5 Simple Practices with Big Results~~~
Do we keep driving a car without getting regular tune-ups? Yet we often push our bodies until we are entirely burnt out. What can we do to avoid this? The following daily tuning techniques take very little time and the payoff is huge.
Grounding
This can take many forms: kicking the legs front, side, back; hip rolls; going for a jog; or standing barefoot on the earth in the morning dew if weather allows. This is also known as earthing which is a fascinating area to explore all on its own!
My daily morning go-to I learned from the teaching of Master Hong Liu, a qi gong grandmaster. He says we die from the feet up meaning we energetically lose our feet, then our legs, and so on, until we live predominantly in our heads. Such a surprise!
He teaches seated foot taps and ankle twirls for which I do not have a video link but it’s fairly simple to describe.
Sit down on the floor with the legs together straight out in front. Keeping the heels together on the floor, open and close the upper part of the feet, tapping them together 300 times. I confess that I do not count and stop when I feel it’s about 300.
To underscore the effectiveness of the foot tapping, note how your body feels before and then after with all of the sensations surging through your feet and legs.
Next, add ankle twirls by putting the heel of one foot behind the toes of the other and on top of the ball of the foot there. It is recommended to do 25 ankle rotations in each direction. Again, I do not count but approximate.
When we are physically grounded, our center of gravity is stable and when grounded electrically as in earthing the health benefits as well as mood enhancements are significant.
The Crossover
Our body is a matrix of crisscrossing energy. Daily I do a standing cross-crawl exercise I learned from Donna Eden Energy Medicine. It can also be done seated.
If you want to ramp it up, you could include Eden’s three thumps at the start of the routine. The thumping or massaging of these points stimulates the adrenals for energy, the thymus for the immune system, and the spleen for metabolism along with the immune system.
Conversely, when rundown or ill or injured, our energies do not cross over but run parallel. The homolateral crossover is just like tuning a string instrument. You start where it is out of tune and bring it back into tune, so you start this exercise homolaterally and then move to cross-crawling.
I could go on and on about people, including myself time and again, noticing very fast results when using the homolateral crossover if not feeling well.
I’ll simply share about a colleague who came back to teaching after having had a stroke. She told me that she was tired and just could not get her energy back. Of course, I taught her the homolateral crossover.
A few days later she came to my classroom to see me.
“It’s been three months that I have been dragging and now I feel normal again!” she exclaimed.
Then I reminded her to tune daily but to switch to the basic cross crawl since she was feeling herself now.
I sense that this is a well-kept secret outside of energy circles, and so I am compelled to spread the word.
Stretching
After grounding and cross-crawling with the thumping, I do a variety of stretching exercises lifted from classes I have taken including yoga. We know that as we age, the body does not move like it used to. The more I stretch, not only the better I feel but the further I can go into a stretch and the more flexible I become, which naturally is true at all ages.
I am blessed to also have a weekly stretch class at my gym and local yoga classes, but they are not daily and this daily five minutes or so gets my body ready for the day. I usually have a favorite program on the living room television while I stretch out on the rug.
I would be remiss to not mention Classical Stretch by Essentrics and the work of Miranda Esmonde-White, another gem. I would love to do it daily but am happy when I get to it once or twice a week. She has a regular television show I record as well as many free videos on YouTube. Note: Be sure to scroll down past the advertisements.
Meditation
After I’ve woken my body up, I sit and meditate even if it’s just a few minutes.
Meditation techniques vary, but I keep it simple in the following steps:
- Close the eyes.
- Notice the breathing.
- Feel the sensation or energy pulsing in various body parts starting with the lips or the face and combing down the body, ending with the feet.
- Smile gently into each part while going along.
- Open the eyes halfway aware of the inner space of stillness, expansion, and joy while aware of the outer world of movement.
- Be with gratitude.
Once you’ve established this connection, all throughout the day you can be like ET phoning home just by pausing to feel the sensation and the smile in a body part. Then go about your business from this space. Remember to phone home often!
The Zip Up
I like to end my routine with this zip-up exercise, especially before I leave my home and go forth in the world as it helps one to not pick up other’s energies and so brings confidence too.
I was coaching a teenager with anxiety and self-esteem issues. I encouraged her to use the zip-up daily and to let me know how it went at our next session. It was so rewarding when she reported that she could now get through the school day more easily and indeed felt more confident.
The zip-up exercise is in Donna Eden’s daily energy routine which includes the three thumps and the crossover as well as a few other gems.
In Sum
The body is a complex organism and like a string instrument requires daily tuning before playing to optimize harmony and function. It is an orchestra unto itself with many parts contributing to the whole. And YOU are the conductor, the director extraordinaire.
In the words of Albert Einstein:
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.
Let the music play on.
Read also on Medium.
Photo by Sean Stratton on Unsplash