful to our health
That is because we use the human mind as the microscope and not the body that that mind belongs to. As history shows us time and again, there is nothing more dangerous than a renegade mind working in opposition to the physical form it is a part of. From here we enter the realm of ‘theory’ and ‘rational intelligence’ that all sounds very good and convincing on paper but when put to the test, leaves our bodies in a state of depletion and exhaustion.
Like a cross and frustrated parent our way of disciplining and listening to our body is short and sharp. It’s so ingrained that we hear what is has to say then look to fix and cover it up again, to the point it has to shout and really misbehave, just to get us to stop and consider there could be another way. All of this is a million miles away from us approaching it on the front foot and saying ‘what wisdom do you have to share with me todda? what can I do to live further in tune with you?’. Your words here Ingrid have inspired me to be more this way. Thank you, my body says.
As I sit here reading these comments the sun is beginning to light up the day, breaking through from behind a bank of clouds. When we listen to and honour our body, the light of our soul is also given permission to shine through our body, much like the sun’s light as warms and lights up the earth.
“Now I know that by finally acknowledging the innate wisdom of this amazing body of mine, I no longer allow myself to be led astray by my wayward mind.” I love this sentence Ingrid, and to feel the power we all have to re-imprint and set a foundation that will support us in our next life where we meet life through the wisdom of our bodies and not comforts of the mind.
I had similar experiences as a child and was constantly ill suffering from tonsillitis, ear infections, diarrhea and bloating. This continued well into my 20s and got worse. I loved dairy drinks like iced chocolates and never wanted to give them up even though within 5 minutes of drinking them I would be on the toilet with severe stomach cramps and diarrhea and then suffer from ear aches for the following days. When I heard Serge Benhayon present on the impact of dairy on the body, I had never heard anyone talk about it before, but it made total sense as my body had been trying to tell me the same thing for years.
Our bodies are great communicators. Sure we are good at finding excuses, but the message is always there, waiting for us to read and respond.
The more I connect my body and my mind the more the go-to-when-things-get-heated behaviours are supportive rather than detrimental to the health of my body and my relationship with life’s moments.
I reckon a lot of people can relate to your life Ingrid. How many of us quit something only to run back to it when life gets intense? The more I return to my body the more my go-to-in-tense-moments behaviours change to be supportive of the body rather than detrimental.
It can’t be underestimated that the care we take with ourselves when young is what will support us as we age, however, and a big however, it’s never too late (or too old) to make changes. Indeed it’s vital that we constantly look to refine what supports us as the months and years come on by.
Not caring for your body is like leaving your instrument as a musician untuned.
I love this analogy Steffi – the more we learn to listen the more we can retune the instrument and the finer the sounds it produces.
Better late than never- everything is possible no matter what age. Your own will to change something can move mountains and in your case change your way of listening to your body.Very well done and a great role model for the elderly.
I so agree Stefanie that it doesn’t matter what age you are it is never too late to make changes in your life; and I’m still making them. Many older people may argue that they can’t change but this could simply be because the thought of changing a lifetime of habits seems just way too hard and instead they prefer to continue living in the comfort, as uncomfortable as it is at times, that they always have done.
The funny thing in this is actually – the people you are talking about who say the habits are lifetime old – what if the habits are many life-long old?! Being very sure of not living only once, the behaviours we carry, don´t only exist in one life suddenly. So you gotta disconnect to that knowing, to stay in comfort with it. If you connect to the fact, that you will continue to live in another body one day, you would try to tidy up behind yourself the best as you can, so that you don´t have to deal with the same behaviours again.
It is so easy to ignore the intelligence of the body and we have never really been brought up or taught to have this relationship with it. It is like pulling back a thick black cloth that has been over our eyes yet it is our awareness and openness to see what is being communicated. This is super cool, empowering ourselves from our core.
‘Looking back, I can see that there were times my body struggled under this continual abuse as I was regularly stopped in my tracks with an illness or disease.’ – I can relate to this, my body continually offered me stop moments with illness and disease, which now I know was caused by foods that my body could not process but even more so the inner feelings and discomforts that I did not express. So what did I do, I soldiered on and ignored the signals from my body, or at best I ‘repaired’ them with either alternative or medical treatment, which enabled me to keep up with the facade.
How great that you listen to your body now. It’s never too late.
It is quite incredible how strong our desires can be that result in us deliberately making choices that produce some pretty awful physical consequences because everyone else is and we don’t want to miss out. But in truth what are we missing out on? The raging sinusitis, the blinding headaches, the instant rash and itchy skin? When we make these honest connections, suddenly turning down the Sunday dessert becomes quite easy.
Sometime we can really tell ourselves we want something, but gnawing away is the obvious indicators that our body does not. It is for me a question of which part of me is stronger, the part that loves and respect my body, or the part that wants the relief from the food I eat.
A great call Stephen – which part of ourselves do we truly claim and support…? Something to reflect on.
If you think about it it’s quite weird that we do not listen to what our bodies are telling us. We override them again and again. It’s like we are programmed to do this. Even if we listen sometimes there will always be times when we don’t listen and we override the little things because it is inconvenient or for whatever reason. It has taken Serge Benhayon to come along for me to realise just how much I override my body, and that this is in fact unloving. There are so many reflections in the world to support this unloving behaviour that we don’t choose to know any different until someone comes along and makes self-love normal! It’s like being given permission to care. And what I understand now is that true care starts with listening to our bodies and caring enough to act on what they need. Without this we cannot show an ounce of true care to anyone else.
That persistent raspy cough we put up with that is just part of smoking. The occasional next day, feeling like hell because of overindulgence the night before from in a list of things that is not good for the body. Years ago I knew someone in a hospice, just waiting for the end and smoking was allowed by the patients! It wasn’t going to kill them! The choices we make are not always in consolation with our bodies!
This ‘floating head’, disembodied as it were, runs riot without due care and respect for its choices, not only on the body it inhabits but also on others. I love the opportunity to bring my mind back in line with my body, into its rightful place as a support for the whole rather than a wayward dictator.
I love this article and the opportunity it offers to develop a different and deeply respectful relationship with our bodies – listening rather than dismissing, honouring rather than disregarding – and that whilst this will always be a deepening relationship, it is absolutely natural for us.
It’s quite hard to understand that many of us are brought up to respect others, especially our elders, but hardly ever educated to respect our bodies. It’s a bit along the lines of being told you need to care for others first as to put yourself first is considered to be selfish. It actually makes no sense at all, as if we don’t respect our body and put the care for ourselves at the top of the list what sort of body are we living in and taking to the world?
Thank you Ingrid. I relate to so much of what you have shared. I found it really helpful to read that you had to remove gluten before you were able to heal certain issues.
We tend to notice another when they take care and listen to their body… there is something very inspirational when we see this
Absolutely, because it is so rare that people do, it really sticks out. Although the ridiculous part is, that this is actually the way we naturally are.
“Then there was the regular Sunday afternoon headache that I know now came from the cream that was placed in huge dollops over the special Sunday dessert.” Its amazing how obvious things are when we want to see them, and when we don’t we ignore what is right in front of us.
‘You just ate the food that you were presented with and anything that the body tried to tell you by way of subtle (or not so subtle) messages was likely to be overridden, as most then didn’t understand that food could be the issue behind many of the body’s ills.’ – I feel this is still the case today, and that in many instances if we declare that we don’t eat certain foods for the sake of our own wellbeing, it is being met with disbelief and seen as a bit of a nuisance.
I’ve observed this too Eva. I’ve often felt that I need to provide a ‘valid reason’ for my food choices. I feel this pressure comes from other people’s discomfort with my choices. If I feel solid with what I have chosen I am not affected by the opinions of others and instead I can simply observe their reactions rather than absorb them.
Very true Leonne – in the past I would often find myself going into defence over my own food chocies and would take on other people’s discomfort with it. Today I am very solid with my own choices and no longer adjusting to make others feel comfortable. Learning to observe and not absorb is indeed key and a great tool for life in general.
Most of us take great care of our gadgets, ensuring they have the most up to date app, that they are syncing and running on maximum efficiency, and are constantly on the look out to learn how best they can be used.
So how ironic that we occupy the most exquisite system, our body, aspects of which these gadgets at best can emulate, yet we don’t take the same care nor pay half as much attention to it.
Our bodies deserve to be listened to all of the time, as they are our wisest and most consistently responsible allies.
Food has definitely been used as a filler for the emptiness we feel inside, unfortunately it dulls us to the extent that we are unable to feel the truth of what is inside, the emptiness is an illusion.
This blog was a revelation as your story mirrors my own in many ways. I even had my tonsils removed aged 8. As I read your words I noticed how itchy my skin was and I know it’s because I’ve been eating (sugar free) sweet food. Usually I wouldn’t even make this link but now I cannot deny it.
Is it possible that our bodies know how to move naturally in rhythm to nature but when we eat foods and drink that dull that awareness, we lose communication and in that disconnect we are then out of kilter with our bodies. Is it possible that illness and disease are showing us the stresses we have placed on our bodies by being out of rhythm?
“Looking back, I can see that there were times my body struggled under this continual abuse as I was regularly stopped in my tracks with an illness or disease.” No doubt we all have similar stories to tell when it comes to our bodies and what we consume, but it seems so few of us are willing to really listen to the messages until the pain or discomfort becomes too much to bear. And even then, it can be a temporary measure until our symptoms die down and then we go back to our old eating habits. What a difference it would make to our health, and no doubt to the health service if we were to start listening to our bodies in relation to what we put in them.
Love the simplicity of what you present Ingrid, I followed your journey from childhood and could relate to it. You show that from young we are schooled to not connect to and have a relationship with out bodies. We place little value on it because we often don’t value ourselves. You inspire us to understand we all have the potential within us, at any age, to turn this around, begin again to love, listen to and honour our hugely intelligent bodies.
To neglect and ignore our bodies to the extent we do is unintelligent and ignorant. The body feeds us intelligence everyday but, unable to read its messages,we override them and ‘think’ we know better. Mind overriding feeling is a recipe for ill-health and disease.
It is crazy that listening to our bodies is not the number one thing in determining what is good to put inside our bodies on an individual basis from day one. This really is cave man stuff, eat a berry that makes you ill you don’t eat it again even if it has a pleasant taste. Being forced to eat something that is said to be good for us when we are young is sometimes totally wrong if it has a bad effect on us but also I was glad I was made to eat spinach as that was one thing I down right hated eating as a kid and it was good for me with no dire effects and is now one of my favourite foods.
The mind v’s the body. Back the body every time.
We are being communicated vast volumes of wisdom through a body that only knows how to move in rhythm to the Universal order it belongs to, until we bring another factor into the equation and allow our physical form, the vehicle in which we ride through this life, to follow the lead of an opposing force that moves against such divinity.
Yes Ingrid, I too have found my mind to be wayward, taking me off on all sorts of tangents creating situations and disorder but my body stays consistent and strong in its messages, always offering the truth. To bring my mind to my body and align it brings an order, harmonious flow and clarity.
‘It’s messages, always offering the truth’ I love what you say here Ruth. Truth is embodied, we walk with it and yet we often seek outside ourselves for it.
“With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.” I absolutely love this Ingrid.
These days it is my first question if I feel queasy or unwell – what have I been feeding myself? And this can be metaphorical too, as the quality of my thoughts can be equally toxic.
