Lisening to our bodies

Well, I’ve entered the “get-plenty-of-rest-drink-a-lot-of-fluids-and-gargle” phase of a winter existence. When I was serving the church full time people would share, “Well, preacher, your body is just telling you that you need to slow down and allow it to catch up.” But, now the “slowing down” part IS my profession. The fortunate part is that this “phase” comes only once a winter instead of two or three times.

Listening to our bodies is not something that we do on a regular basis. I’ve been trying to get a sore throat for about 5 weeks now and haven’t done the “gargling bit” so a full-fledged winter cold should not have come as a surprise to me … but it did. I should have listened to my body.

I believe it was Dr. Bernie Siegel who shared in his marvelous book, “Love, Medicine and Miracles,” that the body has a tremendous communicative ability. Long before any minor or major illness overtakes us, our body is sending little hints that something is about to take place that we should address. The built in fear is that we could become little hypochondriacs and so, we simply go on with our lives, ignoring those persistent little aches and pains (or in my case the little discomfort in the back of my throat) until our body is taken over by the illness.

If we would but listen to what our body is sharing we would be better off physically, emotionally and spiritually. It is this old preacher’s belief that God uses every cell of what he has created to communicate with us ... but are we listening?

Quote for today: “If you are an adult of average weight, here is what you accomplish in 24 hours: your heart beats 103689 times; your blood travels 168,000,000 miles; you breathe 23040 times; you inhale 438 cubic feet of air; you eat 3.25 pounds of food; you drink 2.9 quarts of liquids; you lose 7/8 pounds of waste; you speak 4800 words, including some unnecessary ones; you move 750 muscles; your nails grow .000046 inch; your hair grows .01714 inch; and you exercise 7,000,000 brain cells.” Source unknown