Your Spidey Sense: Are You Listening?

Hi Reader,

It was a warm spring day and I was on a lunch break from work in Midtown Manhattan. I was thirty-one at the time and I recall having a strange prickly sensation in the lower left area of my back. Immediately, the word “SHINGLES” flashed across my mind.

​
Later when I got home from work, I saw that I did have a rash on my lower back and it was red and burning. I made an appointment with my doctor to have him check it out and he confirmed that it was indeed shingles.

​
My initial thought was, “Shingles is something people over sixty get. Not someone my age. WTF!”

​
I was under a lot of stress at the time because my father had recently experienced chest pains when he drove me home after we had gone out for dinner. Then a few days later, he was scheduled for triple bypass surgery.

​
Ironically, my father is a doctor and wanted to return to seeing patients barely two weeks after triple bypass surgery. I thought he was nuts, but I also know work is what keeps him going and he wanted to get back to his life. Thankfully, everything turned out well.

​
Looking back, I couldn't help but wonder whether all that stress had something to do with the timing.

​
I’ll always remember that experience because I recognized something was wrong before there was much to see. Years of being physically active have helped me develop a strong awareness of what feels normal—and what doesn't. I like to call it my “Spidey Sense.”

​
​
​We’ve Been Taught to Override the Body

But you don’t need decades of participation in sports or dance to develop your own “Spidey Sense.” Your body is giving you feedback all the time. The question is whether you’re paying attention.

​
So many of us have become very good at dismissing those signals. I see women depending on caffeine to get through the morning or day because they are tired. Personally, I would rather feel tired than mask the feeling because then I’m dialed in to what my body is telling me: I need more rest.

• Have you ever felt hungry two hours after eating and made the assumption you need more willpower?
• How about feeling unusually sore after a workout and assuming something is wrong, when you may have simply worked harder or differently than usual? Or the opposite—not feeling sore and assuming your workout wasn’t effective?
• This is a scenario I see all the time: You often feel stiff, spend the majority of your workday sitting, and chalk it up to getting older. Hmmm…What’s going on here?

In each of these situations, the body is giving you information. Instead of immediately glossing over the signs, or worse, making an assumption about what they mean - “Paging, “Dr. Google” - what if you got curious about them instead?

The first step is noticing. The second is being inquisitive about what it might be telling you. I really love the phrase, “Be curious,” because it’s a lot more inviting and the total opposite of alarmist. It’s helpful because you’re teaching yourself to listen deeply and trust yourself.

As a society, we’ve become increasingly disconnected from our own feelings and instincts. Compare modern life with cultures and communities that still live much closer to the natural world. Without so many layers separating them from nature and its rhythms, there can be a very different relationship with the body, the environment and themselves.

When Data Becomes The Authority

I think data can be useful but not when it replaces our actual lived experiences. I do understand how knowing your daily step count or how well you slept can provide a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

However, for me, becoming more connected to myself isn’t about acquiring more metrics. It’s simply paying attention to the clues my body gives me.

​
This is one of the reasons I personally don’t use wearables. I find them anxiety provoking because they can feel like some kind of grading system. If a device tells me my sleep was poor, then I feel like I failed at sleep. That just sounds crazy. If I stayed up too late and wake up feeling like crap the next morning, I already know why I didn’t sleep well. I don’t need a device to tell me. And if I wake up feeling great but my device tells me I had a terrible night’s sleep, which one am I supposed to believe? I’d probably get depressed and throw out the wearable or tie it around a fork and let it track that for a while.

​
That doesn’t mean I think all tracking is useless. There are situations where technology can give us information we simply can’t get by tuning into how we feel.

​
Let’s take a Continuous Glucose Monitor (or CGM), for example. I think this can be an incredibly useful device. For someone with insulin resistance or concerns about their glucose regulation, it can provide valuable feedback about how glucose responds to different foods and meals in real time.

That’s information you may not be able to feel. Seeing those patterns can help someone better understand how their individual body responds and make informed changes to their diet, exercise and other lifestyle habits that support metabolic health.

To me, this is where data becomes incredibly useful. It’s giving me information about my physiology that I may not otherwise know.

The Science of Listening Inward

But what about all the information we can sense on our own?

Our bodies are communicating with us all day long, and we actually have a biological process for sensing and interpreting much of what’s happening inside us.

It’s called interoception.​

Interoception is our ability to sense and interpret what’s happening inside our bodies—things like hunger, thirst, fullness, heartbeat, breathing, temperature, tension and fatigue.

​
Earlier in the newsletter, I mentioned my “Spidey Sense,” and interoception is part of what I was describing. Being in tune with ourselves is natural, but many of us have forgotten how. For me, those signals have become clearer over time. After decades of living with myself, I’ve become quite familiar with my own bodily patterns.I know what a good energy day feels like compared to when I’ve bitten off more than I can chew and need to say no more often. The people-pleasing thing starts to get old.

