The Energy Centers Meditation Routine

Some time last year we began a series of posts about meditating while visualizing your lower and upper energy centers, your energetic baton, and the energetic bubble. This will be the capstone post for the series, where we put everything together, finish up the energetic bubble,  and give you a routine for practicing that you can do in less than half an hour.

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The Energy Centers Meditation Routine

1. The Lower Energy Center: Sit down comfortably on the edge of a chair. Touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth and begin to visualize a glowing ball, a little smaller than your fist, sitting two inches below your naval, and two inches back from the skin, toward your spine. If it helps, picture this energy center like a calm pool of clear water. Do this for about 5 minutes and then move on.

2. The Upper Energy Center: While still visualizing the lower energy center, begin to visualize the upper energy center as well. This center is located in the middle of the brain, halfway in between the base of the skull and the nose. Don't focus on your forehead, because that is a different visualization. Instead, try being aware of the sensation of your soft palate. That should get you a lot closer. The upper center can also be visualized like a pool of water. Make sure you picture this pool on higher ground than the lower energy center. Continue these two visualizations for 5 minutes.

3: The Energetic Baton: Now it is time to connect the two visualizations into one, and cool the baton. Picture the upper energy center flowing down into the lower energy center, like a waterfall, or a stream down a hill. Focus on the sensation of moving energy from your head and shoulder girdle down to your lower abdomen. You should feel a cooling sensation as your energy settles and your brain quiets down a little. Spend another 5 minutes here.

4: The Energetic Bubble: Lastly, begin expanding your focus to just beyond the surface of your skin, about two inches, into a bubble. This bubble is your filter to pull in good energy from the world around you, and also is a shield, to protect you from negative energies. Remember that the energetic bubble reacts to the temperature around you: the colder it is, the more the bubble shrinks toward your core, the warmer it is, the more the bubble grows outward into the air. Your goal here is to visualize the bubble, identify what parts of it are weaker than others, and then visualize yourself patching those weak areas. After another 5 minutes here, you have completed your energy centers meditation routine!

And there you have it! Do this routine every other day and you will begin feeling more balanced, calm, and your energy bubble might even keep those pesky mosquitoes away! (Just kidding, but one can wish!)

Happy stretching!

A Balanced Approach to Taking Mind-Body Classes

People usually love or hate the first yoga or tai chi class they take. If they hate it, they usually blame the teacher. But very often, the reason some people have a bad experience with their first mind-body class is that they don't understand what mind-body learning entails.

The teacher cannot quiz you to see how well his or her teachings are working. Unlike, say, a math class, your job in a mind-body class is not to do your best, it is to do what gets YOU results. You don't have to do every technique exactly the same way the teacher first shows you how to. You also don't have to do techniques for as long, or in the same order, as the teacher shows. In fact, you don't have to do any technique you don't want to do.

But it is very, very important to understand why you SHOULD change your class experience, and why you SHOULDN'T.

If an exercise hurts, consider why. Is it putting stress on an injury? Should you be going slower or for less time? If so, you need to figure out what will work given your circumstances.

If an exercise is difficult because you have a lot of tissue tension, or a lack of mobility from non-use, then the exercise is probably helping you. So long as it isn't making your condition worse, you should stick to it and put in the work. Don't push yourself too hard, but challenge yourself so you can improve.

In the intimate class setting of a hospital, it is easy to get tailored treatment and personal feedback. In a large public class, the teacher can't think about each student, they have to focus on meeting all the demand for their instruction.

To get the mind-body class experience you need, make sure you pay attention to both parts of the mind-body yin-yang. The body half is about feeling how the exercise is affecting you, and adjusting so that you feel progress without pain. The mind half is about accepting the challenge that the teacher is giving you, and using your will power to keep doing the exercises even though there is a part of you (and everyone around you) that would rather lie down and just watch TV. 

Mentally Chunk Your Workouts

Do you get overwhelmed by the idea that you have a whole hour of exercise ahead? Does the idea of a laundry list of to-dos make you exhausted?

Modern psychological research has long since established that our short-term memory, which we use to work through our day-to-day lives, has a limit of 5 to 9 "things" or "chunks" which it can handle at once. Any greater number of details or tasks and our brain goes a little haywire. We stress out because we're worried we will mess up or forget something. It takes so much energy to remember things and mentally prepare for everything that we can't put all of our focus onto actually doing the one task at hand.

So to make your workout life (as well as the rest of your life) easier, you should chunk your workout into small parts, and focus completely on one part at a time, like hamstrings, for example. 

If you have a whole-body workout you do, focus on one area of the body at a time, and don't worry about the next area, or how much time you have left, until you are completely done with the chunk you are working on. 

