Graced Health Podcast

Your Body Is Not a Machine: Listening, Trusting, and Caring for Your Body with Dr. Brook Sheehan

Dr. Brook Sheehan, Guest

Amy Connell, Host

Amy: Hey, welcome to the Graced Health Podcast. I am so delighted to have Dr. Brook Sheehan with us today. She's a chiropractor and host of the Your Body Speaks podcast, and she helps women in midlife understand their body's signals.

And you guys, you know, we've got a lot of signals going on right now. Dr. Brook comes to us with a gentle, faith-grounded approach, and she shares practical tools for navigating fatigue, stress, and symptom confusion. She's the creator of the Body OS and is passionate about replacing overwhelm with trust and grace.

Dr. Brook, I'm so glad you're here.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Thank you, Amy. This is going to be so fun. I love this.

Amy: I love it when my guests come with a solid body knowledge base. As a doctor of chiropractic, I know that you have that, and of course I'm sure you have lots of continuing education as well. And with the faith approach, we can have these integrated conversations that I think our bodies were designed to have — and that are often left out of the health atmosphere.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Absolutely. It's left out a lot in the health and wellness industry.

Amy: It really is. So when I was doing my research and looking at your website and learning about you, one of the things you said, Dr. Brook, is that our bodies are masterpieces designed by God — not machines to be hacked. Can you tell us what led you to that perspective?

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Absolutely. I'll spend some time on the background and then come full circle to addressing that point about our bodies not being machines and being intended to be honored.

So growing up, my grandfather was Dean of New York Medical School. He was a neurosurgeon — when he was alive — and his brother, my great-uncle, developed or discovered a condition called Sheehan Syndrome that's still in medical literature today. So I grew up in a very medical-model home. Although, even then — I was born in the 1980s — my grandfather held the viewpoint that we need to understand the body as a whole before teaching students all these different pharmaceutical methods. My dad didn't really pick that up from him, though. So in our childhood and upbringing, every single time I had an earache — which was a lot — I was prescribed amoxicillin so much that I developed an allergy to it. I cannot have any cillins at all because my body—

Amy: That happened to my husband.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Yes, right.

Amy: Sorry to interrupt, but yes, that happened to him as well.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Absolutely. It is a thing — the body will start rejecting things. So a lot of my growing up was medication: Tylenol for headaches, Pepto-Bismol for stomachaches, no natural remedies. My grandparents on my mother's side were just your average household. We were lower middle class. We did what standard Americans did — we ate Jack in the Box and Taco Bell and all the things. We didn't care about the food we put in our bodies.

Fast forward all these years: at 27, I got pregnant with my daughter, who's now 14. You can do the math on how old I am. But at 27, I started this journey of understanding my body in a different way. I was like, oh my gosh, I shouldn't be eating Burger King. I need to be having more protein, I need to be doing this and that and all the things.

So I went on this journey of consumption — consuming every bit of health wisdom I could find. Social media, summits — at the time there were so many summits going on, where a host brings in different speakers around a topic, whether childhood immunity or whatever else. I would listen to all of these summits, consume the information, take supplements, do all the things, because I wanted to have the most natural childbirth I could.

Now, the reason I went into this almost obsessive behavior is because I was born with a mild case of cerebral palsy. For those who don't know what that is — cerebral palsy is a gross motor issue. It affects the large flexor muscles in your legs and hands. You may see people curl their hands toward their chest or walk on their tiptoes if they're not wheelchair-bound. Mine was mild and affects the right side of my body.

I can speak like a normal human. Most people with cerebral palsy — depending on the severity — it does affect their tongue, so their brain is interpreting everything you say around them. They know what you're saying; they just can't speak. So when people make negative statements like, "Oh, they're just X, Y, and Z" — that's hurtful, because they know. I just want to say that if you have people in your life who have cerebral palsy and aren't vocal about it — I digress.

Amy: Well, I appreciate that. I think the digression is welcome because we just need more awareness and education about how to respond to people who may not be presenting and communicating like a typical person.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Absolutely. So because that happened during my delivery into the world — I was forming in the womb just fine, and everything happened at the point of coming out — I became very obsessive and controlling about how my daughter's birth experience was going to look, because I didn't want her to endure anything that I had to endure: the bullying, all the things.

