Howdy folks! Has anyone been experimenting with listening – really listening – to their body’s needs this last month? I’ve had feedback from people increasing their water consumption, and being more mindful about which foods their body is asking for; feeding the need rather than the hunger. If you’ve not read Part One of this series yet, about learning to listen to your body’s language, make sure you check it out here before moving on to this, Part Two.
It’s all well and good increasing awareness of the body’s needs, but what if your body doesn’t know how to express those needs in the first place? How can your brain possibly interpret an incoherent request? What if it has never been taught the words? This kind of inexperience leads to a situation where a deep yearning for something is felt, but is likely to be filled with unhealthy food or experience. That is why this month, we’re looking at expanding your body’s vocabulary – giving it a wealth of knowledge and experience to draw on when it needs to ask for something. And it’s pretty much always asking for something, if we’re listening!
Quick disclaimer; I’m not a herbalist, I only know what I know, so please take the following examples as anecdotes, not advice.
Let’s start with plants. Obviously, plants offer so many natural remedies for our ailments, and provide all we need to maintain health. I truly believe that for everything that can go wrong, there is a plant/food to fix it. But most of us, let’s face it, have limited knowledge of which plants do what. We’d need to read books to learn, draw on the wisdom of our ancestors, or read the studies proving certain plant compounds really do what our ancestors said they do. But how did our ancestors know, without formal training or libraries of information? I used to wonder, who on earth first touched a nettle leaf and thought “ouch, that stings… let’s eat it!” I think the answer is pretty obvious; experimentation. They tried everything, and if it didn’t kill them, their bodies received the experience of that plant, remembered it, and could recall it when necessary. We still have this ability, but these days many of us lack the opportunity to really try everything (safe) that is out there for us.
Here is a prime, and very personal example. Back in my 20s I used to drink a lot of verbena tea. Primarily because I liked it; also because I was told that it was good for digestion so I thought it might help me lose weight. But that was ages ago, and until recently, I had gone probably 15 years without having it. Then I recently went through an early miscarriage (actually, two of them) and about 3 days into the first miscarriage I suddenly started wanting verbena tea. It just popped into my head. I could almost smell it, and I wanted it. I searched its properties and lo-and-behold, it is apparently a uterine stimulant. I had not wanted it during the short pregnancy, but clearly now that my body was trying to clear out my uterus it was asking for help to do that. My brain only knew verbena as stimulating digestion, but my body knew better. Having had the direct experience of metabolising verbena in the past, it was able to recall the word, the flavour, the smell, when I needed it most. My body knew! Just imagine the power our ancestors (of all cultures) must have had, having experienced so many different foods and plants, in their natural state with no modification or pesticides, as well as being much more deeply in tune with the natural cycles of the earth, the seasons and the body, and being able draw upon that internal body knowledge to realise the remedy for what ailed them? That’s pretty amazing stuff.
Here is where we need to learn to trust in the wisdom of the body. It remembers everything. It stores everything. There is a wisdom and a knowing in the body, of which our thinking brains can’t really conceive. The thinking brain is there to interpret the body’s signals for us to understand, but it needs to be taught the words. Otherwise a magnesium deficiency may be interpreted by the brain as a deep ‘need’ for chocolate, because that is the source of magnesium the body has learned to recognise. If your body has never encountered, say, lemon balm, how can it learn that it has anti-viral properties? How will it know to tell you that it might be good for that cold-sore?
Another example. When I used to suffer with regular migraines as a pubescent teenager, my brain, during the attacks, would ask me for stacks of fine green beans. Thankfully I grew up in beautiful natural New Zealand, eating 99% home cooked meals, meat and three veg (thanks Mum & Dad!), so I had experience of all sorts of foods from the get go. Blood tests showed I was low on iron, which of course is available in many foods, but my body chose green beans as the source of choice. It could also have asked for steak, but I was extremely fussy about meat as a child, so it wasn’t first choice.
