Before Your Mind Decides, Your Body Knows.

How can we learn to hear — and trust — it again?

We’ve all been told to “trust your gut.” 

We’ve all been told to “trust your gut.” What most people don’t realize is that your “gut” isn’t just in your stomach. It’s your whole body talking. Your muscles, your breath, your heartbeat, even your skin temperature — all of it is part of your internal radar, scanning for changes before your thinking brain catches on.

How can we learn to hear — and trust — it again?

We’ve all been told to “trust your gut.” 

We’ve all been told to “trust your gut.” What most people don’t realize is that your “gut” isn’t just in your stomach. It’s your whole body talking. Your muscles, your breath, your heartbeat, even your skin temperature — all of it is part of your internal radar, scanning for changes before your thinking brain catches on.

SCIENCE INSIGHT

The science is clear: your nervous system is always running in the background, catching tiny shifts about your safety, danger, tone, and energy before you even have a thought about it. That’s why you can get a sudden drop in your stomach, a flash of tension in your shoulders, or an unexpected wave of calm before you’ve “figured out” what’s happening.

But here’s where it gets tricky — survival wiring can scramble the message. Your body might signal safety, but an old script says, “This isn’t safe.” Or it might spot a real issue, but you dismiss it, explain it away, or call it anxiety. 

When you’re always on, in a toxic environment, and carrying a heavy personal load, you stop hearing your body’s early warnings. You miss the moment when stress shifts into burnout. You override the signal that says, this isn’t safe — until your body forces you to listen through exhaustion, illness, or a breakdown.

Over time, you stop trusting those signals — and without meaning to, you stop trusting yourself.

COACHING INSIGHT

I see this all the time in coaching. Maybe you’re in a meeting, a tense conversation, or just scrolling your phone. You feel it — the shift in your shoulders, the knot in your stomach. And before you can sit with it, your mind jumps in: Don’t make a fuss. You’re overreacting. 

Years of conditioning have taught you to override the body to keep the peace or stay “reasonable.”

That’s not because you can’t read your body — it’s because you’ve been trained not to.

This is where our work starts: creating space between the signal and the story. Pausing before the old script takes over. Asking without judgment: Is this about now, or is this about the past?

That’s when your accuracy starts to return. That’s when you rebuild trust in the signal — and in yourself.

REFLECTION PRACTICE

Your body’s talking — here’s how to catch it in action.

This week, your only job is to notice. It’s the first step in rebuilding trust with your body.

1. Download your Body-Signal Tracker (linked below).

2. Track every physical shift you notice — breath changes, tight shoulders, stomach flips, or sudden calm.

Send me your completed sheet by next Thursday and I’ll gift you a free 30-minute coaching session.

Download Body Signal Tracker