While control can be a very negative thing — and it is, because it shapes us in certain ways — in that situation, I believe God used it to bring me to where I am. I went from being completely disconnected from my body as a child all the way to becoming extremely obsessive about it at 27.

To the point — we sometimes chuckle about the people on the street corners with megaphones saying, "Jesus loves you! You're going to hell! Repent, repent, repent!" And we go, "Well, that's not really effective. You need to build a relationship with people." That is what I was doing with health. I was getting on my soapbox and screaming at everybody: "This is toxic! Don't eat that! Did you know this? Did you know that?" And that is the culture I've exited.

I was in that culture at 27 and left around 35. So about eight years. Now I'm 41, and over the last six years I've watched it get even worse — with all the new technology advances. And I want to be clear: I am not anti-living a non-toxic lifestyle, or using your oils, or optimizing your sleep, or any of this. It's when we literally cannot think about anything else. When all we're doing is striving, striving, striving — biohacking, biohacking, biohacking — "We're gonna live to 150! We're gonna be the 200-year-old woman!" When that replaces God in the mix, takes time away from family, and becomes a full-time stressful job — that is what I've been raging against in my work.

And God brought me back full circle into the middle. He took me from one end of the spectrum to the opposite end, and then showed me what balance with him looks like — taking care of the masterpiece he chose to put my soul inside of. He chose to put your soul inside of that body, Amy. He chose to put your soul inside of your body. And we need to take care of these bodies. We need to learn to love them, honor them, and be graceful with them. I know that was a lot, but I had to share it all.

Amy: It was great. Thank you for sharing all of that. The word that was coming to mind is idolizing — idolizing the process of health — which we are very clearly told not to do with anything other than God.

I have an adjacent story of being totally obsessive about health, and then one day God just whispered to me while I was doing laundry: You're paying more attention to the food you're going to eat and the exercise you're going to do than you are to me.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Ouch.

Amy: Ouch. I know. And it wasn't a full about-face, but it was a turn. Everything I do now comes from that passion — and from the pain I see in other women who feel like they're not succeeding in their health if they're not doing all the things people are telling them to do. And that noise is only getting louder. I feel like almost every episode I record now, I reference the episode I did with Michael Ulloa — "The Wellness Industry Has Lost Its Mind." It's real.

I really appreciate your story, and I think it comes back to the why. When you say, "I'm not anti these things" — to me, it's the heart behind what you're doing. Why are you doing this? There can be a lot of different reasons for that.

So as we're getting older and starting to see little changes — I was just having this conversation with a client — we talk about listening to our bodies. And I say this phrase all the time, but for years, many of us ignored what our bodies were saying because we were told we had to finish the hour-long workout, or we needed five workouts a week, or we needed to under-nourish ourselves to try to manage the shape of a body God maybe didn't design us to have. We've been overriding a lot of signals. So what does it actually look like to listen to your body instead of overriding it?

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Ooh, I love this question. It can be a heavy question for some people, because like you said, so many of us have spent years completely disconnected or just pushing through for the sake of whatever someone else is saying — whether that's a personal trainer telling you how many reps or how much time at the gym, or a video you have to finish, or supplements — "here are the top five supplements for a perimenopausal woman." You try all these things and what are you doing? You're listening to the external more than the internal.

So what listening to your body actually looks like — especially if you've been ignoring signals — is really about settling in. I believe a lot of your audience are believers, and we know that spending time with God, spending time in prayer, heeding the voice of the Holy Spirit, is vital to our walk with the Lord. Listening to our bodies is different — obviously, God is on the throne — but it is a similar practice in that it means actually settling into your skin.

Maybe lie there in bed after you finish your prayer — not during, but after — and just feel into what's going on. Maybe nothing's going on. Or maybe you feel your stomach rumbling, and you realize: I had dinner at 6:00 PM, it's now 8:00 AM, and whether I was intentionally doing intermittent fasting or just told I needed to, my stomach is screaming for food. I'm feeling lethargic even though I slept enough hours.

