Opposite Day: Learning to decode your body’s message

In primary school we used to play ‘Opposite Day’, which was a game when yes meant no, when sad meant happy, happy meant sad, love meant hate…you get the picture.

‘You’re not my friend, I don’t like you’
‘What, why?’
‘OPPOSITE DAY! Got you!

It was prank city on opposite day. It was weird. I’ve just clicked that our bodies and all of mumma nature talk in this weird opposite day way. Check it out.

When it’s chilly, our body sends a message to our brain that we’re cold so that we are triggered to find the opposite to cold - warmth. Imagine this:

Body: Shivering, ‘I’m cold’.
Brain: Cold hey, I know what you need, more cold. I’ll take some layers off, slurp a frozen drink and turn up the air con. There you go body, feel better?
Body: ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

Silly.

This is the most woo woo sentence I think I’ll ever write: the language of nature is paradoxical. It talks in opposites, creating discomfort so that we will act in contrast. When we’re hungry we don’t crave more hunger because it would lead to starvation. Hunger tells the brain to break our fast with food. It’s through this polarity that nature creates continuous rhythm, swinging from extremes: day to night, summer to winter and food to fast. Life.

Genius.

We need to remember this when we feel uncomfortable sensations in our body like the fear of failure. Our body is sending us a message that it needs the opposite of fear, it needs faith and love, self belief and self compassion (a.k.a. The Failure Friendly Mindset, read about it in my new book). But somewhere along the line of our unnatural lives we’ve learnt to respond to fear with more fear, fear on fear. A negative plus a negative moves us backwards into energy depletion rather than forward towards intended equilibrium.

Nature.

I once read a book about the mind in the library of a yoga retreat in South India. The only thing I can remember from that book is this one line ‘All truth is paradoxical and all lies are a contraction’. My personal favourite paradoxical truth bomb comes from Martin Luther Kings Jr. who said ‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that’. A paradox is full of equal and opposite forces which make it seemingly untrue but true none the less, while a contradiction is full of inconsistency and can not be true ever. I like to watch out for contradictions in my own mental chatter. It’s funny how one moment my mind can tell me I’m better than someone then that I’m inadequate all in the same breath. Seeing the contradictions makes it easy call out the ego B.S. and know that the whole narrative is fiction. 

Disconnection.

So if you’re feeling uncomfortable in your body, or you’ve caught your mind contradicting itself, try doing the opposite and flip it. If you’re mind is telling you ‘You can’t, you’re not good enough’ try on some positive thoughts like, ‘I can, I am enough’. Better yet, if you’re drowning in thoughts get out of your mind into your body. The mind and body are opposing forces that work best when they are  in balance. If the scales are tipped too far on the mind’s side you’ll go mental if you don’t balance it out with some physical action. Move, sweat, hug, get a massage, trace your own outlines or just stretch your way back into your body. (Music helps). 

Balance.

Your Friend,

Buzzy

Quick Remedies:

Stress // Relaxation
Fearful // Faith-Full
Inadequate // Self Compassionate
Uncertain // Visualisation 
Overwhelm // One small things at a time
Depressed // Gratitude
Anxious // Excited 
Pain // Purpose
Betrayed // Boundaries 
Out of control // Surrendered