Listen to your body
Q: What practices help you stay regulated?
Kinnari’s Dialogue
I’ve been doing strength training, yoga and daily walks of about ~8k steps every week for the last 3 months. Diligently. And yet, the scale has not budged. So when my trainer asked me to do the dreaded inch worms during a warm-up one Saturday morning, I let my frustration out.
Me: “I’ve been working hard for 3 months and haven’t seen any significant change.”
Trainer: “Change takes time, be patient. But I have noticed that you carry a lot of stress in your body.”
Me: “Stress?! In my body - how can you tell?”
This led to an eye-opening conversation. My trainer is more than a personal trainer. She’s also my yoga teacher and health coach. She observes, she corrects and she pushes me past the moments I want to quit (which is often). So when she said my body was carrying something I listened.
She pointed to the way I talk - always racing to get a hundred things done - and in the way I resist certain exercises. She explained she’d started to make adjustments to both my yoga and strength training classes in response. “It’s important to help your body let go of the stress or it will be really hard to make meaningful changes.”
I asked if she’d write something I could share here. Here’s what she sent –
“Before you count calories, before you step on a scale, before you measure your worth in kilos or inches - Regulate. Because a body in survival mode holds on. It hoards. It inflames. It resists every effort you throw at it, not out of stubbornness but out of protection. You cannot out-train a dysregulated nervous system. You cannot out-diet chronic cortisol. The scale will never tell you what your nervous system is carrying. Heal the threat response first. Slow the breath. Tone the vagus. Signal to every cell that the danger has passed. A regulated body doesn’t fight you, it works with you. Weight, energy, digestion, immunity all of it shifts more easily from a place of safety than from a place of war. So before you chase any number, come back to yourself first. The body doesn’t need more pressure. It needs to finally feel like it’s allowed to rest. The fear of being left behind is keeping you from arriving anywhere at all. And the most radical thing you can do is stop. Breathe. Signal safety to a system that has forgotten what safe feels like.”
I had heard a version of this before. Last November, at a wellness retreat in Thailand a body composition test revealed that my body was in a pre-burnout state. I came home with a list of the changes I needed to make promptly forgetting several once I resumed my busy mom-work life. This conversation with my trainer reminded me of what I had uncovered back then. To slow down, to subtract, to pause. Unfortunately, I am back to all burners on “high” (work, home, family, social) and I’m not sure I even know how to turn any one of them down.
But this body that I inhabit is aging and I know continuing to ignore these signs is going to have an irreversible impact on my longevity. So I’m paying attention and trying to follow her advice. Sleep, earlier more consistently. Meditation, almost daily. A deep tissue massage every few weeks to work through the soreness. And recently, my husband and I have started doing occasional date nights at a jimjilbang (korean spa). where we sit in the special heated rooms, then move between the sauna and steam rooms. The heat helps us destress and recover from our hectic week.
The other thing I’m exploring is an AI Health Coach. I created a “project” on Claude uploaded my past labs and DEXA scans and gave it a specific prompt - “Act as a holistic health coach for peri/post menopausal women, draw on the latest studies for weight loss, longevity, brain health, hormonal health, blood sugar control and any other longer term chronic conditions and offer personalized guidance on changes I should make including daily nutrition, sleep, exercise.” I’ve been amazed at the insights it has provided. Things my Doctors have not raised. It’s shared what’s going well (bone density) and identified things I put aside (stress and impact on cortisol) and shown me how that impacts my body.
I’ll end with the question the Claude Health Coach posed to me - “The question for 2026 isn’t just “how do I lose more fat?”. It’s “how do I build a version of my life where my nervous system is actually recovering, not just performing? Because the data suggests that chronic stress is quietly working against almost every health goal you have right now.”
Here are some of our older posts where we talk about taking care of our bodies and a quick poll for you.
Mitali’s Dialogue
I have been feeling slow and sluggish this past month. Initially I attributed it to jet lag and a packed eight day trip to India in April. But it’s more than jet lag. My gut feels off, like it decided to slow down and store up reserves for a rainy day. My migraines that started in India have continued here in California. The fatigue and a deep desire to take a nap in the middle of the day has persisted for a few weeks.
I have learnt over the past couple of years to pay acute attention to my body. It sends me signals way before my brain has a chance to process and spin a narrative on what is happening in my life. So I paused. And listened to the messages.
I normally resist taking naps but last week I decided to lay down for thirty minutes in the afternoon giving my eyes and brain a rest.
I upped the protein content in my meals, recognizing that the fatigue meant I needed to nourish my body more.
I added more fiber to my diet and changed my eating patterns, based on all the tips I have learnt on how to fix my gut. I have read about the gut-brain axis and know that any gut changes are a sign to slow down before my brain starts receiving signals from my gut that I am drained.
I resumed my somatic exercises as a way to regulate my nervous system, trying to send a message to my body and brain that I was safe.
Taking care of my body has become a priority for me. Not just for my physical health as I age or I start to edge towards menopause but because it also takes care of my mental well-being. Numerous depression episodes over the years have taught me the importance of small daily habits like moving my body. Sleep and nutrition are a must in those times as well. I have also learnt the hard way, the importance of paying attention to my body even when things are going well. To not fall off the bandwagon and stop the daily habits that sustain my body. When things start to get busy and I start to deplete my reserves, if I choose to pay attention, I notice that my body always tells me before my brain.
It has been a busy couple of months. Stressful too in some ways - which I tend to just power through without noticing the toll things take on me. My older son K graduated from high school this past week. Given he is neurodivergent, we didn’t know what he was going to do after high school up until a few weeks ago. Without realizing it, I must have been holding onto anxiety in my body as we toured, shortlisted and applied to a few programs that would be a potential fit for him. Last month I also had to take care of some personal stuff for my mom in India which resulted in a quick trip to Kolkata and a visit to Mumbai to see my in-laws. It has also been a busy time of the year for my younger son N, who just finished middle school, and is participating in regional Taekwondo competitions, while also figuring out a plan for his summer.
The invisible load that we take on as moms, daughters, wives, caregivers goes often unnoticed. Sometimes we don’t even realize how many things we are juggling in our head, on top of taking care of the regular day to day between work and home. And if we don’t pause to acknowledge it and recharge our energy, we can often find ourselves running on empty.
It’s been four weeks of dedicated effort to get my body back to an equilibrium. I know the effects of new practices take time and I can’t expect miracles overnight. I also know that during this time I must be kind to myself, prioritize the activities that give me energy and take time to step away when things get overwhelming. Taking care of myself is critical for the family to function well.
Here are some of the practices I have found useful to regulate my body when I am out of sync -
Daily somatic exercises - This program Heal Your Nervous System by The Workout Witch has been super helpful in building new neural pathways and reducing stress levels.
Quick fixes for my gut health - I follow tips from Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, a gastroenterologist and gut health expert who is best known for his book, Fiber Fueled.