It's just paying attention. You may not know all the nuances of every body signal — and I'll put in a quick plug here for those who follow me after this episode: I do have a free Body Signal Decoder assessment. You can pull the top things you're experiencing and figure out what your body is saying when you feel chronic exhaustion, migraines, headaches, and so forth.

But really, it's just taking a moment to pause. Even 10 seconds — I know that can sound long to some and very short to others. Give yourself some time before getting up. If you don't feel grumbling or any aches or pains, put your hands to your chest and just thank your body for everything it did while you were sleeping, before you even get out of bed.

Amy: Like a little body assessment.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Yes, exactly.

Amy: I like that. And we'll put that Body Signal Decoder link in the show notes — that sounds like a wonderful tool.

Going back to the noise: as of this recording, I'm not on social media anymore. I've gotten so tired of having no control over what's shown to me that I just stepped away. Which is a terrible idea as a small business owner, but I don't post, I don't scroll — my friends know that if they want me to see a funny reel on Instagram, they need to text it to me.

But because so much of wellness culture is telling us to do more, optimize more, track everything — how do we discern what's actually honoring our bodies versus what's just adding to the noise? Because I think that's tricky, especially in the anti-diet culture and intuitive eating space, which I think is a wonderful — I mean, intuitive eating wasn't trademarked by God, but he gave us the tools to use our discernment. But it gets muddy: how do we use good wellness wisdom without letting it overtake our lives or feeling like we're being screamed at? That's a long question, but I think you get the gist.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: I completely understand. And it piggybacks on what I was saying about spending that moment with yourself in bed — tuning in, heeding those signals. If you feel a little headache coming on: where am I in my cycle? Did I sleep well? Did something happen yesterday? Asking those little questions.

And I'll say — I'm totally like you, Amy. I'm on social media, but not a lot. Honestly, Andrew Huberman — I love him and respect him — but with all of his protocols, I'm just like, oh gosh. You gotta do this, you gotta do this, get your sunlight, and pretty soon you're just like, oh my gosh, I'm not doing anything right.

Amy: Yeah. My husband and I have these conversations. Because of his work schedule and commuting in Houston, he said, "Amy, this could be a full-time job." And I was actually reflecting on this earlier — all of this biohacking, it's a thing of the privileged. People struggling to get food on the table aren't worried about the top 1% of optimization. They just want to make sure their kids aren't going to bed hungry.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Absolutely.

Amy: Now I digress, but—

Dr. Brook Sheehan: No, that was great. And you're right. Your husband's not wrong. That's what it started to become for me when I was in this over-optimization state — I had a brand-new baby, I was going through chiropractic school, and I was doing all the things in the name of health. I actually started to feel worse than I ever had when I was completely disconnected from myself. I was taking almost 30 different supplements and had no idea if any one of them was working because I just kept hearing, "Oh, I need this, and I need this." I'd gotten a genetic test and thought I had to supplement for everything.

And I will get to the question — I promise. On genetics: I understand people wanting to get their genetic profile run and supplementing for the things they're missing. Yes, but also no. Yes, you can supplement for genetic gaps and get the proper nutrients you need, but you don't need to take them for the rest of your life. Even my own supplementing now is down to three things, and it shifts every couple of months. Sometimes I'm taking nothing. I'm honoring my body.

So how do we get to that point? How do we know what's actually working for us versus listening to all the external noise — "you need this ring, you need to track your sleep, you need to do this"? Tracking menstrual cycles — I do think that's important. Sleep tracking via wearables — I'm less sure about, especially since a lot of this wearable technology emits EMF onto your body.

Is cold plunging great? Is infrared sauna great? Are blue light blockers good? All of these different things — when you're getting inundated with information, here's what I tell people: it takes a little time, but as you consistently do that morning body check-in — offering gratitude, building that relationship with yourself — over time, you'll start to feel your body talking to you. You'll be walking around your house or on your lunch break at work and go, "Oh." Your body will start to say something to you.

