The body never lies

It’s just before six in the morning. It’s still cool in the room, and the light outside is only just starting to find its way through the blinds. There’s this short, strange moment right after waking up where my mind hasn’t yet started scrolling through the to-do list, the worries of the day, or yesterday's memories. In those few seconds, I am just breath, warmth under the covers, a sense of weight on the mattress. Pure existence.

Then my head switches on, and the usual noise begins.

For a long time, I lived like that - entirely on the top floor of my own body. I had turned into a walking mind that viewed its physical shell simply as some kind of transportation vehicle for the head. The body was supposed to get me from point A to point B, endure eight hours of sitting in front of a computer, not get sick at an inconvenient time, and above all - not get in the way of my productivity. If I was exhausted, I drank another coffee. If something hurt, I took a pill to make it shut up. I called this "discipline" and "resilience."

Now, looking back, I realize how cruel that was. And how inhuman.

The modern world teaches us exactly that - complete alienation from our flesh. We are constantly told to push past our limits, ignore fatigue, grit our teeth. But from a psychological standpoint, this isn't just a bad habit. It is pure violence against the unconscious. When I was a child, if I felt fear or anger, I was often told not to cry or not to be so sensitive. My mind quickly learned to suppress these emotions to be the "good girl." But emotion doesn't just vanish into thin air. It has nowhere to go and literally hides in our body.

The body becomes a warehouse for uncried tears, swallowed anger, and unspoken words of refusal.

I started noticing how every hidden anxiety has its own address inside me. When I worry about money or security, my stomach knots up, as if refusing to accept reality. When I take on too many responsibilities and can't say "no," my shoulders stiffen like stone - an invisible burden I drag around with me. My jaw is often so clenched at night that it hurts in the morning. How many things did I want to scream out, but instead locked away behind my teeth? The body never lies. Our mind is a master of excuses; it can convince us of anything: that our relationship is fine, that we like our job, that we've outgrown old trauma. But the body holds onto the truth and shows it through its symptoms. It is the most honest mirror we have, even if the reflection hurts sometimes.

From a spiritual perspective, this neglecting of the body is our greatest mistake. We often look for the spiritual in distant, abstract concepts, in meditations that pull us out of reality, or in reading thick books. The truth is, the body is the only place where we can experience God or the present moment. Our mind is constantly time-traveling - it either regrets the past or fears the future. Only the body lives always and undeniably Here and Now. My heart beats in this specific moment. My lungs fill with air right now. When we disconnect from our body, we actually evict ourselves from our own life. We become ghosts inhabiting our own thoughts.

A few years ago, my body simply refused to listen to me. I was going through a period of terrible stress, but I kept telling myself, "Just a little more, I'll push through, then I'll rest." One morning, I just couldn't get up. I didn't have the strength to lift my arm, my head was spinning, and my heart was skipping beats. I was terrified, and I was also angry at my body for "betraying" me at the most critical moment.

Only later did I realize that it wasn't betraying me. It was saving me.

Illness or utter exhaustion are not punishments. They are the emergency brake our body pulls when our ego has lost all connection to reality. When we refuse to set boundaries consciously, the body sets them for us through the symptom. It says, "Since you have no mercy on yourself, I will stop you so you can survive." This is an incredible, instinctive wisdom that doesn't work with words, but with sensations.

Learning to listen to this wisdom takes time and a lot of shame for how long you've ignored it. Now, I try to do something very simple. When I feel myself speeding up into that old pace, I stop for a minute. I close my eyes and ask myself, "What is happening inside me right now?" Not in my head, but in my chest, in my stomach. Sometimes I feel an emptiness, sometimes a heavy pressure. Sometimes I just need to stretch my back or drink a glass of water in slow sips. These small acts of attention aren't just "self-care" in the modern sense of the word. They are a return to the sacred partnership between soul and flesh.

Our body is not a machine. A machine requires maintenance just to work and serve us. The body is a living organism that needs compassion. It has its seasons - a time for activity and a time for complete stillness. When we try to stay in a constant summer, to be eternally smiling, energetic, and ready for feats, we break a natural law. And nature always takes back what belongs to it, sooner or later.

I'm also starting to notice how much information the body gives us through intuition. That gut feeling when you meet someone and something inside you shrinks, even though the person seems kind and polite. Or the opposite - a feeling of lightness and expansion in your chest when you're in the right place, even if logic tells you that you're risking too much. Our body processes thousands of signals from the environment that our mind doesn't even manage to register. It knows the truth long before our head has analyzed it and filed it into folders.

The sun has already risen, and the room is full of light. I look at my hands, I feel my feet touching the floor. I feel a quiet, slightly sad gratitude toward this body of mine. It has endured so much of my foolishness. It has carried the scars of my mistakes, starved because of diets, been deprived of sleep because of ambitions, tolerated toxic people just because my mind believed it had to. And despite everything, it continues to work for me every single second. My cells are renewing, my heart is pumping blood, my immune system is fighting, without me even lifting a finger.

There is an innate, deep urge for life and healing within our body. It always wants to balance us, as long as we stop getting in its way. Listening to it doesn't mean becoming a hypochondriac or obsessing over your health. It simply means coming home. To stop fighting yourself, to drop the armor, and to start living in partnership with the only friend who will be with you from your very first to your very last breath in this world.