#104: How to Listen to Your Body

When I talk to people about listening to their bodies, I’m often met with a lot of blank stares.

Most of us have some semblance of how to tell our bodies what to do, especially when it comes to exercise.

But reversing that pathway? 

Nobody ever really taught us how.

In this episode, I share the types of signals that you receive from your body and some simple ways to move your awareness back into it. 

When you finish listening, I invite you to join my free video training on How to Make Body Centered Decisions.

I can’t wait to hear about your discoveries.

How to Make Body Centered Decisions (Free Video Training):
https://theembodiedwaycoach.com/listentoyourbody

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On the Podcast Blog: https://theembodiedwaycoach.com/2026/05/15/how-to-listen-to-your-body/ 

For show notes and helpful resources, visit https://theembodiedwaycoach.com/podcast.

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Transcript

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I want you to start noticing. Oh, I feel uncomfortable, my shoulders feel funny, oh, I'm slouching. You know, this isn't about getting perfect posture overnight, and I talk about this a lot with some of my Pilates clients, but I really want you to just notice all the times you have an impulse to move and you don't do it, and start moving your body. This is the Embodied Way Podcast, where creative people come to reconnect with their sole purpose, identify and release their blocks, heal old wounds, and manifest the life they've always dreamed of. Hi, I'm Natalie Neckyfarow and welcome to the Embodied Way Podcast. Today's episode is a bit of a quickie because I want to encourage you to engage with this material experientially rather than just intellectually. We're gonna chat a bit about the types of signals that you receive from your body and some simple ways to move your awareness back into it. And then I'm going to invite you to grab an additional free video training that will teach you how to make body-centered decisions. Okay, so let's talk about the different types of signals you receive from your body. Some of the most basic signals we receive are related to our bodily functions. So if you really pay attention, you can actually feel a lot of these things happening. For example, if you're hungry, you can hear your body literally grumble, right? Or when it you are digesting something, or if you listen really closely or put your hand on your heart, you can feel it beating. You can sense your body breathing, and you can actually control that as well. And, you know, we get signals how many times a day that we need to go visit the bathroom, or we'll get signals that we're tired and that we need to sleep, or that we're thirsty and we need to drink something. So a lot of these signals are just basic things that are needed for us to survive. But then there are other signals that our body gives us that are far more complex than that. And I'm gonna just preface this with saying that I'm not a naturopath or a Chinese medicine doctor or anything like that. But especially in Eastern medicine, there have been uh documented uh signals that a doctor can look at your tongue and determine what organs are not functioning well and need to shift, which I just think is so incredible and fascinating. And these are signals that we can also read if we learn them. So that is just simply related to how the body functions to keep us alive. And then we get signals when we are doing some kind of physical activity. So if you are working out, you're gonna get that sensation of your body lifting the weight or your breath shifting as you maybe your heart rate starts to accelerate and you're breathing a little faster. Um, you'll feel a muscle fatigue if you're doing like a set and you're getting towards the end of the set, you'll feel that muscle fatigue. So we're getting all of these signals from our muscles. And then we also have this incredible thing called proprioception. So, what proprioception means is that we have this sense of where we are in space. And there are a lot of different components to proprioception. Our eyes play a very big part. So if you're driving a car, you know, you're looking at the road ahead of you, but you're also perceiving what's happening on either side of you. And yes, we, you know, have to turn our head to get some of that information, but we're actually able to pick up stuff that's within that peripheral vision in part because of proprioception. Or if you're exercising and you are trying to get your certain muscle to activate, the reason you know where that muscle is, like where is my knee, where is my hip, the reason you know where that is is because of proprioception. Um, another signal that you receive is soreness, right? So if you've had a really great workout and you're sore the next day, that's a signal. Oh, I worked out really hard. Oh, maybe I should rest today. Maybe you went for a long hike, or maybe you have some other kind of physical pain after working out. Oh, maybe that pain indicates that I did something that wasn't super healthy for my body. And maybe I should look into that a little further. All right. Another signal that we get is our emotions. And I think a lot of people don't recognize the fact that your emotions are actually a signal from your