The Human Body Has A Language. Can You Speak It?
Free course: A simple tool to help you understand what your body is telling you. Access this free PDF to guide you.
Welcome to The Feel Good Life! A newsletter about health, prevention, empathy, and hope. I’m Dr. Mariana M.D. and I’m here to teach you how to not go to the doctor. Get started by checking my easy, medically-guided course on managing stress and daily habits, right here.
Hello!
In December 2023 we finished our first course! It’s a free, easy and actionable course on managing stress and healthy habits in your daily life. It’s an 8-part course that you can do at your own pace anytime, and as many times as you need.
Now, after an amazing first course, today we continue our learning journey, and this month’s activity comes with a twist.
In most courses, you’re given content that you read and learn from. However, here at Feel Good I like to do things quite differently. So in this month’s course, instead of paying attention to what I’m saying, you will be paying attention to what your body is saying. Sounds quirky, right?
Let me explain.
Say hello to The Feel Good Health Journal!
I have created a small and super simple spreadsheet for you to fill up every day. Its purpose is to help you track down the most basic habits that all humans have to perform on daily basis, such as peeing, pooping, drinking water or sleeping.
Sounds silly? Yes.
Is it that obvious for you to know what your body is actually doing? Probably not.
If you have gone through the Don’t Stress It! course, you might know that habits and basic human functions are the holy grail of health. You have also learned how the body works, while being able to observe and practice some fun, easy tricks to help you recognise the main health patterns in your body.
However, it’s time to take the next step and go deeper.
It’s time to learn a new language!
Basically, your human body has a language of its own. Every organ and every cell speaks to each other. It’s an amazing and complex language which is being spoken day in and day out throughout your entire system. You might not hear it but it’s always happening. Us doctors and the entire medical and scientific community have spent eons learning how to decipher and decode this language. Thankfully, and luckily for you, we have now mastered a good percentage of this human body language so that we can translate it for you.
But as the quirky Doctor that I am, of course I want to teach you some of this body language, so that you don’t have to need me EVERY time you feel something in your body. That’s the power of this tool I’m giving you in this month’s course.
By learning the basic signs of how the body communicates, you’ll be able to understand what your body is telling you. Sounds amazing, right? And the best part: anyone can learn how to speak Body! I’m a language lover. I speak 5 languages and currently learning my sixth, so trust me, you too can learn this one.
The Feel Good Health Journal is a small, simple and easy spreadsheet that will help you track down your daily health habits by simply marking a box and writing down what bodily sensations you have through the day.
This paper is to be filled up at night, right before bedtime ideally, so that you can recall the main things that might have happened in your body during the day.
On day one you’ll find this to be funny and silly, maybe even pointless. The second day as well, but just keep going. Because the magic happens after a few days…when you suddenly start to see a connection between your today’s sensations or symptoms and your yesterday's habits.
Yes, after a few days of filling up The Feel Good Health Journal you will find out the most amazing and unexpected things that your body is doing and trying to tell you. Except you didn’t speak Body before and you couldn’t know! But this journal is about to teach you how to speak Body so that when your body speaks to you, you can now actually attend to it and understand what it’s telling you.
I also recommend filling this up for at least 2 weeks in a row. It doesn’t take complex knowledge or loads of time to do it - just five minutes at bedtime will be more than enough and trust me, the awareness you’ll get from this will blow your mind.
EXTRA ADVICE: practice this with the little ones in your life, whether it’s your own kids, grandkids, students, friends or others. Helping them understand and feel their own body, mind and emotions from early age will be an ABSOLUTE game changer in the way they grow and perform in their lives.
So, without further ado…
Download your Feel Good Health Journal right here:
How To Use The Feel Good Health Journal:
Here’s a quick summary for you.
Download the document above
Print two copies of it. Each copy serves a week of tracking your health.
It’s recommended to do this exercise for 2 weeks in a row.
After 2 weeks, sit down calmly with your papers and observe your notes. See if you can find any patterns, for example: 2 days of low water intake followed by 2 days of constipation, bloatedness or other digestive issues, even headaches.It’s all connected.
Write down your findings after pondering on your notes.
If you can’t still see a pattern, keep filling up the journal as many days and weeks as you want to. A full month has proven to be the most insightful period of time for most of my patients.
Make sure to enjoy the process rather than becoming obsessed with it. Observation is a fine, calm art, and it applies to health and the human body too.
The whole purpose of this month’s course - this journal - is for you to get to know your human body better, in a super easy and comprehensive way. This won’t ever replace any medical consultation with your doctor, but it will certainly allow you to better understand when they talk to you, or even avoid unnecessary medical appointments whenever possible.
As I (and many of us) always say: prevention is better than cure. And the first step to prevention will always be Awareness. Without awareness you just don’t know. And sometimes not knowing can take a big toll later, specially regarding your health.
So please remember:
Awareness is everything.
It is the first step to change.
With awareness comes knowledge.
With knowledge comes clarity.
And with clarity comes action.
Let this Feel Good Health Journal be your entrance ticket to Awareness land!
Here’s your download:
Have an amazing week, beautiful people!
Yours truly,
Dr. Mariana
PS. If you have any doubts about the worksheet or activity, just hit reply, ask me in the comments or contact me at thefeelgoodlife@substack.com and I’ll be right with you. :)
Also, if you find this useful, please share it with someone who could benefit from it. It could help save lives. No, really, it could!
Image credits: Personal Canva Design
oooh I love this. Your worksheet is much prettier looking than my clumsy spreadsheet that was only tracking a couple of these items.
It's really interesting to hear about the body's language and the dialogue between different parts of it. I was aware researchers were looking at how the mind/gut interaction works, but it seems from what you say, this conversation inside us is way bigger. Thank you! It's just a pity I'm such a poor linguist :)