Written by Connie Rogers, a Certified Integrative Health Coach
As human beings, we seem compelled to help others. Just watch young children when they are around each other on a playground, or adults in the role of caregiver, or young men when they notice an elderly person needing assistance. While it is noble to help others, we may neglect ourselves most of the time. The art of listening is like learning how to paint for the very first time. Sure, there will be bumps in the road but soon your brush strokes will begin to feel like second nature.
How listening happens (The Art of Listening)
Is your body telling you it's exhausted and frustrated? Do you feel moody after you eat and annoyed when the house is a mess? Sterilizing everything every day, along with increased fears, worries, or uncertainties about cleanliness, actually increases disease as worries and fears create imbalances.
One Solution: Find a quiet place, and focus on being in the moment, even if it's only for a few moments. This is a great place to start, allowing yourself to be open to listening to your still voice. When we relax and take deep breaths we feed our soul and silence the external noise that may distract us. Deep breathing exercises are recommended to help relieve stress. (1)
In today's world, viruses present themselves in a tightly polluted environment, including an environment filled with pesticides and other degrees of toxicity. Paranoia seems to prevent us from doing anything holistically when caring for ourselves. It's easier to take a pill and get back to work. If we rely on bad medicine and insufficient data on how to take care of our bodies, we cannot make informed decisions.
One Solution. I encourage you to do your own research on the dangerous effects of toxins in, on, and around you. Some toxicities include living on diet sugars or breathing in air fresheners, dryer sheets, mold in ventilation systems, glues, cigarette smoke, dry-cleaned clothing, and purchasing foods sprayed with glyphosate. Pollutants are known to cause a higher illness rate.
Are you feeling disjointed or starving for social connections?
One Solution. Touch is important. We touch with our spirit, our mind, heart, and body. Touch also involves sharing feelings, foods, and thoughts. How and when we touch people's lives is so much more satisfying than how we resent our current situation.
So, participate in life! When we include touch in our daily lives, we know we are not alone and become stronger working together.
Do you suffer from cigarette and alcohol addiction, insomnia, restless leg syndrome, reflux, hair-loss, and constipation? Is your skin breaking out, or do you have frequent headaches. Did your doctor just prescribe your sixth medication? Now what? Listen. Your body is asking you to make some critical lifestyle changes.
One Solution: When you listen to your body you can take an active step in your own healing. Craft a health plan designed specifically for your needs (i.e.,ditch frozen diet foods), move it forward, and make it real.
Finding Balance (The Art of Listening)
Listening to your body may be the most important thing you do for yourself. When I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, I didn't imagine that I could be instrumental in my own healing. The quest for balance in our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual life is innate. Everything in our environment needs balance, including our soil, water, air, and our microbiome.
The Gut Microbiome is the number one influencer of wellness!
We need to rapidly envision a scientific paradigm where we're always in a great relationship with our microbiome on every level. We have a brain-gut axis and according to Dr. Russell Blaylock, "the nervous system is the most metabolically active organ in the body." Our central nervous system can be profoundly disturbed by the absence of healthy microbiome. (2,3)
Making a plan for better gut health means ditching the caffeine, sodas, and other stimulants and hydrate with water or herbal teas with fresh sliced ginger pieces. (4) An attainable approach for changing gut microbiome is adding in organic green leafy vegetables and fresh berries. Fermented foods, such as sauerkraut and carrots are a great way to spike up salads. For breakfast, add in organic sprouted steel-cut oats topped with sliced organic apples. Thirdly, our bodies are meant to move! We don't need to get a physical exam with a detailed medical report to show us how true this is.
When we listen to our body and take care of our gut microbiome, we take care of every organ and system in the body. There's truly no other time than now to listen up. The beneficial side- effects are endless.
footnotes
- 1- https://tinyurl.com/hhfk1wyu
- 2- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3232439/
- 3- onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/
- j.1365-2982.2010.01620.x/full
- 4- Caffeine- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16722996/