body. So emotions present as a physical sensation. And this is something that I do with my clients, or if you've ever done one of my meditations, you will recognize that we tune in to the physical sensation. And sometimes it's like if you're feeling sad, that presents in your body in a specific way. Or if you are feeling anxious, that presents in your body in a specific way. So that's a physical signal. And depending on how you're wired, some people actually have a harder time labeling an emotion than they do sensing it. They might just feel that physical sensation of anxiety or anger or sadness, but not actually be able to place a label to it. Another way that we receive signals from our body is something that people maybe describe as a sixth sense. This could also be called clairsence, which means that you have a sense of what's going on because of something that you feel in your body. And one of my biggest gifts is actually clairsentience. So I often will know that someone in my life is having a hard time or struggling because I will get a physical sensation in my body. And I've done a lot of boundary work so that I don't receive this information from every single person I ever come into contact with. But that's kind of another topic for another day. But we can actually cultivate this sixth sense. We all have it. We all have this ability to read a room, to get a sense when someone's had a bad day, or to know if maybe an environment that we're walking into isn't safe, or an environment is actually quite warm and welcoming. We can feel that. And then there's this really cool thing called sacral response. And if you are not familiar with human design, I'm gonna very briefly touch on this for just a second. But there are two types of human design that have this sacral response, and one is generators and one is manifesting generators. And I think together these two types are about like maybe 75% of the population. So there might be somebody listening to this podcast who does not have a sacral response. If you don't have a sacral response, uh there's nothing wrong with you. But it's this um sense that your body will automatically tell you if something feels right or wrong, or if uh it's a yes in your body or a no in your body. And this is something that I'm getting into much deeper in this um free training that I'm gonna share with you at the end of this podcast today. And yes, uh, there's other ways that we can feel a yes and a no in our body. And that's what that training is all about. And then the last piece is a little bit more complicated. It's called claire cognizance. The reason I say it's more complicated is because it's a little more nuanced. And with a sacral response, we're getting a yes or no answer. But when we know something, clair cognizance, that's what that means, we actually will get like downloads, like maybe, you know, in our own voice or in another voice, we'll just know something that we shouldn't know that makes no sense that we know, but we know. And that might come in the form of like a lot of words. It's not just a yes or a no. And this is something that you generally develop through meditation, but some people just suddenly have this ability, and that's pretty cool too. So we've talked about the kind of signals you might receive, and in order to receive these signals, we actually have to create a pathway to receive that information. And there are actually a lot more ways to do this than you think. So the first thing I want you to do is stop ignoring your body's signals. And you might be like, I don't ignore my body's signals. What are you talking about? Okay, when's the last time that you were in the middle of something and you got hungry and you didn't immediately get up and eat? Or similarly, you are in the middle of something and you needed to go to the bathroom, or you're sitting in a funny way on your couch, and you just stay sitting that way until your leg has gone completely numb. I know that you do this because I do this. It is very, very common. And it's because we spend so much time in our heads, right? A lot of the work that we do, most of us, isn't super physical. We're sitting at a computer all day. We're really engaging with our mental state. And when we are fully engaged in our mental state, we are not tuned into our body. So even on a super subtle level, if you're like, oh, I'm feeling hungry, it barely registers or it registers as not important. And I want you to start really registering it as important. The next thing I want you to do is start checking in with your body position when you're working. So if you're sitting at a computer and your fingers are on the keyboard and your head is moving forward and you're rounding into your low back, and maybe your toes are curled up underneath you, you're actually putting your body in a position where energy cannot flow easily. And maybe you get a little ache and a pain, but you don't address it, you don't feel it, and you don't move. And so I want you to start noticing, oh, I feel uncomfortable, my shoulders feel funny, oh, I'm slouching. You know, this isn't about getting perfect posture overnight. And I talk about this a lot with some of my Pilates clients, but I really want you to just notice all the times you have an impulse to move and you don't do it, and start moving your body. It doesn't have to be huge. It's just, you