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Do you know what a miracle you are? What a phenomenally sophisticated apparatus your sentient being is? Your ability to translate these squiggles into something meaningful involves a highly complex orchestration of brain activity. And the extracted meaning affects your entire body - producing chemical reactions, sensations, emotions, activating memories and connecting thoughts. As you read this your body intelligence is aware of your surrounding environment, filtering out the unimportant while keeping partial attention to what is relevant. Your body continues its ceaseless functions, digesting foods, pumping blood, breathing, regulating your body temperature and filtering out toxins. Your body is doing all these things and sending feedback back to your brain, guiding with messages about how to care for

Perhaps you’ve forgotten or did you never realize what a miracle you are? I hear how you talk about yourself when you come see me. You don’t like how your body feels or how it looks and you are struggling to get to some remembered or imagined state of being. In that struggle, you have left yourself and can no longer hear the messages from your body. You just want your body to behave, but you don’t realize what you view as “misbehavior” are compassionate, intelligent messages sent from you... to you.

Maybe you’ve forgotten the language that your body uses to communicate with you. The language that we translate as pain and pleasure. These are intelligent communications. Pain, discomfort and agitation signals us to change our situation and move towards ease. Are you uncomfortable? Is there strain on your wrists, back, shoulders? Maybe you need a pillow, a drink of water, a walk or a nap. Are you distracted? Is your head or heart moving towards conflict at work or the bleak state of the nation or the endless things on your list you feel incapable of completing? Maybe you need to sit still and listen to what your heart is telling you. Cry, ask for help, let something go, apologize. Pain and discomfort are not punishments. They nudge us to feel for another direction, urging us to find the places with more space and ease. And this miraculous guidance never leaves you, gets louder if needed and guides you back to yourself!

Likewise, pleasure, joy, ease and delight are also messengers. Are you sitting with a warm cup of tea right now? Was breakfast nourishing? Did you get a hug from your child today? Can you feel the warm sun on your face? Did a compliment make you smile? Did you enjoy listening to music? Then do more of these things, but more importantly, take them in when they are happening. Let them soak into the core of your being. Don’t deflect or overlook them. These pleasures are ambrosia for the miracle that is you. But don’t mistake the pleasure for the miracle or you might create pain chasing after those small moments.

The miracle is that you feel pain or pleasure at all, that your guidance works ceaselessly and effortlessly.  Whatever you are doing. your entire being is automatically operating in an incomprehensible and divinely complex way. When you remember, understand, accept this, you won’t reflexively run away from pain or towards pleasure. You will naturally respond to the language of your body with sensitivity and respect. You will move towards ease and joy. What an amazing miracle you are!