How true Rowena – the thoughts we are feeding ourselves can be straight out poisoning.
So true Susan – the real issues lie underneath the food choices in why we ate those things which do not truly support us. I love the feeling of space to feel this which is made available in playing with food choices when we become aware of a particular choice which no longer feels true.
Brilliant blog because I would say we have all been there, and as you say Ingrid
“I know without one iota of doubt that if I had been brought up to know my body as I know it now and how to understand its messages, to respect it as the all-wise and wonderful vessel that it is, my life story would read very differently and that would have been so very welcome. But as the saying goes: “Better late than never.” Now I know that by finally acknowledging the innate wisdom of this amazing body of mine, I no longer allow myself to be led astray by my wayward mind.”
Now that we have more understanding of our bodies when it comes to food and drink we can reeducate our children and families so that they have a greater understanding of the choices that they make.
I had a lot of resistance from those around me when I began to change my diet and it still continued even when my health began to improve, which I struggled to make sense of for a while. There were a lot of challenging remarks and of course the standard line -‘surely a little won’t hurt you?’. But I was so focussed on finally caring for my body in a loving way and absolutely appreciating the changes these different choices made to the way I felt, that there was no way that anyone was able to sway me. Today everyone accepts how I live and eat and I have even seen signs that some are starting to make the same self-loving changes.
The lies that milk is good for us was swallowed… literally a long time ago; hook, line and sinker, And, the side effects passed off to other causes. It has been a grand illusion, sleight of hand and misdirection to consume dairy products. I have found out what milk does to the body by deleting it from my body after 50 + years of consumption. My body now has immediate responses if dairy products slip in undetected with the body acting as a theatre on fire with everything rushing to the nearest exit.
Doctors have a great deal of knowledge but they do not know our individual bodies and their individual requirements, so a doctor who truly listens to us as well as us truly listening to our bodies can make for a great healing that supports the medical profession as well as our individual and collective health.
It makes sense that a fuller intelligence would include the communications of the body as it is receiver of all that we eat, the way that we move and where we think from.
The moment we reconnect to the wisdom pouring through our physical body, is the moment we realise that this seemingly tiny body (and the being within it!) belongs to something far greater in size but no less in majesty and that is the Body of God – the Universe in which we live and that lives within us all.
In a world that doesn’t listen to their bodies and moves in a way that is against all the message’s offers, we can grow up learning to ignore what our bodies are saying. We start to doubt ourselves and our bodies, we look to others to do what is ‘normal’ in their eyes. This continues in many areas of our lives until we stop and listen, or get stopped by our bodies to then start listening.
It’s interesting that we talk of things ‘making sense’ because sensing is very much a body thing rather than just mental. We have reduced it to mean ‘adding up’ in an intellectual – purely mental sense. Our language gives us lots of clues like this once we start to pay attention to it. To me, when something really ‘makes sense’ it is because it is congruent with my whole body/beingness and this I find more trustworthy than purely mind based reasoning.
We are really only just beginning to scratch the surface in regards of just how intelligent our bodies are. We are living in a multi-dimensional organism that is connected to universal laws we glibly attempt to ignore and over-ride at our peril. When we start to put together the clues, what we consume and the quality of our inner relationship with how we feel, a whole new world of health, vitality and responsiveness opens up before us.
What a difference it makes to our health and wellbeing when you do take notice to the signs and symptoms of ill and un-ease displayed in the body… The body certainly is clear and loud when it wants our attention.
Our body has always been like the dashboard of our cars. Every day when we awake is like when you start your car, and all those lights come up to show you all the checks being carried out. And, as you move through your day if something in the body has a problem it is expressed immediately. How often do we ignore these little idiot lights and at what peril?
Great analogy Steve. It brought home to me – with a thud – that I would never ignore a warning light on my dashboard, so why would I ignore a ‘warning light’ from my body, especially as the ignoring of them will most likely lead to a big forced stop moment and usually a very painful or uncomfortable one at that.
We may think we get away with it for a while but eventually our bodies give way and tell us in no uncertain terms that we need to change our ways.
Our bodies are like guide dogs, faithful and dedicated to the core.
I get the image of sticking my fingers in my ears and singing ‘la la la’ in order not to hear my body – using my body not to listen to my body.
I so agree Jennifer that the re-imprinting of how we are with our body can be “a painful process”, one that takes one simple choice in the beginning but then constant and dedicated commitment to follow through with. I know for me that I was re-imprinting 50 years of old patterns and right from my initial choice to begin to listen to the messages and to act on them, it became clear very quickly as to how deeply ingrained these imprints were.But as you say it is so very well worth it – priceless in fact.
I agree. One of the nice things is that this is a finite process and our life changes drastically, the further we are down this process.
‘ With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.’ I love this, I can feel the strength of your commitment and consistency. Very inspiring.
When the mind is aligned to the body, everything feels simple.
I remember having digestive issues in my 20’s and someone told me I might have a gluten intolerance and to try and avoid bread. I remember thinking why me, there are all these other people around me eating bread and they were fine why should it affect me and not them, using my mind to justify why I should carry on eating bread. By the time I was 40 I did begin to listen a little bit to my body and try not to eat so much bread. But It wasn’t until my 50’s that I began to really get the message because my body was speaking very loudly to me by then.. It wasn’t until I started to attend Universal Medicine presentations that I got to understand how much food really does affect us and as you say Ingrid, “These presentations contained bucket loads of light bulb moments, as well as many confirmations, especially around the foods that my body had tried for years to tell me that it couldn’t deal with; finally I was listening to what I now know to be true intelligence, the intelligence of my body.”
This just goes to show how much better our body can communicate with us than our mind alone – the mind should serve the body, not the other way around.
That is what I love about the presentations of Serge Benhayon: he doesn’t pump us full of knowledge we have to remember, instead he shows us techniques for listening to the wisdom of our own bodies so that we can learn for ourselves what to eat, and how to be in all our relationships.
Right from day one of meeting Serge Benhayon I was supported to observe and learn profound wisdom through personal experience. This has been the most honouring and equalising way of teaching anything, when I am not expected to hear, accept and run with knowledge and theories, but explore and deepen an awareness together. This has also helped me remember, reconnect to and start to honour the deep awareness we all naturally have deep within.
I’ve heard many people speak about the horror of having to drink warm milk at school and it makes me ill just thinking about it. So often as children we were made to eat stuff that wasn’t good for you, I had white bread sandwiches every day of my school life until I went to secondary school, white bread that was loaded with sugar and salt.
How many times have we put something in our body and knew beforehand the undesired and inevitable effects it would have on us, but we still do it! Its that organ between our ears that is forever the optimist and enjoys rolling the dice of maybe it won’t be so bad this time?
Learning to listen to our bodies again can be a painful process sometimes and one most of us resist doing at times, if not most of the time. I recall learning to do so many years ago and finding evening-time going to bed the hardest. Those few minutes when I first lay down were quite excruciating because I didn’t want to feel what was in my body from the way l’d run myself during that day, but I wasn’t tired enough or wound down enough to fall asleep quickly… so either had to ‘check out’ and daydream, or distract myself with reading a novel or something like that. Neither were conducive to sleeping well and waking feeling refreshed. I remember forcing myself to keep my awareness in my body and would nominate what I could feel. Gradually as I stayed with everything I could feel, acknowledging where l’d been that way earlier in the day, where l’d reacted, gone into drive or pleasing or held back saying something…. whatever it was, gradually it would ease away and l’d be left feeling my heart and the love I am… and sleep would be easy, deep and much more restful. A painful process as I recall but well worth it I can say now.
Listening to your body makes so much sense, as with all the so called intelligence in this world most people seem to miss the fact that the body doesn’t lie and keeps sending us messages. Looking back at my life I can totally relate to your story and how poorly my body felt at times, from being stuffed with dairy, gluten and tonnes of sugar. I still remember those putrid warm milk bottles at school that were mandatory. Thank God we can now live without that imposition, re-imprint the world with better choices that support tenderness and sensitivity in a body that isn’t being suppressed from poor dietary choices.
Greg I completely agree, yet i never used to and like you I would feed my body with so much rubbish that I would never be able to listen to it as I covered up and smothered anything it told me. Until of course I got properly sick, by properly I meant I had no choice but to listen and so I listened and eventually deepened the care I took for myself.
Ingrid this blog stands out at me again for how often do I hear loudly what my body is saying but then don’t listen, how often do I get a feeling but then don’t follow through.. yet how simple is it to follow my feeling and how much more loving is that.
I know exactly what you’re saying DN. It is definitely a continuing commitment to listening, expanding our awareness and to being totally honest with ourselves about how our body feels. If the honesty is not there then it is easy to ignore any symptoms. It feels like an endless work in progress but it is one that I am totally committed to.
There’s a strong case here for developing food awareness and watching and working with our children to support them in their food choices. Forcing ourselves and our kids to eat things because of some sort of received so-called wisdom does not make sense.
It really does not seem to be intelligent to keep eating foods we identify to be causing certain symptoms or feelings in the body yet we do it and consider the mind that is running this show as intelligent.
The madness of our choices exposed. Well said, Lieke. So what is true intelligence? A mental activity in separation from our bodies, or a whole body response in every moment?
I love how honestly you describe your journey and found this way back to honour the body; it’s inspiring and yeah I definitely had the same as a child the milk, the cream, the sweet bread cake, well so much bread. Every day this was mostly our dinner with some cheese, butter, jam etc on top. I struggled with loads of nose issues mostly blocked, mucous, also had to take out two tonsils at the age of six…could hardly breathe till I got a nose operation at the age of 16…it’s a great reminder to appreciate now how great I can breathe again, no headaches for at least 4 years and feel so much more still in my body, I was so nervous and anxious so tense in my body or heavy and sluggish instead. Still learning so much more to listen to my body; it’s a gift from heaven to come back to this whole body intelligence as you say.
Serge Benhayon’s presentation gave me understanding of what my body had been showing me for so many years, I didn’t want my body because it hurt in so many ways but with the understandings and growing awareness I could see that my body was showing me how I was choosing to live and in changing those choices the pain and illnesses resolved. Now I love and cherish my body for all it shows me and guidance it gives me everyday in life.. and I’m still learning to listen to all that it shows me.
My body used to feel like a clapped out car and it is not surprising when I consider how I used to treat it. The pivotal turning point was someone reflecting back to me the preciousness of my essence and the innate wisdom within my body. Once these qualities are connected to within us, we begin to realise that underneath the tarnished exterior is a Rolls Royce of a body simply itching to run harmoniously once more when treated with the absolute care and respect it deserves.
I love your analogy Rowena. I know I also used to treat my body like a car I was just going to run into the ground until it was done without taking too much care of it. This is not the case now and I am beginning to appreciate the attention to detail we can bring when it comes to looking after and listening to our vehicle.
I’ve eaten a lot of things throughout my life, not always healthy, and often I think I get away with it but when I totally overdo things, my body soon tells me, for example, in the days when I ate sugar,I was away on holiday and ate sweet puddings with every meal plus red wine. Within a few days my right hand started itching up the forefinger and down towards the thumb. The same thing had happened once before and this time I clocked that it was the sugar that was causing it. Other times I over eat something like nuts, for example and I’m ok for a few days, feeling a bit heavy perhaps, then too many and I get diarrhoea so I know it’s time to stop.
