Your Relationship With Your Body’s Signals (Ep 3 - Relationship Series)

This episode is not the one I originally sat down to record - and that’s exactly the point.

Today I’m sharing how my own body stopped me mid-recording, why the planned episode on friendships felt completely “off,” and how listening to that tightness, heaviness, and constriction led me to the real conversation we were meant to have: your relationship with your body’s signals.

We talk about the sensations beneath your thoughts - the nudges, the tightening, the resistance, the “not this, not now” moments - and why your body often tells the truth before your mind can even process it.

In a season when so many people override their energy, push through exhaustion, say yes out of obligation, and call dysfunction “normal,” this conversation is a reminder that your body is always speaking… the question is whether you’ve learned how to listen.

I share how ignoring your internal cues creates depletion, burnout, resentment, and survival mode -  and how learning to trust those cues changes every relationship in your life.

We also explore why outsourcing your peace, happiness, or stability to anything outside of you keeps you dependent rather than regulated… and how coming back to your own body is where real grounding begins.

This episode includes a card pull from the Magic of What If™ deck and a guided moment of reflection to help you reconnect with yourself.

Reflection Questions:

1. What is my body trying to tell me that I haven’t wanted to hear?
2. Where do I feel resistance or heaviness - and what might that be pointing to?
3. Where is my body asking me to slow down, rest, or create space?
4. What would it look like to trust my body’s signals, even for one day?

Take a breath.
There’s nothing to fix today - only awareness.
Your body always tells the truth.
And when you learn to listen, everything changes.

Chapters

• 2:56 Holiday Shift And New Freedom
• 5:09 Seeing The Old Martyr Pattern
• 6:30 Scrapping The Friendships Episode
• 8:53 Your Body Speaks In Sensations
• 11:03 Growth Discomfort Versus Pause Discomfort
• 12:44 Holiday Pressure And Overriding Cues
• 14:57 Rest, Boundaries, And Alignment
• 17:02 Regulate Within, Not From Circumstance
• 19:07 Card Pull: Conspiring In Your Favor
• 21:03 Reflection Questions And Guided Pause
• 23:28 You Have The Power To Change

