"Listen to your body" is a phrase we hear often, but rarely feel.
For a long time, I treated it like a box to tick so I wouldn't crash. I didn't see it as a relationship. I didn't realise my body was constantly speaking to me through the language of sensation—the sadness, the tension, the held breath.
Through therapy, plant-based medicine, meditation, and circles that held me, I began to find my way back. I learnt what safety with another person feels like—what it means when your nervous system can finally rest in someone else's presence.
"There is a knowing your body holds before it ever reaches your words."
The language of the self
I learned the technical terms first. Proprioception—knowing where you are in space. Interoception—sensing your internal state. My intellectually geared mind needed these definitions before allowing my body to show me what they meant; that there's a difference between the map and the territory.
Knowledge about the body is the framework. Knowledge through the body is the lived experience. One is information, the other is inhabiting that information.
What this looks like
Clinician Deb Dana talks about neuroception—the way our nervous systems detect safety or threat beneath conscious awareness. It isn't a thought, it's a physiological response.
This is your chest tightening when you walk into a room, your shoulders dropping when you sit with someone who truly sees you. This is your body reading the environment.
The paradox of modern wellness
Today, we're flooded with information. We have neuroscience terms for every ache and wearable tech to track every heartbeat. We know more about our bodies than ever before. Yet many of us feel deeply disconnected from them.
"We try to optimise our way into a state of being that's actually found through relationship and belonging."
We practice solo protocols in quiet rooms, forgetting that safety isn't a thought-pattern you can force—it's a state the nervous system remembers when it feels supported by another's presence.
The way back
We were never meant to navigate this alone.
We learn safety through co-regulation—through proximity to nervous systems that are already regulated. For most of human history, this happened naturally. The first "therapists" weren't practitioners with degrees. They were the elders, the aunties, the steady neighbours.
We learned what safety felt like by being near those who were already grounded. We learned to hold our big emotions by being around those who could remain present with theirs.
"Our nervous systems are mirrors. We find our way back to ourselves through the steady presence of others."
But we lost this in the move towards industrialisation and urban isolation. We didn't just lose connection to the seasons—we lost the consistent proximity to the very thing that helps us regulate: each other.
Modern medicine has given us life-saving gifts. But we also lost that quiet, ancestral transmission of safety that happens body-to-body. We traded the village for systems of external expertise, and forgot that some knowledge doesn't come through protocols. It comes through presence.
What your body already knows
Your body isn't a problem to solve or a machine to fix. It already knows when it's tired. It knows the difference between the discomfort of growth and the warning of harm. It knows when you're "resting" but your mind is still preparing for the next task.
The work isn't about acquiring more information. It's about unlearning the habit of overriding your instincts. Noticing the tension in your jaw during a difficult conversation. Honouring the drop in your energy when something feels off in a relationship. Recognising that numbness or shutting down isn't weakness—it's your nervous system protecting you when things feel like too much.
"Sometimes the hardest part isn't hearing what your body is saying. It's creating the conditions where it feels safe enough to speak."
I sit with people who can explain everything about their nervous system. They name their patterns. They've read the books on co-regulation. They understand the theory. But there's a vast territory between understanding what your body is trying to tell you and actually being able to receive it.
That space—where you can name the theory but still feel disconnected from the felt experience—is where the real work happens. It's not about learning more. It's about building enough safety that your body doesn't need to protect you from what it already knows.
Sometimes that requires the steady presence of another person. Someone who can be with you in the places where you've learned to leave yourself. Who won't rush you towards resolution before you've had time to notice what's happening in your chest, your throat, your belly. Someone whose nervous system is regulated enough that yours can begin to remember what it feels like to rest.
The invitation
Embodied knowing isn't an achievement. It's a return.
Your body has been speaking all along. First in whispers, then in shouts. Chronic fatigue, tension, burnout—often just the body's way of calling us back to ourselves.
You don't need to manage or hack your way to healing. You just need to arrive.
"Your body already knows the way home. The question isn't whether you're listening. It's whether you feel safe enough to hear."