A truce.

Some people are really connected to their bodies.

You may have guessed that I'm not one of them.

Not that I really neglect myself.

It's just that I'm one of those people who has always been more in my head than in the physical world.

I've always known that, and while I knew it was something I could work on, I never really felt the need to.

Until last week.

Last week I was on retreat, getting biggified, as one does, in a beautiful setting, with smart, interesting people.

And my body started rebelling.

It's happened to me before, in a similar setting. On the last day of another seminar, I was overcome with nausea. No, not food poisoning or stomach virus. Just freaking out at all the changes I was going through.

Another time, my left arm -- my writing arm -- developed a distracting ache.

This time, the nausea started a couple of weeks in advance of the retreat (remember when I was stubbornly perfume shopping through the queasiness?).

Then, once I got there, I pinched a nerve around my shoulder blade -- not badly but annoying.

I started to have painful heartburn (and I never, ever have heartburn) accompanied by a sharp, stabbing pain at the base of my skull. Bizarre. Even Dr. Internet was stumped.

Then, the bum arm was back.

Frustration.

These weird symptoms were keeping me from doing some of the exercises. Add them to my normally low threshold for people-overload (as Jacquelyn called it) and I got even less time to hang out and socialize with everyone else. I was hardly getting to know people.

Ugh.

I was sitting in my hotel room with ice on my head when it finally came to me: my body is screaming out for attention.

Not only that, it's demanding my attention at a retreat that's all about personal and business development and how it's all related. My body was saying, 'hey! You can't do this without me! And I'm not letting up til you listen!'

That night I asked for a truce.

I apologized for ignoring all the urgent signals. I wondered, was there something my bum arm didn't want me to write? Was there some big idea or plan that I couldn't quite swallow?

I promised that I'd listen. Maybe we could be better friends, or colleagues, at least?

The next morning, the mysterious symptoms started slowly to abate. By the next day, the day I left to come home, I was able to eat without any pain.

The ache-y arm is still making appearances, but I think this is going to be a long, slow process of diplomatic talks, letters back and forth, and noticing what's happening in my physical world.

I've heard loud and clear though: I can't cut my body out of this partnership. Working on this long-neglected relationship is part of growing the business.