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The Body That Wants to Move
- Juel McNeilly
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Hello People,
Most people think the big moments are where change happens -
the emotional breakthrough,
the swelling grief,
the collapse you finally admit you feel.
But the truth is quieter than that.
Change starts in the tiny, almost invisible moments where your body tries to speak…
and you interrupt it.
You know these moments, even if you’ve never named them:
The slight lift of your chest before you take a deeper breath - and then you swallow it down.
The minute impulse to turn your head away - and instead you smile politely.
The feeling of your spine wanting to uncurl - but you tighten instead.
The yawn that threatens to expand - and gets seized back into stillness.
The hip that wants to shift.
The voice that wants to sound.
The foot that wants to step back.
The jaw that wants to soften or tremble or open.
These micro-movements are the body’s native language.
When we return to these micro-movements, we begin rebuilding a kind of body-based awareness that most of us were never taught to trust. This is the quiet intelligence that lives underneath the story.
And yet:
Most of us have learned to shut them down long before the signal even reaches consciousness.
Not because something is wrong with you.
But because somewhere along the way, your body learned:
“It’s safer to stop than to feel.”
“It’s safer to hold than to express.”
“It’s safer to stay still than to risk being seen.”
This is what somatic conditioning looks like - not as a concept, but as a lived experience.
It’s the moment before the moment.
Where your system tries to complete something… and you override it so quickly that you don’t even notice.
You interrupt completion.
Regulation.
Truth.
Capacity.
The body doesn’t forget.
It just files the incomplete impulse somewhere deeper - where it becomes tension, anxiety, reactivity, projection, or the sense that you’re “not aligned with who you are”.
But when you begin to notice these impulses…
When you begin to track the very first whisper of your body’s communication…
This is the foundation of body-based awareness: noticing the moment your system speaks, before the mind interprets, edits, shuts it down, or goes into autopilot.
You open the door to something profoundly different,
a relationship with yourself that is not mediated by conditioning.
A space is created.
A fluency in your body's language begins.
More of you becomes embodied.
A deeper listening emerges, and with it, a fuller congruency in how you move through life. This is where your nervous system starts to settle. This is where resilience grows.
This is the part most people skip - and the part that matters most.
Awareness is not about suddenly being more mindful.
It’s not about self-correction, control, or trying to “do better.”
Awareness begins with the smallest possible window:
Could I notice one moment today where my body wanted to respond, and I stopped it?
Just one.
Maybe the impulse to sigh.
Or to step away.
Or to say “no” sooner.
Or to put your hand on your own heart.
Or to rest your eyes.
Once you start noticing these micro-pauses, a new map appears - one where you can finally track the difference between your authentic impulse and your conditioned one.
This is where the body speaks before the story comes in. It’s the fertile ground where healing begins.
When you don’t interrupt the impulse. When you allow the body to complete the loop.
A breath completes itself.
A boundary clarifies itself.
A trembling discharges.
A truth emerges.
A “no” arrives sooner.
A “Fuck Yes” lands deeper.
Your system finds the next step naturally - not through effort, but through allowing.
The intelligence is already there. The body already knows.
This is why presence matters. Not as a spiritual ideal, but as a practical skill that can change your life.
Every time you let your body complete what it needs to do, you reclaim a part of yourself that was once shut down.
You stop living in survival patterns that don’t belong to you anymore.
You stop bracing against life and begin participating in it.
And you begin a lifelong learning of something essential -
Your body is always trying to bring you back to yourself.
You just need to stop interrupting the conversation.
Watch this vlog here:
One love,
Juel
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Juel helps people return to the intelligence of their bodies—so they can lead with presence, resilience, and truth.
Her work is somatic, trauma-informed, and rooted in nervous system awareness, guiding real change where the body still carries what the mind has tried to move past.
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