It's building trust. Because after years of pushing things down, making your body perform in different ways, doing all this stuff — it doesn't trust you. The more you engage in this relationship, the more it opens up. Then when you see a new product or supplement claiming X, Y, and Z benefits, you can look at it and go: Do I need this right now?

That question can feel heavy. Sometimes people go, "I don't know if I need it." And I say: come out of your head. Come into your heart, into your chest, maybe your gut — and feel if you get any sensations from your body. I'm not asking you to sway or feel some dramatic signal. Just spend 5–10 seconds there. See if you feel a yes. If you're getting overwhelmed and not getting an answer, don't engage. Don't buy the product, don't take it. Because a lot of times, people waste a lot of money on devices, food, and supplements they don't need — hoping for a benefit because the marketing is really, really good at making you feel like you cannot live your life without it.

Amy: I agree. I love how you say "build a relationship with yourself," because I think a lot of us haven't. And one of my biggest regrets as a fitness professional is that for years I would start a session — often some sort of high-intensity workout, which I love; no problem with high intensity — and I'd point to the door and say, "Whatever problems you have, you leave those on the other side of the door. You're here to work."

It wasn't until one of my participants unexpectedly lost her young adult son that something shifted for me. She came in and you could tell she'd been crying — just all the horrible things that happen when you lose a loved one unexpectedly. And I thought, she can't leave that at the door. How insensitive is that? We have pushed things down and separated head from body for so long. So I really like this: "Come out of your head and listen to your body." Start building that connection back.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Can I add one piece to that really quickly?

Amy: Absolutely.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: What these marketing campaigns are doing — especially in reels and TikTok videos — is so sensationalized. They do a great job pulling you into the story. Before you pull out your credit card or double-click on Apple Pay, take that pause and ask yourself: is this right for me? Because you will probably realize, "Oh, I was totally sucked into the vortex." You were heading down the road.

Amy: Yes. What's that called? There's some term for it — an impulse buy from Instagram. Whatever it is, I hit the "Shop Now" button the other day for a hair product and I do not regret it — but at least it's something I'm putting on my body, not in my body.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Yes — different.

Amy: Yes. I will justify it till the cows come home. But I like this common sense approach — pause, ask yourself: what are they really pitching, and does this make sense for me? One thing that's helped me — with the exception of the hair product — is sitting on a purchase for at least two weeks. If I'm still thinking about it and still feel like it would genuinely help me, then maybe I'll go back. But they are getting you — the double-click, the Apple Pay — it's all designed for that.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Yep.

Amy: And there's always such urgency. I think urgency is a red flag. If there's a sense of "if you don't do this, you will die" — red flag.

Dr. Brook, a lot of my community are women in perimenopause and beyond, and our bodies are changing in ways we never expected — it's confusing and frustrating. How can you help us navigate this season with a little more gentleness, a little more grace, without feeling like we have to do the cold plunge, the red light, all of the things — and just turn down the volume of Wellness Inc.?

So good — Wellness Inc. Yes, the corporation. I think I'm going to trademark that. That's the first time I've said it and I like the sound of it.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: You should, Amy. Said here first.

Amy: Yes.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: I want to go a little deeper on building a relationship with your body so that listeners today can really sit with this. Think about any relationship in your life — with a significant other, a coworker, a best friend, a childhood friend you've known for 20 or 30 years. Those relationships were not built overnight. They were built with consistency, day in and day out.

With a significant other, for example: you don't meet someone and immediately share all your deep dark secrets and say, "Do you want to marry me?" No. You're both putting your best foot forward, sharing a little about your family, learning little things about each other. "Oh, you don't like cheese on your salad?" So in building a relationship with our bodies, we have to extend grace, love, and patience — and understand it's going to take time. But it's not going to take forever, and the timescale isn't chronological. Some people may develop a deep body relationship in three months; others may need a year. What it needs is consistency.

So when you're waking up in the morning and offering that small moment of gratitude — another thing I teach is practicing a concept I call "this or that." Instead of trying to answer a million questions at once, it's: every morning I wake up and have coffee. Tomorrow morning, do I want coffee or tea? Sit with that. Let the answer come from the chest, from the heart, from the gut — not from the head. Not "oh, I always have coffee." Just sit there for 10 seconds. Didn't get an answer? Drink your coffee. Next day, try again — and maybe you go to the tea or the lemon water.

