(Sonia Choquette)

This is a very powerful question, “what does my body NEED right now?” But it’s also a very difficult question to answer as it requires being able to quiet the chatter of your mind and to learn how to deeply listen to the whispers of your soul. I ask myself this question most days, particularly on the tougher days and really listen for the answers, as I have learned the hard way that the body is a temple, what we put in, we get out and it deserves to be treated with tenderness, care, kindness, understanding and love.

It seems that over the last few decades, we are being conditioned to just keep going, to keep pushing on with life, with work, with family, without taking much time to consider the effect of this erratic and demanding way of living on our bodies. I personally have never been taught (before introducing Mindfulness, Kindness and Compassion into my life) to praise my body, to listen to my body and to its subtle or not so subtle signs and messages that it continuously sends to my heart and soul. Before this, I would have found it absurd to actually ask my body what it ‘NEEDS’ in any moment and even more absurd to listen and hear the responses to this question, until I learned the importance and power of doing just this!

So why do we find self-love, self-care, self-compassion and self-kindness for our bodies or indeed our minds so difficult? I guess it’s because, it can be a daunting and unfamiliar experience to turn ‘WITHIN’ ourselves, to tune into the fine frequencies deep within our hearts and souls. It can be uncomfortable for many of us to get to know our ‘true selves’, our ‘true souls’ as we are so used to just making and pushing our bodies to perform, to operate, to live. It takes courage to confront, to calm, quieten and disconnect from the stories and uncertainties that our minds will always try to convince us of. A quote I love to illustrate this is:

“Go inside and listen to your body, because your body will never lie to you. Your mind will play tricks, but the way you feel in your heart, in your guts, is the truth”

(Miguel Ruiz)

So what can we expect to hear back from our body when we ask it ‘what it NEEDS right now?’ The most common replies will most likely be sleep, better rest times, balanced nutrition, water, exercise, quiet time to rest your mind, time to spend with family and friends, time to spend in nature, time to connect with and care for ourselves and others. I feel that by continuously checking in with and tuning into our body and granting it whatever it is that it truly needs in any moment, we can live a more balanced life in the mind, body and soul. We can learn how to delicately protect our body by honouring it through active listening and therefore, we can prevent it from getting to a stage where we crack, we break, we fall apart as we are burned out. A quote to illustrate this is:

“If you listen to your body when it whispers, you won’t have to hear it scream”

(Project Happiness)

Once you learn the art of connecting with and listening deeply to your body and its messages and signals, the next part of the process is to learn to honour your body by letting go of all the pressures we regularly put on ourselves, the demands, the expectations and just ‘grant’ your body whatever it is that it needs. This is by far the hardest part because it requires making space and time in your day, in your life, for self-care and respect, in what ever shape or form that works for you. But this is the most magical part of the equation! As you listen more to what your body is telling you and as you actively implement its suggestions, you are honouring and taking care of yourself on a deep, personal, intimate level and your body will respond by helping you to feel empowered, energised, compassionate and deeply connected to your soul and you will be able to live more peacefully, with inner calmness and an enriched and nourished respect for your amazing body!

A thought to leave you with:

“Take Care
Rest your mind to stay healthy
Rest your brain to think positive
Rest your soul to keep your body alive”

(Diya)

How to ASK, LISTEN TO and RESPECT ‘what your body NEEDS right now’:

The following is a guide on how to ASK, LISTEN TO and RESPECT ‘what your body NEEDS right now’:

• During the normal moments of your day, form the habit of asking yourself ‘what does my body NEED right now?‘
• Listen intently and notice any guidance or signs that your body may send you in response. If you feel that something is not working for you at the moment, this is your ‘gut instinct’, your ‘soul’ communicating with you. You just need to really tune in and listen.
• Be courageous and respectful in granting your body whatever it is that it needs in any moment. If it is sleep, then make time to take an extra rest in your day or to go to bed earlier. If it is better food choices, tune into how the foods you eat make you feel. If it is fresh air, make time to spend some time outdoors.
• Notice any signs or signals from your body that you may be overloaded, you may be under too much stress and pressure. Your body may need you to do absolutely nothing, to just let yourself be as you are in your moment. If this is the case, trust that you are enough and grant your body what it needs.
• Express appreciation to your body for the incredible work it does to keep you alive every day. Develop a deep and nurtured connection with your body so that you can hear the whispers of your soul.

Noticing and tuning into the beauty in nature

Thank you as always to Brian O’Loughlin at The Westmeath Examiner and his team at Celtic Media Group (https://www.anglocelt.ie/, https://www.con-telegraph.ie/, https://www.meathchronicle.ie/, https://www.offalyindependent.ie/, https://www.westmeathexaminer.ie/ and https://www.westmeathindependent.ie/ for all their wonderful help!

As published by The Celtic Media Group w/c 22/2/2021

The answer is very simple! You create a time and space in your day, each day and you learn to sit with yourself. You learn to breathe with yourself. You learn to listen to yourself, encourage, motivate and empower yourself. You learn to nurture and care for yourself and most importantly, you learn to love yourself, from the inside out.

