The Wisdom of the Body

learning to listen and trust the divine intelligence

Happy Sunday Fam ♡

I wanted to dive in this week and talk about something that’s been a huge part of my journey: healing my relationship with my body and some of the insights that have slowly unraveled over the years.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much pressure we put on ourselves to get it right, especially when it comes to our bodies. The perfect diet. The perfect routine. The “right” way to eat, move, and show up for ourselves. and for a long time, I held so fucking tightly to that pressure (in so many ways I still do). If I could just crack the code, find the perfect mix of food, supplements, and structure then maybe I’d finally feel safe in my body. Maybe I’d feel in control.

But here’s what I’ve come to learn: control is an illusion. We are not one dimensional beings and neither are our bodies. They’re cyclical, alive, and ever-evolving and they require something different from us in every season we move through.

My own journey with food and healing has been so deeply complex and layered, it’s honestly wild to reflect on how much has changed. For a good few years I lived in the depths of an eating disorder, rooted in so much fear, control, and restriction. Swinging between extremes and desperate to find some sense of groundedness during I time I felt anything but grounded. Rigidity was the name of the game. I used to treat my body like it was a machine, something to control, fix, and manage. I clung so tightly to routines that felt safe, foods that felt safe, a life I thought was safe…yet it was anything but that. Even when those habits no longer served me, I held on because letting go felt too uncertain, too unpredictable and too much for my nervous system to handle. But as my journey shifted toward chronic illness, and the deeper I got into healing my body, the more I began to understand it was never about food and my body was trying to speak to me. I witnessed just how intelligent my body really is and just how much it is always trying to guide me home to myself.

Our bodies are not broken. They’re not confused. They are and have always been communicating, adapting and doing its best to bring us back to balance. That’s been one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned through years of feeling like I was at war with it. For so long, it felt like this foreign thing I couldn’t quite figure out… like it was working against me, showing up with symptoms and struggles as some kind of punishment. But now I see, it was never trying to hurt me. It was just trying to speak to me.

When I talk about swinging between extremes, I’m not exaggerating. I’ve had seasons where I ate nothing but ribeye steaks for a straight year and others where the only thing I could stomach were apples. There were times my digestion was so out of whack I could barely tolerate anything at all, and years where my hunger was so insatiable and unexplainable I would myself to sleep,

My point is: our bodies are constantly evolving. And that truth is something I still navigate every single day. But what’s shifted is my perspective is that I’ve come to see my body not as something to fix or control, but as a collaborator and co-creator. A relationship I’m learning to listen to, be curious about, and understand more deeply with each new season.

I think so many of us have inherited this belief that control equals safety and that we need to eat the same thing every day, move our body the same way, follow some fixed plan in order to feel whole. But life isn’t linear, and neither are our bodies. And the most healing thing I continue to strive for is to meet myself with as much flexibility and compassion as possible along the way.

Instead of “What’s the right thing to eat?”, I shift to “What is my body asking for today?”. Rather than “What can’t I have?” to “What am I needing more of?”. Shifting the way I see food and recognizing it as a source of nourishment and a tool for healing has been really powerful. Even these small changes in the way we talk about it can make a big difference.

I’m far from perfect, but I keep coming back to this truth: my body carries a divine, intelligent wisdom and I can trust it. It’s always communicating, always trying to adjust, adapt and bring me home to myself. So I do my best day by day to lean into that trust. My daily mantra has become: “thank you body, I love you body” and I repeat that as I give myself a little hug.

Because healing isn’t about perfect routines or rigid rules. It’s about building a relationship rooted in trust and being open to allowing myself to evolve over and over again.

If you’re navigating a season of change with your body, I just want to remind you: you’re not doing it wrong. Be open to the idea that what worked for you yesterday might not serve you today and that’s perfectly okay. That’s called wisdom.

Your body is not asking for perfection. It’s just asking to be seen and heard.

Hugs,
Nat ☁