More wonderful examples of the wisdom of the body and those continual messages that it is giving us; I can relate to all of them. It feels to me, from my experience, that we do have an understanding of what it is trying to communicate but we are closed down to the messages as if we were to choose to listen we know that things will have to change and giving up our favourite foods simply feels way too hard; what would life be without them? Well, we know the answer to that one – a lot more vital than it is when we do eat them.
“…finally I was listening to what I now know to be true intelligence, the intelligence of my body” – isn’t it revelation when this discovery is made Ingrid.. for years I was under the illusion and strive for academic intelligence and the mind, and hence lived life and worked too, completely cut off from my body and its intelligence — one that for years messaged through acute debilitating neck pain to reflect exactly and precisely how dis-connected to myself and to my body I was. Thanks to Universal Medicine and its guidance towards connecting me back to my body, I no longer get such severe neck pain, and if I do get a slight twinge of it now understand the communication.
I love the concept of whole body intelligence, it is such a fantastic way to be guided through life, to listen to how our body feels in any given situation and trust that our radar is faultless provided we allow it to be heard.
The simplicity and profundity of listening to my body blows me away on a daily basis… the depth of wisdom we all carry with us always.
When we do pay attention, treat our body very well, nourish, rest and exercise with care, just the simple things like walking becomes such an amazing pleasure.
Imagine if we had a phone call we had to return, a letter we needed to respond to, or an email where we needed to reply – we’d probably do it straight away, or least feel bad the longer we delayed. The fact is though, that we have been ignoring our body for so long – it’d be understandable if it resorted to taking out spreads in our favourite newspaper or making giant billboards in the streets. Well, I guess this is what illness and disease is. When you consider that we may have been ignoring our body for life after life it’s actually huge, beyond words for us to begin to listen to it today. Thank you Ingrid for listening to yours and sharing this way.
Sometimes it can be easy to convince ourselves we are listening to our bodies, and our bodies are saying they want to eat that or drink that – but have we lost touch with a craving that can come from the body but is a signal of a disharmony, for example being exhausted and craving sugar, or feeling emotional and craving comfort in food – these things can feel like they are what we/our bodies want if we simply go on face value, but when we look underneath at why we feel that way we can see that potentially it is not coming from the body’s true communication of what it needs
If we live with our minds coming into line with our bodies and then start to move as one, then we will naturally know what is next for us to eat, rest, work etc. This is all part of the everyday medicine that supports us to be vital and inspired, and be open to what is next.
It makes sense not to listen to our body as, in the beginning, most messages may feel negative, especially when we take the positive ones – having lots of energy or feeling really good in our body – simply for granted.
I would be interested to see if there are more reactions to different foods today than say thirty years ago because of what goes into them or is it just because it is just more widely known how and what certain people react to different foods.
Your blog demonstrates just how the body never gives up on us… and at some point we do take notice and listen.
At boarding school we were made to eat everything on our plate without question, even if it made us gag. One time I resisted hard, tried to argue and stuck to my statement that it was apple pith and inedible – the nun wouldn’t listen and I was punished for it – not allowed to go swimming that evening. I understand the challenge of feeding 100+ boarders but the power play that went on was beyond reasonable.
The school had very low cost labour (nuns) yet still chose not to find enough money to make their food remotely edible. Is there really any excuse for that?
A beautiful blog sharing experiences of living and our health that are considered normal when we give up on the advice sought with no true answers and ignore our body’s messages.The light bulb moments from hearing truth that simply makes sense and resonates from listening to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine is very beautiful and allows this truth to be known and lived. Magically things are changing and listening to our bodies is gradually becoming more normal and called for as it is much needed in our world’s health today.
Our level of awareness as to how food affects us it quite remarkable, the number of times I have spoken to people who suffered for years with a bodily disturbance yet didn’t relate it to food, who then one day clock that it was because of this or that and eliminate it and regain their health. And for others they do know but consider they love the food too much to give it up and so the suffering they feel is worth it, and perhaps also convinced by the messages sent from certain sources that this or that food is essential, yet how could it possibly be if it is causing them ill effects?
How the body must revel in us choosing to be on the body’s side and make loving choices that support this body to do what it was made for and that is to move in and express love.
‘You just ate the food that you were presented with…’ What else do we ingest, just because we are presented with it? We are remarkably passive when it comes to what we accept in life.
“Mind 1 – Body 0!” If I were to have kept score I’m sure Mind has won many a tournament over Body. Becoming aware of what my body is communicating has been a process and is discovered in all manner of ways, in foods and behaviours. Some things have been easy to let go of, and some are not, at the moment. Yet the willingness to continue to listen and refine means I get to build a more intimate and loving relationship with myself, – without the flavour of deprivation or hard discipline that the mind would like us to think is there!
Our bodies are the ultimate barometer, ready to measure every action, word or deed and every reaction or response to life. It is the greatest tool we have to measure, observe, understand and live life by. How often do we see it and use it as such?
Realising the real reason why we have made certain choices, such as what food to eat, in our lives means there is no need for a special diet or regime change in our lives, just to choose what feels true and what does not, and the rest starts to change around us.
Amazing to think that we spend so much time trying to ‘shush’ the body, believing that its symptoms and ailments are an annoyance and inconvenience, when really they are important messages warning us and guiding us about our lifestyle and about life itself.
I also had a silent partner that did whatever I said or decided to do to the company I was running into the ground. Until I also meet Serge Benhayon. The company was in the process of being destroyed and was almost complete. I have now built a new foundation, and all the employees own the business currently, that all have an equal voice in running the new company… called my body.
Yesterday my body was feeling very tired. It was great to honour this feeling and go to bed early, even though there was lots I didn’t get done in the day.
Now that I think of it, there were many periods of foggyness amd sore throats, especially after attending a birthday party as a child – and I didn’t start to think it could be from food until I was 16, then after that was clear I discovered that not only food causes our tensions or digestive dilemmas in the body, but also situations.
It is incredible how far we are able to distract from our bodies and as a result of that are able to consume foods that are not nurturing and actually can be called abusive to our bodies instead. This activity, the distraction from the body, is foremost led by the intelligence of the mind, the intelligence that is so championed in our societies but actually not by our bodies as they show by the increasing illness and disease rates we experience in the world. But why do we not listen to our bodies but continue to give precedence to the misleading mind while the evidence of what our mind is doing can be felt in every body in the world, is the question we all may ask ourselves.
Sometimes it is a long journey back when we finally start listening to the body’s incessant communications… but one well worth the return.
Looking back, it appears that the overriding became a natural response to my body’s messages so much so that it became a normal; what a loveless normal that was. A gastroenterologist I had an appointment with a couple of years ago asked if I had ever been tested for Coeliac Disease and was quite shocked when I said no… but, when I was growing up maybe that wasn’t something that was tested for as the symptoms were never linked to what I was eating except for the obvious ones, like the hives and swelling of my lips. How wonderful that many of us are now realising the extent of the long term physical damage to our precious bodies when we ignore the wise messages and are finally starting to listen and act.
We tend to live in a way that continually habituates the physical body to certain indigestible substances until the symptoms become so ‘normal’ that they are regarded as a ‘normal’ part of life and are no longer questioned – until the penny drops and we realise that life is not about being ‘normal’ when ‘normal’ is anything but natural.
Gosh we distract ourselves so much with food don’t we? And I am speaking from experience here as well! We distract ourselves because we don’t want to take responsibility for our own lives, and we expect others to fix us when things go wrong! Nothing can go wrong with that plan can it ;-)?
As I sit here with a bloated tummy I wonder when I’ll listen more attentively to my body. I appreciate how consistently it tells me what it needs me to do, so I just need to consistently care enough to listen.
It’s been revealing to consider how accepting certain things when young, through lack of understanding and an absence of guidance we start to tolerate a level of discomfort and dis-ease. Then as the years go by the symptoms may slowly increase yet because it’s so gradual the tolerance also increases with out much consideration – we just get on with life so to speak. Until the body can support our denial no longer and develops a way to gain our full attention. So much of this can be prevented if we are willing to be honest about anything that doesn’t resemble full well-being and vitality.
It is beautiful when we really start to listen, as our body doesn’t have to shout anymore to get our attention and we enter into a very reasonable conversation instead, a big relief for both of us!
Indeed Rowena, it is less exhausting for the body and it gives us back the energy that many people are craving for to get effortlessly through daily life.
I agree Nico. It is so understandable that exhaustion is affecting the majority of humanity as so many are feeding their body food it cannot deal with and as a consequence the energy that is used trying to process this food is not available for everyday living. The increase in my energy was one the most amazing results of removing the foods I did; it actually astounded me.
There is so much anecdotal evidence that gluten and dairy have negative impact on health and vitality. I am certain if such stories were more widely shared, many more people with recurring issues would try cutting out these foods and the anecdotal evidence would be even more widespread.
There is a powerful message in your story for all of us Ingrid.
Like you, I know that if I had grown up with some people around me openly honoring the wisdom of their bodies I would have felt confirmed in what I felt and taken the courage to listen to my own body a LOT sooner and saved myself a lot of grief.
Hurray for inspiration via others honoring their own truth!
Once we begin to take notice and listen to our body, life starts to become far less complicated.
Our bodies are deemed to be magnificent pieces of engineering when we are well and a failure or a let down or even weak when we become sick. Interesting how they are not still considered to be magnificent when we are sick. However this magnificence does not change, this remains constant no matter what.
When I look back to the days before Universal Medicine and attending courses presented by Serge Benhayon, it amazes me how strong the messages from the body were and how I was able to ignore them, to the point of getting very sick. But now that I know how crucial it is to listen to our bodies and how by doing so we can reverse illness and disease within the body, it is becoming more obvious when I look around the extent of people ignoring their own messages.
When something becomes clear, we can look back and feel how come we didn’t observe or learn it earlier, but it is the process that needs to happen for the learning to take place. So there is an appreciation we can feel now how far we have come and made those changes Ingrid, without any judgement. The wisdom of the body shows us the way.
When most of us speak to someone who isn’t listening, we eventually just give up but our stunning bodies never falter, not even for the briefest of moments.
It’s so important to look at how we use justifications in our day to day, because veils of justifications could be covering up an array of disregarding choices, mis-truths or ill manners that are having a huge impact on our body that we don’t realise.
A beautiful, inspiring and simple account of what I expect is many people’s experience of living with signs and symptoms from our bodies that we are conditioned to ignore and/or accept as normal. This is a brilliant invitation to give our bodies a voice.
I Love the fact that the choice to start being aware of what our body is telling us and to make changes accordingly can come at any stage in life – there is no it’s too late. Every day offer us the opportunity to have another go, to change what went before and to bring more Love into all we do from who we are first.
It is mad how most of us on this planet carry on doing, eating and behaving in a way that only our mind can try to rationalise, when our bodies just know, and don’t stop trying to communicate to us what our true way of being really is.
We can never say that we don’t know what we feel. We feel everything way before we choose to ignore those feelings.
Yesterday I did a lot of walking and today my legs feel very fragile. My body has reminded me to walk very gently and tenderly today. When I was walking I felt a sore spot on the bottom of my feet, I changed my walk and the soreness went away – it pays to listen before we injure ourselves.