This building of experience doesn’t stop at food; there are physical experiences our bodies may ask for too. I was working with an animal communication group a while back, communicating with a horse who had just moved to a wonderful new home, with a new guardian and rider. If you’re not a believer in animal communication we may part ways about here, but please bear with me and suspend your disbelief for a paragraph. This beautiful horse, he needed something. But he didn’t know what. His body needed physical assistance, but he’d never had osteopathy, or physio, or massage, so he didn’t know how to ask for it. This is where we, the ‘listeners’ or ‘communicators’ were able to interpret his body’s feelings through the window of our own experiences, and knew that he needed osteopathy to help his body realign gently, without force. Incidentally there was also something dietary needed, but just like a human with limited experience, this horse hadn’t sampled enough herbage to know what he needed. Horses are meant to be browsing and grazing all sorts of herbage and plants and hedgerows, not just lolling about on grass. All lush green grass, for a horse, is a bit like all candy for a kid! But we generally keep them on just grass, albeit varying types, and a lot of owners supplement with dried herbs and other plantstuffs or minerals in their feed. But not all horses have this available to them. When we asked this particular horse what he needed in his diet, the message that came through was just ‘green’! He had grass already, but in his previous home, it would seem that he didn’t have experience of browsing hedgerows, and he didn’t know how to ask for nettles, or rosehips, because he’d never had them before. We soon fixed that.
This learning process, like any learning, requires concentration. It’s not just a case of stuffing oneself with random foodstuffs in the name of expanding vocabulary. Children, learning about food, have a natural curiosity – they play with their food, feel it in their hands, rub it on their skin, take their time learning the food from all different angles before it eventually (hopefully!) makes it into their stomachs. I don’t see very many adults doing this, and I’m not suggesting you start finger painting with your risotto tonight. However, we can engage with our food in a more thoughtful way; let’s call it mindful eating. It is actually a pretty well-known spiritual practice fostering appreciation and gratitude for food, and learning to stay in the present moment of every part of the eating process. This is coincidentally rather helpful for breaking patterns of over-eating, or rushed eating which does no one’s digestion any favours. Next time you eat anything at all (even if it is chocolate, no judgement, but preferably a good proper meal), try this exercise on for size:
Become aware of the first sensation that arises – the thought that you are going to eat. Is there a sensation in the mouth? Salivation? An expectancy in the stomach? Become aware of the physical movements each as they happen. Witness yourself raising the fork, piercing the food, saying to yourself internally, “I am lifting my fork. I am piercing my food. I am raising the food to my mouth” etc. Be aware of the mouth opening (“I am opening my mouth”), the food touching your tongue, the lips closing around the fork, withdrawing the fork from the mouth, the lowering of the hand. Chew, slowly, being aware of every burst of flavour, of texture, of the movement of the jaw, the tongue, the grinding of the teeth. Say to yourself, “I am tasting e.g.: spinach, egg yolk, wholegrain bread, chicken” etc. Say thank you to every food as you taste it, say thank you to the egg, to the spinach, to the grains, to the chicken. Become aware of the food mixing with the saliva and forming a bolus (things can start to feel a bit gross around here, bear with it!). Become aware of the urge to swallow, then of the swallowing (“I am swallowing”). Notice the sensation of the food passing down your oesophagus, and the sensation of wanting to take the next bite. And repeat, for what may seem like ad infinitum!
This process not only allows the body time to digest optimally, and tell us when it is full, but by identifying, and creating a relationship with each food item (by saying thank you) we are helping the body to learn. If you want to experiment with herbs and plant medicine there’s a book I recommend to many clients, written by my anatomy physiology and pathology teacher (and Medical Herbalist) Pip Waller. It’s called The Domestic Alchemist and it’s full of herbal recipes for health and home. Playing with these will expand your vocabulary enormously!
Bottom line, what I’m getting at here is the need to feed our bodies with experiences and natural foods, to help it learn what to ask for when it has a need. Try physical therapies, try meditation, try different sports, expand your eating, try healing, try afternoon naps, try early bedtimes, try no TV, try reading poetry. Give it a full vocabulary to choose from, so that ‘chocolate’ doesn’t remain the go-to word for magnesium, and TV isn’t substituted for sleep.
So in these last two installments we’ve looked at 1) learning to listen to the body’s need cycles, and 2) increasing the vocabulary of remedies for those needs. Next month we’ll look at an even more subtle layer – listening to emotional needs. So many pains, frustrations, and mental illnesses we encounter come down to the simple source of an emotional need(s) that was not / is not being met. It’s definitely worth a look-see. Lots of love in the meantime xKB.