>> Here’s the AUDIO for today’s Transformation Tuesday

There’s a new condition on the block in the world of sports medicine, and it has a very funny name: Dead Butt Syndrome. 

The idea is that our modern lifestyle places us in a state of near-constant front-body muscle contraction — think sitting at a desk, in a car or on a couch, and even exercising in forward motion or while facing a mirror.

As a result, most of us have actually forgotten how to fully activate the muscles in our backs and, particularly, the large muscles of our glutes. 

In other words, our butts are dead. 

Sports medicine doctors and physical therapists care about this because it can cause all sorts of pain in the, um, butt, but also all sorts of other injuries in our hips and hamstrings, calves and even feet. 

Fortunately, this pain can be relieved by learning to fire your glute muscles fully and stretching and strengthening them regularly.

But I think there’s a deeper lesson we can all learn from Dead Butt Syndrome. 

To fully inhabit your life — to live wholeheartedly, shrinking from nothing, exploring even your shadows and fears and thus causing them to dissolve — you must fully inhabit your body, and learn how to hear the wisdom it contains. 

This can be challenging for those of us who are very cerebral or very verbal, those of us who have a practiced habit of living in our heads and those of us who prefer talking about our feelings to actually feeling them. 

A wise woman set me on the path to learning how to feel my feelings, asking me over and over again to translate my detailed, verbal, thoughtful descriptions of my inner experience with these questions: 

“How does that feel in your body?” 

“Where do you feel that, in your body?” 

She also taught me not to push unwanted feelings down or reframe them immediately, but to allow them. To feel them. They pass much more quickly that way. 

When you allow yourself to feel your feelings in your body, you also get access to a new Inner Wisdom another wise woman taught me to see. 

My friend and colleague Monisha regularly issues our students this challenge: 

“Can you investigate and find the gift in that feeling?” 

I say it this way: “What is your body trying to tell you?” 

Or when someone is struggling with a decision: “I suspect your body already knows the answer.”

Yet one more wise woman, Martha Beck, taught me to use my newfound ability to feel my feelings as a deep, inner wisdom containing the answers to almost every question, from what to wear today to whether to get into partnership with this person or that one. 

Her advice: When an option or course of action you’re weighing feels like “shackles on” in your body, DO NOT DO IT.

Overrule or argue with your Inner Wisdom all you want. 

People do this all the time, making lists of pros and cons and Googling for backup, and even asking the whole entire peanut gallery for advice or emailing me to see if they can “pick my brain” when they actually know what they want to do, deep down. 

Catch this principle: When you get a “shackles on” feeling, your body already knows the answer, whether it seems logical or not. 

And your body’s deepest, Inner Wisdom is never wrong.

In all my conversations with transformation-seekers, I have never once heard someone who followed their Inner Wisdom regret it later. 

But when something feels “shackles off”? Feels like opening, expansion, freedom in your body? 

DO THAT. GO THERE. THAT’S A YES.

Even if it’s a little scary.

Over the years, that has translated into one of my personal life rules: “I’m a no on most projects, until I’m a YES.”

I felt no and said no to my last job for six months, until it because a resounding, inner YES. 

And when it did become a YES, all the people and circumstances and learnings and everything else I would need for that job to be the best job I’d ever had had lined up and fallen into place, and not through my hard effort or forcing.

At the center of your Being, there is an infinite well of wisdom that will guide you along a beautiful, unpredictable path into the life you came here to live. 

So learn to listen for that still, small voice. Don’t let the chaos of your calendar or your Inner Critic drown it out. 

Ask yourself: 

• How does it feel in my body? 
• What is the gift of this feeling?
• What is my <breath holding, jaw clenching, stomach sucking in, constant fidgeting, hard rock in my chest> trying to tell me? 
• Or, what is this <opening in your chest, warmth flooding through me body, feeling of solid, grounded, okayness, exhilaration or sudden expansion inside me> trying to tell me?
• Does my body know the answer? 
• When I think about this course of action, do I feel “shackles on” or “shackles off”? 

There’s one more step.

When you get a Divine Download, which is what I call an idea, a desire, a bolt of inspiration or even just a hunch that feels so “shackles off” you can barely restrain yourself from taking the natural next step? 

Milk it for all its worth.

Head up + heart out,

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