The need to always be right, which I wrote about last time, lives in the mind, in the arguments we build and defend. But there is a source of information the mind frequently ignores, precisely because it cannot be argued or controlled: the body. And today's subject is precisely this relationship, about how the body communicates what the mind refuses to acknowledge and how to learn to listen to it.
It is not about wellness or relaxation practices in a superficial sense. It is about one of the most direct pathways of access to your own interior.
Why do the mind and body end up in conflict? The mind is built to organise, plan, justify, and protect. It has a special relationship with narratives, with the stories we tell about ourselves and the world. And when bodily reality contradicts the narrative, the mind tends to win in the short term, suppressing or ignoring the bodily signal.
You feel tension in your chest before a meeting the mind presents as neutral. You have a knot in your stomach about a decision the mind describes as logical. You are exhausted after an interaction you told yourself went well. The body knows something. The mind has already decided it is not relevant.
What does the body communicate and how? Through a few channels we can recognise if we pay attention.
The first is muscular tension. Raised shoulders, a clenched jaw, a rigid back, tight fists, all of these are forms through which the body registers stress, perceived danger, or suppressed emotions. They do not appear from nothing. They appear in response to something you are experiencing, even if the mind has not acknowledged it as stress.
The second is digestive sensations. The stomach is the second brain, not metaphorically but literally. The enteric nervous system, with its hundreds of millions of neurons, processes emotions and states. Nausea, tightness, discomfort, or conversely ease in the abdominal area are information about your relationship with a situation or person, not merely about what you ate.
The third is energy level. How do you feel in the presence of certain people or after certain interactions? How much energy do you have before compared to after a particular activity or conversation? The body keeps score of these energetic transactions with an honesty the mind cannot produce.
The fourth is involuntary responses: tears that come unexpectedly, laughter that bursts out inappropriately, a tightening of the heart in the face of something that seems neutral. These are moments when the body short-circuits the mind's control and delivers the information directly.
How does this mind-body gap manifest in relationships? Frequently and with real consequences.
You remain in relationships the body experiences as draining, because the mind builds arguments for why you must stay. You ignore early signals of discomfort about a partner because the mind interprets them as your own anxiety. You do not recognise that an interaction hurt you because the narrative is that it should not have hurt you. The body registers all of this. Sometimes only later, sometimes in dreams, sometimes through illness, it delivers the bill.
How do you learn to listen to the body when the mind refuses to stop? Not through an effort of will, which is itself a mental activity. But through a few practices of returning to sensation.
The first is the bodily pause. Before making a decision or in the middle of a difficult conversation, to pause and scan the body. Not to analyse, but to observe. What am I feeling now? Where am I feeling it? With what quality?
The second is to give the sensation a word. Not an explanation, but a single word: tight, light, heavy, warm, cold, open, closed. Minimal verbalisation of the sensation makes it more accessible and anchors it.
The third is to treat bodily sensations as valid information, not as noise to eliminate. If your body tightens every time a particular subject is about to be discussed, that is not anxiety to ignore. It is information to investigate.
I believe one of the most valuable recalibrations a person can make is to treat the body as a partner in self-knowledge, not as an instrument for transporting the brain from one place to another. The body is present where the mind avoids. It knows what the mind does not want to know. And listening to it, with gentleness and without rushing to interpret, brings a form of clarity that thinking alone cannot produce.
Think about a recent situation in your life in which your body sent a signal that your mind ignored or rejected. What was it signalling? And if you had listened to it, what would you have chosen differently?
