#73: Trusting Your Body: How to Read Your Body’s Signals and Come Back to Yourself [Summer of the Self Series]

Jul 21

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Hello and welcome to Find Yourself, Change Your Life. I’m your host, Mary Clavieres. This podcast is here to help you rediscover yourself and become the leader of your life, however you want that to look.

Today we are continuing the Summer of the Self series and we’re talking about trusting your body.

I’m very passionate about this topic because personally, I feel so many of us are disconnected from our bodies. What happened for me at a high level is — when you don’t pay enough attention as the things are happening, your body can stop you in your tracks. When you’re meant to slow down or meant to shift gears a little bit, and you know it within yourself and you’re ignoring it, you’ll get to a certain point where usually your body will say, stop, enough. Let’s not do this anymore.

I have stories like that. You may also. You likely do have stories like that.

So I’m very passionate about the fact that we don’t pay enough attention to our bodies and we don’t connect with them in the ways that we can or that would be way more supportive to us and to our life journey.

How Do You Actually Do It?

The thing that I get asked a lot when we talk about the body stuff is: how? How do you pay attention to your body? How do you read its signals? What does that even mean?

And the first step that I say with any of that is to get quiet.

It’s to get quiet because you won’t be able to hear and you won’t be able to listen if you are being run over by all the noise in your life. I’m speaking from experience on this too, because there was a time where I would follow all the noise or be so wrapped up in the noise that I couldn’t hear myself. And that’s when things get wonky.

So the first part is getting quiet. Whichever ways help you to get quiet… if that’s meditating, if that’s walking, if that’s spending time in nature, if that’s walking around a noisy city but you have noise canceling headphones and you’re able to get quiet inside, whatever it is for you. As you do that, it will open up new things to you as you start to pay attention.

Start Paying Attention to Your Body

The other piece is to just start. It sounds ridiculous in its simplicity, but start actually paying attention to your body.

We only really pay attention to our bodies when there’s something wrong. We’re sore from something, we hurt ourselves, we had a tough workout, whatever it is. But you can check in on your body other times and notice what it’s saying and notice those subtle shifts, even without being in pain first.

The goal is to pay attention before you’re in pain so that you can see — huh, that feels a little bit not quite right. But we’re not at a red alert yet.

The Traffic Light Check-In

You can think about the colors of the traffic lights.

Green is good. You check in on your body and everything feels good. Great. You’re green.

You check in at another point in the day and it’s like, oh, this is getting a little sore, or I have a tender spot over there. Maybe you’re a yellow.

And then those times where it’s like — alert, something is wrong. An accident, a fall, or something. That’s red. Red alert.

So you can use something like that if you want to just take stock. But the idea is you actually check in with your body.

You can do a body scan for this. A body scan is something I really love to do. You gently close your eyes and tune in and check in with each part of your body and see how it’s feeling.

The goal, eventually, is to be speaking with your body as a living thing and having a relationship where you’re talking to it and it’s talking back to you and you’re speaking and you’re aware of that. Because that’s how you can have it work more for you and build those layers of trust within yourself.

A Tool for Getting Still: Box Breathing

If you find it challenging to get still and you’re not sure what to do about that piece, a tool that I love for that is breathwork.

Personally, I believe breathwork is the simplest, easiest, fastest, and — well, cheapest because it’s free — way to settle your nervous system and to tune back in. Hands down.

You can do this very simply. Box breathing would be four counts on the inhale, you hold for four counts, and then you exhale for four counts.

Now you might do it once and say, oh, it doesn’t work. You have to do it a few times. You have to get into a rhythm and really sit there for a few minutes and do it until you feel your body shifting gears. You will feel it. You might have to do it three times, five times, ten times, twenty times until you feel like your body is settling down.

On client calls, I do this with clients and they can feel it right away too. And they say, oh wow, yeah, that shifted something just in that moment.

I always say go until you feel it in your body and then do a little bit more so that you actually can take it in.

When you’re conscious of your breathing and when you’re counting the breaths, your mind can’t be wandering to other things. So it’s also just a really easy way to get into that space that you’re really looking for without having to fight your brain at the same time for all the thoughts that might be floating around in your head. Actually count when you do it and you’ll see what I mean.

From Always Running to Reading the Signs

I was someone that was always running, always running from one thing to the next thing to the next thing, always doing, always kind of in it. And then at some point, with the body stuff, I realized — okay, this is not sustainable.