I remember spending the best part of my school days with a foggy head feeling half asleep. It was the milk consumption that caused it. I too remember the warm cartons of milk waiting for us at school and we HAD to drink them. YUCK! In my adult life I cut out milk and instantly felt 100% more alive. My body heaved a huge sigh of relief. It is so worth listening when our bodies speak.
Ditto – apart from being made to drink warm milk – that sounds putrid! As soon as I stopped drinking dairy I felt 100% better and could never go back.
What body? . . . Most of my life I was completely out of my body and lost in dreaming, ideals and beliefs . . . in my head.It was the very first Universal Medicine workshop I attended that I realised just how out of my body I was.
Love your honesty Kathleen and yes, I too have to say “What body?”. My mind definitely was the ruler and in it I lost myself and my place in the world, preferring to live in fantasy-land much of the time as being in the world and feeling the truth of the state of my body and my life was just way too uncomfortable. Finally being re-introduced to my body by Serge Benhayon at my first Universal Medicine workshop was a big wake up call, but since that day I have never wanted to go back to the disconnected life I was living. These days I prefer to be with my body, even if at times it doesn’t feel that great, as not feeling great is one of the messages that I no longer ignore.
From Serge Benhayon’s presentations it took me quite a while to realise how much I went into my head to escape what my body was clearly showing, I wanted to get way from my body, I knew this.. I started to catch myself doing it and slowly the process shifted and changed. Now it feels horrible when I go into my head the disconnection from my body is so pronounced I quickly want to return.
Oh yes I remember the bottles of warm milk drunk through a paper straw that was soggy before you got to the end, the curdled cream on top and the smell of the crate of empty bottles. Baby calves drink milk straight from their mothers, and the way we doctor milk and then transport it around for miles makes a mockery of the true nourishment that milk is – for the animal it was intended for. Not for human consumption.
In the past I was in the constant situation that my body gave me messages but I didn’t like these messages. I heeded them as much as I had to but was constantly tempted to override them as they were often inconvenient.
Very true, it is often inconvenient messages as they show us our choices and we often prefer the taste or the effectiveness of the numbing the food or substance has provided over that of the consequences.
The deep wisdom the body has is beyond measure – everything is designed to work harmoniously together, until we override it and cause the disharmony and war within.
This has brought me a deeper level of awareness and being able to appreciate the Glorious reflection that body actually offers when we ‘get ourselves out of the way’.
The deep harmony, synchronicity and flow that is possible in the body, IS true brotherhood in action and this quality of harmony in movement is what can be brought to every action in our daily living.
I love this ‘true brotherhood in action’ what a beautiful way to think about our bodies!
The majority have yet to learn the language of the body and how it communicates very clearly that our choices in life are not working. For years I ignored these messages believing that there was nothing that could be done if the medication did not work and that I had to use my mind to combat the pain I was feeling – the trouble with this is we start to see our body as the enemy.
I am still learning this Julie .. learning to listen to my body and will always be 💕
Same here Vicky, the pain or discomfort messages are still the loudest but at least they do get a response from me these days.
“Better late than never.” absolutely and the amazing thing is that we can hold the notion or belief that it will take a long time to reverse choices that have been made over time however the benefits are felt almost straight away and the transformation of lives of people I know have been amazing at whatever point in life they have chosen to make new choices to honour what feels true and supportive in their bodies.
Yes Michael that has been my experience also that no matter how I have treated my body previously if I take even one small step towards caring for it more, it makes a difference.
It is mad that feeling what our bodies are telling us is not at the forefront of every way of life. When we do truly feel, there is so much in our lives that we can let go and quickly feel the benefits. Stopping gluten and dairy for me made me lose 13kg in no time at all with no effort involved and this felt amazing.
We have a long way to go before this medicine is truly understood and implemented across the board, but it is a simple medicine to apply. It is still very ironic that when someone is admitted to hospital, the food provided is actually contributing to their sickness rather than supporting their healing.
Very simple medicine Rowena and one that we constantly adjust to support the body through its healing.
“Now I know that by finally acknowledging the innate wisdom of this amazing body of mine, instead of allowing myself to be led astray by my wayward mind.” To know this innate wisdom of the body is the best medicine ever and on top of it – it is not expensive at all!
Awesome post Ingrid.. when you talk about the severe itching I recall having the same in my toes when I consumed a small glass of fresh orange juice.. and how that before drinking fresh fruit juice and more than once a day was never any issue; there was never any itching. The more i’ve connected with my body and say yes to its communication…the more ‘food intolerances’ appear such that even to eat for example ‘non-dairy’ or ‘free’ alternatives have the same effect energy wise as if they still have dairy.
Thank you Ingrid! If only we had the knowledge early in our lives that our bodies are the “marker” of truth. I HAD NO IDEA until I came to the work of Serge Benhayon that my body had been telling me the truth about the food I was eating. Now I recognise that it is up to me to follow this truth.
To take responsibility for our own health, including what we eat, how and when we eat, is empowering and a responsibility we all need to take… only then will we start to reduce the over-burdened healthcare system.
As time passes we may need to refine our diet, changing it in subtle ways. I gave up gluten, dairy and sugar but was still experiencing some bloating and gripey-ness. A Naturopath suggested I try a low fructose diet – my first thought when I looked at the list was ‘this could be restricting’ but I decided to give it a 4 week trial and see how I felt by the end. However, after only 2 weeks my body felt so light, so clear and with no symptoms, that I decided to continue forever. Its been 3yrs now… and the irony is that it is only as restrictive as you make it to be – there are less items I eat but the combination and variety of ways of cooking those foods is endless!
“the intelligence of my body was given full reign”, I felt such joy in you sharing this with us all.
I have found it can take many attempts to listen in full to the body. Many moments where you slip back into the old ways only to end up with the same conclusion that needs addressing once again. To love our selves in full is to chose to live with our eyes wide open, to see all the moments we allow a lesser movement in by not choosing to re-imprint a way forward.
Yes, it takes a while to fully listen to something that is smarter than us.
I remember those warm bottles of milk at school – and how I refused to drink them because they made me feel sick. Interestingly enough when I was young I did not like anything dairy or creamy, chocolate, Ice-cream and sugary sweets or fruit. But over time I learned to like some of these and found ways to eat them – totally overriding my body’s natural inclination.
It was less than 24hrs ago that I realised fully (for this moment, the awareness will possibly deepen) that my body has been communicating the same message to me for over 50 years. Much like what is described the so called symptoms had been ignored by the adults when I was young and then in turn by me because there was no understanding that physical reactions related to food etc. What really struck me yesterday is how these things slowly, slowly creep along and the tolerance creeps with it until there is a crisis point – that is the body sends out signals that simply can’t be ignored any longer. And this is where the blessings truly start if will to take responsibility for what comes next.
There is a seemingly hidden set up in society to constantly abuse and disregard and ignorantly suppress the wisdom from our body. Perhaps it asks for too much honesty that otherwise would expose a completely wayward and totally indulgent society.
Ages ago after a period of fasting which I did simply to join in with others who were doing it, my body was clear of the usual junk food I was into and I found I hated the taste of my ‘favourite’ chocolate. But after forcing myself to have a few mouthfuls despite my desire to throw up, my taste buds were retuned to like it! My mind actively backed a strategy that completely undermined what my body was showing me.
We need to stop pretending that we actually enjoy activities that harm our body, and be at least willing to be honest about the real pain underneath it all we are wanting to not feel. Only then will we start to get a true understanding of how we are actually using these ways of numbing ourselves.
Isn’t it funny how we are on to it if a reaction is severe, out goes the food, plant, air quality is changed, pet etc. yet we don’t see having diarrhoea, nose bleeds, tonsillitis or a blocked nose as anything much. Ask our bodies and they would say something completely different. Even now my body can recall the absolute pain of eating gluten and dairy growing up and running to the bathroom… it’s crazy when I look back on myself and no-one in the family going enough is enough. I remember myself and other family members having to stop half way home to find a restroom after eating a creamy meal. But, as you have presented, there are many reasons why we use foods that make us ill. I can see how I felt better having something ‘wrong’ with me, as family and friends were then kinder and less attacking if they saw me down. All at the expense of my body.
Our body is our friend and not our foe. The more we realize this the simpler life becomes because then we can make decisions based on what our body is revealing to us.
There are many messages we get in our lifetime about what to eat, what is considered good for our health, but not much attention is paid to us feeling for ourselves what our body needs in each moment.
There is so much more behind our self-destructive choices than registering the fact of their harm. If that’s all there was to it, we’d all live relatively pristine lives. Thanks for illustrating so beautifully what can be involved by way of healing before choices like this naturally change to more supportive and sustaining one.
Mind wins on points, body wins on knockout.
I could eat anything I thought as I still had energy, though a big plate of spaghetti did make me lethargic, though at age 30 I found I had a wheat allergy. However I had no idea how much more energy I would have after stopping stimulants and food that made me heavy.
It is a total revelation when we stop eating certain foods and then realise how much more vital and alert we are and how different and better our body feels by not having them as part of our diet. So simple, yet we have to willing to first be aware of what we are choosing, and then be willing to change our sometimes habits of a lifetime.
It is amazing to feel the waywardness of the body and how if we allow our mind to wander astray we over ride our own innate wisdom. Also being brought up in the late 1940’s and 1950’s I was encouraged to always leave my plate clean at the end of a meal – the consequences of leaving food was too dire for me to contemplate as a child who lived in fear. And yet I can see the consequences were dire anyway as I continued to abuse my body with food for most of my life. I am now slowly letting go of the ideals and beliefs I was brought up with and learning to trust my body – it never gave up on me – that’s love indeed.
“With the continual nose issues and sore throats, my tonsils finally gave up and at age eight they were removed, but I continued to drink milk and so my body kept talking.” So many children’s tonsils are removed and it makes me wonder if that could just be because eating a food that is not good for them for such a long time that there is chronic infection. We can still learn a lot about what foods role is in illness and disease.
The more I have refined my diet based on how my body feels, the more I appreciate just how hugely sensitive my body is and that it really appreciates being fed simple, fresh, green and gorgeous foods. There is no feeling of deprivation because the benefits of these refinements are a robust health and vitality that no amount of cream, chocolate, coffee or the like can ever deliver.
Rowena I agree 100 percent with you. There are no feelings of deprivation for me either, the benefits are such that this is not even a consideration. As a child and young adult I had so much medication to try and control/stop my symptoms… bad digestive problems and regular sinusitis, yet when I stopped gluten in my mid twenties and dairy shortly after, the results spoke for themselves, the pain and inflammation stopped, the sinusitis stopped… I was on a list to have my sinuses drilled and drained but cancelled it as the problem completely resolved.
I used to get serious heart burn, it would keep me awake at night and I was on constant medication which was quite costly as well. I had a camera shoved down my throat to see what was going on but when I stopped gluten and dairy it almost went away and then I stopped drinking alcohol and it was gone completely. If only I had listened to my body years before I could have saved myself so much grief.
That’s most of us Kev. We wait until there is an actual condition or someone of a high standing has confirmed it for us….yet what about the body that speaks very loudly and confirms anything in an instant? The pharmaceutical companies and many health industries would no longer exist if we stopped ingesting various food and drinks that our bodies react to.
