Learning to Listen to My Body (the Gut Center)
Sometimes you just know. Our Gut Center speaks the language of sensing and instinctive inner knowing. As a professional researcher, I rely heavily on accumulating knowledge and data. I let my Head Center lead me through most situations. However, when I became sick with cancer, I intuitively knew that to survive, I needed to break habits and do things differently. Something in me knew that I needed to trust my Gut and engage my intuition to get through this dark time.
What I didn’t know was that engaging my Gut — my innate sense of inner knowing — would so radically change the way I moved through life. I don’t know that I would have gained this perspective had it not been for the gift and hardship of cancer. Different from both the cognitive (Head) and the intuitive and interconnected (Heart), the Gut provides an instinctive, inner knowing. Gut instincts, by definition, aren’t learned the same way that Head knowledge is. Still, I needed to learn how to listen and trust my instincts, something I had never really done before.
It is a challenge to describe with words what is happening when we get messages from our gut. How do you explain, “I just know!”? Our gut center is mysterious and perhaps magical in this way. It is also fascinating to explore, and one the most exhilarating parts of life.
Body Wisdom
When I was sick, I learned a big part of trusting my gut meant paying attention to what was happening in my body. For most of my life, and certainly during the early phases of my cancer experience, I learned what was happening to my body from my doctors. They would communicate with my body, extract information, and then translate back to me. They would listen in mysterious and elusive ways: biopsies, tests, MRIs, scans, chemotherapy, drugs, and blood draws. Then, they would wait and listen again to see if anything had changed.
“Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.”
I knew I couldn’t communicate with my body at the same level as my doctors. I didn’t have their expertise, so I relied on my doctors to tell me what my body was doing (and to tell me what that meant). Despite the fact that the danger was inside of my body, never before had I felt so little connection to it. I’m reminded of the James Joyce quote from his collection of stories in Dubliners: “Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.” I have often felt like Mr Duffy. Leaning on my Head Center for stability, I became completely disconnected from my own body. My ears were bent toward the doctors, waiting for them to provide explanations that I could understand (through my Head Center). This went on for months. As is often the case, the catalyst for learning how to listen to my Gut came from experiencing what happened when I didn’t.
No more. My body says no more. The transformative moment came during one of my hospital stays. I was sick with an infection that developed after a surgery. I was packed in ice and running a fever of 104 degrees. My white blood cell count was dangerously low and had been for days. I believed I was dying. Early on, a nurse came in to give me a shot to keep me from getting blood clots. I remember recoiling and feeling a constriction in my body before the needle even entered my skin. After that, the nurses would come into my room every few hours and put needles in my thigh, like clockwork. When my left thigh became black and blue from the injections, they moved to my right thigh. When that thigh was too bruised to continue, they moved to my stomach. The pain was unbearable, but I thought I had no choice but to take it. Take the pain, take the bruises, take the stress. The nurses kept coming, but my body was screaming at me to make it stop.
Finally, I listened. The next time the nurse came in the room with the needle I cried out, “No. No more. My body says no more.” And you know what happened? The nurse said, “That’s okay, I understand.” And she left. That was it. It turned out that these incredibly painful injections were good, but not required. They weren’t the difference between healing and not. They were a standard, but there is no standard human body. When the situation changes, the medical staff can adapt. Without my intervention, without speaking up for my body, they never would have known.
Living in your body
When I can live in my body, versus a short distance away from my body, I have more clarity when it is getting worn down, sick, thirsty or in need of rest. Have you ever truly paid attention to what it feels like in your body when you are too tired to continue? How do you know? What is the very first indicator? If I’m in tune with the first signs of sickness, I’ve found I can ward off sickness or other attackers sooner and minimize the blow. Essentially, this is shamanism. It’s simply paying attention to the way our bodies naturally communicate with us rather than ignoring the reality of our physical capabilities and limitations.
It took me some time to recognize that the voice of my Gut sounds different than a cognitive or emotional reaction. Many of my reactions are learned behaviors created from my ego, caused by the stories I tell myself in my Head. It has taken me time to develop this inner knowing and to decipher when I am hearing from the wisdom of my Gut, or the stories in my Head (sometimes useful, sometimes not), or the emotions and connections in my Heart. The more I practice tuning in, the more I find I can listen and understand.
Stop fighting
Just this morning while on a run, I felt twinges of pain in my lower abdomen. I noticed it, but ignored it. After all, I had a busy day planned and a meeting I was looking forward to. Mostly, I was annoyed. A stomachache would interfere with my plans. I was also mulling over my plans for this article. The discord stopped me in my tracks. I thought, “Here I go again! I have a literal pain in my gut, and I’m not listening to it.“ As the pain intensified, I instinctively knew what I needed to do. I had to cancel the meeting I was looking forward to. But the second I sent the email, my body responded. The pain subsided a little. I went and got into bed and stayed still. My stomach responded and the pain subsided even further.
Before cancer, I thought of pain and discomfort as something I needed to conquer and control, and I still catch myself reacting to unwanted sensations as if they can be overcome by pushing through. And this is what the world tells us to do: defeat, dull, ignore, and push through. But each time we do this, we declare war on our bodies.
Perhaps it’s time to stop fighting, and instead, learn to listen. Paying attention to my body’s wisdom and trusting my Gut is a powerful source of wisdom that is easy to forget in our busy and achievement-driven culture. Today, I invite you to tune in to your Gut and invite it into your Internal Board of Directors when you are facing tough times.
How to Listen
Listening to our Gut requires presence. Paying attention to our senses is a powerful way to begin to communicate with our Gut. Try this simple exercise each day and you will connect into your own body’s wisdom and what it means to trust your gut.
My five senses are one of the most direct paths to connect me to my body. Try this simple exercise, called 5–4–3–2–1:
What are five things that I see right now? Look intently at them.
What are four things that I can feel right now? Touch them.
What are three things that I can hear right now? Listen to them.
What are two things I can smell right now? Smell them.
What is one thing I can taste right now? Savor it.
In a related article, “Enneamania” and Three-Centered Leadership™, I introduce the idea of Three-Centered Leadership, which is built on the ancient idea of engaging each of our inherent centers of intelligence (Head, Heart and Gut) and combining their powers to tackle the many challenges life throws at us.
