Lyrics & Story Behind Song #3: “Are You Listening?”
“Spirit’s always talking through your body—are you listening?
Talking through your body! Are you listening now?”
Before attending my first class in “body language” at Faith in Wellness Retreat Center, I had had a variety of experiences with systems that read body symptoms as “signals” and treated “dis-ease” as an energy imbalance. I’d done muscle testing on myself, and seen practitioners use that method to confirm what would support me emotionally and physically. I’d taken courses in Reiki and done energy work. I’d experienced several BodyTalk sessions, experimented briefly with energy tapping (EFT), and even trained in massage therapy. I knew John Barnes’ Myofascial Release therapy worked with restrictions in the fascia, often resulting from stored body memory of trauma. No one had to convince me mind/body connections were real and powerful. I believed body wisdom could offer me a gold mine of information. I just didn’t know how to translate the messages. It never occurred to me to simply ask in, and then combine feeling and intuition to “read” whatever I was experiencing. I had also never heard of Robert Tennyson Stephen’s book Sacred Body Language Translations, a reference that would eventually spark me to write the song “Are You Listening?”
Have a headache? I was taught to immediately blame an external cause and seek an external cure to erase the “symptom”. Take two aspirin. If that doesn’t work, try extra strength Tylenol and a cold compress. If the headache persists, see a doctor to determine if it is eye strain, stress, illness, high blood pressure, a brain tumor, etc. No one ever suggested I thank my body for giving me such a clear signal, and then check in and explore what I had been thinking or remembering before the headache appeared. If my headache was at the base of my skull, was I feeling fear of others (fight or flight) or anxiety about survival issues? If the headache was in my brow area, was I worried about imagining a future vision? The suggestion that everything my body experienced might be translatable in consciousness was mind boggling.
The more I explored treating body language as information from my subconscious, the more intrigued I got. If I had shoulder pain on the left (feminine) side, was I experiencing a burden with a female family member or co-worker? If I had hip pain on the right (masculine) side was I holding back rather than moving forward somewhere in my life? Itchy skin represented irritation with my outer world, while burns represented anger. Suddenly my body became my health advisor, partner and therapist. I still valued the role of 911, medical doctors, hospitals and pharmaceuticals, but if my body was willing to telegraph constant messages, why not pay attention?
Stephens’s book presented a series of detailed diagrams for teaching his Mastery Systems method of translating what our bodies are telling us. He also made reference to the work of naturopath Dr. John Whitman Ray and to homeopathic physician Dr. Constantine J. Hering’s “law of cure”, noting our symptoms signaled where we were out of alignment. According to the law of cure, we could count on our bodies to intuitively guide us toward whatever required healing in a step-by-step way. Cure typically happened from the inside out, from the head down, from simple to complex, and in “reverse order” (i.e. the reverse of how symptoms were suppressed). As I became more practiced at checking in and trusting my intuition and feelings, I wrote pages of notes about possible translations for what body signals might be telling me. My face suddenly broke out during a retreat, and then just as quickly cleared up once I “got” that I was irritated at how I was seen. After being well for a year, suddenly three weeks before I walked into a recording studio to begin my album my lungs filled with congestion (fear-blocked inspiration). I got excited about writing a song someday about the magic of body language. What happened next was a cosmic joke on me.
I loaned all my body language notes to a friend, telling her to keep them as long as she liked. The next week I found out “Translating Body Language” was the topic for a class happening at the retreat center in seven days. I wasn’t comfortable immediately asking my friend for my notes back, so I resigned myself to “no song”. My self-talk went, “Too bad! Without my notes, I can’t possibly write a song now in time for that class.” The next morning I woke up at 3:00 a.m. hearing these lyrics: “Spirit’s always talking through your body, are you listening?” That line sounded like a great song hook but, without my notes, why write it down? I ignored it and went back to sleep. In the meantime, I was repeating decrees during the day designed to get me “out of my head” and into my heart. All through the following day I repeated, “I LISTEN TO MY HEART”, “I VALUE MY DIRECT CREATIVE EXPRESSION” and “I TRUST MY HEART TO SPEAK”.
The next night at 3:00 a.m. the words “Spirit’s always talking through your body, are you listening?” woke me up again. Once again, I didn’t do what I usually do when a song comes in—which is write it down, get out my guitar, and play with where it leads. During the next day I continued decreeing “I LISTEN TO MY HEART”. The third night I woke up to the same lyric and again ignored it. I unconsciously repeated the limiting belief “I need my notes to write a good song”. During the third day I continued pouring energy into decreeing my commitment to listen to my heart for direct inspiration. Do you begin to see a crazy pattern here? I didn’t. For three days I was oblivious to the gleeful insanity of what I was doing!
Finally, when the lyrics to “Are You Listening?” woke me up at 3:00 a.m. on the fourth night, I realized the ridiculousness of what was happening. Each night I was being given an invitation to allow the direct inspiration I’d been asking for all day to come through. Each night I was getting in my own way by shutting that direct inspiration down. The joke was on me. This time I got out my guitar. Within a few hours the song was written. Spirit had been talking to me for three days. I just hadn’t been listening. I choose to listen now.
LYRICS: Are You Listening?
CHORUS: Spirit’s always talking through your body. Are you listening?
Talking through your body--are you listening now?
Movements every moment, are guidance for your mission,
Answers to “who, what, when and how”.
Verse 1: When you pay attention, symptoms and tension
Are messages of wisdom--just tune in.
Your body is your partner. Once you start to listen,
You won’t see your body the same way again.
Are you having trouble sleeping, as you toss and turn?
Are there secrets your heart’s keeping, lessons there to learn?
Know your body’s in your corner, rooting for your win,
With a wealth of information just beneath your skin.
CHORUS: Spirit’s always talking through your body. Are you listening?
Talking through your body--are you listening now?
Movements every moment, are guidance for your mission,
Answers to “who, what, when and how”.
Verse 2: Hello, do you read me? Hello, do you copy?
Are you there--aware of all I have to say?
Spirit and subconscious, sing in “Halleluiah”,
Grateful you’re awake to what you’ll heal today!
It sounds crazy, but don’t laugh. We’re all walking telegraphs.
Getting signals all the time, to keep our hearts aligned.
Hair’s antenna. Thumb is will. Before you choose to take a pill,
Ask if you just need to move, where you’ve been standing still?
Verse 3: Does conflict between mom and dad make your TMJ real bad?
Could your aching, lower back…be support you lacked?
And what’s that cramp inside your thigh? And the urge to rub your eye?
Is it time we checked inside for the reasons why?
CHORUS: Spirit’s always talking through your body. Are you listening?
Talking through your body--are you listening now?
Movements every moment, are guidance for your mission,
Answers to “who, what, when and how”.
Verse 4: Outer, self or others? Inner, right or left?
Head to toe, your body knows what to shift.
Hear the invitation. Do a translation.
Spirit’s talking. Take the gift!
CHORUS: Spirit’s always talking through your body. Are you listening?
Talking through your body--are you listening now?
Spirit’s always talking through my body and I’m listening--
Talking through my body, and I’m listening now.
CHORUS: Spirit’s always talking through your body. Are you listening?
Talking through your body--are you listening now?
Spirit’s always talking through my body and I’m listening--
Talking through my body, and I’m listening now.
© 2019 Ann S. Bugh