I want to talk about a popular message that definitely has merit, but that I think is often misused: the idea that your body and intuition are always telling the truth.

Over the last several months, I’ve heard and seen many statements like “it just feels like something is off with this pandemic – there has to be something deeper going on”, or “mandated mask-wearing feels like a slippery slope to tyranny or being controlled”….and then the person goes on to make a huge leap from “it FEELS this way” to “it IS this way”.

Before I go any further I want to say that I’ve seen incredible transformation in myself and others through dance and Expressive Arts Therapy. As someone who has trained in and personally used many healing modalities involving movement and the body, I will always tell you that reclaiming your relationship to your body and its messages is a worthwhile journey. AND…I’ll also tell you that indiscriminately following every single nudge from your body or intuition is misguided and potentially harmful.

Your body is a reliable indicator of emotional truth. It will give you signals of how any given situation is affecting you, and what patterns are playing out. And yes, it can pick up on cues that your conscious mind isn’t aware of: it can keep you safe from danger, or give you hunches that steer you in a direction you wouldn’t have otherwise considered. At the same time, the messages of your body (and any messages you receive through your body, if you believe they are coming from a higher source) are filtered through the lens of your experience. They can be coloured by everything from trauma to illness to prejudice to just being tired or hungry….or by the underlying stress of living through a global catastrophe like a pandemic.

For example, over the past few months I started having recurring dreams of needing to move. I would dream of panicking over finding a new apartment last minute, or of some damage that made my place unlivable, etc. It’s true that I’ll be moving at some point…but that doesn’t mean these dreams are telling me to do it right this second. Since March, I’ve been back and forth between living situations, I’ve been worried about what the school year will look like, what would happen if my mom got sick because she’s high risk and had a health crisis already this year, and I’ve majorly shifted some boundaries with family in a way that’s new and uncomfortable. Between all this AND a pandemic, it makes sense that I’d start to fixate on my home – something really basic that reflects our sense of safety in the world.

My dreams and the nights I stay awake worrying feel really overwhelming and scary, and give me an urgent sense that something is wrong and I need to fix it – and preferably right now. This is valuable information about my mental and emotional states. I can honour it and sit with it, and make adjustments to manage it. But that doesn’t mean I should take these messages literally. They reflect an emotional truth of my internal world – not an objective truth about the external world. It’s totally normal to feel a sense of overwhelm and foreboding in a time of great uncertainty, especially if you’ve been fortunate enough to live a relatively stable life so far. It’s understandable to feel an urge to find who or what is responsible, or to resent any regulations that make you feel like you’re losing even more control, or to seek vindication as an antidote to feeling powerless. It’s understandable, but it doesn’t mean any of these things are actually helpful solutions.

The water of emotion and intuition is a powerful ally in healing and understanding yourself, but you need a sturdy boat to navigate it. If you’ve ever been caught in dangerous waters before, you know that currents often pull you with conviction and force – and they can pull you very far in the wrong direction before you’ve even realized what’s happening. Don’t just jump into them and try to swim: learn to navigate them with nuance, discernment, and critical thinking.