I have recently had a most timely example of the huge denial of some in the medical field of the fact dairy is not good for our human body. A friend who I had shared my before and after dairy story with tried her own experiment and her nose, which had been forever blocked, began to clear. She tried having dairy again and back came the symptoms. She did this more than once. On sharing this with her doctor he replied, ‘what a load of rubbish, it’s the damp weather that’s causing it’. She shared with me that her experiment had totally convinced her that removing the dairy is helping her health and now she is sharing this with others. Thank goodness for common sense.
These are exactly the words that were spoken to me too when I made the choice to remove dairy, gluten and sugar from my diet, but as you say so wisely Susan, “it is a bit like saying ‘a bit of poison now and then is fine.’”. And the reality is, these ‘foods’ were a poison to my body and it wasn’t until I took them out and my life began to change in the most amazing ways did I realise how poisonous they actually had been.
I had for years been looking for another way of living because the way I was living should be killing me slowly. I also had found Serge Benhayon! I had cut out a whole lot of things from my diet just because it was said to be unhealthy for bodies without feeling the effect I had from eating and drink them. I had started by substituting the items with gluten-free bread, de-café coffee and soya, coconut milk and other forms of plant sugar. Energetically it was all the same, and over time I had just stopped these mainly because they did not taste all that great. But still did not feel the effects of the foods, drinks and sugars I stopped putting in my body, until I occasionally reintroduced them into my diet. The body will always tell us what is true, if we just listen!
There have been many times in my life when I felt foods or drink were really not good for me but … they tasted so good! Crazy that we make this more important than our health and how we feel. However, Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine have been an enormous support in helping me to love myself more so now how I feel outweighs taste .. although sometimes this is still work in progress! But you are right if we are taught to truly listen to and love our body from young then maybe… in fact this is not a maybe but a definite … there would be less illness and dis-eases and also less tonsils removed!
To appreciate that the time came to stop and truly listen to the body is a marker of how the choice to bring more vitality is always there when we choose in that split second to say yes.
The instant effect of the story you read shows how powerful all our stories are to help another person realise what is going on with their health and even give us permission to stop going along with the crowd. This story also shows me how hard it is to even think that a food is harming you when it seems outside the norm. I also love that you realised that it wasn’t just the food but the emotions under the food that were causing harm.
When food is the most common thing that we all use to affect just how we feel it is exposing of how much we do not want to take responsibility that we choose to ignore the possibility of such for so long.
We can often learn to push aside these messages – the racing heart or agitation after a sugar binge, the sore stomach or sleepy feeling after some heavy comfort food because the taste is just so good! But what if there was more to life that that momentary taste on the tongue? What if the long term feeling of being light, energised, sleeping well and symptom free, was just as sweet as that ice cream? Have we been brought up to prioritise instant gratification and quick fix sugar highs over commitment to taking care of ourselves?
Great point Rebecca – not only that but are we at a loss for living examples of this in the world around us? Although there have always been the few who have chosen this and now the numbers are growing the mass of people live in a way showing that instant gratification, relief and escape are the ways to find something to counterbalance what they’d not want to feel in life and themselves. Living in connection to all that we feel and honouring it in making choices to live in connection to our naturally loving ways brings a foundation of joy which needs to no such quick fix.
I agree – we at best have role models of discipline, control and physical prowess that can feel unreachable or just downright difficult and uptight – very few reflect an ease and contentment with themselves and their bodies massages. Listening to its signals doesn’t lead to a life of dry piety but one of true vitality – what if our connotations on looking after ourselves being dull and boring are keeping us from experiencing true health.
I have noticed that even when I know something is causing an unpleasant reaction in my body, I can go through a phase of over-riding my awareness that it is time to stop.
What Serge Benhayon has highlighted about the fact that we are highly sensitive and aware multi-dimensional beings and humanity’s wayward behaviour is never a sign of our lack of intelligence, on the contrary every wayward choice is always a very specific strategic behaviour to sabotage a particular aspect of our awareness and expression.
So if I am consistently choosing to eat something that makes me feel foggy, or stops me from being still, then as well as the food itself, it is useful to consider why I am seeking to be foggy and racy. This expanded view is hugely significant for anyone choosing to work with human behaviour.
The response “oh you are so disciplined” is a common comment about gluten and dairy free eating. However there feels to be no discipline, it’s just something that’s as much a part of life as not smoking or not ingesting alcohol or drugs, all of which are respectful and loving towards the body I live with 24/7.
Yes I too hear those words spoken a lot as well as “don’t you feel you’re missing out?” being a common question. In response to both I usually say ‘Why would I choose to have 1- 2 days of feeling miserable just so I can experience 10 – 20 seconds of so-called pleasure in my mouth?’ This question is always met by a nod of understanding but very few words, if any at all. The person nodding has nothing to counter that with, as what I have shared simply makes too much sense to challenge.
Your awesome blog Ingrid makes me wonder how many people are suffering from illnesses, skin and digestive conditions that are food related but have not been aware of the link. Our bodies are amazing at communicating everything to us but are we open to listening?
By bludgeoning our bodies in the countless ways that we all do, we bar our own access to our soul and so continue to tread this earth seemingly alone. Of course we are never alone but it sure does feel like it at times. When we restore our bodies to their original pristine condition, it enables them to be able to be used as vehicles through which our souls can express.
Few people understand the extent in which food we consume today is largely poisonous and shocking that it is lawful to supply food and other substances that harm the body. Despite harmful habits developed from childhood, it is re-assuring to know, with dedication and love, we can restore the body to its ‘original pristine condition’ and allow the soul to express through us.
We can choose to ignore our body’s reactions to certain foods but eventually it catches up with us – I used to have colds and sore throats every winter and have had remarkably few since stopping consuming dairy.
I love how my body never gives up on me and my choices, it is always showing me exactly what these are, and if I don’t listen it just keeps showing me until I do. My mind can give me all sorts of reasons why I can keep doing what I’m doing but my body will always tell me and show me the truth. It’s my greatest guide in life.
Me too. I am in awe of the unwavering support and guidance my body gives me… never has it given up on sign posting me super clearly.
I had my fingers stuffed in my ears for a long time and therefore the messages from my body had to be extremely loud before I would listen to them. The way Serge Benhayon presents the truth about our way of living and its myriad of dire effects is delivered with such compassionate integrity that it enabled me to take my fingers out and start befriending my body with astounding results.
“You just ate the food that you were presented with” – Do we really aspire to have this kind of world and relationship to food? Is this not the same as putting a bowl in front of a cat or dog, when the contents of this bowl is governed by what society calls ‘healthy’ and part of the human’s diet, including excessive sugar, starchy foods, breads and dairy in large volume.
“And the itching! Oh, that continuous scratching until my skin was raw from being raked by my finger nails, itching which my body was trying to tell me was from sugar!”
A revelation of previous numbness arose from reading this sentence today – in my early 20’s, I experienced this same awful sensation in my skin being scratched raw on my legs whilst asleep at night – it never occurred to me then that this was the body communicating with me, that even a small amount of alcohol was pure sugar and poison to my system.
It is quite common to hear Serge present and feel what he has said as being true, and then there are the things that are said which we have also clocked ourselves and done nothing about, especially when it comes to listening to the body. When I first heard about the harming effects of gluten and dairy I knew instantly that I had clocked this for myself but was putting up with the many symptoms, instead of coming off of them, mainly because I had brought into the belief that you had to have so much milk a day and that whole grain bread was good for you. Having removed these things from my diet I have found that my health has improved beyond measure, and I no longer need medication for pain other than for an occasional headache.
How many babies can’t stomach a dairy-based formula? Should it be All?
It is in some way shocking how long we can override our body and our true awareness. I have similar experiences in my life and now when I look back I ask myself why did I not change my diet in earlier stages of my life ?
I wouldn‘t have suffered the illnesses I had.
I had an old girl friend who had lived the first fifteen years or so of her life in absolute misery because she couldn’t tolerate gluten, but it took that long for her parents, doctors and herself to figure out what was causing all her digestive problems. Such an unnecessary lot of suffering when if we just pay more attention to the signs our bodies give us so much could be avoided.
It is like bringing the responsibility and power back into our bodies’ driving seats rather than hanging out for an expert to solve a ‘mystery’ that we are living the answers to every day.
Less is definitely more. When you mentioned Ingrid that when you properly removed the foods that you knew were causing issues your energy levels went up. I can vouch for that as well. When I started reducing and removing foods, I remember feeling a vitality that I hadn’t felt for so long. The energy levels were up and I could truly say feelings of vitality were being felt, every day, consistently. I let my body direct me to what needed to change, not any doctor, fitness expert, news or articles from men (or women’s) magazines. My body determined my diet, how much and when to eat and it still does.
I can so relate to your milk experience Ingrid, especially at school, although it was only for a couple of years and then it stopped. However my parents would get a large billy can of warm frothy milk from my uncles dairy farm… I couldn’t stand the taste or the smell or the mucousy feeling I’d have in my mouth afterwards… and so I stopped drinking plain milk – but still ate cheese, cream, and had it in food (e.g. custard) and beverages for years. Weird how we don’t add it all up but isolate it as one thing and not connect the dots! When I did stop all dairy, my body thanked me for it – it was the best thing I could’ve done – along with giving up gluten and sugar! Gluten and sugar was easy, dairy took awhile – it was the cheese that took 6mths to go.
It is not that we are stupid when we choose to numb ourselves with food it is just that we are using it as a way to constantly measure just how much we are ready to/ or want to feel at any given time. When I no longer ate anything that could be considered numbing I noticed that I would eat in way, in an energy that would numb me, so it was not to do with the food at all. At the end of the day it is all to do with our willingness to deal with our own feelings.
Being brought up in the same era Ingrid I too was encouraged to drink that dreaded milk at Primary school I always felt awful after I had consumed milk! We were not encouraged to listen to these important symptoms and I appreciate that this was a time when it was considered a healthy thing to do for all children.
In a world where we pride ourselves on the amount of choice that we have, we are constrained by society’s norms like being in a straightjacket (albeit one that tastes sweet, feels comfortable, and does not require us to really go for it).
The intelligence of the body has been reduced so much in humanity’s eyes and yet it is the greatest form of intelligence which we have 24/7 access to.
There’s no denying that the body is way more intelligent than our minds and is always in constant communication with us because we all have had through our lives many times where the body has shown us something and we have decided to ignore it for our own reasons. I too remember when younger how everyone went to other suggestions of body problems but never looked at food.
How amazing is our body at speaking, at sharing with us what is going on and yet for so long I would override this. Today things are full circle and whilst I don’t always listen to my body because I may want things to be different to the reality, I am fully knowing that the truth is first in and through my body than anything else.
We are a walking vessel of wisdom – our bodies showing us all the time. Recently I have had a big stop moment with my body, and as I was stubborn, it took physical ailments for me to truly want to see how I was living and to say no to old patterns. But the truth is, as you share here – we are being communicated to all the time, and we have a responsibility to not ignore that.
Reading this was very interesting. I pondered on some of my own childhood ills and it’s like a lightbulb went on! I always had nose problems and as an adult sinus problems. After 5 years of no dairy, I’d almost forgotten about them.
I love this Ingrid. A great example of the lengths we go to in overriding what our body is communicating to us and, when we finally listen, just how quickly our energy and vitality is restored. I remember the warm milk at school with teachers watching over us to make sure we drank it – fortunately this has now stopped but society still clings onto the ‘healthy’ benefits of milk in our diet.
