How To Hear Your Body Talk

Artwork©aviavladim/123rf

To survive in our world, it is not at all necessary to access subtle energy or learn how to listen to the quieter currents of connection and flow. Our food is grown on farms and predictably delivered to stores for us to buy. We wear clothes that are made in factories. We have continuous shelter accessible at all times. We carry endless access to information in our pockets. The loud world of ease and distraction is right there, always with us.

Modern life supplies our most basic needs with convenience. We can talk about the problems of the world in a detached kind of way without really being worried that our own bubble of contentedness is at risk. If it is, there are psych drugs to help a person out. Add in some talk therapy or maybe a few bouts of intense emotional release and that’s all the support needed for a good enough life.

Plenty of people have fulfilling lives without a direct line into anything but the concrete reality of work, money, and stuff. For those who have a contentedness with life but still feel like more is needed, it’s time to find a current of quiet in life and go beyond ease to find the quiet self.

When we only listen to loud stimulation in life, we are training the inherent feedback system of the universe to respond with intensity. This results in greater suffering. If we train our body to primarily give us only loud feedback, it communicates with us using disease and sickness or addiction and ecstasy. Loud stimulation in relationships means the relationships are dramatic, chaotic, abusive, or have extreme ups and downs. The divine loudly gets attention by providing extreme hurdles or a sense that life is coming at us in too many directions at once.

Transcending the loud means listening to the quiet. When we retrain our bodies, minds, and perspective to shift into subtle energy awareness, the quiet feedback is heard, and our being can receive what is needed to grow without intensity, chaos, or drama.

The loud of the world is so easy to get caught up in. It’s dramatic. It’s interesting. It requires no real work. It is sooo comfortable. Cultivating a relationship to the embodied subtle and quiet self not only sounds like work, it is work. Entering the realm of the quiet requires actual change.

My Story 

When I first got the call to come into my body and listen, I received it the way most of us do — through disease and pain. I had recurring infections. My body was literally attacking its joints. I suffered a major back injury. My body only knew how to speak to me in the loud. To treat the pain and sickness, I took antibiotics, pain killers, muscle relaxants, and anti-inflammatories. There was nothing subtle in this clashing of feel and subdue, hurt and fix.

Lucky for me, the lack of practical medical answers to my healing crisis created an opening into passion and purpose. To heal, I needed to immediately start retraining my body. Treatment meant learning, not just fixing. I started with diet, nutritional supplements, and chiropractic adjustments. Over time, I got strong enough to fast and cleanse. Later I would enter into the realm of subtle energy through treatments such as acupuncture, herbs, naturopathy, flower essences, tai chi, yoga, and energy healing (to name a few).

If I had kept on band-aiding symptoms, the pharmaceuticals would have transformed me into a dependent and pain ridden cripple. The unexpected result of healing my body with subtle energy modalities was my body began talking to me through them. Acupuncture made it so that imbalances and imminent sickness were felt earlier through my meridians. I could feel exposure to a sickness, then track it entering my body and deepening. I could choose to treat it early or ignore it and suffer the consequences.

I went from feeling out of control in my body to having choice about my own healing. I had to cultivate a relationship of listening to my body and trusting what it had to say. Once I could talk to my body, it responded to the treatment forms I chose to focus on — acupuncture, nutrition, and energy healing.

My body literally changed when I started listening. I learned how to respond to the body sooner and listen to the body’s responses to the treatment I chose. Going into the realm of quiet slowed everything down and changed my relationship to everything.

Acupuncture made it so that imbalances and imminent sickness were felt earlier through my meridians. I could feel exposure to a sickness, then track it entering my body and deepening. I could choose to treat it early or ignore it and suffer the consequences.

Photo©sheeler/123rf

Using Subtle Energy To Get Unstuck 

We all have a tendency to get stuck. We may perhaps go from noticing a recurring pattern or consciously avoiding a dynamic into creating a narrative around why the pattern is occurring and then justifying our avoidance. When we hardwire thoughts into a justified action, we create a stuck that is likely at some point to get loud and cause suffering.

Subtle energy practices move stuck energy without the need to consciously justify or logically understand a process to let it go. Consciously engaging in subtle energy practices creates flow through us and not just around us. A relationship of listening to the body and trusting subtle energy prevents any stickiness from getting caught up in the mind and its dramas.

Wanting a positive state to stay for as long as possible and getting attached to how that state feels is another form of stuck. This is why addictions are so alluring — the state of being that is entered through the addiction is predictable. We want the same experience instead of being open to something new. Subtle energy practices cultivate a relationship to subtle pleasure in the body, and a felt sense of choice about embracing what is present to let life in.

Listening to quiet currents in life does not prevent bad things from happening. All it does is change our relationship to what comes our way. There are always going to be places inside us that are avoiding the quiet and need the loud to wake up, but as we form a relationship to quiet listening, willingness to listen becomes part of the self. Hard times and bad experiences shift into trusted invitations for awakening. Life is embraced, not fought.

There is a sense of shift that happens when the flow of subtle energy becomes a possibility. Suddenly life is not just happening to us, we are happening to it. When something bad, negative, or unwanted comes our way there is space to ask what is needed, be curious, and learn. There is an understanding that the pain signals a need of the deeper self to access more life force, and the difficult circumstance is in service of the self, not hurt. Negative roles of victim, martyr, sufferer, etc., feel dense, heavy and separate in the subtle energy field and cannot be sustained. Negative feelings exist in everyone, but it is easier to let them transmute with subtle energy when quiet listening is cultivated.

Activities To Access Subtle Energy Through Quiet Listening

Finding, listening to, and having regular access to subtle energy requires a practice…or five…or ten. The world is too loud nowadays to simply meditate for 10 minutes a day and be able to tap into subtle energy.  Nothing about life is subtle right now.

Seeking quiet listening and subtle energy awareness requires cultivation. Eventually we make a shift from the practices being practices to the practices simply being the self. Many ancient and wise traditions for embodiment already exist, along with more modern additions. Some of these include:

• Yoga
• Tai Chi
• Qi Gong
• Meditation
• Breathwork
• Acupuncture
• Energy Healing
• BioGeometric Integration or Network Styles of Chiropractic
• Homeopathy
• Flower Essences
• Plant Medicine
• Craniosacral Therapy
• Bowen Therapy
• Myofascial Release Massage

Any action can be turned into an embodied action with attention and focus on listening to subtle energy — sensing energy, sinking into sensation and senses, and embracing flow. Every single day, multiple moments in the day invite us to cultivate a relationship to the senses through listening:

• walking
• paying attention
• breathing
• making music
• cooking
• gardening
• hunting and/or gathering
• writing
• dancing
• art
• playing
• creating
• fire watching
• story telling

Consistent opening into the awareness of listening and sensing subtle energy is simply a matter of choosing to pay attention to more than thoughts or loud experiences. Some cultivation practices need to be worked at. Find ones that you enjoy and that also stretch the mind a bit by challenging what it knows. Find practices that interest you, that you can get lost in, and create a connection to the emotional body.

I suggest finding a healing modality or two to work with when life provides you with a challenge that needs support. This will also mean that your body can communicate in the language of the healing modality to tell you when there is an imbalance or need for healing.

Imagine a world where the quiet subtle energy of life is felt by more people. Imagine the interconnectedness that can come from silently experiencing life. We can create what we need in this life; we just have to slow down and make the choice to do it.

Four years ago, Nessa Emrys shifted her personal paradigm and became a digital nomad. Nowadays she works as a multidimensional therapist and writer, using travel to embody compassion and challenge personal perspectives. You can read more of her work at https://nessaemrys.substack.com/s/personal-transformation.

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