We are conditioned to avoid pain at all costs. But what if staying so safe for so long is actually holding us back?

In this week’s episode I share some lessons I’ve learned through painful experiences. Physically and emotionally. Pain isn’t the enemy. It is the messenger to our brain to pay attention, be careful, and send healing. And if we keep ignoring it, which I am so good at doing, the pain will increase until it knocks you to your knees.

Can we instead challenge ourselves to listen to our pain and soothe it before making it disappear? You tell me.

We tend to live in our heads. Yes, I’m making a generalization, but even those of us who consider ourselves fairly embodied (hi, it’s me) still live mostly in our heads. So when our bodies raise their hands to let us know there’s some pain, we don’t even notice it. 

And then they start doing the thing from elementary school where you wave your hand in the air and hold it up with the other arm. And still, we don’t register it.

And so our bodies start shouting. Which we obviously ignore because we are busy not listening to our body.

And it’s not until the pain is debilitating, air horn, megaphone screaming that we snap out of it and wonder “what the H-E-double hockey sticks is going on here?!”

And that pain can be throwing your back out, muscle spasm in your neck so you can’t turn your head, a migraine, diarrhea, heartburn, feeling run down like you’re getting a cold (which then leads to some additional panic that it could be covid), or a general feeling of being out of sorts.

Your body is throwing a tantrum to try to get you to pay attention that you’re working too much, playing too hard, pretending your feelings aren’t hurt, ignoring your bad knee because you don’t want to admit not warming up before the A Chorus Line opening number when you were 25 was a bad choice. The possibilities are endless. 

And when we listen, we learn. The pain redirects us toward an easier path. I invite you to take a deep breath right now. A life like that.

In this week’s podcast episode I talk about a recent series of events which knocked me on my ass and forced me to rest. In my old habits of living life above a 10, I ignored each sign that I needed to slow down and ended up down one eye, one thumb, two shoulders, a neck, and blindly catching up on the bachelorette. 

Resources: 

• pstprtm www.pstprtm.com
• Anne Omland & Blair Badenhop
• Download your FREE guide to the 20 Things No One Tells You About Pregnancy and Postpartum, visit www.alissa-alter.com.
• Join our private Facebook community Mom’s Club for the community of like minded, intentional moms hanging out in a 100% judgement free zone you’ve always dreamed of.

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