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Our bodies are talking to us all the time, and in this episode, we dig deep into how to listen to what they’re saying. Pain isn't just something to push away; it’s actually a teacher, giving us vital info about our well-being. I share my own experiences with body pain and how I've learned to understand the signals my body sends me, even when it doesn't feel like I have control. We’ll explore how ignoring these messages can lead to bigger issues and why tuning in is so important. Let’s take a moment to appreciate our bodies and learn to read the signs they give us!

If you really want to know how to be healthy, more energy and sleep better. Listen to your body. One of our biggest teachers is our own body, yes your body. It is giving you all the information you need to make wise decisions, yet we very often do not listen to it.

In this podcast Steven Webb the host of Stillness in the Storms talks about his body, his paralysed body and how he needs to listen to it a little more deeply than most would have to.

Pain can be more than just a nuisance; it can be a teacher. I want to dive deep into how our bodies communicate with us and how we often ignore these signals. In this podcast, I share my own experiences with pain and how they reflect the messages our bodies are constantly sending. I talk about my paralysis and how it alters my perception of pain. For me, pain isn't always clear because I don't feel it in the same way most people do. Instead, I have to rely on other signs from my body to understand what it's trying to tell me. This journey into understanding my body has taught me that every little discomfort or ache can provide valuable insight into my health and well-being.

Through my stories, I encourage listeners to start tuning into their bodies. I explain how ignoring subtle signs can lead to bigger issues down the road. For example, when I was overweight or eating poorly, my body was sending me hints through fatigue and discomfort. I emphasize the importance of becoming aware of these messages, whether it’s feeling sluggish after a big meal or not being able to focus due to dehydration. Our bodies need us to listen and respond appropriately. By taking the time to understand our physical sensations, we can prevent more significant problems and lead healthier lives.

As we wrap up, I suggest practical ways to start this process of listening to our bodies. Simple practices like taking deep breaths and slowing down can help us become more aware of what our bodies are saying. I invite listeners to engage with their physical sensations, to ask themselves what their pain might be trying to teach them. This approach can lead to a richer understanding of health and well-being, making us more in tune with the most crucial aspect of our lives: our bodies. Let's learn to respect and listen to our bodies, recognizing that pain serves a purpose and can guide us toward better health.

Takeaways:

• Our bodies are like teachers, using pain to communicate important information to us.
• Listening to our bodies can lead to understanding our discomforts and how to address them.
• When we ignore body signals, we risk worsening our health and wellbeing in the long run.
• Taking a moment to breathe and check in with our bodies can reveal valuable insights.

Okay.

So you hear around everywhere about your.

Your pain is your teacher and your perceived enemy is your teacher and all those things.

In this podcast, I want to particularly talk about our bodies and your body, and I want you to look at your body and wonder why that is the teacher and why is your body gives you all the information you need for you to be free of pain.

It doesn't really make sense, but bear with me on this podcast.

I'm Stephen Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms.

And I talk about things that are going to give you a little more inner peace when the world around us is going crazy, when we don't have it and we need it most.

So follow this Podcast Leave a Review if you can click the follow and click the whatever it is on whatever platform you're on, it would be really super awesome.

If you do subscribe to this podcast, that would be amazing and that would leave me with a really good feeling.

We all like to show up and help others.

And if someone clicks on the following or it does make me feel like I'm helping, I'm making a difference.

So let's talk about the body pain.

You know, I'm.

I'm paralyzed just below the neck.

Here's the thing.

I don't feel my body.

So I don't feel when my body is in pain.

I don't feel when in the same sense that you might.

I'll give you an example.

If I'm sat down on in my wheelchair and my carers haven't put my clothes straight, my jeans straight, and I'm sat on a seat, it's going to cause me pain.

Now then what you would do is you would get the information and you would just move a little.

You would just adjust yourself a little.

But because I cannot feel it, I wouldn't know that was giving me pain.

So I wouldn't adjust.

I wouldn't know where the pain was coming from.

So by the end of the day, I would go to bed and I would end up with a pressure sore.

And this pressure sore from a seam could end up bleeding or could end up being really, really bad.

And it has done at times.

But the thing is, as I get older, the more I slow down, the more I take notice of my body.

My body does tell me where and what the pain is, but it doesn't do it in a subtle way.

And it's the same with your body.

It's like a whole different language.

And it's a language that we need to learn.

It's like as if you come across someone that maybe is deaf and they got to do sign language for you, you'd have to learn the sign language to understand what they're saying.

