Exercises
These somatic exercises are about simply being curious, as opposed to achieving a goal, or looking at metrics, or even feeling something specific other than feeling and noticing where you are at the moment, in your body. The goal is to bridge connections between your body’s messaging and your mind’s messaging, and build awareness of how your body responds or reacts to your conscious messaging, and the energy that holds and sends. Then, we observe the ecosystem, the environment you inhabit, and how that supports and translates energy. What is the overlying ecosystem and what kind of energy does that support? Is that enabling the messaging you intend to convey?
When the mind and body can have opportunities to synchronize, develop symbiosis with your conscious mind, your body can start to heal on different levels. As we look at our mind and body as a system, mindfulness engaged with integrative health practices adds a component of healing that enables faster symbiosis. You begin to sense the impact of messages from your mind, start managing the messaging in the mind, and begin to see and feel how your body responds to your own intrinsic energetic pathways. A study at the National Institute of Health investigates how when layered, different modalities are
“Numerous traditional medicine techniques such as yoga, sound healing, Qigong, Tai Chi Chuan, and acupuncture have recently been studied in relation to their potential for reduction of human chronic stress, a widespread societal health problem. These ancient treatments present considerable potential for stress reduction globally. Thus, the present authors recommend that substantial resources be devoted to the study of these practices as potential tools for stress reduction and improvement in public health. This guide includes mindfulness techniques, as well as breath-based techniques designed to return the individual to a state of reduced sympathetic nervous system reactivity.” ( https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7819493/ )
We can become proactive in directing what energy exactly is being passed on from mind to body- and where we hold that energy- when we become aware of where in the body we’re holding and moving stress, blocks, energy. These exercises show us simply where we literally stand in our bodies, how we balance and move with the weight we’re asking our bodies to hold. From here, we can develop mechanisms and tools to process at a pace that’s sustainable- both consciously and subconsciously.
If we can convert our stories, narratives, memories, histories that we use to describe and identify ourselves, to energetic pathways, we can separate ourselves somewhat, and begin to objectively see and feel the stress, i.e. energy, as something to work with, something we can manage, communicate with and shift. Through the lens of body-mind messaging, we can see how the body is triggered or affected by energetic messaging, and why the body responds, moves, how it absorbs energy and how energy can be transfered. Awareness of sensation begins to develop, awareness of triggers. This energy is now called biofield.
Biofield is a term that recognizes our bodies have an energy field that is affected by energy close, surrounding the body, sometimes up to 10 feet away. Biofield was termed at a National Institutes of Health meeting in 1992.(https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/grappling-with-the-science-of-touch-based-healing-practices )
“Biofield descriptions also include what Shamini Jain, a psychologist at University of California, San Diego, and founder of the Consciousness and Healing Initiative, calls “subtle energy,” such as prana and chi, terms that have translated to “life force” in India and China for thousands of years. Studying that type of energy is more complicated and difficult to measure.” (https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/grappling-with-the-science-of-touch-based-healing-practices )
In Chinese medicine, Chi or Qi is the energy flow in the bodies, recognized through meridian points.
“Traditionally, Qi circulating through channels of the body known as “Meridians” in Oriental Medicine is referred to as “Internal Qi”. Proper flow of this energy is deemed to be necessary for good health, while blockage of it is associated with disease and dysfunction. “ (https://mindbodylab.bio.uci.edu )
As you move in tandem with your body, you are listening to responses from your body. Be as specific and nuanced as you can.
BALANCE
This is about awareness of proprioception, the sense of our bodies in space and time; how we carry weight and stress. And how that allows us to move through space and time.
Standing on both feet, dropping your weight into the ground as you feel your spine elongate elegantly from earth to sky
Extend yourself all directions as you allow your body to be grounded, softly. All in softness.
Then, while maintaining alignment with your pelvis, lift one heel off the ground, with awareness. If you’re tilting, just notice.
Notice any shifts as you mentally shift, then physically shift.
Slowly lift your foot off the ground, using props if necessary, awarenesss on not lifting one side of your pelvis or body.
Using any prop to help with balance, if needed, just notice if you balance, or as you try to balance.
Practice. Practice. See what changes.
Try this in your office, as your chatting with colleagues, at the water station, and slowly see how you might be standing like a flamingo.
TWISTING FASCIA RELEASE
The fascia holds our stress and tension. It’s miraculous how we can release that tension quickly with our own hands. In our intrasomatic connection, we are capable of moving massive amounts of energy, redirecting energy, opening up pathways with our own hands.
“Fascia is a thin casing of connective tissue that surrounds and holds every organ, blood vessel, bone, nerve fiber and muscle in place. The tissue does more than provide internal structure; fascia has nerves that make it almost as sensitive as skin. When stressed, it tightens up.” (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/muscle-pain-it-may-actually-be-your-fascia#:~:text=Fascia%20is%20a%20thin%20casing,almost%20as%20sensitive%20as%20skin. )
We’re taught not to touch ourselves, not to move our own fascia. That it’s inappropriate and that we should source touch to someone else’s judgement and protocol.