Transcript

Shannon: 1:57

Welcome back to the Pure Possibilities Podcast. I'm your host, Shannon. And before we get into today's episode, I wanted to chat about the weekend a little bit and the holiday. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, it was very interesting for me this year. So as you all know, this is my first holiday season where I'm not the general manager of a movie theater, which is very interesting. So many new things are coming up for me. So this year I was able to host Thanksgiving in my home and had family and friends here. And we had an incredible time and everyone really enjoyed themselves, which felt so good to me. And it was funny, we were having a conversation at one point. I'm like, I don't know if I'm more excited about not working today or actually having all of the weekend off because the holidays are obviously busy at the movie theater, but then like the weekend after used to be really busy then too. And so I had so much fun this weekend. I went to holiday bazaars, and there was this Holly Jolly Christmas thing I went to with my sister, and that was fun. We went and listened to music on Friday night. I went to the Seahawks game yesterday. I had so much fun this weekend. And I'm grateful for so many things, but most importantly, I am proud of myself for making the decision, taking this leap. As scary as it's been, I'm so much happier. I'm so much happier. And it sometimes blows me away. I'm not gonna lie, it's been a little bit scary this year, but the growth and evolution that has been happening within me and the awareness. I know in my heart and in my soul that this wouldn't have happened had I not made that decision. And so the holidays are looking very different for me than they have in, you know, more than half my life. Like 30 years I was in that industry. And it's exciting to be able to participate in all the things that I was always. I think I said to my sister, because we've been to like three different holiday events, and I'm like, I've always wanted to do this, and I was never able to. That's probably not true. I likely could have if I had made the time for it, but I felt like I had so much on my plate all the time that I didn't feel like I had the capacity to add anything else to it. And honestly, since I'm being honest with myself and honest with you, there was an element of victimhood. Oh, this is interesting. I hadn't really thought about this. There was an element of playing the victim that I was doing during that time. Huh. Where it was, I could be a victim, I could be a martyr, I could say, Well, I can't do that because I have to work, or whatever the case might have been at the time. But it's so fascinating to be reflecting on that right now and the awareness that I was actually, I was absolutely victimizing myself. Hmm. Interesting. So I sat down this morning to record today's episode, and I had full intention and an outline of everything I wanted to talk about, and it was gonna be about friendships. And then I sat here and I recorded an episode, and I struggled through the entire thing. It didn't feel right, it didn't feel aligned. There was something coming up in my body about what I was trying to talk about, and it created an awareness within me that there's something with some friendships that I've had that was coming up that was like blocking me from being able to have that conversation. So I was listening to my body, I was feeling tight, my throat was things were not flowing. And it brought up to the surface some things for me that I need to address within myself before moving on to that episode. And had I pushed through it, it would not have been aligned. It would not have come through as the message that I wanted to convey. And there's something that I need to look into. So that is bringing us to what we're actually going to talk about today, is actually quite aligned with last week's episode where we're talking about how every relationship you have starts with the relationship you have with yourself, because I am at a stage in my life now where my body is communicating with me and I listen when it talks to me. And so when that feeling came through, that tightness, that constriction, that yuck feeling, I knew that was the moment to pause, pull back, somatically release what was going on within me, and then come back to it and acknowledge that that isn't where this is meant to go today. It was just off. And it felt really, it felt like I was forcing and pushing through to create something that I had in my mind that I thought it was supposed to be today. And that's not actually where we're meant to go. So this is where we're gonna go today with the episode. We're talking about your relationship with your body's signals, the signals beneath the thoughts, the ones you feel before you can explain them, those nudges that you get, not this, not now, something's off. This doesn't feel right, or this does feel right, whatever is happening in your body, whatever that sensation is, pausing and listening to what it's saying to you. Because this is the relationship that truly shapes all of your other relationships. And what happens is it comes up and you feel it, and you can ignore it and suppress it and push it down, or you can be open to listening to what it's trying to say to you. Most of us grew up being taught to rely on our thoughts, our logic to process, analyze, break it down, reason with it, and push through. But our body actually speaks to us through sensations and in a completely different language. It tells you the truth long before your thoughts do. And it happens so quickly that you actually start to believe it's your thoughts, but it's actually your body communicating with you. You know, those moments when something feels tight or constricted, or you like can't quite breathe. Most people would interpret that as stress or resistance or your nerves, but often it's your body saying, Something about this doesn't feel right for me today. Something about this doesn't feel right for me in this moment, something about this. I need to pause and take notice because your body speaks in sensations, not in sentences. Please hear this. Your body speaks in sensations, not sentences. And one of the absolutely most life-changing things you can learn is how to feel the difference between the discomfort that's asking you to grow and pull you forward, and the discomfort that's asking you to pause. They are two very different feelings in your body, but you can only learn the difference when you're willing to stop overriding the habitual cues and become aware and actually listening and being open to what your body is actually trying to say to you and not avoiding it. Not avoiding it. So talking about this now during the holiday season is extra important. As I've talked about before, this season amplifies everything. You have continual pressure put on you to host, to keep giving, to keep saying yes. And our bodies are speaking to us even louder than ever. This time of year, people are forcing themselves through exhaustion, overwhelm, tension, shutdown, and calling it normal when you ignore and suppress what your body is trying to communicate with you. Sometimes you get sick, sometimes you are injured. Things happen because your body is screaming at you that you need to change something, you need to stop, you need to rest. Like it's telling you what it needs, but are you actually listening to it? Because if you don't, it's gonna force you to, and it might force you to in a way that completely incapacitates you for much longer than you expected, and you might be forced to rest because you didn't listen to what your body was saying to you. Your body knows how you're actually doing, it knows when something feels too fast, it knows when you've taken on too much, it knows when you're pushing past your capacity, it knows when you're pretending, and it knows when you're trying to be fine when you're not. When you slow down enough to actually listen, you start to notice things like, wow, I'm tired in a way that rest might actually be helpful for me. I am saying yes out of obligation and guilt, not out of alignment. My body is tightening every time I think about doing this particular thing or having this particular conversation. I need more space than I'm giving