SELF-IMPROVEMENT

How Can You Trust Your Body Whilst Also Challenging Your Mind?

Day 44, 50 questions for deep self-reflection

Trigger Warning: Psychological exploration and personal growth — everything here is a reflection of self only. If you are triggered, please stop reading immediately. Always put your own mental health first!

What does it mean to challenge one’s mind? What does it mean to trust one’s body? The answers to those questions are on a spectrum of perception and possibility. As a writer who trusts their characters to tell their stories, I had never considered the possible impacts of my own mind/body connection. Until today.

This is day 44 of the 50 Questions for Deep Self-Reflection challenge from Know Thyself Heal Thyself created by Diana C.

DAY FORTY-FOUR: How can you trust your body whilst also challenging your mind?

When I released the need to follow the rules of doing this challenge every day for 50 consecutive days, I gave myself permission to move forward to the next lesson only when I am ready and able to see beyond my current beliefs. Growth isn’t only in education, it’s also (and more so) in the readiness to absorb new awareness with the understanding that it’s just one more layer. So, I trust my intuition to direct me back here, when I’m ready. And I understand why today’s question punched me in the guts. That’s the journey!

What is the question really asking?

Allow me to preface by saying that the beauty in this challenge is in the individual perception of the question. Understanding a question is already a process of reflection and self-awareness. For me, I perceive this question as asking me how I can take the trust in intuition I’m developing (because it is a WIP) and apply it elsewhere (to my physicality) while also continuing to develop and grow that intuitive connection.

Let’s re-word for my perception and current awareness.

How can I learn to trust my physical apparatus whilst also allowing intuition?

In my perception of the question, I guess I’m already suggesting that the answer must have something to do with trusting my physical body to respond to my intuition. Now, that was interesting, because my mind was thinking, “…trusting my physical body’s intuitive cues and checking in with intuition”, but I let my fingers (my physical apparatus) type and what it wrote was so much better.

…trusting my physical body to respond to my intuition.

And this is what I mean by your own perception of a question being part of the reflection and learning. I just had a huge realization. Because, I am a writer. Well, I am a meat sack through which my characters write their stories. And because I call myself the meat sack, I am allowing the physical apparatus (meat sack) to move in response to intuition (my characters' voices). I already knew that part, but the realization was that it is when I try to control the meat sack that things go wrong. I thought it was in trying to control the characters, but it’s not at all, because they can’t be controlled. I can only control the meat sack. Huh! So, I need to stop doing that.

Back to the question

How can you trust your body whilst also challenging your mind?

• By allowing it to flow as easily as my mind (hmm, interesting. I wonder, can the state of flow apply also to the body? I don’t see why not. Sportspeople and Olympians surely feel flow. Great new insight — good job me!)
• By giving it over completely to my characters to use as they need (oh, I got some laughs and interest throughout my character collective at that one)
• By knowing when to ask my kids (a.k.a. characters) to give the meat sack a break (boy, isn’t that one important? But funnily, I think this question is also prompting me to consider if perhaps burnout, overwhelm, and exhaustion are symptoms of not allowing that connective flow in the first place. Like a car spinning its tires).

Are our bodies and minds connected or drifting in opposite directions? No matter the response, what does that even mean? For me, this question has been a valuable and timely exploration (as they always are) and I’ve discovered that perhaps it was never my lack of trust in intuition that got in the way. Perhaps, in all these years, I just needed to trust my body to respond to intuition. How do you perceive this question, and how can it help you uncover another layer of your best experience?

If you are interested in the journey so far — all the days that came before, I’ve collected all the article links here:

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