On Guardedness, Body and Soul

We often think of weight as a purely mechanical equation. Calories in, calories out, willpower against appetite. Biology-wise, that’s not wrong.

But it overlooks how guarded you’re willing to be, at the deepest level of who you are, and what that guardedness costs the body over time.

Guardedness is not a metaphor. It is a physical stance. One that begins somewhere less visible than in the body, it’s in the part of you where you decide, moment to moment, if it’s safe to be fully present, fully known.

When someone spends years bracing their mind, against being seen, against being hurt, against being felt too closely by another person. The body doesn’t hold that as an abstract idea.

It holds it as tension. As shallow breath. As a nervous system that never quite stands down. No amount of meditation can change this. Trust me, I would know.

Apparently, cortisol stays elevated longer than it should. Digestion runs defensively rather than efficiently. Inflammation ticks up. Water is retained.

None of this is dramatic on its own. But stacked over months and years, it adds up to a body working against itself; not because it is broken, but because it has been told, quietly and constantly, that it isn’t safe to relax around others.

This is one reason willpower alone so often fails, or it works only for a while before collapsing. Pushing a body to change through sheer discipline, while the mind underneath remains untouched, takes constant effort. Every bit of progress has to be forced rather than allowed. The body dragged along by the will, rather than moving because the mind has genuinely changed.

Something different happens when that deeper guard actually drops. When you stop defending yourself and allow yourself to feel your emotion.

The mind and body seem to follow that lead together. The brace loosens, more as a consequence than an effort. And what looks, from the outside, like physical change is simply the visible edge of the body responding to a self that has stopped fighting itself.

The best part about this shift is that it rarely stays contained to one area of life. Guardedness is not compartmentalised. In my experience, no one braces selectively, holding tension only in the parts of themselves relevant to eating or exercise while staying open everywhere else. The posture is total.

It shows up in how you enter a room, how easily you laugh, how much of a conversation you’re actually present for as opposed to quietly managing from a safe distance.

So when the guard comes down, the change tends to be total as well. A lighter feeling not just physically but socially. More available, more inclined to allow and sustain connection, without the hum of self-protection running underneath everything.

None of this means weight is only a matter of feeling safe enough to relax. Genetics, metabolism, hormones, and biology set real terms that no amount of emotional openness can override. Two people can do identical inner work and arrive at different physical outcomes.

But there is a difference between a body fighting itself and one that’s harmonising itself.

Guardedness is a cost (albeit necessary) carried in the soul first, then the mind, then the body. So when it lifts at that deepest level, the rest is often simply free to follow, and to do what it was already trying to do which is basically to give you a full experience.

None of this means abandoning all defence, or switching off your protective instincts entirely. Discernment still matters. I would know.

Of course, not every person or situation deserves the same openness. The shift is not from guarded to unguarded, but from constantly bracing to aware. To truly living in acceptance, from understanding (or as it’s often said these days, innerstanding), and from reasoning, rather than from reflexive self-protection.

You can absolutely still sense danger and respond to it. You should. You must never lose your whiff for it… That would be quite… catastrophic 😂

Maybe I’m yet to achieve that feat but for now that’s a hill I’m willing to die on.

However, the change is that the response comes from a more balanced place rather than a permanently clenched one, and that difference alone seems to be enough to let the body stand down and open up your life experience in a rather phenomenal way. The Body-Mind-Soul way.

Happy Healing.

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