The Body Sometimes Has Its Own Ideas

How to Listen to Your Body When Running and What One Stubborn Ache Taught Me

I found this story in my archives recently. I wrote it nearly ten years ago, about a run from earlier that year. Reading it back, I noticed something I had missed the first time. I will tell you what it was at the end, because I did not see it then either. It only arrived once the story had played out. The story is about a stubborn ache, and what happened when I listened to my body while running.

Here is the run.

How to listen to your body when running: a runner in a moment of mindful awareness while enjoying a quiet beach run at dawn

Saturday

It was on my Saturday morning run that I first felt an ache in my left hamstring. I reminded myself not to panic, and to relax with the sensation rather than brace against it. I let myself feel it fully as I kept running. I sent love to the area and asked it to relax, the way I have learned to over the years. It was a stubborn ache, so I had to continue this process for quite some time. Eventually the hamstring let go, and I ran home easily, with no injury. But that is not where the story ends.

Monday

On my regular Monday morning run, the ache came back.

I could not believe it. This never happened before. I have spent years learning to catch these small signals before they turn into injuries, and the catching has always been enough. So, I felt fear creep in. Was this finally the time my body would not respond? I quickly reminded myself that feeling fear never helps. I firmly said to myself: "No. I will not become a victim of this."

I began the same practice I had used on Saturday. I gave the ache my time and my kind attention.

It did not want to go.

I have done this so many times, and it has always worked. For a moment I wondered whether this was the run where my body simply would not answer, and the running injury would have its way.

A Thought Arrived

Then a thought came to me. Maybe my body was not as relaxed as it could be. So, I decided to relax it completely. I kept running, but I imagined that my body was so completely relaxed, that it was just hanging on my bones. I maintained my form, but I visualized that all my muscles and flesh were just dripping off my body as if they were melting.

I know this doesn't create a pretty picture, but there was no tension left anywhere in my body. I had given everything over to gravity. There was almost a feeling of relief. It was as though the body was finally allowed to do what it had been waiting to do. I did not have to hold this visualization for long. The ache in my hamstring let go and was gone.

I have not had trouble with that hamstring since.

What I See Now

I never used that running visualization again. I did not need to. It arrived for that run, for that ache, and then it left.

When I wrote this nearly ten years ago, I thought I was telling a story about the practices I had been building. Reading it now, I see that the most important moment was the one I improvised. The melting-body image was not in any method I had been taught. It came because I had been listening to my body so closely, for so many miles, that I could hear a new solution the moment it arrived.

That is what I had missed when I first wrote this story, ten years ago. The most important moment in the run was the one I improvised. This is what learning to listen to your body when running really does. It builds a strong mind-body connection for moments like the one I had on that Monday run.

This is the part I want you to take with you. The practices I teach, the ones I have spent twenty years developing, are not a checklist that fixes every ache. They are a way of staying close enough to your body that when the usual responses are not enough, something else can come. The practices are the doorway. What you find on the other side of it is yours, in the language only your body speaks.

I have been putting the finishing touches on a workbook this month. There are eleven practices in it, and the one in this story is not among them, because it was never a planned practice. It was what listening made possible on one ordinary morning. The workbook is about building the foundations that let moments like that happen for you, on your own runs, with your own body.

It will be ready in about three weeks. If you are already a member of the Peaceful Runner VIP Club, you will be the first to know when it goes live.

Update, July 2026: The workbook is here. The Peaceful Runner Method is a workbook for runners who keep getting hurt. Read more or purchase here: The Peaceful Runner Method

Until then, the next time something aches on a run, I hope you remember this:

Your body is not working against you. It is asking you to listen.

JOIN NOW!