What Does Your Body Actually Need?
A short guide to reading your body’s signals, for people who become adept at overriding them
You can tell when your laptop needs charging. You can tell when the car is due a service. Ask what you need at four on a Tuesday afternoon and there’s often nothing there, not because the signal isn’t being sent, but because you stopped reading it.
That’s a reasonable adaptation. Most people who develop it developed it for good reason, and it holds up well for years.
This guide is about turning the signal back up. Slowly, and without asking you to change anything yet.
What's in it?
01
Why the signals get quiet in the first place, and what that says about your nervous system rather than your discipline.
02
A short practice for locating one physical sensation, designed for people who find that genuinely difficult.
03
The four questions worth asking before you reach for coffee, the list, or your phone.
04
What to do with the answer when it isn’t convenient.
Where should I send it?
It arrives straight away. You'll also get Body Dispatch, a fortnightly letter on the body and the nervous system. Unsubscribe whenever you like.
No pressure, no inbox overwhelm. Built with Kit
who wrote it?
Cliodhna O'Carroll
I’m an integrative psychotherapist and somatic practitioner in Dublin. I hold an MSc in Integrative Psychotherapy, I’m a certified Intuitive Eating counsellor and a trauma-informed yoga teacher, and I’ve spent over a decade in financial services across Dublin, London and New York, where I learned first hand how our environments can reinforce disconnection from our embodied experience.
I wrote this guide because the question in the title is one I couldn't answer myself for a long time and I wanted somewhere to begin