Episode Transcript
00:00:01
I remember having this conversation with a dear friend of mine where he shared with me that his cousin's husband came home from a long day of work, proceeded to go into the kitchen like he had done the night before, the night before that, the night before that nothing was off about this evening, it was just another night until he suffered a massive heart attack in the kitchen and later died. And I remember that story sticking with me because I couldn't help but think, how do people go throughout their day and end up having a medical emergency, which seems like it comes out of nowhere? Are there signs that your body sends you? Is there communication that your body is trying to tell you? Is your body trying to communicate with you in some kind of way and you just miss it? And the more that I began to study, embodiment and deeply connecting to my body and learning the language of my body, that story has always stuck with me because I wonder, I have all these tools and I have all these skills, but am I truly listening to what my body is trying to communicate with me?
00:01:42
Or have I been practicing ignoring it for so long that I actually really don't know or truly understand what my body is trying to tell me and that I'm only scratching the surface? And I think about this more now than ever as my health is, I wouldn't say not in the best place, but I'm definitely realizing I haven't been taking care of myself in a way that is prioritizing my vitality, prioritizing my wellbeing. Health is more than just numbers or feeling good or having good days. To me, health is everything. It is about attending, not just to your physical wellbeing, but your emotional, your spiritual, and your energetic wellbeing. It's about connecting to your life force energy, realizing what is causing you to have power, leakages and energetic leakages that could leave you feeling depleted and disconnected and filled with stress and burnout and overwhelm. To me, this is just as important as what you put in your body food wise, drink wise. It's a holistic way of looking at our health. And it all begins with listening to your body, understanding how it communicates with you, understanding the signals is trying to send you the language, the full language of the body. And that's exactly what we're going to talk about in today's episode. And I cannot wait to go deeper into the question of how do you feel more deeply in your body.
00:04:18
Hi, I'm your host, Justine Aksoy, and this is The Pleasurehood podcast. A podcast where we explore what it means to be a mother, a leader, and an all around badass from a place of pleasure, empowerment, and turn on. I am here to revolutionize how humans experience sex, pleasure and motherhood by normalizing self-care, normalizing mothers having desires and normalizing mothers as sensu and sexual beings. Quick side note, you don't have to be a mother in order to listen to this podcast, though I create my work with mothers in mind, this conversation is truly for everyone. I believe that pleasure is one of many paths of healing and I'm here to highlight how to walk that path no matter who you are. It is my deepest desire that wherever you find yourself on this amazing journey we call life, you can experience your power, your turn on, and of course, orgasmic pleasure.
00:05:51
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Pleasurehood podcast. On this episode, we're going to continue with the Body Love Series with part two, how to feel more deeply in your body. I personally feel it is super important to talk about what it means to listen to your body, how to decipher what our bodies are trying to tell us because our bodies are constantly communicating with us day in and day out. I also find it important to talk about what it means to actually tune into our bodies instead of listening to our minds. And if we were to actually listen to our bodies more often, how we would find ourselves living a life that is in full alignment and attunement with our highest good. Lately, I've realized that throughout my embodiment journey, I really have yet to truly listen to what my body is trying to communicate with me.
00:07:00
And it's mostly because for years I've been practicing not listening to my body. So what I mean by that is I'm 38 and I would say the last seven years is the first time I've actually listened to what my body has to say. I've spent way more time ignoring my body signals than actually listening to them. And recently I decided to start journaling about my health and my relationship to my body when it comes to my physical wellbeing. My health has been a huge issue for the past three years because ever since giving birth to my son, I've been navigating high blood pressure, fatigue, brain fog, aches and pains, and just general malaise. And as of late, my blood pressure has been extremely high and these recent numbers are reminiscent of the high numbers I experienced after giving birth. My current bout with high blood pressure has definitely given me pause because every time I've gone to the doctor, my blood pressure is high and I'm on blood pressure medication right now and I know I'm under an immense amount of stress as of late cuz I'm in the process of moving to Turkey.
00:08:36
So I'm having to navigate taking care of a two-year-old and taking care of myself, nurturing my relationship with my husband, nurturing my relationship with friends, and still having to handle the day-to-day life all while preparing myself to move to the other side of the world. And it has been a lot. It's been a lot for my mind, my body for my soul, and it's been a lot for my physical body, my emotional body, my energetic body, and my spiritual body. And honestly, I've been dealing with the stress by not dealing with it at all. <laugh> be completely honest with you, ignoring my body signals because if I were to truly listen to what my body has to say, I would probably have to stop rest and do nothing. And because I have all the things still to do to prepare to move across the world, that doesn't seem like a choice to me, to be completely honest.