​
As we pay more attention to these internal cues, we begin to recognize our individual patterns. You begin to recognize what hunger actually feels like versus eating because it’s noon. I know people who can eat as soon as they wake up at 6 AM whether they’re hungry or not. That’s not me. I need to wait about a half hour, do a few morning stretches, evacuate (that’s putting it nicely), and then enjoy a hearty breakfast. My morning pattern isn’t governed by a clock.

​
Over time, you may begin to recognize the difference between feeling tired because you had a poor night’s sleep and the deeper fatigue that tells you something else may be going on. You begin to recognize when your body feels strong and ready to be challenged—and when something isn’t quite right.

​
Interoception doesn’t mean we always interpret the signals correctly. It means we’re aware enough to notice them in the first place.

Midlife Changes the Conversation

Many of the women I work with begin noticing shifts in midlife that weren’t there before. Sleep changes. Weight doesn’t come off as easily as it once did.There may be more achiness or sensitivity in the joints, digestive issues, or new reactions to foods and alcohol they once tolerated without a problem.. Anxiety may creep up more along with more emotional ups and downs.

Midlife can bring a whole new set of cues to pay attention to, and when several seem to show up at once, it can feel overwhelming.

But these changes don’t mean your body has suddenly turned against you. They mean the conversation has changed.

​
The goal isn’t to become more cautious with your body as you get older. It’s to become more skilled at reading it.

Do you recall some of the advice that came from generations before us? “You need to take it easy now that you’re older. Fifty-something-year-olds don’t need to be running around riding bikes and climbing mountains. It’s important to rest and take naps.”

So, at fifty or fifty five, we should invest in a good rocking chair and take up needlepoint.

What a load of malarky!

That may have been a common belief back then, but it certainly doesn’t have to define how we age today. Just look at women competing in sporting events well into their 80s and 90s or people like Joan MacDonald, who took up strength training at age 70 because she was overweight and had several chronic health issues. Joan completely transformed what she thought was possible for herself.

Of course, there are also days when taking a nap might be exactly what your body needs. I do what I call “constructive rest” on days I’m exhausted. I lie on the floor and use my cranio-sacral device, and within 15–20 minutes I feel revived. The difference is whether you’re resting because your body is asking for recovery—or because you’ve bought into the idea that after fifty, you’re supposed to slow down.

Feedback Doesn't Always Mean “Back Off”

Body awareness isn't about always choosing rest OR always pushing harder. It's learning to distinguish between productive challenge, normal discomfort, fatigue, pain, and a genuine message that something needs attention.

Have you ever had one of those days where you were doing a lot of mental work but didn’t move much, and by the end of it you felt sluggish? It’s easy to mistake sluggishness for being tired and then blow off a workout.

It’s subtle, but I can tell that for me, sluggish often means I need to get off my butt and go to the gym or get outside and take a walk. That’s the kind of body awareness I’m talking about.

It doesn’t always yell or hit you over the head in an obvious way. Sometimes it’s kinda quiet and requires asking yourself, “What do I need right now? What would serve me best?”

Other times, I can walk into the gym fully intending to do a hard workout and realize during my warm-up that I don’t feel quite right.. Maybe the weights feel unusually heavy, a joint is acting up, or I simply don't have my usual energy. That doesn't necessarily mean I go home, but I may adjust the workout and do some yoga instead. I call that a maintenance day.

​
Listening to your body doesn’t always mean doing less. It could mean doing more. Maybe a modification. And sometimes it means stopping altogether. The skill is learning to recognize the difference.

Trust Your Spidey Sense

When I think back to the moment when the word “SHINGLES” suddenly flashed across my mind, I still find it remarkable that I knew something was wrong before there was much to see.

I believe we all have our own version of a “Spidey Sense.” Call it intuition, instinct, body awareness—or even being psychic. Interoception is one scientific piece of that conversation: our ability to sense what’s happening within our bodies.

But then life happens. We’re exposed to societal norms, cultural beliefs, other people’s opinions and all kinds of doctrines about what we should eat, how we should exercise, how we should look and even how we should feel or think. Add in the constant noise of modern life and it can become harder to hear what was there all along.

I don’t think we need to learn how to listen to our bodies as much as we need to remember how.

Sometimes the message is rest. Sometimes it’s eat something. Sometimes it’s get off your butt and move. And sometimes it’s simply saying, “No.”

The more you listen, the more familiar you become with your own patterns. And the more familiar you become, the easier it is to recognize when something changes.

Your “Spidey Sense” has been there all along. The question is: Are you listening?

​
​
​

Many blessings to you for abundant health, happiness and wellbeing ~

Strong and Beautiful in Midlife!

Sharon

Kuhle Body is a project of Vidya Ministerium, a faith based, private membership association. Services are available to members only. Membership is free and we are always accepting new members. You can opt out at any time. For more information, please read our PMA Declaration.​