A Conversation with my Body (in place of goals)
What if your body has been there the entire time?
For as loooong as I can remember, I heard that setting goals was the gold standard of getting motivated. Get clear and focus on what you want to achieve and that will support a change in behavior which will get you to where you want to go. Simple, right?
Well, that hasn’t ever been simple for me. I could always set goals. I would actually BECOME the goal. I would defiantly achieve the goal. But I always ended up pretty lost and disoriented after I “got” there. All the old behaviors would swoop back in after I had towed myself and my body to the “finish” line.
Oh, you, too?
Then, one day after doing Daily Returns with the FTS community Every. Single. Day. (for about 5 months) something was different. After noticing my body and my nervous system consistently for a few months I could NOT set a future goal without including my body and without including the present! What happened was amazing. I naturally started a conversation with my body.
Below is a recording of the first time I had a conversation with my body. I didn’t set a hard goal. I didn’t start. I didn’t look to an accountability partner. Instead, I looked inward.
This recording is the moment I experienced how regular Returning naturally brought into awareness the RELEVANCE of my body.
Audio Transcription:
Hey, just popping on with some thoughts. You know, musings, as we call them, I just had a really wonderful experience. I feel like wonderful is a little too big of a word because the, the experience feels blissfully neutral, which is hard to explain. But, um, okay. So I am, one of the things that, one of the transformations that are happening for me as the founder of Find the Shift™ and as obviously a participant, um, and a person who's doing the returns constantly, is I'm getting very disoriented with goals. Now, goals have always been disorienting because you become fixated on a goal, whether that's a weight loss goal or a fitness goal or whatever. Um, I'm specifically talking about obviously, um, body stuff. And then you achieve the goal or you get close to your goal or that time comes. And then when you are so heavily fixated on an external focus and you achieve that goal, or you hit a benchmark on the other side, so often there's a, for many people, not everybody, but for many people, there's a big disorienting experience that happens and you lose the momentum.
You get literally, it, it, for me, it's a feeling of being lost and everything feels as if it just backslides all that momentum is gone, and then you get very confused and very often emotionally frustrated and hard on yourself. So, what's happened over the last six months of doing the daily returns every day and having these experiences, and I've mentioned it in a previous Michelle's musings, is that any type of focus on a goal for me becomes a little, um, I get, I don't like it because I don't want to externalize, I don't wanna motivate myself with external goals because it just does not feel sustainable for me. So with all that being said, my family and I are, are planning a really wonderful trip next June into July, and we're gonna be doing pretty epic hikes in the Southwest. And, uh, while I do a, a fair amount of hiking now, I really want to be able to keep up with <laugh>, everybody, and I don't wanna be injured, and I wanna enjoy it.
And normally I cry during hikes, and I'll probably still cry because I cry all the time on hikes because of fear of heights, and yet I do it anyway. And that's a whole nother story. And actually, there's a really funny video I have not funny, but anyway, tangent, back to the point. So I keep noticing that I wanna create a goal for training for this hike. So I'm trying to figure out a hybrid, right? I want a goal because, well, it's not even a goal, it's just a, it's just a decision. I, I would like to feel stronger and feel secure in my body during this time, so I have that desire. Okay? Now, I have a long, interesting history with my body when it comes to athleticism and movement and endurance and strength, because I was, you know, I struggled as a child with confidence and with mobilization 'cause of all the dissociation.
So my body has a lot of interesting issues with it, um, that really all are, are not even, I always thought I was genetics. I have bad knees, but the reality is, I, I did not have equal distribution of strength and I didn't stretch and I was really disconnected from my body. So as a result, you know, it did the best it could, but it has some mobility issues and strength issues. So with that being all said this morning, I woke up and I had a desire to engage in some kind of a strength activity. But what was really interesting about this time is I went into the back where I've been, been doing my movement, and I did not engage with a class or with a YouTube video. And I stood there and I set the timer. I, I did turn on the Peloton app, the, to go like, where you just time your workouts and it's not led by anyone. And I started a conversation with my body in the most compassionate and curious way I have ever showed up for my body. I had the lights dimmed, it was early, it was, uh, 5 45, opened the window. There was a nice breeze.
It's obviously the end of August. So, you know, it was a, it was a beautiful morning. And never have I ever began a movement experience with this level of gentle curiosity. And there was no other being involved. It was only me and my body. And I started by standing and feeling the strength in my stand, tightened my body, my posterior chain, my abs, my shoulders. And then I released
And I just felt, and then I started doing some movements that felt relevant. Um, I don't know what they're called, a bear walk. I think when you, it's not a bear walk, it's, I dunno, whatever I bend, uh, bent over, touched my toes, and then slowly walked out into a plank, whatever that's called, and then slowly walked my hands back and then stood up. But I did it with this like, Hey, body, what works? What feels strong? What feels tight? Where's your best balance? And I did squats with a slowness and a curiosity of where's the knee pain, where's the stickiness, where's the weakness? Where's the, um, better balance versus the not better balance? And I moved through this series of movements, some lunges, some hip rolls, some balancing downward dogs, some abs, some planks, some step ups.
And for 35 minutes, I had the most beautiful conversation with my body in a way I have never before. And I feel this really beautiful, the way I can describe it physiological is it's this warm glow almost in my right, in the center of my chest. So I just wanted to talk about that because it's really hard to explain as, as information, but really it's an experience. So I wanted to describe my experience to you that when you engage in a journey where you are truly trying to bring your body in as an ally, an ally, and an informant, a friend, everything changes slowly.
So I'm really proud of me and my body from what happened this morning, and I'm looking forward to having that conversation again and again, seeing how that conversation changes, maybe that con, you know, likely that conversation with my body will become a bit more structured. But ultimately I approached the whole experience with curiosity, compassion, and non-judgment in an experiential way. And it was very intimate. So that's all I invite you. If you are curious about a journey where you discover yourself in the process of trying to break free from disembodied eating and work on feeling access to mobilization and nervous system navigation is curious to you. Um, yeah, I invite you to check us out. I find the shift and um, yeah, it's new.
Remember you exist. Thanks. I'll see you soon.