know, shifting the way you're sitting. Or one of the things that I love to do is I like to work at a lot of different places, even in my apartment, right? So I have my desk and a regular desk chair, and I have a comfy blue chair, and I have a couch, and I have the floor, and sometimes I even work in my bed. So there's lots of different ways that I can bring my body into a position which helps the energy flow differently and helps me from being stuck physically, which actually helps your mind too. So try it out. So ideally, as you build awareness, you will not have to think about this as much. But one of the things you can do to help yourself become more aware of your body in your day-to-day life is by setting a timer. And you may have tried this in relationship to taking breaks. So if I know I'm doing a lot of work on my computer in a given day, I will set a timer for 55 minutes. Or maybe if I need to do a short little sprint, 25 minutes, because I will get really engrossed in what I'm doing and lose all sense of space and time. And so that little timer that goes off will just pull you out of that experience for just a moment and give you the opportunity to get back into your body. Now, you might want to take breaks too. You might want to get up and walk around. One of my favorite ways to take breaks is I go in my kitchen and I do my dishes. I hate doing dishes, but when I am in this break time, it's delicious because I'm not sitting in a chair, I'm not sitting on my couch, it gives my body a chance to move, and my brain starts to work in a different way because I'm in a different position. So that's really a beneficial thing you can do for yourself. Another thing that you can do is to start really noticing your breath. And I could do a whole episode on this. Uh, there is so much I've learned over the years from teaching Pilates and practicing yoga about breathing. But at its very simplest, you can notice where is my breath going in my body? When you breathe, does it go down into your belly? Does it stay high up into your chest? Is it up in your shoulders? And how deep is that breath? Is it shallow and short and fast? Or is it deep and long? And even as I'm thinking about my breath right now, you probably just noticed that my voice changed, the quality of my voice changed, the speed that I'm talking at changed, and all of that is just from noticing my breath. I'm gonna give you a very quick exercise. We're not gonna do it together, but this is a pretty easy thing to do and walk yourself through. So the first thing that you do is close your eyes and then do a body scan. So this involves bringing attention to your feet, your legs, your hips, your torso, your shoulders and arms, your neck and your head, and doing it slowly. And as you're doing this body scan, noticing what you're feeling, you know, noticing if there's tension, noticing if there's tightness, uh, noticing is one shoulder higher than the other? Um, am I sitting evenly in my chair? And it's a really simple, quick way to get back in tune with your body. Now, the final thing that I want you to try is talking to your body and asking your body questions. And you're gonna start this very simply by asking your body questions that have a yes or no answer. Our bodies are kind of primitive in that way. When we get more nuanced answers, like you know, I was talking about clear cognizance, we're not purely connecting with the body at that point, we're talking to our body and our intuition, which uh, depending on you know your belief system, we could say that the intuition comes from spirit or uh source or the universe or God. But by being more in tune with our bodies, it is easier to get in tune with that wisdom. So we're gonna learn how to talk to your body in a very quick way, and I'm gonna walk you through this whole process inside this free video training that I've put together for you. It is called Body Centered Decision Making, and you can grab it at the embodiedwaycoach.com /listen to your body. And this little training is gonna take about 20 minutes, but it's gonna teach you how to start asking your body before you make decisions. And what's really cool about this is very rarely is the decision that comes from my body the same as the decision that comes from my mind. And the more I've practiced asking my body, the more tuned in I am to my body. So sometimes I don't have to close my eyes to get an answer. Uh sometimes I can just feel it because I've learned what does yes feel like in my body and what does no feel like in my body. And this is really powerful, and I want you to have this as well. And that's where we're gonna leave things today. So I always invite you to connect with me about what I'm talking about on each episode. And I love to know what's resonating with you, how you're implementing what you're learning. So you can come join the conversation on my Substack, which is at theembodiedway.substack.com. Or you can come and chat with me on my podcast blog, which is the embodiedwaycoach.com /podcast. Thank you so much for listening to the Embodied Way Podcast. I'm just getting started, and early listeners like you really make a difference in helping other creatives find my show. Subscribe now to be the first to know when I share new episodes each Friday. And while you're at it, please leave a review. Until next Friday, have a restful week.