00:09:47
But what I have learned over the years is your body is going to make you listen whether you want to or not. The body will make you listen. You can only ignore and bypass what you're feeling for so long before your body starts to scream at you. In fact, just the other day, my body was definitely screaming at me and as it was screaming, I received the message that I am burned out. And that particular day I felt so incredibly tired, like to the point where I could have probably if I could have slept all day and be in bed all day. And then it dawned on me that I've been coping with my burnout by finding artificial ways to jumpstart my energy, whether it's through coffee, sugar or comfort foods. This has been my way of coping and honestly trying to bypass how I am really feeling.
00:11:02
And don't get me wrong, sometimes coping with these things are okay and don't get me wrong, sometimes coping in these ways are okay. I mean, you're not always going to find the perfect coping mechanisms. Sometimes you fall into the coping mechanism that are the most comforting and that's just what you do. But lately I realize that those coping mechanisms have not been serving me. In fact, they have just been causing me to slip deeper into burnout because I'm not taking care of my body, I'm not nourishing my body, I'm not listening to what my body actually needs. I'm just trying to push through so I can do all the things that need to be done. And I have reached my tipping point. When I went into my annual visit with my OBGYN a few weeks ago, my blood pressure was 159 over 98, pretty freaking high.
00:12:08
And I freaked out. I was like, what the fuck is going on? This was a number I would've suspected to see postpartum, but not three years after giving birth. Those numbers took me aback because this is not the numbers that I have seen in the past year, but instead of Fran going into fix, fix-it mode, I decided to get curious about why my blood pressure was so high and what is truly going on and what is my body trying to communicate to me. So like I had mentioned, I started a health journal and I started to journal about my relationship with my body. I started to journal about all the ailments I'm currently experiencing. I wrote down how I have dry skin, slight hair loss, which has gotten under control for the most part, how I've been experiencing stomach pain, headaches, joint pain. I've been having fatigue, brain fog, high blood pressure, all these things that my body is trying to tell me and signal to me that something is not right.
00:13:20
And I haven't been listening. And when I looked at this list, I realized just how long I've been ignoring my body. I've been going through the motions that everything is okay, pretending that I'll be fine when the truth was my health in my body needed my attention. I feel like in western medicine or just Westerners in general, we are so apt to try and fix the problem, fix the symptoms, get rid of the symptoms because therefore that equals health. That means that you're healthy. But we don't look at the underlying issues, the core issues of what could be causing whatever ailment you might have, the energetic issues, the emotional issues, past traumas that we're holding onto beliefs and old stories that we're holding onto that is draining our energy, lack of boundaries saying yes when we really should be saying no, people pleasing. All of these things contribute to our overwhelm and our overall health and wellbeing.
00:14:35
And I just wanna add that I am not a medical professional, okay? I am only a professional of my own body and this has been my experience. And what I'd like to communicate in this episode is the importance of you learning the language of your body. How does your body communicate with you? Because it communicates in different ways for everyone. And it can be so subtle, so incredibly subtle that you just might miss it. Knowing the language of your body is valuable information because it could be a source of understanding where you're losing and leaking your energy and your power and where you need to call your power back so you can feel strong, empowered, and more like yourself. I invite you to get a journal, sit down and write down what the language of your body is. How does your body communicate with you?
00:15:41
Does it show up as headaches, joint pain, heavy bleeding during your menstrual cycle? Or maybe you don't bleed at all. Just really look at what your body has been communicating with you all this time. It's funny, when I started to journal about my health and my relationship to my body, I went so far as to go back into my adolescence for what I can remember. And I went so far as to go back into my adolescence as far as I could remember. And when I did, I realized that I had a lot of chronic health problems that I had ignored or even forgot or didn't think it was a big deal because I was so busy trying to find the solution to my quote unquote problem instead of healing my body in a holistic way. Once you've taken a moment to journal about how your body communicates with you, then I invite you to sit with your body and talk to it.
00:16:47
Have a conversation with it. Say, I haven't been listening, but I'm listening now and I'm ready to follow what you have to say. I'm ready to have a two-way conversation instead of a one-way communication. I am ready to actually listen to you. And I promise you, your body will have so much to tell you. The body has an innate wisdom to it that we have forgotten because we had been taught to not value our gut feelings or our gut instincts. We've been taught to value our mind's reasons, but our bodies are the source of our lives. It really is home for our life force. You may be wondering, okay, well this is great, but how do I even get started? Like how does one even begin to notice what is actually happening in their bodies, especially if you're so used to ignoring the signals that your body sends you?
00:17:52
Well, this is where feeling deeply comes in. I'm going to share practice with you that changed my life, changed how I connect it with myself, how I connect it with my body, and how I listen to my body. And it's super, super easy. It only takes like five minutes out of your day to practice. And in fact, the more you practice tuning into your body and the signals your body sends you, this practice can be done throughout your day. The practice is called body scan. It's a somatic practice. And basically what you're going to do is you're going to find five minutes to sit quietly. And you can also do this lying down. I personally love doing it lying down because it allows me to feel more held, supported, and grounded, and I can drop deeper into my body and it feels like the process allows me to to really drop into my body.
