Episode 6: Learning to Listen to Your Body

I want to share a story about how I learned to listen to my own body and its wisdom. One year after I gave birth to my second child by c-section due to a miss diagnosis of herpes, I found myself pregnant again with my third child. The trauma I had experience with my second pregnancy was still raw. You see, I gave birth on February 13, 1979 to my second son…and the next day, Valentine’s Day February 14th still in the hospital recovering from major abdominal surgery, the nurse came into my room smiling and happy… she had a beautiful bouquet of roses from my mother and she was grinning from ear to ear… She said she had news…

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In fact, she said, “I have really good news” we just got your lab work back and you don’t have herpes! To say that I felt betrayed would be an understatement! My already overwhelmed and traumatized body breathed a sigh of grief and joy for the confusing message I had just received! So, I didn’t have herpes! That was good news!! BUT I had just endured major abdominal surgery and my poor child had been deprived of his birthright to an undisturbed vaginal birth. I felt devastated, angry and sad! Three months later I moved my little family to Alaska.

By 1980, I was living in Alaska with 1- and 2-year-old boys at my side, I discovered that I was pregnant again. At this time, I was an active midwife. I really didn’t think I could handle another child, much less a pregnancy and birth. Someday, I will tell you the details of my third child’s birth, but for today I just want to share with you how I learned, by using this pregnancy and birth, to listen to my own body.

Learning to understand the signals that your body sends can help you be a healthier more well-adjusted mother. Today we will explore how pregnancy can be a great time to develop a better relationship with your body and its needs. Next, I will show you how to listen to your body. And finally, we will explore how listening to your body can help you take better care of yourself and become a happier, healthier person

When a woman is pregnant, she has heightened body wisdom that is influenced by her Nero-biology. Hormones like estrogen, progesterone, drive the changes in her brain structure and function during pregnancy. Hormones can exert a powerful influence on brain cells, and no time in a person’s life produces more extreme hormone fluctuations than pregnancy. A first-of-its-kind study has revealed that the architecture of women's brains changes strikingly during their first pregnancy, in ways that last for at least 2 years. In particular, gray matter shrinks in areas involved in processing and responding to social signals. In 2016, a team of researchers from the Netherlands and Spain used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study what happens inside the brain during pregnancy. Comparing MRI images taken before women became pregnant with images taken after they had given birth, the researchers found pregnancy shrinks the brain’s gray matter. What’s more, the volume loss persisted for at least two years after childbirth. While losing gray matter might seem detrimental, the effect may be quite the opposite. “Everybody always thinks of volume loss as something negative, as a loss of function,” says Doctor Elseline Hoekzema, a neuroscientist from the Netherlands and lead author of the study. But volume loss can also represent a “fine-tuning of connections.” She compares the change to what happens in the teenage brain when a flood of hormones triggers widespread pruning of synapses, the

connections between nerve cells. This makes for more efficient, streamlined brain circuits. Hoekzema concluded, that pregnancy creates a more finely tuned “mommy brain” that is hyper focused on her own needs and the needs of her baby.

How exactly do you actually listen to your body? For many people it can be pretty awkward to tune into their body. It can't be easy to tune into your body, and be aware of what it needs, when you’re running around taking care of work, school, and other people. Many of us have learned some pretty useless ways of living that make it hard to tune into our bodies. We tend to ignore or deny things that make us uncomfortable. Sometimes we get stuck in an emotional state and it can be challenging to let it go, instead of listening we get mad or try to numb the feeling with drugs or alcohol. Our modern, fast passed lifestyles do not support tuning in and listening to what our bodies are saying.

There are several tools that we can develop and use to tune into what our bodies are saying. One of these is our maternal intuition. Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without resorting to conscious reasoning. During your pregnancy you can learn to trust your intuition. When I became pregnant for the 3ed time I relied heavily on my maternal intuition to guide me, because my conscious mind was screaming, “I can’t do this, again!” By tuning into my maternal intuition, I was guided to the real needs of my other children and myself, and I found the wisdom to care for everyone. It is said that pain is the body's way of speaking to us. If we learn how to decipher this language, we can hear our bodies more clearly and therefore treat ourselves better.

Today I want to share with you the number one tool I used to tune in and listen to my body. I learned to meditate very early in my life. The discipline of my practice, taught me how to quiet my mind and tune into my breath and body. The language of body (somatic) wisdom gives us signals as to our real needs. Get in tune with the flow of your breath. Pay attention to the ways you tense up or relax. Learn to breathe deeply, especially when you are anxious. Move in ways that feel good for your body. Make room for all your emotions in a healthy way. By bringing your awareness to your breath and listening to your body you will learn to identify what your bodies different sensations are saying. It is important to be respectful of the demand’s pregnancy puts on your body.

Learning to listen to your body is an important skill for all people, but especially when you are pregnant. Pregnancy and motherhood will provide you with opportunities to develop the skills needed to tune into yourself. Do you need to rest? Are you getting enough support? How is your nutrition? All of these things are the ways that your body uses somatic messages to get your attention and turn your focus inward to your own needs.

In conclusion, Pregnancy can be a great time to develop a better relationship with your body and its needs. The habit of listening to your body can help you take better care of yourself and become a happier, healthier person. Learning to listen to your body during your pregnancy is a skill that will help you in all areas of life to be more successful.

If your interested in learning how to meditate, I have a simple instructional video link in the show notes to get you started.