I am always amazed at the body’s ability to keep going, like people who weigh a ton – how is that possible ? It clearly is but what is most interesting is how we stop taking responsibility for our health early on and a big part of that is because we don’t heed our body’s communications.
What we eat is actually medicine. Just like what we think, how we move, what we express, what we do is true medicine, if it supports your body and that of others equally so. True medicine takes all of us and our bodies into account and is not just a solution for something that needs to be fixed.
The most initimate relation in life we built by listening to our body again.
From there we can mean also so much more to others.
It starts with wanting to become aware what the effect is on our body of the food we eat.
Not just physical but also energetically, way before we see the outer symptoms.
I sprained my ankle 3 times playing football and STILL didn’t listen to what my body was telling me – “This sport is not for you!”. How wise I would’ve been to heed its message the first time around.
It’s interesting that even when we choose to listen to our body and make different life style choices, how we still try to measure the level of listening we will pay regard to.
I have continually eaten what I wanted; only until I have been in extreme pain or have experienced a very uncomfortable feeling that I was forced to stop eating dulling food. This was due to my lack of purpose and self-love for myself. Since attending Universal Medicine the feeling of my wellbeing and vitality has increased 100 fold and continues to do so. This feeling is so lovely and I cherish dearly that my choices now of what I put in my body are to support me to grow and maintain my feeling of greatness than the lack of love I used to align to. I very much am in awe of what the Esoteric Modalities have provided me and the true nourishment for my body that this way of life is now my choice, rather than what were the unloving and unnecessary food choices I used to make.
Universal Medicine presentations offer support in the ability to be seeing things with ‘fresh eyes’ and realising that fixing things in our habitual actions only bring a temporary solution. Being willing to address the root cause = true healing.
“I began to address the many emotional issues and the exhaustion that were behind my eating patterns”
I know what you mean about the light bulb moments from the Serge Benhayon presentations – he makes so much sense and there is a simple energetic explanation for everything.
Good point Doug that we think we are getting away with it but the increasingly alarming statistics on illness and disease are rapidly showing us that we are not.
Yes very true Andrew and Doug, I have often found myself marvelling at the body and what it can seemingly withstand by way of abuse, but l’ve come to understand that there’s no ‘getting away with anything’ and that what goes in, has to come out…. eventually.
I remember as a teenager getting really bad acne and going to see all the specialists under the sun and no-one mentioned that it could be related to diet at the time but looking back now, with hindsight and more wisdom and experience I can see now that what I was eating was definitely contributing to the problem.
Looking back on my life a lot of emotional and physical problems I had were side effects of being poisoned by food that was not healthy or supportive for me. Food that is accepted and normal and healthy in society – not even so called junk food. Listening to my body and being much more discerning about, when and how much I eat as well as how I eat and prepare it has resulted in me having more energy and being healthy and more gorgeous at 60 than I ever was even in my teens!
It’s a really interesting topic to consider, why we suppress body sensitivity, allergies and nominating how we react to different foods. It’s common to encourage someone to ‘stomach it’, build up resilience or ‘spend more time in the dirt’ if they feel sensitive to certain foods, because ‘picking and choosing’ food can only (apparently) make things worse. But why? Could it be that sensitivity is very exposing of the fact that we’ve all been there, feeling heavy, damp, tired, bloated or addicted to a certain food, and that saying no to this is making the choice to value our wellbeing and vitality over a taste, fitting in or ‘normal’ diet?
And could it be that those telling us not to pick just don’t want to feel that they too could be just as sensitive if they were to allow themselves, but then they might have to give something up.
Our bodies speak, and we know they speak, but often we do not listen as we believe that succumbing to peer pressure and fitting in is more important. It takes someone like Serge Benhayon to come along and tell us that self-love is actually cool, it’s actually ok to love ourselves and listen to our bodies, and in fact if we do this we will feel utterly amazing. It’s so refreshing and our bodies do breathe a sigh of relief. It’s like we have received permission to live in the way we have always wanted to live but have never dared.
Working on my willingness to listen to my body as it continues to offer refinements to my diet and other areas of my life including sleep and exercise. It is amazing how stubborn I can still be of letting go of habits that no longer serve me.
Thank you for the link here to Whole Body Intelligence, a great interview.
A wonderful expose of the relationship between food and the body, and the enormous wisdom it offers us by way of such intricate feedback. It makes me ponder how much burden would be lifted from our health-care systems if we all took that level of responsibility for what our bodies tell us about not just our food choices, but many other life and life-style choices too.
I couldn’t even being to imagine how much burden would be lifted from our health-care systems if we took that level of responsibility – couldn’t imagine because it would be so HUGE and transformational. Makes me also ponder why we spend zillions on research when the answers are so simple and before our eyes… or maybe not so simple in that the question needs to be why are we not attending to the obvious!
Great point Nicola, it’s almost too simple and easy for a system that has made an art of making our healthcare extremely complex. When we don’t address the root cause, which is always our own responsibility, we end up putting out spot-fires in a multitude of other places, dealing with all sorts of symptoms and conditions that result. Eventually this approach has to run out of steam for no other reason than it simply isn’t working and our bodies AND our economy cannot sustain it.
I notice that science sees these kinds of things as something to be overcome, for example a cure being worked on for Coeliac disease so that they can eat gluten. It’s an understandable attitude but the issue is that we are trying to make certain foods more comfortable for the body, but it’s not an attitude inclusive of the being. What if eating gluten impacts on the ability of the being to express fully energetically, and the body in its symptoms is signifying this? We need that whole rounded approach of both Western Medicine and Esoteric Medicine to get a fuller understanding of what the body is experiencing and communicating, as well as the being. We are after all human-beings.
“I began to address the many emotional issues and the exhaustion that were behind my eating patterns”, how crucial is it then to allow our children to voice how they are feeling when we observe in them their eating pattern shift… and for that matter, rather than imposing a GF/DF/SF diet, it is the natural choice due to expressing their feeling before it becomes something that needs burying.
I can remember often feeling uncomfortable or slightly unwell after eating or drinking certain things, but never actually putting 2 and 2 together. I grew up in a family that enjoyed ‘good food’ that was often quite rich which was considered quite normal, and in a sense an expectation that we should be grateful for it, so to stick my neck out and say I wasn’t going to eat something because I felt my body was sensitive to it was almost an insult to what was on offer. But years later, having felt the differnece for myself of how I feel after eating certain foods, and then how I feel when I don’t eat them, there is no question about the effects they were having on my me and my body. And this is something that is constantly being refined.
An inspiring and beautiful blog Ingrid. Being from the same era, I can relate to those crates of creamy milk waiting in the dining area for the morning playtime break from age 4 at a kindergarten school and many years afterwards. There were always nose, throat and ear problems and at age 7 my tonsils also had to be removed as they were constantly inflamed. The symptoms were fixed temporarily but continued for many years until I finally stropped taking dairy into my body.
Stephanie, what a great point when I look back I had all those symptoms and yet it was only when I also adjusted my diet and the way that I lived did they change. How different would it have been had I known about this before!
The combination of the wisdom of the body with the knowledge of the ‘experts’ is the perfect match.
How very different our lives would be if we all learned to live in harmony with our so very wise bodies rather than from our minds alone. It makes so much sense to bring them both into alignment and for both mind and body to work together.
Your blog has brought back memories of school milk and school dinners. Being forced to eat food I didn’t like is not a great memory, but I also recall how awful I would feel after eating sugary foods and sweets. I think it would be great to teach school children the importance of paying attention to the body’s messages and how food affects us.
It is totally barmy that humans are not masters at what our bodies try to tell us. I also never really heard of allergies growing up and if someone did have an allergy or reaction to a food it was as though they had a disease or something. Our bodies are so quick to tell us what is going on so why don’t we listen. Like most people I suppose, I always feel terrible if I over eat and my body reacts majorly but this still doesn’t deter me sometimes from over indulging. I am certainly not as bad as I used to be and seldom do it these days, but if I do I know it was not worth it when my body lets me know exactly what the consequences are.
I have conducted several mini experiments around foods and how my body feels eating them or not. I have changed my diet over the years because of the results and consequently feel so much better.
I remember waking up every morning in my 20s with a blocked nose. It didn’t at all occur to me to take a look at my diet to see if there was anything there that may be causing this. Given what I know now this is very exposing in terms of how we do not educate kids to have a relationship with their bodies first – to connect, check-in or clock what is going on for them and then to respond accordingly. So often we notice something but are then inclined to dismiss it almost at once – overriding it like I did with my nose and many other symptoms besides. How different would life be if we actually taught our kids that everything they needed to know can be felt from the body and that in order to keep feeling it we have to honour the body and listen to what it is telling us – expressing it aloud, nominating it, discussing it, being playful with the learning – keeping our observations alive in other words?
What a difference it would make if we were really honest about the effects of the things we consume have on our body. How many of us would reach for the ‘Clotted Cream Headache Fudge’, ‘Diabetes Cola’ or ‘Chocolate Hangover Bar’ when the consequences of consuming them are clearly labelled?
I know that when I started to make choices to remove certain foods from my diet there were those who questioned me doing this, saying that the foods I had stopped eating ‘have not done you any harm so far’. The interesting thing is that I felt much better and if I did eat those things that I had stopped eating at that point my body certainly let me know about it and I felt awful by comparison. Therefore, the question I am left with is how many other people are eating foods, which they may not have an allergy to or react to at this point, but which in fact they would be better off not eating and which they would realise this should they choose to listen to their body a little more.
It never ceases to amaze me how much our bodies put up with our overriding of their messages… constantly having to adjust to maintain harmony. And yet when we support our bodies by listening to their messages, life becomes so naturally joy-full, vital and harmonious – our bodies celebrate with us!
The worst part is in the not being aware, I ate gluten throughout my whole childhood with varying degrees of reaction in my body. I suffered a lot through eating bread in particular, but never linked the ill feelings, the tiredness, bloating, dull aches, itchy nose, sinus problems with the fact that bread and me were not meant to be. To create a truly intelligent and progressive society we need to teach everyone that they can listen to their body and that questioning how we feel after what we eat is the most valuable process to engage in. For if we really pay attention, there is a goldmine of information to appreciate and it might just be the start of a transformation of our health. I say that start as Ingrid beautifully alluded to the need to understand how we eat to bury feelings, and that is the next incredible factor we must understand.
We have been trained in life to push through and ignore our bodies and it’s something that is actively encouraged; even now with a greater, wider awareness of the impact of food those who don’t eat certain foods often feel they’re missing out and we’re now seeing the chemical alteration of many of these (lactose free milk being one). We still have some way to go before we fully embrace our whole body intelligence as a species which is why accounts such as this are so useful and supportive for all of us.
If we fully appreciated just how incredible our body is, the intricacies of how it works, the different systems, organs, cellular processes and transport mechanisms that ‘do their thing’ while we live our life, would we treat it any differently to how we currently do? Our body is so so precious, truly magnificent by all standards.
Thank you Ingrid. Your article bought back memories of school yard milk racks with glittering sliver foil caps shining in the sun, not one of my favourite childhood recollections…all that glitters is not necessarily gold in this instance. Although there appears to be more awareness around food choices today and the effects on the body, it is not being reflected in the health of us on the whole as yet. When we eat, how much we eat, the quality of our food choices… as well as everything else we ingest in life all play a part in our overall health.