When you're out to lunch with coworkers looking at the menu — maybe instead of defaulting to your usual order, try "this or that" and feel what your body responds to. It's not about moving your body or doing anything dramatic. It's about sitting into that heart space and feeling what your body is saying.

And so it's really about building that relationship, knowing it takes time — but knowing it can happen so much faster if you're just consistent with very simple questions. It's not a full-time job. It's: "Hey, I heard I need sunlight. I heard I need to work out. Do I do an intense HIIT workout today, or is my body — depending on where I am in my cycle — craving a brisk walk around the neighborhood?" So many times we get into a checkbox mentality: check, check, check, check. And that's not how you build relationships.

In this season of life — and I'm right there with you, ladies — things are changing. I'll notice something and just say, "Okay, I hear you. However I can support you, let me know." I may not get a clear answer, but I'll take some rest if I'm having achy body pain or cramping or something in my low back. Just having grace for yourself.

Amy: Yeah. Having grace for yourself and the empowerment of not having to do things just because someone told you to — honoring your body signals and having that discernment.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Right.

Amy: You're speaking my language with "what does my body need today?" I did an episode back in January all about figuring out, before you even start moving, why you're doing it. Are you doing it because you've got a lot of energy to burn and need something higher intensity? Or because you just need to take things down for a day? Having that understanding of the why behind our movement choices helps us stay in our own lane — because otherwise, diet culture creeps in: "You're not going hard enough. You're not breathing hard enough."

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Totally. It is such a huge thing — we get told we're not doing enough, or we carry these beliefs that we're not doing enough or won't get where we want to go if we don't do X, Y, and Z. But there are some really good things that come from listening to your body and actually responding.

Amy: And that's the second part — responding. Okay. I always like for my community to have applicable takeaways. We've talked about listening, building a relationship, consistency — it's not a one-and-done. Can you give us one to three simple ways we can start honoring our bodies right now?

Dr. Brook Sheehan: There's no one size fits all — we are all so different. So I'm not going to tell you that you have to drink 80 ounces of water a day. But I've said it a million times already in this episode: show your body gratitude. Be okay with how it may not look how you want it to look. You may start noticing changes — muscles aren't as tight, skin looks different in this season of life. But this body has gotten you through so many things. Before Jesus, after Jesus, all of it — it has carried you through this life, through every year on this planet. You got to walk, you may have had kids, maybe grandkids. Whatever season you're in, your body brought you here. So — gratitude and grace.

Second: listen. If your body is asking for the tea instead of the coffee, for the lemon water instead of the other thing — listen to that, because it's telling you for a reason.

And Amy said it beautifully: it's not just listening, it's responding. Actually doing what your body is asking you to do.

Here's a weird metaphor, but stay with me: if Amy's favorite color was blue, and I was her best friend — maid of honor at her wedding, knew her deeply — and I showed up at her house every single day with green and yellow and red and purple and said, "Look what I got for you! Do you like this beautiful shirt?" — that is what we do to our bodies every single day. Our bodies ask us for certain things and we say, "No, but you're gonna drink the coffee. No, but you're gonna do the HIIT workout, because we have to do HIIT six days a week, and if we don't, we're not going to have the muscle mass, and if we don't have the muscle mass, we're going to be—" all the things.

No. My body is in the best shape it has ever been because I've learned to build this relationship with it. So: show gratitude. Listen. Respond.

Amy: I love those. Thank you so much. Okay — we were talking before we hit record, and you showed me your new body affirmation cards, which are gorgeous. Tell us about those and what people will get with them.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Yes. This is a God-ordained project — his hand was all over it. I was actually resisting it hard. "I'm not doing this, I'm not doing it." He told me I was doing it. It took me six months to take any action. So I just want to encourage the listeners: if God tells you to do something, just pick it up and start. Don't wait.

