Dear Dr Rosensweet:
I am not as well as I would like to be. I have been advised to "listen to my body". It has been suggested that I change my breathing, water consumption, exercise, nutrition, and other things. What is confusing is that I already "listen" to my body, in that I breathe naturally, drink when I am thirsty, eat when I am hungry, etc. What are your thoughts on this? R.R., Naples

Dear R.R:
You may be 'listening', yet the question becomes, how well are your listening. Most people are insufficiently sensitive to the "messages the body sends". It is probable that your body may want more than you are 'automatically' providing. Many people are under-breathing, under-drinking, under-exercising, etc. Taking care of ourselves requires an increase in our sensitivity and response to the wants and needs of our body and being. Diminished sensitivity originates with the repression of emotions. We learned early in life to avoid our emotions and to 'shut down' our feelings. Many infants, in the midst of crying, screaming and yelling, when sad, angry or afraid, learned to hush up. This quieting was repeated and reinforced until most of us became all-too-skilled at repressing our feelings. There are, for example, many men who have not cried a tear since they were children.

Repression, like any phenomenon of significance, is profound, widespread and multidimensional: if you repress anything you repress everything. Thus, if you are repressing fear you wind up repressing your ability to feel love, to think clearly, to understand, perceive, and much more. Biologically, repression activates the stress response in your body. Part of the process of holding in your emotions translates physically into holding in your chest, your diaphragm and your breath. Holding feelings diminishes breath. There are approaches to emotional healing that capitalize on this phenomenon. Therapies of this type will utilize various deep breathing techniques to help amplify feelings and facilitate stronger emotional release.

I have been asking a question in my office for years: imagining the amount of oxygen your body would love to have in a day for full aliveness, vitality and health, what percentage are you supplying to it in your everyday breathing? (Before reading further, ask yourself this question). Common answers are between 15 and 25 percent. We all breathe differently than we did when we were young. If you have the opportunity, observe an infant's breathing while it is sleeping; it will be deeper and faster than an adult's.

Thus, to just follow one's usual inclination or pace of breathing may not be "natural" at all. You actually may be repeating a longstanding pattern of diminished breathing. The cumulative effect of underbreathing on your overall health, vitality, passion and healing is profound. It takes significant effort and retraining to learn to breathe "naturally" again. A similar situation exists with water consumption. If early in life you ignore the subtle whispers of thirst calling for adequate water, you will eventually convince your body that it will have to make do with an insufficient supply of water. Your body will then adapt to the new circumstance, develop water conservation techniques, and settle for a constant state of mild dehydration. Your sensation of thirst will blunt as you adjust to low water input.

Many people, when they discover this and decide to increase their water intake, will find themselves urinating excessively. They often then assume that the increased water input must be unnatural. However, if you supply an adequate amount of water, your body will eventually reset its internal water regulation, and urinary frequency will, over time, diminish.

This topic becomes more complex when we consider nutrition. People eat from a myriad of motivations. Many years ago, an experiment was performed with very young children placed in front of a variety of foods and allowed to choose what they found most attractive. Included in this selection were beneficial and non-beneficial food choices. In this study, over time, the children selected a wide variety of mostly nutritious foods.

Isn't this a surprise? It is common knowledge that so many people make a multitude of poor dietary choices overall. Diets with excessive processed foods, hydrogenated fats, excessive carbohydrates and sweets, as well as many other indiscretions, are epidemic in our culture. You might ask, with regard to nutrition, what are people 'listening' to.

There are many more opportunities to increase your sensitivity to, and awareness of, the true needs of your body. These include when to be active and when to rest, when to sleep and when to awaken, and when to work and when to play. The list is extensive. Listening with greater sensitivity is a fascinating exploration that is at the foundation of any program of healing and health. Real changes of habit in these most basic of functions can lead to remarkable results.

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This article is from www.RosensweetMD.com and is Copyright 2003 Daved Rosensweet M.D.