You might get the odd bits and the odd glimpse, especially when they're really mad, you know, if they're really cross and they're angry, you might get the gist of it then.

But in the normal conversation, you would not understand.

And this is the problem with the body.

In the normal body feedback loop, we don't really understand.

We're not listening.

You know, when I was overweight or when I was smoking, my body was subtly telling me in little ways that, you know, this smoking is hurting me.

When I was overweight and eating the wrong things, in subtle ways, my body was telling me in my energy levels, that was information.

If I ate a really large lunch, I would be feeling really sluggish.

By 3, 4 o', clock, I'd be falling asleep.

And if I ate really late in the evening, I probably wouldn't go to sleep or at the wrong things.

My sleep pattern would be terrible.

You know, I now know if I eat cheese shortly before bed, I tend to.

It's not just a myth.

I do tend to have nightmares or it's because it's something heavy the body needs to digest, so I don't go into a deep sleep.

So that's why you end up with nightmares.

Well, that's my theory.

That's based in no evidence whatsoever, just on my evidence, so.

And the ability to repair the body.

So if the next day you're still in pain and you're still struggling and still you're not eating the right foods, your body's telling you this, you know, if your concentration focuses out, your body's telling you, you know, in.

In a subtle way, if you cannot concentrate on things, you're not drinking enough water or you're not eating the right things or you're not doing the right things, you're staying up late and doing all those other things.

We complain we cannot focus or we cannot stay awake or we can't do those things and yet we don't look at the reasons why.

But my body has this system now, then it's a broken system because if I get any kind of pain or like I said earlier, sat on a crease, my blood pressure starts to go up slowly and it makes me feel uncomfortable.

I get tingly cheeks in my face.

I always have to say in my face.

Because if I say I get tingly cheeks, it's like, which ones?

No, in my Face, let's keep it.

Keep it above a certain level.

And my lips go a little bit blue and they tingle a little bit as well.

You know, I get a headache and I start to feel quite awful.

But it doesn't tell me where the pain is or what it is.

It just tells me I'm uncomfortable.

And then I would wiggle my body a little bit because I cannot really move.

So I'd lean to one side and into the other.

And I have to wait there just a second just to see whether it eases or whether it gets worse.

So I'm looking for these really subtle little signs that tell me where the pain might be, where the original place of the pain might be.

I don't always get it.

I sometimes get it wrong.

I sometimes say to the carer, well, I need to go back on the bed because of this.

I need this.

I get back on the bed, I'm totally wrong.

And it might be the shoe done up too tight.

It might be the sock with the grease, all kinds of things.

Even wind at times creates this autonomic dysflexia.

A lot of the time, it's very mild.

If I have a lot of pain, the autonomic dysreflexia causes high blood pressure really, really quick, and it becomes a medical emergency in which the blood pressure is that high.

It's not just high blood pressure, it's extremely high blood pressure after 10, 15 minutes can lead to a stroke or even worse, it can be fatal.

So in that instance, we need to do something about it.

My carers are very much trained.

I know a lot about it.

So we would go back on the bed and we would start looking immediately.

But normally that's quite obvious.

It's normally, I need the toilet or something like that.

But the milder dysreflexia, the milder discomfort is not always easy to read.

And, you know, I'm talking about me, my position, but I want.

I want you to look at the pains in your body, the discomforts.

I really just look at them as information.

Look at them as, what's my body doing?

What's my body telling me?

And start to study your body.

You know, if you're going to be in charge of, I don't know if you.

To become a mechanic and be in charge of diagnosing cars and all that.

You're going to learn about the cars and how they work.

And each one of you, you learn about the things you drive and the things you do and the things you are in control of.

We are in control of this awesome body and it's the, it's the most important thing to you, you know, nothing else on earth is keeping you alive apart from your body.

But we don't sit down and study it.

We don't stop and take notice of what's going on.

Then I have my tummy rumbles and all that and I think, oh, I used to think advert on telly, I must be hungry.

That's not the case at all when your stomach's making those gurgitating noises.

Borobogamy, apparently it's called.

It happens about three times a day and it's your intestines moving, your fuel, your food on.

Sit down and study it, feel it, what's it like, what's it doing?

Why is it doing it?

You know, is, is this uncomfortable?

What have I eaten to create this uncomfort?

I went in for a colonoscopy and the day before they give you these juices and I'm not going to go into detail, but they empty you.

They seriously empty you.

This is the most interesting day.

And I went to bed, I wasn't allowed to eat for 24 hours and they emptied my intestines and I woke up the next day and I went to hospital to have the procedure and I was freezing, I was shivering and I said to them, I said, I am freezing, I can hardly function.