I love how our body is constantly communicating with us, the bloating, the wind, the tiredness, the raciness, the itchy skin, the tummy ache, the runny nose, the sore throat, the heavy feet…. whatever it is, it is letting us know but more often than not we don’t listen.
Our bodies are master communicators, a highly intelligent science and yet we open ourselves up to ways of living that not only ignore but deny this. We place all of our focus on having an intelligent mind and achieving through life and yet we grow sicker, more overweight, more unhappy, more stressed in our everyday, more anxious, more exhausted…the list goes on. Maybe our master communicator has been doing its job, communicating everything and we don’t give it the credence to listen and override this with the apparent intelligence of the mind. Something is definitely astray here.
Your story is my story, I even had a doctor suggest when I was about 12 to cut out dairy because of severe asthma and hay fever, which both my mother and I scoffed at. It took me until early 30s to experiment with a detox that illuminated how much impact food had on my body – shedding 2 stone in the process. Quite incredible. Now I don’t have asthma or hay fever.
There is so much proof in the pudding. The body being the pudding that does not lie but rings out loud and true what brings the unrest in a naturally harmonious body.
Our bodies are so responsive and wise that now even before I go to eat something it doesn’t want, but I do, I will bloat or have a reaction! Do I listen? Not always. Do I pay for it later or in the moment? Always!
A great example of whole body intelligence – the mind and the body being and working as one rather than the mind pulling the opposite way and imposing its ideals and beliefs on the long-suffering and yet so very patient physical frame.
It’s incredible, the science of the body. I was about to say that I can’t imagine living with such discomfort for all those years, and then I realised, that I’ve been doing it myself. There are many symptoms I have that I still feel are ‘normal’, simply because I’m so used to them. I know from an intellectual point of view that they are not normal and that I could be feeling a lot better, but there is a level of comfort I tend to not always want to break free from. And that’s all after cutting out a whole heap of foods. In my experience, whilst food is hugely important, it’s also an attitude that will either help heal or harm the body.
With the wisdom I have now I too wonder how I lived with such issues for as long as I did. The simple answer was, that I thought it was a natural part of life, although at times I used to feel that there was something very wrong with me. I get a sense that at those moments I was so very close to connecting to the answers but not close enough to understand what exactly was going on. I was brought up hearing that I ‘caught everything that was going’ so I came to believe that I had a body that was very susceptible to viruses etc. And yes, my body was definitely susceptible simply because it was worn out trying to process food and drink that it could not deal with.
Ahh my beautiful body. It was the only thing that stopped me completely giving up and pursuing a path of self-destruction.
My body didn’t react like this when I was younger and I could pretty much eat anything. It was like it was all done for you and you really had no say in it, food was prepared and you would eat it. I remember sitting at the kitchen table for a while with certain meals until they were finished, after all it was dinner, it was prepared and so you had to eat it. My diet change dramatically when I moved out of home and I looked again for someone else to prepare it, not often taking charge of what I was actually choosing to eat. It took sometime before I actually actively took part in the way and quality of food I prepared and now I do pretty much all the cooking. It was like I was so hands off so I didn’t have to bother or be responsible for what was going in my body because it wasn’t me doing it, I was a victim of sorts. I can’t believe at times the sensitivity of my body to certain foods and now I no longer eat them because of how my body reacts. I can see now that when I was younger my body was still as sensitive it was just I never gave myself the platform to see it and this impacted on how my life was. My eating is directly linked to how I move in the world, the two are a reflection for one and the same thing.
Something is very very wrong and does not add up with our world when we consider that our mind has the tendency to abuse the very body it lives in and no other species on this planet would ever dream of doing the same. If we are so intelligent as a race of beings then why do we have suicide, drug addiction and a will to want to escape from life? That does not sound intelligent to me. What are we in truth intelligent about?
This is a great point you make Joshua. Abuse can enter via our thoughts just as easily as a form of physical abuse. It is a silent and insidious form of abuse and it is totally up to us to have the love for ourselves to say no and not align to those energies and therefore the thoughts they will deliver.
Whole body intelligence is not rated very high in our society, it is more about brain intelligence. Yet we are all masters of body intelligence if we allow ourselves to be aware of what our bodies are communicating. I realized recently that there are groups of people where I give more space to – and groups where I allow less body intelligence. Work is a place to definitely allow more body intelligence for me.
I loved the way you’ve expressed with simplicity and I can relate how my body was screaming at me when I consumed gluten, dairy and sugar until I stopped about 8 years ago. I’m humbled by body’s intelligence.
There certainly is more awareness surrounding food intolerance and allergy compared to when I was little, but where I live it is still considered as anomaly, something that needs to be cured and conquered. We have so many TV programmes on health and well-being and the interest in what we should be eating to avoid diseases and illnesses is very high. It is a real shame that we seem to be willing to gain knowledge but not so willing to accept and trust the very direct and personal message our body is communicating to us.
It really doesn’t make much sense to ignore the messages our body gives us. Often it has to shout out loud before we listen to it. How much more harmonious would our lives be if we responded to the first ‘whisper’ of disharmony like indigestion or excess mucus? Perhaps we even have the innate ability to feel or sense what is right for our bodies to eat, without having to experience the consequences at all.
I definitely think so Richard that we have the innate ability to feel or sense what is right for us and what is not but often we override this intelligence so we can continue to disregard our body, therefore disconnect from ourselves and others.
I find too that what I eat and also the way I prepare and eat it makes a big difference to how it feels throughout my body – sometimes it may have been great food that I cooked and ate but if I did it in a rush or just as a thing to get done without the depth of care that I can bring to it then it doesn’t feel good!
Like you, Ingrid I was brought up on dairy and my nose suffered. Allergic reactions to our 3 dogs didn’t help the allergic rhinitis, asthma, sneezes and wheezes that had become my norm. By the time I got to my early thirties I couldn’t bare the bloating, sniffing, constipation and hyperglycaemia any more. The doctors really weren’t much help so I went to see a naturopath. She instantly said to give up dairy, gluten and sugar. What amazing results from something so simple! My health did a complete turn-around. (Not having gluten or dairy was very easy, but not having sugar was the challenge… this part took a good 3 years to let go of…. but wow it has been worth it!)
It is rather shocking to think that we accepted such bodily symptoms, some severe, as being normal; I certainly did, well most of the time. When my health finally did the big turnaround I began to realise that living the way I had done, in so much discomfort, was light years away from normal. And the biggest and brightest confirmation of all, besides my obvious physical changes, was when I realised that I was no longer needing to buy endless boxes of tissues for my endlessly running nose.
What a fantastic piece of writing, I think we have all turned the other cheek when our body has tried to communicate with us. It is a beautiful that you have tracked back and now listen deeply to all the little whispers that your body has to say.
I grew up on milk, bread, cheese and sugar in its various forms. I was moody, shy, hiding myself away, then loud and gregarious at times. I don’t eat these food any more but I know that I have essentially replaced them with healthier options. It is a process looking at the food we eat, why we eat it, what needs is that food meeting and is there something that we are ignoring or numbing through eating certain food. It is a reasonable thing to say go to decaf coffee from coffee but at some point the decaf no longer serves our body and we do need to look at why is it that I am needing this?
I can very much relate to all you have written Ingrid, especially the periods where I chose to not eat any sugar and also dairy anymore and how my body responded with so much more clarity but I feel I had not made a lot of self loving choices and could not sustain eliminating sugar and dairy from my diet because yes I felt the consequences of reintroducing these foods back in my diet but it all started from a discipline based on that I was not good enough, not from the love I now know I am.
I recently started to feel a fair amount of bloating and skin irritation, and I knew that something I was eating wasn’t sitting right with me any longer. Many years ago I had let go of gluten, dairy, sugar and my diet had become lovely and simple – but now something else was no longer needed and my body was speaking more and more loudly. Well – I fought tooth and nail to resist the messages I was getting, painful ones as the bloating got worse and worse. The irony is that all along I did know what I needed to let go of and it wasn’t even a big deal – because now that I have and can enjoy even more lightness and spaciousness in my body, the meals I do have are even more delicious. The fight wasn’t about letting go of something tasty even – it was about resisting the call to be more, to shine more and dare I say it, stand out amongst a society that has sadly dulled itself for a very long time – and which needs more and points of inspiration of what is available to all of us when we do choose to let go of what our body so loudly communicates to us all along.
Thank you Ingrid for this awesome blog. I love how you started connecting to the intelligence of your body. I remember cutting out diary and sugary foods when I had a cold or flu because I knew it wasn’t good for me but as soon as I was well again, I went straight back to eating them because I couldn’t resist. It was a deliberate choice to ignore my body’s messages but now, I have started to listen to the intelligence of my body more and more. I feel so much better for it, my energy levels have increased, I am less moody, and I feel more myself and my relationships has improved.
It’s amazing how deaf we can be to what our bodies are doing their best to communicate. Having ignored many signs and unpleasant symptoms over the years I am currently reviewing my health as I enter my 6th decade and having recently received the results of various blood tests I am in awe of how hard my body has worked to try and keep everything in balance. I am now committed to actively supporting it rather than sabotaging it as has so frequently been the case in the past.
Even further I am finding other areas beyond food have an affect on my body, if I don’t want to feel something my jaw hardens, toes grip and muscles become tense. Holding this tension is exhausting and drains my energy, leaving me feeling tired which then leads me to wanting to eat sugar and get itchy as a result. It’s like the food is not just the cause but also a symptom of something else going on inside us.
“My Body Spoke, but I didn’t Listen… for a very Long Time” just the first line is something that i am sure so many of us can relate to, it’s like we fight this constantly, like we don’t want to listen to truth or if we do perhaps we don’t like exactly what we get reflected back. What I’ve also found is when I do listen, when I embrace what is being offered it makes a huge difference to not only my life but all those people I meet and connect with.
Many people make the point as to why suddenly so many people are becoming intolerant to gluten and dairy when we have eaten it for thousands of years. Firstly, the gluten and dairy most of us eat now is worlds away from that of the past, because of genetic modification and drugs, pesticides, insecticides and mass farming methods. Secondly, as you are sharing, these allergies and intolerances have not been acknowledged over given voice until recently and so the symptoms where just a part of life. Allowing people to be more honouring of there sensitivity to food is a great step
Phew! I can feel the relief of your body. Isn’t it interesting how we know what is going on but we do not allow ourselves to listen.
It is quite astounding how differently our bodies will respond when we start listening to it and then actaully acting on its messages.
There is so much in this article. Ingrid shares here about the constant itchiness. I had this from the age of 13, and had come to believe that I would have to live with it. I know now this is not the case, but it took complete elimination of sugars from my diet. Then it took 6 months for my body to completely clear before I felt absolutely no itchiness in it. Sugars definitely have an affect on our bodies.
This is brilliant, the biggest difference I find between eating from my mind and eating from my body is that the mind will eat for satisfaction and not consider what happens from the neck down, but the body will consider every single part of it and the nutrition it needs to work everyday.
I know what is shared here from my own experience. I contracted asthma and needed medication from the age of 21, until at 40 I made the choice to go dairy and gluten free. Within 6 months I no longer needed medication. This speaks such a loud message to me, one I wish I could share with every asthmatic. For I know how it affects life with the constant worry in the back of the mind.
