As I lay awake at 3:30 this morning taking inventory of my various aches and pains and regretting my snack choice from last night, I began writing this post in my head.  Since that wasn’t helping me get back to sleep and I couldn’t keep my mind on my breathing (a technique that is supposed to help you fall back asleep) I decided to get up and write this one for real.  

When we are young, we live our lives blissfully ignorant of what our bodies are telling us.  We ignore the telltale signs –  like the acne on our teenage faces that appears from consuming too many simple carbs.  For the most part, we can get away with our bad habits because we are young and resilient and heck, acne is a right of passage through those awkward teenage years, right?  We take our bodies for granted as we do a lot of things at that age – as a taken-for-granted parent of a teen, I can attest to that last part.  In our 20′s we are busy thinking about careers and marriage and starting families.  In our 30′s we are too busy dealing with everyone else to pay attention to our bodies.

Now, in my mid to late 40′s, my body is shouting at me. All right, all right, all ready.  I’m paying attention.  After years of disregarding what my body had to say, I’ve got to learn a new language – body language – and I’m not talking about whether having my arms crossed in front of my body when in a crowd indicates that I’m a closed person.  Although that may be the case, that’s not where I’m going with this.  Body language – what our bodies are trying to tell us about the state of our health and how the choices we make affect us.

So here is what my body’s taught me so far.

Right hip pain –  cause:  left hamstring weakness, what to do about it:  those fun hamstring curls we all love so much.  In the Ki Hara resistance stretching course work I’ve taken, we learned that pain in one area is often caused by tightness or weakness in a completely different area and that those imbalances are what cause our injuries.

Back side of right shoulder – cause:  idiocy.  Note to self – never demonstrate the improper way to do something while swinging a kettlebell!  Equally valuable, I also learned more about my body as this injury didn’t want to heal.  That has required a lot more study involving stress hormones, workout intensities, more fine tuning of my diet.  I’m still in the midst of figuring all of that out.

Front side of left shoulder – cause:  I have no idea.  What it has taught me, though, is to really think about keeping that shoulder sucked down into the socket as I move my arm up.  Maybe that’s reason enough for this one to have happened.

Headaches:  cause:  back to hormones and diet.  Dang it my body just doesn’t want me eating chocolate.

A few years ago, my husband read a book out loud to our kids entitled “The Music Lesson:  A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music” by Victor L. Wooten.  One of the parts I remember him reading was when the main character had a headache, his mentor/teacher told him to smile.  A headache is a message from your body telling you that something you did or didn’t do is harming you.  You should smile because your body is getting you to pay attention so you can stop whatever it was that caused the headache, thus protecting yourself.  Plus, if you smile, your pain will lessen.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that the longer you ignore your body, the more things get out of whack, the more complicated it gets trying to figuring out what your body is telling you.

All joking aside, listening to your body can be a life or death decision.  My 43 year old cousin, Sara, died suddenly two weeks ago from heart problems.  In the months leading up to this she hadn’t had any obvious issues that would have lead her to think there was a problem.  She was active and trim.   Just before Memorial Day, she began having chest pain.  She put off visiting the doctor until after Memorial Day because she had too much on her plate to add a doctor’s visit.  The initial test showed nothing obvious, but they scheduled her for a visit with a specialist for a week later.  She never made it to that appointment.  The next day, she was dead.  I don’t know if anything could have been done to prevent this, but I’m pretty sure her body was trying to tell her something.

So hear is a little piece of advise:  listen to your body.  Spend time trying to figure yourself out.  Learn a new language – your body’s language.  Don’t let your busy life drown out the message your body is trying to get across.  Teach your kids to listen to their bodies so perhaps they can catch things before they get complicated.  Next time you have a headache or sore shoulder or knee pain… listen and smile!