Best Self Magazine

Insights From the Heart: Learning to Listen to My Body, Mind & Spirit

Insights From the Heart: Learning to Listen to My Body, Mind & Spirit by Karen Eller. Photograph of a woman looking into her own reflection by Eugenia Maximova.
Photograph by Eugenia Maximova

On a mission to overcome a deeply-rooted anxiety, one woman learned the power of listening to her body to release fear and embrace love.

Knock. Knock. Knock. Actually, the sound from the person banging on my hotel door at 10pm was more like, Pound, Pound, Pound.

I had come for a solitude trip although I wasn’t really trying to get away from anyone. Rather, this one-night trip was to overcome my paralyzing fear of being away from my husband. It would be my first time I was out of town without Don since his heart attack and subsequent bypass surgery. In the two-plus years since, I had been afraid to be more than across town from him. My mind kept reiterating: 

What if something happens again and I’m far

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Best Self Magazine

Best Self Magazine4 min read
Love and Heartache: An Unfathomable Separation of Mother and Child
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes — 1970 in pre-Choice America. The lonely only child of a high-ranking naval officer and a socially ambitious mother, after our eighth move in thirteen years, I longed for a normal adolescence — to have lasting frien
Best Self Magazine5 min read
Chasing Happy: 3 Steps to Life-Long Transformation
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes — It started with a simple question: “Mommy, can I give you a goal this year?” At the time I was working long stressful hours leading a large client relationship for an advertising agency while balancing having two
Best Self Magazine7 min read
How Cancer Helped Me Let Go of Fear and Make Deep Connections
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes — I am a two-time breast cancer survivor, but my story is not really about cancer and its trials. It’s about how cancer taught me that humor, nature, exercise and relationships with both family and “found family” h

Related Books & Audiobooks