myself. This conversation does not feel good to me anymore. I need a moment just for me. Those are the conversations that your body is actually trying to have with you. And are you listening? But most of us have learned to override those cues because we never believed that they mattered. And actually, they do. We believed that our needs were in the way. We believed that pushing through was the only option. We believed discomfort meant try harder, push harder, do more. We believed stillness and rest was laziness. We believed saying no made us selfish. We believed rest was optional. And I'm here to tell you those beliefs are not true. Your body speaks in sensations because it wants to take care of you, it loves you, it wants to care for you and nurture you and love you and be there for you, and it will be there with you and for you for the rest of your life. My body stopping me from recording the friendship episode wasn't about resistance, it wasn't avoidance, it wasn't fear, it was wisdom, it was guidance, it was saying you are not in the right emotional space for that topic today. Let's go somewhere else. Listening to yourself at that level is a relationship, one that grows and expands the more you honor it. So, why does this matter in all of our relationships? When you listen to your body, you start to speak up sooner, you stop abandoning yourself, you stop holding everything inside of you, you stop forcing yourself into spaces that you don't actually want to be. You start choosing people who feel safe. You recognize when you're overwhelmed before you actually collapse and get ill or hurt yourself. You learn to rest without guilt. You say no when you actually mean no. You say yes with your whole body, not out of guilt or obligation. You become more present, more grounded, and more of who you authentically are. Your body becomes the internal barometer for everything: work, friendships, partnerships, family decisions, desires, boundaries. And ultimately, your body is the place that you can return to when everything is chaotic outside of you. You can return to yourself and connect with yourself and find that inner peace within you and how to regulate yourself when everything is crazy outside of you. Because when we continually outsource our happiness, our peace, our joy, and if your nervous system can only feel safe when everything outside of you is perfect, you're not actually regulated, you're dependent. And so when you can cultivate that sense of peace and groundedness within you rather than outside of you, everything outside of you is going to change. So when we shift our internal world, it completely shifts our external world. And cultivating that relationship is critical, critical to have you not be living in survival mode and codependency. And ultimately your body then becomes the place that you return to when things are chaotic around you because you always have you. Always. You're never leaving you. We're always with you for the rest of your life, regardless of the people that come and go, the jobs that come and go, the relationships that come and go, everything. You always have you. And so when you can ground and center yourself and reconnect back to yourself and listen to your body talk to you, it shifts everything for you. It absolutely does. I can 100% guarantee that because I've lived it. I have absolutely lived it. I never used to listen to anything that my body would say to me ever. And now I'm listening all the time. And it has completely shifted how I show up for myself, how I show up in the world, how I show up in all my relationships, because it all starts with you. Okay. With that, we are gonna go into a card pull from the Magic of What If card deck volume two. The decks are available on my website, purepossibilitiespodcast.com. And you can also find amazing Magic of What If merchandise, journals, mugs, the 2026 desktop calendar, all kinds of goodies for yourself or for those that you love for the holidays or any time of year. It doesn't even have to be the holidays. Today's card is what if the universe is always conspiring in my favor? What if the universe is always conspiring in my favor? It doesn't always feel like it. It doesn't. Wherever your belief rests, everything is always happening for our highest good, even when it doesn't feel like it. There's either a lesson that needs to be learned or something meant to pull you forward into the next highest level of yourself, that most magnificent version of you that you were shutting down and hiding and suppressing. There's always something. And we don't always want to admit that that's true, but when you look back at your life and the things that have happened, the path that you've been on, it's your path, right? And your soul is craving and desiring that growth and expansion. And when you look back and you see how things have played out, they've all brought you exactly where you're meant to be. And it is always in your highest good. Even if it's not happening the way you expect or the way you want necessarily, that doesn't mean it's not for your highest good. There's a truth bomb for you. Okay, so now we're gonna move into the reflection questions, and these will be posted in the show description. And before we get into these, I want to say one thing. First, I would like you to ask yourself, do I bypass these reflection questions or do I take an opportunity to actually connect with myself and ask myself these questions? I completely understand. If you're driving or if you're busy and you're just listening to this in the moment, but do you make the time for yourself to go back and reflect on these questions? And if you don't, I'm not judging you. I'm wanting you to get curious with yourself because if you bypass and ignore these, the first question is: are you trying to avoid being honest with yourself? Is there a truth deeper in these questions that you're wanting to bypass? Do you feel like it doesn't matter? Do you feel like you are not important enough? Do you feel like what I'm asking you isn't important? So those are other questions in addition to the reflection questions, but I'm just curious if you're noticing any resistance coming up when we do the reflection questions. So, okay, let's dive in. Go ahead and if it's safe and comfortable for you to do so, go ahead and close your eyes for a moment. Relax your jaw, put your hand on your heart if that feels comfortable, and take a deep breath in. And release. What would it look like to trust my body's signals for just one day? Take another deep breath in and release. There's never any pressure to fix or change anything in this moment. This is strictly an invitation to become aware. And I'm not gonna sugarcoat this because I know that you have the ability to change your life, and I'm not gonna hold back because if you hold a belief that tells you that you have to stay exactly where you're at for the rest of your time here on this earth, I'm gonna tell you that that is not true. You have the power to change your life if you're open and willing and curious because it's all within you. Nobody's coming to save us. It's actually really quite beautiful because no one is coming to save you, and you have all the power to make a change in your life. It's all like you can look at it as a burden or you can look at it as something amazing and magnificent that you don't have to stay stuck or feel stuck where you are. You can actually change it if you want to. If your desire to change is greater than your desire to stay the same, and all you have to do is give up the belief that it's not possible because it absolutely is. Your body is always speaking to you, it is always guiding you, it is always honest with you, and it is always trying to bring you back to yourself. And the moment that you stop making those sensations that you're feeling wrong, or you choose to listen instead of override, you build a relationship with yourself that becomes the foundation of every other relationship in your life. Period. And everything is a relationship. Thank you for being here with me today. Thank you for listening to your body, even if it's just for a few moments. And thank you for allowing this episode to unfold exactly as it needed to. I hope you have a beautiful, beautiful day and an amazing week. Much love.