Fit Soul Chapter 16 - How To Listen To Your Body

Hey, welcome to fit soul Chapter 16 Chapter 16 this is Ben Greenfield and every week I release to you a brand new chapter from my book Fit Soul, which you can also get for free@fitsoulbook.com that's fitsoulbook.com and today we are in chapter 16. Chapter 16 how to listen to your body your body is intelligent. It sends you subtle messages and cues about your state of stress and readiness. That is, if you learn to listen, can save you from injury, illness and even chronic disease. As author Syer G. Writes in his book Regenerate and Jeffrey Rediger and Cured, your body can, when immersed in the correct, nourishing and loving environment, repair and renew itself very much unlike a car which would never spontaneously repair a dent, faulty wiring or a worn brake pad. By tuning in and listening to the messages your body sends you each day, whether regarding fitness, food, relationships or business decisions, you can enhance your ability to be an expert pilot of the finely tuned and intricately design craft that is your human form. On the contrary, if you rely purely upon self quantifying wearable devices and take an all too popular modern biohacking and data driven approach to listening to the body, you can often miss those subtle cues from your body and ironically grow more distant from being able to care for yourself as intelligently as you could. Anyone who relies upon a sleep device like a whoop or a dream or bio strap for self quantification knows what I mean. You might wake well rested, refreshed and energized from what you thought was an amazing night of sleep. But upon glancing at your wearables metrics, you're suddenly confronted with a screen that warns you that your deep sleep was 10% lower than usual and that you had an abnormally high nighttime heart rate. Thus, your readiness for the day is supposedly quite low. Bubble burst, right? The placebo effect of being told by a computer that you're not rested can fill you with a sense of stress and unrest and influences you to make a decision to put the brakes on anything mildly stressful or meaningfully productive for the day, causing you to instead choose to take a look, long nap, skip a meeting, or forego a workout. Of course, the opposite is also true. You might wake with a sore and tired body craving a cup of strong coffee and feeling as though you barely slept a wink. But when you glance at your sleep app's feedback, it shows you a giant thumbs up with a congratulatory gold star for sleep and tells you to go crush the day. So you venture forth, push through tiredness and experience a somewhat unproductive and unpleasant day as you fight through fatigue because, well, your computer told you you were just fine. What a conundrum. As any regular reader of some of my more edgy scientific fitness or recovery content knows, I'm not against self quantification, wearables and informed feedback from the impressive variety of devices that can easily track body temp, heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, sleep cycles and a host of other metrics. Metrics that can, often with laser like precision, inform you as to the general status of your physiological state. Yet constant plugged in reliance upon these devices is the sole source of your decision making about training, recovery, business, food and more can ironically distance you from the ability to be able to pay attention to and develop an intimate relationship with the innate intelligence God built into your body and the signals that's sending you. So how do you know? How do you know if that mental resistance to go exercise is just you being lazy or a true sign that you shouldn't train or should opt for something more restorative like yoga or the sauna? How do you know if that dread of placing a heavy barbell on your shoulders for a back squat is because your body doesn't need the chaos, damage or overtraining that might create on an anatomical or physiolo level? Or whether your body is instead just resisting discomfort and the orderliness, strength and stability that hard squat day might create for you? How do you know if you're craving carbs due to an addiction to sugar or the need for a quick dopamine hit, or to drown feelings of bitterness and remorse, or whether your body is actually asking you for a much needed refill of liver or muscle glycogen stores? How do you know if you truly need more sleep or if you're just avoiding a tough workday, you're depressed or you're procrastinating in bed? How do you know if you desire that glass of wine as a palate cleanser and an enjoyable part of a well balanced meal, or if you want that hit on a vape pen for a whiff of the flavor and relaxing properties of the cannabis plant, or if you're numbing pain and escaping via some exogenous substance? Well, while self quantification metrics can certainly help in these situations, they can't identify feelings like pain, depression, laziness and anger that well, at least. And they can also remove you from being able to truly listen to your body and understand in a deeper, more intuitive and ancestral way what your body is really trying to tell you. This in and of itself is quite ironic, because this fascinating and complex interweb of flesh, fascia, blood and bones is what houses your spirit and soul and enables you to live your very purpose. Yet, like a cyclist who can't change a flat tire or an airline pilot who doesn't know how to read the cockpit instrumentation, you often have no clue about your state of health because you simply haven't come to know your body and listen to your body without the help of technology. So how do you listen to your body? Embrace stillness, embrace silence when you wake, spend a few extra moments in bed breathing, wiggling your toes, wiggling your fingers and tuning into your body. Before a workout or a stressful event, take a deep, centering breath in through your nose, then out through slightly pursed lips. Before you grab a handful of almonds or a cup of coffee or a chunk of dark chocolate, Pause and take a few more deep breaths. Are you truly hungry or thirsty? Or are you simply drowning yourself with a temporary caloric distraction throughout the day? Continue this habit. Step away from the computer. Turn off the podcasts, audiobooks, music and all the background noise and just ask your body, how are you? Then be still for several seconds and listen to the subtle internal, intuitive cues of your heart rate, your muscle tension, your gut fullness, and your breath rate. In other words, be as fully present as you can at all times. Read or listen to chapter two of this book. If you don't know how to do that. Ultimately you'll become better at picking up on the subtle clues your body is sending you throughout the day and more intimately familiar with your body, which is all so easy to lose a deep, intimate connection with. Then sure, use your fancy self quantification devices and wearables, but marry that modern science to ancestral wisdom. Don't completely outsource everything to a computer. Learn to step away from the chaos, the numbers, the apps and the screens into the still, small silence and listen to your body well. For more. I also highly recommend you pay attention to chapter 13 of this book about mindful and grateful eating. Listen to my podcast that I'll link to on the resources page. For this chapter with Paul, check about intuitive eating and also read a book called the Yoga of Eating by Charles Eisenstein. All these are fantastic resources and I'll link to them@fitsoulbook.com Chapter 16 that's fitsouellebook.com Chapter 16 in the meantime, are you married to metrics or do you know how to listen to your body too in my opinion, there's no better time of day to practice listening to your body than just before you lay your head to sleep. In the quiet of the night, do you have difficulty relaxing, shutting down, sleeping, or staying asleep at night? Well, then, by all means, pay attention to the next chapter, because we're going to delve into just that. In the meantime, for resources, references, links, and additional reading and listening material for this chapter, you can visit fitsoulbook.com Chapter 16.