Saturday, August 16, 2025

5 Ways to Listen to Your Body

5 Ways to Listen to Your Body

By Julie Peters

Posted on August 16, 2025



Your body is part of you for your entire life. Are you listening to what it’s asking of you?

Do you listen to your body? Do you attend to its needs moment to moment, or do you find ways to suppress those signals so you can get through your day? What does it really mean, anyway, to “listen” to the body?

Listening to the body is a powerful practice of reclaiming our bodies—and our whole selves—from the daily grind of all the things we have to do, whether it’s for other people, for work, or for systems that we participate in but don’t have control over, like capitalism. Our world is generally set up to benefit those of us who don’t listen to our bodies: people who use caffeine or other substances to stay awake and stay productive; who eat according to diets prescribed by someone else; whose productivity does not change in the dark, cold winter or the bright, hot summer. Sometimes it’s easy to feel like we’d be better off as robots instead of the human animals we are.

People who ignore their bodies for the sake of productivity, expectations, thinness, people-pleasing, making money, or whatever else our culture tells us is important will get along like that for a while, but there’s a great risk of collapse. When we consistently ignore our bodies’ needs, we can get sick, either acutely or chronically. Yet we live in a world where we often can’t take a rest day when we need one, are unable to choose to work more hours when daylight is long and fewer hours when it is short, and cannot attend to the needs and whims of the “soft animal of our bodies,” as Mary Oliver called them. We must negotiate the needs of this world with the needs of our bodies.

One thing that may help is knowing that the practice of listening to the body is valuable in and of itself, even if you don’t do what the body is asking for. Taking the time to slow down and tune in to the itchiness around our eyes when we are tired, the sudden low mood when we haven’t eaten in a while, or the intense longing for our bed during the dark days of January matters—even if we can’t attend to those urges right away. Becoming aware that we feel tired, even if we can’t pass out in the middle of the workday, still matters. Acknowledging the body’s needs could inspire a different choice later, like going to bed a little earlier or saying no to an additional project we know we don’t have time for if we’re also going to rest.

Mindfulness Meditation

One way to listen to the body is through mindfulness meditation. All this entails is slowing down and quieting ourselves enough to notice how we feel physically. Our minds can be very good at overriding signals from the body through busyness and anxiety, giving us so many things to worry about that we don’t stop to feel ourselves feeling. When we do, it’s very helpful to step back from analyzing and judging what we feel and simply notice: a weight on our shoulders; a tenderness around our heart; a buzzing behind the eyes like there’s too much on our mind.

When we practice mindfulness consistently, we open ourselves to learning the language of the body, which is not verbal or intellectual but based in sensations and sometimes images. At first, it can be like hearing a word from a language we don’t know, just a collection of strange sounds without meaning. But with time and repetition, we start to put together context clues. For example, I notice that when my left eye twitches, I’ve spent too much time with Kevin from Accounting. Or when my feet feel swollen and hot, the only thing that helps is a gentle yoga class.

The simple practice of learning the language of your body is individual and personal; a practice of intimacy with yourself. But there are a few keys that can help decode these messages, and when you can find ways to attend to the needs your body is signaling, you can improve your overall health, wellness, immune and hormone function—and, yes, even productivity at work.

Cyclical Awareness

One way to help decode messages from the body is to think about how our bodies tend to respond to the seasons, the weather, and the cycles of the moon. This is easy to remember because it’s so intuitive, and there are easy correspondences to keep in mind.

Spring, waxing moon, follicular phase, and the morning: These are times when energy is growing. This is the best time to exercise, get things done, and take action on projects we’ve been working on.

Summer, full moon, ovulation, and midday: These are peak times, and while in some cases that means we have peak energy, it’s actually a good time to pause and look at what we’ve been doing, and maybe take a rest. Imagine climbing a mountain: When you get to the top, you need to sit down and enjoy the view and take in the fruits of your labor rather than rush to get back down again.

Fall, waning moon, luteal phase, and the afternoon and evening: Energy is waning, and it’s a time to wrap up, integrate, and prepare for rest. Integrate lessons, edit, polish, reconsider, and finish things.

Winter, new moon, menstrual phase, and nighttime: Rest! Stop, pause, slow down, and don’t do so much. Sleep more if you can. Pause projects if that’s possible. Dream, imagine, feel—but don’t do.

When we attend to these cyclic realities, we will tend to already be aligned with what our bodies want to do. We may notice rewards in that way: more energy, more focus and productivity, more stable moods, all which may help us work with our bodies instead of against them.

Attuning to Parts of the Body

The language of the body tends to be metaphorical. We have plenty of cliches in our language about the body and emotional meaning that are actually pretty accurate. Here are some examples:

  • Headaches: Is there a lot on your mind?
  • Shoulder pain: Are you carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders?
  • Neck pain: Is someone or something being a pain in your neck?
  • Lower back pain: Are you bending over backwards for someone?

Think about the function of the body that’s impaired. Is it a part of the body that filters or digests? Does it help you communicate or express yourself, or does it allow you to move? What actions does this impairment prevent you from doing, or what actions does it force you to do instead? There’s very useful information in these answers about how you might need to rebalance.

Self-Consent

Consent is the concept that you are doing (or not doing) something with someone’s permission. If you consider your body as an entity that can consent, ask yourself what you are doing that your body might be saying no to, as well as what it might be saying yes to. Treat your body like a good friend whose thoughts, feelings, and comfort you care about, and consider asking for its consent before you partake in a certain activity. You might be surprised at how much information there is at the ready.

When your body asks for a need to be met—relieving yourself, eating, having a nap, putting on lip balm—meet that need as best you can. Take a moment to notice the slight settling in your body when a need it has been asking for has been met. This is a simple practice you can do to get in touch with your body, to ally yourself with it with gentleness and care.

Negotiating the Body with Life and Work

Of course, we can’t do everything the body requests of us. Sometimes the body has conflicting needs at the same time, like when you need to get more sleep but also have to get out of bed to go pee. We also have other responsibilities in life—obviously, we can’t nap the moment we feel tired in the middle of a meeting. But we can become more aware of our bodies’ needs and find ways to meet them in small or large ways.

To live a life that allows for listening to the body, we need consistent quiet time to allow for slowness. That could look like meditation, journaling, quiet walks, or more space between appointments. Sometimes we need to reprioritize or ask for help so we’re not taking on too much and can have space to attend to our bodies. It can feel really difficult, even countercultural, to do this at first. But it will benefit the only relationship that will be with you until death: your relationship with your body.

Julie Peters


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