Relearning the Language of the Body: Why True Healing Can’t Be Outsourced

The following article was originally written for Dr Clark’s Store Blog for the month of June. You can see the original publication here.

In modern wellness culture, we’re swimming in data but starved for discernment. We track our sleep, count our steps, log our food, monitor glucose, and run labs more frequently than ever before. But the paradox is this: even with all the biohacking tools at our disposal, many of us feel more confused and disconnected from our bodies than ever. Why?

Because we’ve forgotten how to *listen*.

This is not a critique of tracking tools or the emerging frontier of quantified health. I use these tools in clinical practice. They offer plenty of value. But there is a deeper issue we must address: the spiritual and psychological fracture that occurs when we outsource our self-awareness to devices and test results. It’s the loss of direct relationship with the body’s intelligence.

The Forgotten Art and Science of Body Literacy

Our bodies are always communicating. Through sensation. Through symptoms. Through rhythms & patterns. But most of us were never taught how to read these cues. Not by our parents—many of whom were doing their best in survival mode. Not in school, where we were made to sit quietly and tame our childlike wonder and creativity, and we had to ask permission to go to the bathroom. School is particularly brutal in that it teaches us to override signals, like the need to urinate. I see many clients in clinical practice who, even as adults, still fail to respond to basic needs like thirst or the urge to use the bathroom. And certainly not by the conventional medical model, which often pathologizes symptoms with the goal of suppressing them through drugs and/or surgeries, without investigating their root cause or meaning.

This isn’t our fault. The ability to attune to the body is a skill—a kind of lost language. And like any language, it must be learned through exposure, repetition, and nuance. In the beginning, it can feel disorienting. The signals seem vague or even contradictory. That’s because our brains are designed to filter out “unnecessary” information. If we retained every sensory detail from each day—every time we brush our teeth, every bathroom visit, every workout—we’d be overwhelmed.

But healing requires tuning into precisely those subtle signals. The ones we’ve been conditioned to ignore.

This is where tracking can play a powerful role. Not as an end in itself, but as a tool to bring awareness to patterns we may have previously overlooked. It can illuminate blind spots. Help us correlate cause and effect. And build a bridge back to body literacy.

My Methodology: Tracking with Intention, Not Anxiety

In my clinical work, I guide clients to track their own data in a different way. Not obsessively. Not rigidly. But with relationship in mind.

We track not just what they eat, but how they feel afterward. How they slept. What their energy was like that day. Their sex drive. Their digestion. Their strength in workouts. Their mental clarity. Their bowel movements. Their mood. And for women, their menstrual cycle. Each woman has unique needs and ways of navigating the phases of her cycle.

These patterns are the breadcrumbs that lead us back to intuition.

What I teach is not about micromanaging your life through numbers. It’s about building fluency in your body’s language. It’s about learning what your patterns look like—because there is no textbook formula for healing. Tracking becomes a mirror. A means of learning what supports your system, and what drains it.

That’s where true empowerment begins.

Why Nervous System Work Is Essential

And here’s the part most people overlook: learning to listen to your body requires you to slow down. To be present. And for many high-achieving people, that feels deeply uncomfortable. Because presence means feeling what’s actually there—including the anxiety, the numbness, and the stored stress. And many of us have used busyness, perfectionism, or even our health routines as a distraction from those feelings.

The truth is, your nervous system has to feel safe in order to tune in. And safety doesn’t come from doing more. It comes from learning to be with yourself. To notice. To pause. To respond rather than react.

This is the invisible work behind the visible progress.

Sometimes, the most powerful healing shift isn’t in the supplements or protocols. It’s in the moment someone says, “I noticed I wasn’t hungry, so I waited to eat.” Or, “I felt overwhelmed, so I walked barefoot in the grass.” Or, “I finally realized that food isn’t the enemy—it’s how I was relating to it.”

This is the work that reclaims your body as a partner.

Case Study 1: Hydration and the Need for External Validation

One of my clients came to me with chronic bloating, fatigue, muscle cramping, and brain fog. She was tracking everything: food, sleep, supplements. She was dialed in. But she still wasn’t improving.

When I suggested that she was dehydrated at a cellular level, she nodded but clearly didn’t believe it. A few weeks later, she went in for a routine blood draw. The technician couldn’t find a vein and casually remarked, “You’re really dehydrated.” Only then did the information land. Not because anything had changed in her body—but because a stranger in a white coat confirmed it.

This moment speaks volumes. Our bodies are constantly communicating, but we’ve been taught to wait for permission to trust what we already feel.