The Talk to Me Body Card Deck is the voice of your body, anchored in scripture. Inside the deck, there are 63 different cards — based on Psalm 63 — and it really came out of working with patients all across the United States, seeing them fear their bodies so much. I kept saying, "You don't have to be afraid, you don't have to be afraid." And what God told me to do was: show people how beautiful these parts of them are, and how wisely I created them to be, and let them know beautiful things about themselves.

The first section — "I Am Your Body as a Whole" — talks about things like: inflammation is not danger, a chill is not forever, a fever is not failure. These are your body's wisdom in action. Your body changes sizes and seasons.

The second section covers individual parts of your body: your eyes, ears, nose, throat, esophagus, diaphragm, stomach, pancreas, liver, kidneys — all of those.

The third section covers individual chemical messengers — leptin, insulin, cholesterol, cortisol. Cholesterol gets vilified. Cortisol gets vilified. We need both. You'll get to learn about those.

One thing I didn't mention before: there is an individual QR code on every single card. It's an activation point — a neuro-reflex point — to help support whatever organ or system that card is about: your liver, your kidneys, your adrenal glands. You do a point on your body as you read the card. And there's a scripture on every single one of them — the voice of your body, anchored in scripture.

Amy, if you'd like to play along with me — what I love to do on shows is ask the Holy Spirit for a card number. Give me a number and I'll read it for you.

Amy: Okay, I'll go with 36.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: 36. Okay. That is "I Am Your Bones."

I carry your strength and courage. I absorb shock and store support. Pound for pound, I am stronger than steel, yet light enough to let you move with grace. Even when life shakes you, I remain — storing minerals and immune memories that help protect your body. And if I break, I rebuild stronger.

Isaiah 58:11: The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your soul in drought and strengthen your bones.

Amy: I love that so much. And what a wonderful card for someone who talks a lot about bone health — and from a chiropractor. Perfect. Well, congratulations. I know those projects are a big deal, and I am so glad you listened and responded to the Holy Spirit working in you. I've done the same thing — stuck my fingers in my ears and said no — and yeah, that just doesn't work out very well.

We'll have the link in the show notes. You guys are going to want to grab those.

Okay, Dr. Brook, I have some questions I ask all of my guests. First: I love learning about people's tattoos when they have them, because they often have meaning behind them. Do you have one? If so, would you share it and the meaning? And if you don't have one but had to get one, what would it be and where would it go?

Dr. Brook Sheehan: I do have one — on the top of my foot, which I got when I was around 20 years old. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. My sister was in town from her deployment — she was in the military. I have three sisters and one brother. My three sisters and my mom were all together in one place at the same time, which was rare, and we decided to go to a tattoo parlor and all get matching tattoos.

So we all have a crown on our foot, and each prong of the crown has a little gem on top. The gem colors are each of our birthstones — my mom's birthstone, my birthstone, and each of my three sisters' birthstones.

Amy: Oh, how fun! And ouch — I hear the top of the foot is really painful.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: And that's the only one I have.

Amy: I love that. What a wonderful thing to share with your family of origin. Okay, tell people quickly how they can connect with you.

Dr. Brook Sheehan: The best way is on Instagram — @DrBrookSheehan. There's no E in Sheehan, so just search B-R-O-O-K and you'll find me. My website is DrBrookSheehan.com — but on Instagram, all of my links are there too. The Body Signal Decoder, the Talk to Me Body Card Decks — we can put all those in the show notes as well.

Amy: Great. Do you have a meaningful Bible verse you'd like to share?

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Given all that I've talked about today — just being still and showing gratitude — my favorite verse in all of scripture is Psalm 46:10: Be still, and know that I am God. When things feel chaotic, when everything feels loud — just turn it all off and remind yourself: God is still on the throne. He is working in your life. It may not feel like it, but things are happening in the spiritual realm on your behalf.

Amy: We love that one around here. Okay, you get the final word. What is one simple thing you'd like us to remember from this conversation?

Dr. Brook Sheehan: Your body is a masterpiece. It is so wise, so incredible. It was designed with that wisdom. It doesn't need to be optimized and hacked. You can simply start caring for your body with very simple habits.

Amy: Amen. Okay, that is all for today. Go out there and have a graced day.