Diet may not be the cause for every asthmatic, however, I know that even if dietary support did not fully relieve symptoms, there is the possibility that it could reduce the severity.
The wisdom of the body is without a shadow of doubt the intelligence we all yearn for and have forgotten is already there. My head has conned me into thinking all sorts of things over the years and I have flooded it into many rabbit holes, but the whole body intelligence never fails us.
Although my reactions to food were not as extreme as yours, Ingrid, my story is not dissimilar and like you now listening and honouring my body so my health, wellbeing and vitality is vastly improved. In fact enough to say I feel and look a different person.
It is really so simple, but so much arrogance do we have with our bodies that we ignore the obvious and think it won’t affect us.
Listening to our bodies is a gift to support us to make choices that truly respond to what our body tells us, but bigger than this is actually getting underneath why we even give ourselves the choice. I’ve recently been reflecting on food choices, and what is interesting is sometimes I can tell myself ‘you have the choice today to eat better’ but in this it is a setup – because it shouldn’t be about food but rather that I have the will to honour the amazing way my body is today, and therefore ill eating is not even a choice.
One day we will look back on our feeding of masses of school children around the globe milk at school, as the poisonous act it is. Dulling and dampening down the lightness and playfulness of millions of children with a goopy, yucky, damp, ruinous product that does nothing but harm to our bodies, designed only as it is for the children of the cows it comes from. And the crazy thing is we all know this, and the complicity is what keeps us locked in this idea that it serves our health.
I am in total agreement with what you have shared Stephen. The harm from this so-called healthy product has been huge, and still is, with milk for schools recently being re-introduced into some schools here in New Zealand. This initiative has been praised widely as it is still being seen as absolutely needed and very beneficial for all children when in truth, it is as you say: “designed only as it is for the “children of cows”. What is needed is some absolute honesty as to how harming it is to the precious bodies of our children.
Its still a way off I reckon, I work in Public Health and the milk for calcium message is as strong as ever, the government message is milk is good, and for most that is all they need to hear to extol its virtues. Of course when we stop and truly feel we could never come to this conclusion, but for now this is not the common way, unfortunately to the great harm of yet another generation of children being raised on “baby calf growth fluid”.
Generally, it is very rare for us to check in with our bodies and to be honest and really allow ourselves to feel the effect of food on it. If we did so we would be in a much better position to get our children to clock and articulate how their bodies feel too. It sometimes feels like we are still in the dark ages over this. For example, my children tell me that their dinner lady at school forces them to finish their lunch when they are already full and doesn’t honour their connection with their own bodies – this to me doesn’t make sense at all. It feels like we are still coming from the imposed beliefs that certain food groups are necessary for a healthy diet without really feeling into the harm that some of these groups actually cause.
” …the many emotional issues and the exhaustion that were behind my eating patterns …” Food is a very powerful commodity that disguises, hides and assists the ‘want to avoid’ the hard-to-face emotions. Great blog Ingrid, thanks for sharing the ‘road-less-travelled’ … that makes All the difference!
There must be a high proportion of other people who are experiencing such reactions in their bodies from what they choose to eat but have not connected the dots yet – great to continually have this conversation.
It seems backwards to think that we’re brought up with no knowledge of the connection between what we eat and symptoms in our bodies. Learning to listen to the body’s messages about foods is only the beginning.. there is so much more that it is communicating, about the way we react and respond about life, that teaches us everything we could ever need to know about ourselves, and relationships.
How telling is projectile vomiting from baby’s when given formula made from milk! For those that have no experience with this could watch The Meaning of Live with Mr Creosote.
“With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence’ Expressed beautifully Ingrid. “
I too had similar things that I didn’t connect. I remember working as nurse over Christmas one year and we were given lots of chocolate as gifts and I kept getting headaches. My mother suggested I have an allergy test. I had the test and when they got to testing me for wheat I actually fell off the chair so strong was the reaction. That explained why I almost went into a coma every time I ate pasta. My body went through big withdrawals not eating wheat but I felt much better afterwards. It was not until many years later that I heard Serge Benhayon presenting that gluten can be dulling that I decided to also give up gluten as I still bloated. That made a HUGE difference and afterwards my weight reduced a lot, bloating went and I had much more vitality and clarity.
Even though I claimed that I didn’t connect the food to my health issues, I suspect at some level I always knew. On another level I was too poisoned by what I was eating and how I was living to be clear and yet within there is always a part that knows. I remember an ad campaign in England when I was younger for cream cakes that said “naughty but nice” mind you it didn’t say “toxic but nice” which would have been more honest and yet not that is not honest either because how can something that hurts your body be nice.
Oh how I wish it was that simple! I also gave up gluten and dairy and sugar long before I met Serge Benhayon and felt the benefit, but in these last few years I have developed huge bloating and digestive problems, and what I am coming to understand from Serge is that if I am still eating anything with the same energy of need and greed, then it is no different from eating gluten etc, and we have to find the root energetic cause to completely clear the body. I have just discovered how little appreciation I have ever had for myself, and if I eat with that energy then my body will react to everything I take into it. This is now the way for me to work, beginning to appreciate.
It is that simple in terms of connecting to what is the root cause each time and healing that. It is an ever developing evolution with no end!
It is hard to just take away a food when we need it to comfort us and when we use it numb ourselves to the intensity of life. We need to have a knowing and feeling of something that is true to be able to let go of these vices and our soul and the clarity that comes with that is that something that we need in order to be able to listen to our body – ourselves – again.
Whole body intelligence this should be put on the school curriculum. Our body really does know best if we were taught to listen to it. I remember the school milk, Ingrid, I hated the taste of it and even the smell of it would make me feel sick and I would dread lining up to receive it. It was from these school days telling us all that milk was good for our bones and to help us grow, we then take into our adult life as a belief, even though our body is screaming otherwise.
It makes sense that when our mind is telling us one thing and our body is telling something different then the tension will cause problems. When we choose to override the clear messages that our body is sharing with us, why is it that we listen to the mind and not the body? When we do listen to our body and feel the beneficial effect then we ‘change our mind’ and realise that our body is telling the truth.
I too grew up in an era where the ‘bug’ got all the blame and the food was glibly ignored. I had many ‘bugs’ and then like you Ingrid, with the innately wise support of Universal Medicine, realised that food has been the culprit all along, aided and abetted by the many un-dealt with emotional hurts. Deal with those and then giving up those delicious jellies, cream and sweet treats becomes a no brainer and our bodies give a huge sigh of relief. No more chocolate induced headaches, dairy induced sinusitis or gluten induced gut ache, good health here we come.
Beautiful sharing Ingrid. It is never too late to listen to our body but before we can truly eliminate a food that is not supportive for us from our diet, we need to understand why we are eating that food in the first place, otherwise we will forever be at the whim of our desire for that food and have to call on a huge force to resist it every time the temptation arises. Every morsel we put in our mouths has an effect on the body in the sense that it will either help to raise the vibration of the physical particles (which is how we evolve/advance our awareness) or lessen the vibration (how we thwart our evolution).
With this understanding we realise that the name of the game was never about food in the first place but about awareness. Therefore, we need to ask ourselves honestly how aware we really want to be, considering that the more aware we are, the greater responsibility we have and – it is a lack of responsibility that got us into this whole food mess in the first place by deliberating eating food that dulls and deadens us, be that through the sensation of heaviness or raciness in the body, so we do not shine in full the great light we each in essence are.
The consciousnesses that exist to tell us we ‘must have’ dairy / gluten / sugar, combined with the industries that promote their sale, along with the influencing words of our carers, family members, teachers and society in general, present forces that are difficult to overcome. But nothing beats the power of absolute truth and knowing what’s right for our bodies, as Ingrid’s story proves. We can rise above the impositions of these ‘peer pressures’ and reclaim a way that truly supports us.
My mind is a part of my body. It is not to be discounted or reacted to because I too have listened to it and ignored my body but when my mind has stopped chattering and I am connected to my body I am present with myself and my whole entire being is as one.
Beautiful blog ingrid, and well written. That what you write about food intolerance and the ignorance to this fact in the past gave me to opportunity to look back into my youth. For instance the school milk was indeed very disgusting but you had to drink it in complete ignorance of how you felt. So the message was that this is how you live life and you are told what is good for you and what is not. I too had my tonsils being removed at the age of five but never ever there was any inkling on looking to food intake but it was made a normal procedure you go through when you are a child.
It’s pretty amazing to consider the level of disregard and over-ride we’ll subject ourselves to until we finally do something about it – usually as the result of an illness, disease or some sort of wake-up call. Though sometimes even then we’ll get past the event and head straight back to ‘normal’ and our old, ingrained ways. Sometimes it takes a deeper healing of the issues behind the urge to self-abuse before we come to understand why we do what we do – and don’t need to do it anymore.
Wonderful article Ingrid. Our body most certainly speaks. I too grew up in the late forties and fifties. Milk in northern NSW (Dairy country) was considered to be THE healthiest thing you could drink. Milk repulsed me and I could hardly get it down. My mother would resort to disguising it with Milo and I could almost go there with that. But still a struggle. And yes, we too always had those warm little bottles of milk awaiting us at the dreaded ‘playtime’ in crates in the sun – am I dreaming it but did we have the most disgusting banana flavoured milk on some particular dire mornings? Needless to say, as soon as I could escape milk I did. But then later on I wilfully committed to wheat in a way that was irresponsible – I met my 2nd husband at the age of 26 and he was an Englishman who used to have what amounted to a ploughman’s lunch everyday – bread/rolls, cheese and pickle. I, who had never eaten much bread from choice, suddenly was eating bread every lunchtime to fit in with him instead of choosing what was right for my body. No wonder I began to bloat. Why I never connected the bloating with the diet change shows how wilful my spirit was – it/I didn’t care, I just wanted the convenience of having the same lunch without having to prepare two different lunches.
A great exposure of the masterful ways in which the spirit can control our way of living (an ‘ouch’ moment – as this is with our agreement).
“Why I never connected the bloating with the diet change shows how wilful my spirit was – it/I didn’t care, I just wanted the convenience of having the same lunch without having to prepare two different lunches”.
‘With the wisdom of my body leading the way, my mind is brought into line, so that the two may work in harmony as one, allowing space for my soul to express through me as whole body intelligence.’ This is so it, so what could be taught in school, so what makes sense in every cell of my body and so where I can see and be honest about what gets in the way of living this in each moment.
We think we are ‘in touch’ without body, after all we know when to go to the toilet, when we are hungry or when we need to sleep – after all, how complicated can it get? But there’s more to this picture than what we see. For when you look closer do we respond lovingly, or do we look for quick fixes that cover things up? It’s beyond doubt that we feel what our body says, but as you show Ingrid whether we actually listen is another question. Your words inspire me to be a better listener to others and to me.
Indeed Joseph, our body is actually very clear but indeed do we listen and respond to that what our body is telling us or do we ignore the message and stop the communication in favour of the nice taste or the comfortable emotional feeling we get from the food or activities we emulate from what we see happening around us.
Same here, Nico with the school milk and removing of the tonsils.We never questioned any of the things we ate or drank. I disliked some things because of the taste but not because of what it did to my body.