Case Study 2: Cholesterol and the Panic Spiral

Another client of mine had been healing beautifully. Her energy had returned. Her digestion was regular. Her mood was stable. Her skin was glowing. She felt good—better than she had in years.

Then she got back a new set of labs. Her cholesterol numbers had gone up. Suddenly, she began spiraling—doubting everything. Questioning every food choice. Wondering if she should change her entire supplement protocol. Despite the fact that she had more energy, had lost weight, was sleeping better and her total symptom burden was decreasing, a single number sent her nervous system into alarm.

What she didn’t realize is that in many cases, rising cholesterol can actually be part of the healing process. As inflammation drops and the body begins to repair, lipid levels often shift. This is *normal.* But the mythology of lab-based health convinced her something was wrong—when, in fact, everything was moving in the right direction.

Case Study 3: Thyroid Numbers and False Regression

A third client of mine had been working on her thyroid health after years of Hashimoto’s-related fatigue and brain fog. Over time, her energy improved. Her sleep normalized. She was finally feeling like herself again. She had lost and maintained a 40-pound weight loss for several years. Her strength and stamina were better than ever, and her metabolic health had improved. 

Then came the labs.

Her TSH had increased slightly, her T3 had dipped below the conventional “optimal” range, and her antibodies had crept back up.

Despite all of her tangible progress, these numbers sent her into a tailspin. She questioned whether her protocols were working, whether she needed to change her medication, whether she was doing something wrong.

When I posed the question, “What if your body is simply running more efficiently and therefore requiring less T3 than before?” it opened the door for her to reframe what she was seeing. Numbers alone don’t tell the full story. We must always interpret them in light of what’s happening on the ground—energy, mood, digestion, metabolism, sleep, strength.

This is especially important when someone is tapering off medication, switching from synthetic to glandular support, or transitioning protocols. Lab results can fluctuate dramatically during these periods of adjustment, and if you’re not prepared for that—or working with someone who understands how to contextualize those shifts—you might wrongly assume you’re regressing.

Your labs don’t exist in a vacuum. They need to be interpreted by someone who understands your whole context: your diet (especially if it’s low-carb or carnivore), your supplement strategy, your symptom patterns, and your lived experience.

Because when you rely only on numbers, you miss the truth that’s right in front of you. And you risk abandoning progress because the printout says otherwise.

Why Building a Personal Library of Patterns Matters

Another reason I guide my clients to track their internal and external metrics is because pattern recognition over time creates a personal archive of truth. Our minds are unreliable record keepers when it comes to subtle, day-to-day fluctuations. Much like we don’t remember the details of brushing our teeth last Tuesday, we can’t recall what our energy, digestion, or cravings were doing on any given day three weeks ago. The brain filters out what it deems unnecessary in order to conserve energy—but in healing, those seemingly small details are often where the gold lies.

This is especially true for women navigating hormonal rhythms. When you track for several months, you start to recognize the patterns: your mood dips two days before your period, or your digestion slows mid-luteal phase, or your need for carbs increases before ovulation. Instead of watching the pattern unfold and scrambling for damage control, you learn to anticipate it. This is where the magic happens.

You begin layering in strategic support before the crash. You modulate your workouts, adjust your supplements, make room in your calendar. You recognize telltale signs of depletion or overstimulation and respond in real time. Over time, this becomes your own longitudinal study. You understand which parameters support your best self—and it becomes second nature to execute on them. This is the opposite of being controlled by your body—it’s becoming fluent in it.

Reclaiming the Inner Compass

Each of these stories points to the same root issue: the illusion that healing lives outside of us.

We’ve been trained to believe the answer is in the pill. In the supplement. In the lab result. In the expert’s analysis. We’re sold the idea that health can be optimized, tracked, and managed to perfection—and if something goes wrong, a test will tell us why.

But the truth is, real healing doesn’t come from managing your body like a malfunctioning machine.

It comes from partnering with it.

This is a remembering. Of rhythm. Of reverence. Of body-as-ally, not body-as-problem. Of who, and what we really are. Yes, data can be helpful. But it must serve our intuition, not replace it.

There is no shortcut to this work. It takes time. Attention. Curiosity. And the willingness to sit with discomfort when numbers don’t align with your lived experience.This is how we divorce ourselves from perfectionism and reclaim our innate wholeness.

The body speaks. Every day. Through sensation, sleep, skin, stool, cycle, craving, temperature, mood, and more. The question is: will you listen?

Because the real test isn’t in the lab.

It’s in your ability to stay present to the process.