Healing Touch is a modality using hands- on approach with practitioner’s hands.
“If I put on my hard-core scientist hat, we don’t know what’s happening,” Jain says. “But with Healing Touch, we see positive changes in mood and physiology that matter for patients.” In studies, those changes have ranged from self-reported reductions in pain and anxiety to increased natural-killer cell function during cancer treatment.” (https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/grappling-with-the-science-of-touch-based-healing-practices )
Our hands are electrical forces of nature. Using your hands, lightly move skin from your face to your toes. Starting with your face, allow your hands to gently move skin from center to ears, stretching ears all directions, making facial movements, not expressions, but motion, to expand and release facia. Qi is known to be efficiently transferred through hands:
“When the energy is perceived to be projected out from a certain part of the body (most frequently the hands) and transferred to another person or object, it is referred to as “External Qi”. While there have been numerous studies related to the study of Qi, this type of energy has yet to be measured definitively with modern scientific instruments.” (https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/grappling-with-the-science-of-touch-based-healing-practices )
Wrap your arms in a hug, one over the other, then twist, with your legs crossed, standing. Then change directions. Breathing deeply.
Fascia release occurs faster with deep breath, needs the movement of the breath to release.
Human Garage is an eduation, community and series of movements that release fascia. They provide guided practice developed to release tension and redirect the body back to healing from exposure to toxins, trauma and misuse.
Human Garage: “The fascia holds memories, emotions, trauma, and chemicals. It also holds your muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, and organs. When your fascia is restricted, everything it touches is restricted. By implementing the Fascial Maneuvers into your daily practice, you can unwind tension in your fascia to restore flow, reduce stress, and repair the body.” (https://humangarage.net/7-step-approach-to-healing-yourself/ )
ALIGNMENT
Alignment can start once we’ve release fascia. We can retrain our neuropathways to a new alignment, slowly over time. Egoscue is a practice with the foundation of alignment, and slowly building support systems through realigning, and muscle, fascia and tendon strength. The main premise of Egoscue is redirecting the body from a life of misuse and misalignment:
“Most pain and many injuries result from muscle imbalance and skeletal misalignment’s which compromise our posture and our motion. Our back, hips, and thighs weaken from an excess of sitting versus walking. No longer upright and symmetrical, our muscles and joints struggle with stress that they were not designed or evolved to handle. Eventually, we suffer pain or even injury that would be unlikely were we to maintain upright symmetry and full muscle function.” (https://egoscue.com )
Through Egoscue’s ladder and exercises, our bodies can slowly find a new alignment and slowly build the strength to retain alignment.
This is more effective than stretching, as we’re not using force, we’re using subtle entrainment, release and realignment.
INTEGRATION
Through hypnosis, (https://tobemagnetic.com ) and meditation, there’s an opportunity to provide the body and mind generous space to find and integrate paradigmatic shifts. To be magnetic’s hypnoses programs support changing neuropathways held in deep subconscious beliefs that hold us in fight or flight, keeping us from growth, expansion, and moving beyond our perceived limitations into a life amplified by opportunity and creativity, instead of guilt, shame guarded by programmed blocks.
“All the TBM tools use a special combination of magic and science–like EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, Self-Hypnosis, & Neural Reprogramming to help you align with your manifestations on a subconscious level” (https://tobemagnetic.com/authenticity-challenge )
Stillness in your own private, safe space is necessary. Sense of safety especially, without judgment.
These practices are self driven, requiring discipline and the desire to move out of one’s own firmly held belief systems.
We often don’t know our patterns are restricting our ability to grow and evolve. Evolution occurs far from familiar territory. Evolution often speaks counterintuitively and requires peeling away coats and layers of memory and behavior.
SENSES
Our senses communicate intelligence that is necessary for survival. We tend to neglect and disregard, unless they assault us, disrupt, or we react to a situation. Allow time, resting in the senses and emotion, we can be led to information that can guide us towards reshaping neuropathways.
Instead of letting your emotions flow through you, try sitting in them for a while.
Becoming familiar with how you respond to sensory exposure enables management and compassion towards yourself and others.
Developing modalities to maneuver mind and body into and through sensory experiences builds intelligence and expanded our sense that knowledge is found solely through brain based intelligence.
Preparing ourselves to connect to other languages: sounds, vibration, movement, energy fields, visual, generates more language without using hyperbolic words and explanations.
Senses are a pathway to a vast emporium of experiences we don’t even know about yet. These experiences are going to be found in nature, where we can safely awaken senses to hear, see, feel, touch according to nature’s invitation. We are so capable of huge expansive learning that will change our definitions of fixed ideas and fixed meanings.