Your body is talking – are you listening?

As a young girl, I often saw my mum make a beeline from the front door to the kitchen after a long day at work. Shoes and hat were still in place as she hovered over the stove to prepare our dinner without complaint. She was visibly tired and I remember wondering how she found the energy. Two decades later, I imagine my own children will have similar stories to tell about me. 

This isn’t just about motherhood though. As women, we are accustomed to pushing through in the various spheres of our lives. Fuelled by societal expectations, the pressure of inequity and the mental load of unpaid labour (to name a few reasons), we push through tiredness, tension, hunger, overwhelm and hormonal changes – often at the expense of our own wellbeing. We keep going because others are counting on us, because there is work to do, because rest can feel like a luxury we haven’t earned. 

Often, this pushing is framed positively as resilience, service, obedience, faithfulness – but beneath it all, many of us carry a quiet sense of depletion that we don’t always feel able to voice. We want to be soft, but at the same time we sometimes carry the discomfort of the message that paying attention to our own bodies is selfish. That listening inward somehow distracts us from loving God or serving others well. Perhaps we feel that if we don’t keep it together, how will we sustain the ground we have made in systems that already disadvantage us?

Our bodies are speaking to us

While it’s widely accepted that listening to our bodies is wisdom, in practice it’s much harder to do. But our bodies are constantly communicating with us. Fatigue, tension, irritability, numbness, restlessness – these aren’t signs of weakness or spiritual failure, they’re signals. They tell us when something is too much, when we’re stretched beyond capacity, when we need rest, nourishment or gentleness.

Many of us carry a quiet sense of depletion that we don’t always feel able to voice

While we may carry a genuine desire to serve and achieve, over time, pushing through trains us to override our own limits. When we consistently ignore what our bodies are telling us, the cost is real. Anxiety, burnout, emotional exhaustion and a sense of disconnection can slowly creep in. We may still look ‘fine’ on the outside, but inside we feel on edge or empty. And if we do lose our ability to function – as I often seen in my work with clients – the longer we take to listen, the longer it takes to recover. 

As Christian women, there’s an additional pressure if we’ve experienced our faith incorrectly framed as rising above bodily needs, e.g. pressing on, denying ourselves, trusting God rather than our feelings. But the Christian story does not uphold the idea of escape from the body. The incarnation affirms our embodiment and creation speaks of its goodness. Learning to trust and have a healthy relationship with our bodies therefore is an important part of attending to holism and our fragmented relationship with desire and pleasure.

Learning to listen

Listening to the body doesn’t mean indulging every impulse or turning inward in an unhealthy way. It means learning to notice what’s happening within us with honesty and compassion. There’s a difference between self-absorption, which is often anxious and closed, and self-attunement, which is attentive and open. One narrows our world; the other helps us live more truthfully within it. And isn’t this what the Lord desires from us as worshippers? (John 4:24).

Learning to listen to our bodies can deepen spiritual discernment

Throughout scripture, we see a deep respect for human limitation. We are created to need sleep, food, rest and rhythm. Even Jesus withdrew from crowds, rested, ate and responded to the needs of His body. Attending to our physical and emotional state is not a lack of faith; it’s part of living honestly before God. 

In fact, learning to listen to our bodies can deepen spiritual discernment. When we’re constantly overwhelmed or exhausted, it’s harder to sense peace, clarity or guidance. Slowing down enough to notice what’s happening inside us can help us recognise the difference between pressure and invitation, between obligation and calling. Where overextending can become a barrier to vulnerability and connection, acknowledging our limitations allows our needs to be both seen and met by others. When we are grounded in our bodies we tend to be more present, more responsive and more able to give from a place of fullness rather than depletion.

For many of us, guilt surfaces as soon as we slow down. We feel uneasy resting when others are busy, or saying no when there is need around us. But guilt is not always a sign that we’re doing something wrong. Often, it’s simply a sign that we’re doing something unfamiliar, particularly when introducing new boundaries around our self-care.

Listening to our bodies doesn’t have to be complicated. It can begin with very small moments of noticing, such as: recognising tension in your shoulders and allowing them to soften acknowledging tiredness without judging yourself for it pausing to breathe before responding naming when something feels too much, even if you don’t yet know what to do about it.

Committing to these habits doesn’t make us less generous, less faithful or less available to God. Over time, it often does the opposite. When we lean into our limitations, or perhaps weaknesses (as Paul writes), we can rejoice because we are inviting the Lord’s strength to be perfected in us (2 Corinthians 12:9). We stop trying to do things in our own might and are released to live more freely in the power of His Spirit (Zechariah 4:6).

I’ve spoken to my mum about my childhood memories, about how proud I felt, telling my primary school teacher that she had three jobs as a single parent to three children – oblivious to the pressure she was carrying. In hindsight, she reflected that although she didn’t know back then, she realises now that she didn’t have to do it that way. She was in survival mode and struggled to balance the reality of her circumstance with her need for rest, and in the end it only produced more restlessness.

Peace, contentment and joy don’t usually arrive through pushing harder, but through learning when to pause, attend and receive. Your body is not an obstacle to your worship. It is one of the places God meets you with wisdom, honesty, compassion and care. Listening to it isn’t selfish – it’s an act of faith.