And they said, yeah, this sometimes happens.

But they didn't explain to me, they didn't say why or what.

And I thought about it over the next couple of days and I realized whenever this similar kind of thing happens, where upset stomach or something like that, and I become quite empty, I got no fuel, I lost all the fuel to keep me warm, what my body was using to keep me warm and to repair me and all those other things.

So my body did not have what it needed to function properly.

And I realized how important it is what we eat, you know, on a daily basis how important it is what we eat.

What we're eating is fuel.

It's also the repairing.

Now then, if you were told by your local mechanic, don't put that fuel in your car, your car won't go very well and it won't be able to repair because imagine for a minute that your car needs the fuel to repair as well, not just the function.

The mechanic told you, don't put in that make of fuel, you wouldn't do it, would you?

Yet the doctor and all the dietitians and all that, you know, they don't always get it right and they haven't mastered the art of it, but they're telling you what to put in and what not to put in.

Yet we're not taking any notice.

If your body was coughing and spluttering as it was walking down the road, you wouldn't put in that fuel again.

So when you have pain in your body, when you have these niggling sensations, when you have muscles that cannot repair themselves and all that, the back and all hurting, I'm not.

I'm not a doctor, so please don't take this advice.

Like, if you've got pain that's really bothering you, go to the doctor.

But if it's ongoing, again and again, sit with that pain.

What is it teaching you?

What is it showing you?

What information is it giving?

So imagine it as literally information.

So instead of sitting there going, I don't like this pain, and trying to push it away, trying to.

Because sometimes we cling to pain because it's a comfort.

How many times have you done this when you've got a headache and the headache and suddenly you forget about the headache and you go, have I still got a headache?

And you bring on the headache to check whether you've still got a headache.

And then you go, yes, I've got a headache.

Or the shoulder pain would go.

And then you go, no, shoulder pain.

And you move your shoulder around to see if you've got the pain.

Do it all the time.

Be honest.

You know, I do it, I still do it now.

But imagine if we just looked at it as information.

So for the next few days, just look at your body, feel your body.

What is it telling you?

What is the information telling you?

You know this because if a child comes up to you, you ask, what's wrong?

Well, where is it hurting?

How did it happen?

You try to diagnose it, but we don't diagnose very much about ourselves.

If we do, we do it on a very superficial way.

Oh, I've always had that pain.

It's always been there.

I don't know where I come from.

Oh, yeah, I always get it when I'm stressed.

Really sit with it.

Imagine what it's like.

Imagine it fading away and coming back.

Why is it there?

And really just start to listen to your body.

Your body is telling you everything you need to know to live an awesome, healthy, sleeping, well, concentrated, focused, mindful life.

But we don't listen.

And this is what we should do more often.

It's just listen to our bodies.

When you listen to your body, when you really take notice of what happens when I eat this food?

What happens when I do that?

I'm not saying don't ever have a takeaway.

I'm saying have a takeaway, but know that you're going to suffer for a few hours maybe, you know, fine.

Is that.

Is that pleasure worth suffering for?

2 hours?

Brilliant.

Knock yourself out.

Do it.

I do it.

You know, I'm not against takeaways.

Totally.

I'm not against.

I'm not against the odd cigarette or the odd drink.

I'm just against it if it's totally destroying your body again and again and again, and we're ignoring the signs, you know, just to be able to feel exactly where the pain is would be a superpower for me.

I've got to really slow down and listen to my body, listen to the subtleties and.

Okay, let's end this podcast with how do we do it now?

Take a couple of deep breaths.

And when we just slow right down, just when that flywheel of the mind starts to slow and we go from that running of the mind and the running of the body to a walking and then to a sitting.

While sitting, really just take notice.

What was that noise in my body?

Why is that leg aching now?

You're not trying to create pain.

You're just inquiring what's coming up.

Very often, the information is there.

Just listen, listen, take notice.

That's all we have to do.

Do that through three or four minutes, two or three times a day, and you'd be surprised how much information the body's giving you.

You know, it's the only thing you got is keeping you alive.

It's the most important thing to you.

We tend to tell other people to look after their bodies more than we look after our own.

Think about that for a minute.

Really consider that for a moment.

You know, your body's the most important thing to you.

Listen to it.

Your body is your teacher.

Your pain is your teacher.

I'm Stephen Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms podcast.

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You know, take care, guys.

Thank you.

And this is Stillness in the Storms podcast.

Sa.