You can also use this strategy to look at your workouts differently. Twelve exercises is a good amount, maybe even a stressful amount to think about. But four chunks of three exercises, organized by which part of the body they are used for (legs, hips, torso, etc.) might make the routine easier to handle on a mental level.

Very accomplished distance runners use this strategy to make it through long races. Just get to that next telephone pole, now get to the next one, now the next one.... Pretty soon, they've gone five miles without losing their mental resilience.

You can do the same with your life. Don't try to mentally tackle the entire challenge at once, just take each step, each chunk, as it comes. Also, don't forget to meditate to renew your energy!

Where Is Your Mind When You Exercise?

You do exactly the number of repetitions you are supposed to. You hold the stretches for exactly the right amount of time. You do your routine everyday, and and you do it first thing in the morning before anything else. Even before checking email.

But you're still stressed out. You still have anxieties that plague you during the day. You still can't get a great night's sleep.

It's probably because your mind is wandering while you workout.

Half of all mind-body regimens is in the mind. Doing the exercise is good for your heart, but thinking about that project your have to get done at work is bad for your heart. Stress-induced hormones increase your blood pressure and put you on high alert, making it impossible to relax as your thoughts spin around the source of your anxiety.

Put away the timer and start exercising for as long as it takes to feel relaxed. Go muscle by muscle, and move your mind into that part of your body. Picture the muscle and soft tissue like ice, frozen, but melting from your mind focusing on it, like heat from the sun.

Afraid you won't have time to get fully relaxed? Go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. Put yourself in a position where your schedule is wide open when you start stretching, so you can go as long as you need to without constantly checking the clock.

Eventually you should be able to feel each muscle by putting your mind there, and you should be able to consciously relax it with a deep breath.

Focus on your breathing too. Do whatever makes it easier for your to let go of your stress for this hour, or half-hour, each day. You don't need to solve your life problems or get any work done right now. Right now, you need to relax your body and mind.

Doing Tai Chi with a monkey mind is like not doing Tai Chi at all. Bring that energy down from your head to your center and cool off. A meditative mind is kind of like a sauna: you don't need to spend all day in there to feel the benefits. A little bit every day works too.

Tai Chi is Good for the People Around You

Some people are motivated to do things because it helps them, personally. If eating healthy is good for them, then they will do it. No questions asked.

Other people still struggle to be motivated, even if they would experience the same benefits. It isn't hard to understand why: if someone has learned to live with the body and state of health they've got, then the only thing that really scares them is getting worse.

When was the last time you ran a mile? Yesterday? Last week? Last year? Last decade? Unless you run a lot, it is easy to let that ability get away from you. How often does the average joe need to run a mile in his day-to-day life? Not at all, really. But even if you don't feel it, you are getting worse and worse at running everyday that you don't do it.

But if you don't run, you'll never realize how much you've lost. This applies to all health situations. You don't realize you can't bend down anymore until you have to. You don't realize you can't play catch with your kids until your shoulder cries out in pain.

It's hard to motivate ourselves to avoid those things, because we only notice them after they are a problem. But just treating current problems is no way to take care of yourself, you have to avoid health problems to feel really good.

So try this: meditate and be mindful for a few minutes about the well-being of your loved ones. Consider the positive effect if would have on the people around you if your mood was improved through regular meditation. Or the effect that improved strength and flexibility will have on the time you spend with your kids and/or grandkids. Or the effect that better sexual health will have on your love life. Or the effect that lower health care costs and insurance premiums will have on your family's quality of life.

The list goes on and on, but the theme is always the same: your health is not just about you, it is about everyone around you, and everyone who cares about you. So if you aren't motivated to improve your health and start a mind-body routine for just your own benefit, consider the benefits it will have on the people around you.

There's Always Another Exercise

A few weeks ago, I was afraid that I might run out of material for the blog, the videos in particular. I thought, "I've released most of my exercises at this point, what is left to talk about?"

But I realized that I can't have released most of my exercises yet, because I haven't invented most of my exercises yet. 

When I work with patients one-on-one, I always start out with the bread-and-butter exercises to get an idea of how healthy they are, and what works for them. But then, in practically every session I have with someone, I have to brainstorm some new motion, or stretch, or strength exercise for them to do to get the results they desire.

You'll see one of these new moves in an upcoming vlog. It has a name that can't possibly be from ancient Eastern martial arts!

So, how is this relevant to you and your treatment? Well, it means that you should never give up on exercise, because if a certain stretch or movement doesn't help you, it doesn't mean that exercise is general won't help you, it only means that this one particular exercise won't help you.

So we'll just have to invent another that does.

Happy stretching.

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P.S. My publisher YMAA has created a great bundle deal on my books, as well as a few other books written by my colleagues concerning mind-body healing. Check it out here on Amazon. If you are interested in getting a lot of expert advice from professionals in the field, this bundle is the best bang-for-your-buck, so to speak.