00:19:03
So you're gonna sit quietly or lie down quietly, and you're gonna begin to speak the sensations that you feel inside of your body. And I will provide a PDF of this practice and also a list of sensations because sensations is a language that we don't really use. We use the language of emotions. We have a tendency to say, I'm sad, I'm happy, I'm angry, I'm joyful. Instead of the sensation of sadness or the sensation of anger, happiness, and joy. And when you whittle it down to simple sensations, you begin to realize that a lot of emotions that we have a tendency to feel have a similar sensation in our body. And I find when you stick with just the sensation of your body and not the emotion or the feeling, it's harder to attach a story to it. It's harder to say, I'm sad because, or I'm angry because I feel anger.
00:20:13
Because instead you would say, I feel a constriction in my chest. I feel a tightness in my shoulders. I feel tension in my legs. I feel a pit in my stomach. When you're able to just label the sensation, it becomes really difficult to put a reason why you're feeling that way. You just say what you are experiencing and it's an experience that you're having in moment. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you're always going to have that experience. You speak the sensation out loud for five minutes, and after that, you just go about your day. You'll start to realize when those sensations come up, you're like, oh, when this person said this, I felt a contraction in my throat and it felt like there was a ball in my throat and I couldn't say anything. Or you might come to realize every time you go into work, you feel a pit in your stomach, you may start to notice this more and more and more.
00:21:25
It's such powerful knowledge because you get to slow yourself down and connect with your body, and you get to decide how you want to act and what actions you want to take. And it keeps you from living from a place of reaction. And fixing, to me, living from a place of reaction is a state of trying to fix something to try and make it better. Because you know, at the end of the day, the sensations that you might be experiencing are incredibly uncomfortable. This practice really transformed my relationship with my body because I began to really understand my body's language. I could listen to it on a deeper level. And when I decided to listen to it from a health perspective, it really has allowed me to hone in on what I've been experiencing in my body for a really long time and start to explore all of it from a different place. A place where I could heal my body and support my body and nourish it instead of trying to fix it. And right now for me, as I listen to what my body is trying to communicate to me and I really learn the language of my body, I'm finding that my body is asking me to slow down. It looks like asking for help and support. My body is asking me to cry and release feelings and emotions that have been trapped inside my body for a really long time.
00:23:05
It feels like drinking a cup of tea, taking a midday bath, the language of my body is asking me to do less and say no, and walk away from the things that no longer nourish me or support me, or even vice versa. Things that I know I need to walk away from because I can no longer give my best self to it. It's a lot of releasing right now and letting go. That is what feels most nourishing to my body, and it's also listening to my body when I need to hydrate, when I need to eat, when I need to sit down and do nothing. It's become a really beautiful back and forth flow that I find myself feeling so yummy and nourished in.
00:24:12
I have decided that I am prioritizing my vitality. I am prioritizing my peace of mind. I am prioritizing my wellbeing. And to me that is prioritizing my health. And of course, building a deeper, more loving relationship with my body. I hope that you are able to do the same with your body. I really truly invite you to sit down and journal about your health and your relationship with your body to sit down and have a conversation with your body, and then practice learning the language of your body through doing body scans and honing in on the sensations that your body sends you throughout the day. Because like I said, it is truly communicating with you moment by moment, by moment.
00:25:31
And when you decide to really listen to your body, you'll find yourself in deeper alignment and attunement with your life. You will find that your body is your north star. It is your compass, and it will lead you in the direction of what you need right now in this moment. So the question truly is, are you ready to listen? Are you willing to listen? What are you prioritizing right now? Is it your health and your wellbeing, or is it your stress and your anxiety? Your body will tell you, your body does not lie. It tells the truth.
00:26:30
So invitation to listen, to listen to it fully and wholeheartedly because it will not steer you wrong. Thank you for joining another episode of The Pleasurehood podcast. Catch new episodes every other week on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcast. The Pleasure Hood podcast is now on good pods. And if you're not familiar with good pods, it's a podcast centric social network app where you can follow friends, influencers, and of course other podcasters to see which shows and episodes they're listening to and engage with them. Join me on good pods, subscribe, and let's stay connected for more of my musings on pleasure, motherhood, power, and sex. Head over to Instagram and follow me at @justineaksoy or @pleasure.hood. And if you are ready to take your Pleasurehood game to the next level, sign up for my newsletter where you'll receive words of love, encouragement, and support as you take your pleasure, practice a little deeper. You can sign up in this show notes. And that's all for now. Ready ones. I can't wait to go deeper with you on this path. We call pleasure. Until next time, stay wild, sexy, and free.
