Beware the giant walking head
Those of us who work in cognitively demanding roles are SOOOO good at using our heads: we are smart, we are resourceful, we can problem solve, we can research, learn, strategize and synthesize 'til the cows come home!
AND because we are so good at using our brains, a lot of us -- maybe most of us -- can fall into the trap of becoming giant walking heads.
What do I mean by that? We default into seeing our bodies as purely the vehicle, the meat suit, that carries our brains around. And unless our body gets sick, we pay very little attention to it because we are so busy in our giant heads.
And we're missing so much intelligence when we do that. We are ignoring so much wisdom.
We're also missing a massive opportunity to take good care of ourselves so that we CAN do the work that matters to us. So that we can show up fully with the people we care about at work and at home.
Our bodies are sending us millions of signals every day and I believe they are here to HELP, to support us, to guide us.
And yet so many of us treat them like an afterthought or even a hindrance to our work.
I think athletic training is a great example of this - say you're training for a marathon, you've got a well thought out training plan and you're ready to go. You are putting in the work.
Then you start noticing your shins are a bit sore, especially early in your runs. If you keep ignoring that signal and do nothing, it's an excellent bet the problem is going to get worse, and they will get more and more sore. What may have started with mild shin splints finally escalates to a stress fracture and now you can't run at all.
Us amateur athletes often learn the hard way what experienced pros know intimately: pay attention to any niggles early, ease up on training temporarily and/or make some changes, maybe get a massage or do some PT, and you can avoid season-ending injury.
But our bodies aren't just important pieces of the puzzle when we're working out!
Learning to tune into our bodies and finding practices that work for us to drop out of our giant heads and into our bodies is possible -- and gives us access to so much inherent, intuitive wisdom that we completely miss out on we are busy running through the pain and telling ourselves "it's nothing."
(Breathwork is a great way to start reconnecting to our bodies! Because breathing is a direct line to our nervous system, the act of doing breathwork — even just for a few minutes — can take us out of giant head mode and get us into our bodies.)