Over years, I started to address it in different ways, tried different tools, and I built this relationship with my body where I started talking and started being able to see, okay, well, what’s happening now?

When you slow down, you’re able to see it more clearly. It’s really about, are you allowing yourself to slow down so that you can see what’s happening? So that you can see what your body is trying to tell you?

Don’t Skip the Yellow

You want to build those trust muscles so that you can see and you can know in advance. So you could say — okay, it’s a really busy time of year. I have all these different things going on. Let’s say end of the school year. Work, travel, the girls are finishing school, and if you’re a parent or caregiver, you know how many activities there are at the end of the school year that are outside of the regular schedule.

If you do that for too long without checking in on yourself and without tuning in to your body, you’ll completely miss it. And with that traffic light analogy, you’ll go from green to red without ever stopping and pausing at that yellow. And you don’t want to end up in red.

Because it might take you out. You might have to be in bed, you might get sick, you might have something broken, whatever it is. So the point is you want to be taking a look and tuning in regularly so that you can read the signs and the signals that say, okay, actually we’re entering yellow territory. What are you going to do? How are you going to switch gears these next few days or weeks so that you get back into green instead of continuing on to red?

In our house, if we have too many things on the weekend, my girls will be in the red before the weekend’s over. And then on Monday they’re not able to do the school thing as well. And it’s the same for me with work. So we try now — we don’t plan as many things on the weekend, even if we get invited to different things and we’d really love to do them all. We choose not to, because it’s better for the overall wellbeing of everyone.

Your Invitation for This Week

The invitation for today is to take a look and see — how good are you at trusting your body? How good are you at being connected to stillness and listening to those signs and signals?

Do you want to practice the red, yellow, and green light check-in? Do you want to try breathwork? Or maybe you’re already familiar with breathwork and you say, I want to get back to it. That’s great too. Just because we know something doesn’t mean we’re always great at implementing it all the time. Same goes for me.

No shame or blame for anything that’s happened before. You take a look and you say, okay, what do I want to do now? How do I want to approach this? And then how do I want to move forward?

Trusting your body. Love your body, honor your body. It’s amazing. It gets you up and around and out every day. We can never say enough beautiful things about our bodies. They are incredible and amazing.

Thank you so much for being here and for listening. I’d love to hear from you. Talk to you soon.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What does trusting your body actually mean? A: It means developing a relationship with your body where you’re paying attention to its signals, not just when something goes wrong, but regularly, as a practice. It means noticing the subtle shifts before things reach red alert, and responding to what you notice rather than pushing through or ignoring it.

Q: How do you read your body’s signals? A: Mary shares three entry points in this episode. First, get quiet. You can’t hear your body over all the noise. Second, start checking in deliberately and regularly, not just when you’re in pain. Third, use tools like the body scan, the traffic light check-in, or box breathing to help you tune in.

Q: What is the traffic light check-in? A simple way to rate how your body is feeling in any given moment. Green means everything feels good. Yellow means something feels a little off … not an emergency but worth noticing. Red means something needs immediate attention. The goal is to catch yourself at yellow before you end up in red.

Q: What is box breathing and how do I do it? Box breathing is a simple breathwork technique: inhale for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, exhale for 4 counts. Repeat until you feel your body shifting gears. Mary recommends doing it multiple times until you actually feel the shift. Counting the breaths keeps your mind from wandering, which is part of what makes it so effective.

Q: What is a body scan? A body scan is a simple mindfulness practice where you close your eyes and gently check in with each part of your body in turn… noticing how it feels, where there’s tension, where there’s ease. Mary includes a body scan meditation in her book Mind Body Connection Unlocked.

Q: What if I find it hard to get still? That’s exactly what the breathwork is for. You don’t have to force stillness … you breathe into it. Counting the breaths gives your mind something to focus on so it doesn’t fight you. Mary says go until you feel it in your body, then do a little bit more.

Q: Why is it important not to skip the yellow light? Because going from green to red without pausing at yellow is what leads to getting sick, burning out, or your body forcing you to stop. The yellow is the warning signal — the place where you still have choices and can switch gears before things become urgent.

Q: What is the Summer of the Self series? A summer podcast series from Find Yourself, Change Your Life with short weekly episodes and a reflection prompt or tool each week. This is Episode 5 covering trusting your body. Previous episodes covered awareness, conditioning, the roles we play, and the not good enough voice. Coming up: emotions as messengers, energy management, spiritual signs, and more.

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