Why We Don’t Listen to Our Body

Have you ever realised that your body is trying to tell you something? Many times we realise it but intentionally choose not to listen to it. Why? That’s an interesting question. It’s because our “monkey mind” keeps ‌telling us what to do all the ‌time and tells the body to shut up. Now, what do I mean by the body? It is more of our gut that is connected to our soul and less of our mind. It is more of our subconscious versus our consciousness. The body always tries to tell us what we truly want. But our mind, many times driven by rational reasoning and social conditioning, doesn’t want to listen to the body. So in this post, let’s try to understand more about why we don’t listen to our bodies. 

“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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What is the Science Behind Listening to Our Body

Interoception and the gut-brain axis weaponize this exact boundary line between our soul and our monkey mind. While social conditioning hypnotizes our conscious brain, a hidden network of cellular spies deep within our organs aggressively tracks our true stress levels and flashes red-alert metrics straight to our brain’s command center.

Simultaneously, our gut acts as a rogue, 100-million-neuron “second brain” that controls the master switches for our daily joy and drive. The millisecond we step into a toxic environment, this gut-brain completely hijacks the system—it chokes off our dopamine and fires distress signals screaming up the vagus nerve.

By deploying these raw physical strikes, our subconscious body slams on the emergency brake long before our slow, over-rationalizing brain can even figure out why we just checked out.

How to Listen to Our Body

Listening to our bodies is more like being able to savor how we feel. It is also about paying attention to the subtle cues our bodies give us. Like twitches or a twinge of pain. Muscular cramps. But more often, the best way to listen to our body is to breathe slowly. I would say it is a more spiritual practice, but there is science associated with it.

When we are not in a hurry, we can take the time to breathe slowly and be fully present with ‌ourselves. When we are present in the moment with our body, we are not thinking about something else ‌from the past or the future. We are not planning to do anything. This is where, in today’s world, we struggle. Because it’s like a chase, we are‌ constantly running after something. The next thing.

What Happens When We Don’t Listen to Our Body

It is very easy not to listen to our bodies. Because the mind is louder. Our soul speaks through the body. It whispers, and so the mind silences it. This creates a misalignment within ourselves. We often live by ignoring our soul for years.

But often the time comes when it feels like we can’t silence our soul anymore. It seems as if the body shuts down. As if the body keeps on draining energy. It doesn’t feel good anymore. Now then, our ego tries to take control of the situation. It says, pull up your socks. It’s time to move, not slack. But the body says I don’t want to do what I am doing anymore.

Then the rational mind runs the math and says we’ve got a long way to go. These are all the goals we set up for ourselves. These are the milestones. We don’t have time. Let’s continue the grind.

Somehow our mind convinces our body. Let’s keep moving; we want more. The body gives in, but still keeps on whispering. It manifests itself in building visceral fat to deal with the chronic stress and continue the ascend. Often it loses its vigour and spontaneity as if it’s trundling under its own weight. 

Why We Don’t Listen to Our Body

We are prisoners of our own illusions, illusions that our ego creates to face the external world. Something that our ego convinces us we need to maintain to deal with external expectations. Often we depend on these external validations. They provide the dopamine that we need.

Whilst more often than we cannot build our internal expectations and validations, the world drives us. And we are happy to be driven. It just reduces our internal workload. Many times it’s easier not to face ourselves. Just be with ourselves. What the body is trying to say is it our gut? But why should we go by our gut? Or our instincts? Isn’t it better to do a rational analysis with data and then decide? Why should we go with how the body is feeling? Our minds are smarter, right? Why not let our minds run the show? Our lives?

Why Listening to Our Body Connects Us to Our Soul

We may have a lot of discussion on what a soul is. But to me, it is our inner voice. When we are quiet and breathe slowly, try to stop thinking. Just observe our thoughts as passing clouds and not react to them or latch onto them. That is meditation to me. When we can make our monkey minds stop thinking.

That is the time we can listen to the whispering from our inner voice, our soul. That is a moment of peace. Just our slow breaths and ourselves. No thoughts in between. When we truly listen to our body, we deliberately try not to listen to our mind. Our soul speaks through our body, which we can feel with our nervous system. Our body is the temple of our soul. 

Conclusion on Why We Don’t Listen to Our Body

We don’t want to listen to our bodies because we are afraid to pause from our chase often. We just don’t have the time to pause. Since we are always thinking about what we are going to do in the future-making plans and laying milestones. Or are we in the past brooding over our mistakes, regrets, and what we could have done better. So on and so forth. To listen to our bodies, we need to spend time with ourselves. Just ourselves without our thoughts. Then connect with who we truly are. Without our masks. That is when we listen to our bodies. Our inner voice. Our soul.