Learning to love yourself is without doubt a very challenging task. So many of us cannot bring ourselves to give a compliment to ourselves or others and are even worse at accepting a compliment from someone else. It is an instinct for our egos to take over and intercept before we graciously let ourselves blush in confidence and pride. How many times has someone said to you “wow, you look great, have you lost weight?” How many of us have answered “oh well I could do with losing a lot more!”. This is the ego sabotaging our good work and rail roading our progress. Wouldn’t it be a completely different scenario to reply to the same question by saying “thank you so much, I feel really great at the moment?” A completely different concept really.

My ethos is based around ‘healing ourselves from the inside out’. This is how I transformed my own life. There was a point in my life where I could not stand or sit in my own presence for even a few minutes. I continuously distracted myself with housework that ‘needed’ to be done or calls that ‘needed’ to be made. Anything was easier than having to be present with just myself. So how could I possibly heal or transform myself? I needed to get to know ‘the real me’. I needed to give my mind, body and emotions time to disconnect from each other, repair individually and then reconnect with one another. They needed to reconnect with me, as a communicative and functioning being.

I found the analogy of a butterfly’s life cycle so empowering and healing during this stage of my life. When you think about it, does the caterpillar ever think it will transform after complete metamorphosis into a beautiful free flying, free spirited butterfly? We will never know. But I do know that during this difficult stage of my life, I could never see myself as anything past that caterpillar stage. I felt so uncomfortable in my own skin, so full up of past trauma’s, worries, anxieties and fears that I was about to burst. Just like a caterpillar shedding its skin five times before entering its Pupa stage, letting go of the excess plants it had eaten so that it could become more comfortable and lighter in its own skin, I needed to shed layers of my own demons before I could start my transformation.

To do this, I meditated daily, enjoyed yoga, filled numerous notebooks by gratitude journaling, spent a lot of time walking outside with Mother Earth and started to speak kinder to myself. I accepted with compassion the difficult thoughts, the fears, the days which did not seem to go as I wished. I grew to accept and gained comfort from knowing that I was never going to be perfect, I am only human after all. As humans, we will never be perfect, what is perfect anyway? We and life are continually changing and evolving and so we are always on a continuous learning path. We may never be perfect, but we can learn to enjoy the journey.

Upon shedding and letting go of excess baggage, the butterfly then enters its Cocooning stage, it’s protective stage. This is a period of self-growth, of transformation. I used this period of my life as a protective time of self-recovery, of retreat, of reflection and of personal connection. Once I had shed my baggage, I used this time to restructure my mind, to reinvent my thoughts in a positive, kind and compassionate manner. This was a very intimate phase in my healing journey. It was a stage where I wanted to be cocooned with only me, with only my new positive and nurturing mindset and with my new understanding and compassionate way of living.

Slowly over time, my protective cocoon started to break open. I was becoming free. Free of my previous thoughts, memories, anxieties and I was now ready to launch myself and to fly high in life. This is the last stage in a butterfly’s life cycle. Now ready to propel itself into nature as a newly mature butterfly. It breaks free of its cocoon and takes a leap of faith as it waits for its wings to start flapping and flying. This beautiful butterfly completely unrecognisable from the bulging caterpillar a short while before, now a life completely transformed, completely renewed, oozing with an abundance of clarity, of hope, of dreams, of influence, of happiness and of health.

Another interesting concept to think about; ‘can a butterfly fly with only one wing?’ I wouldn’t fancy its chances. We can apply this theory to ourselves in creating and or enhancing our own healing journey or life transformation. Think of one of the butterfly’s wings as comprising of Kindness and Compassion for ourselves and others. Think of the second of the butterfly’s wings as comprising of Mindfulness. Just like the butterfly needing both of its wings to fly, we need Kindness, Compassion and Mindfulness to aid, enhance and facilitate our own personal transformation, healing and life journey.

We can envisage ourselves needing both these wings of Kindness, Compassion and Mindfulness to work together, in sync with one another, in an agreeable and equally effective rhythm in order for us to fly high in our own lives. We are all equally capable of entering a cycle of transformation in our own personal journeys. I guess some of us will decide to do it sooner than others and others will do it later in their lives but maybe at a different pace. There are no rules. Just like every butterfly, we can decide when we are ready to enter our protective cocooning stage and ultimately when we are ready to emerge as a newly transformed being.

We all have this innate ability to develop this deeply intimate relationship with ourselves, to deeply connect with ourselves and to learn to love who we are and to love who we can transform into. The question is, ‘are you ready to spread your wings of Kindness, Compassion and Mindfulness and soar high above your expectations? Are you ready to heal and transform yourself from the inside out?’

Leona McDonnell

(As published in the Westmeath Examiner Newspaper on 16-6-2020 and in
The Anglo Celt and The Meath Chronicle Newspaper on 17-6-2020)