Feedback from Your Body

In last week’s blog, I went over something very simple you can do lying on the floor. I call the “computer body” an example of a stuck body.

Lying on the floor doesn’t require any special equipment. It’s actually how I began discovering how powerful gravity is. As I lay there, I noticed I wasn’t really resting on the floor. How did I know? Certain parts of my body weren’t even close to touching it.

Logically, I realized I must have been holding myself off the floor, fighting gravity. My body was giving me feedback, though at the time I had no context for it. That, in itself, is the missing link — using the body’s innate ability to “undo” what we do to it, including being stuck in the Computer Body.

What made me stay there for a half hour every day was something simple. It was like watching large snowflakes fall slowly from the winter sky — first one, then another. Gradually, as I lay there, different parts of my body began to rest on the floor.

I wasn’t sure what I was doing at the time. I just knew it always felt better — and that something was changing.

Developing Your Body Dialogue

Years later, I began putting direction to what I was doing. It became less haphazard, and I hope that makes it easier for you.

Now, when I lie on the floor, I give myself a direction: feel the weight of my physical body.

When I first began, I wasn’t sure why parts of me were “going down.” It seems obvious now — gravity brings everything down. But those early discoveries were essential. Besides feeling my body rest more fully on the floor, I simply felt better.

Over time, I learned that using certain words — like weight — made my body more responsive, more quickly. Your body doesn’t want to fight gravity. It doesn’t want to hold your shoulders in the same position they were in at the computer just because that’s how you’ve always done it.

Gradually, I learned how capable the body is of adapting to new ways of moving and experiencing itself.

Your Body Formula

Weight + Breath = Reduction of Excess Muscle Tension

The element of weight — part of the Body Formula I write about in The Miracle Ball Method — was key for me.

Many people notice their shoulders are lifted, yet they have no sense of doing it. We think, “My body just does this.” As funny as that sounds, most of us believe our body is something separate — something we don’t have choices with. We think we’re stuck and must manage what we’ve been given.

But what’s beautiful is that we have tremendous choice in the human body. What we usually lack are options.

When I lay on the floor, I noticed my body responding — almost without me. That didn’t make sense. Isn’t my body just my body? Was it giving me options?

That was the turning point.

Turning It Upside Down

Our body is who we are. It is living, breathing, and responsive.

With a few key directions, you can begin to input new sensations. That doesn’t mean telling your body what to do or how to breathe — it already knows how to do that. When you explore weight and breath, your body uses those sensations as feedback. It begins to find alignment and balance on its own. It won’t go to an arbitrary place.

You don’t have to live with a stuck body.

These directions help you develop a different Body Dialogue, something I explain in The Miracle Ball Method. Without this dialogue, the body continues repeating old patterns, and we end up fighting it. We try to make it change — but you can’t intellectually argue with your body.

You have to meet it where it connects.

It doesn’t connect to an idea. It connects to sensation.

That’s what lying on the floor can do. You begin to feel the options your body offers. Or you can keep fighting gravity and hold on to the stuck body. Gravity is powerful. I don’t think you want to fight it.

Don’t Fix It. Feel It.

Your body is an experience — not just a thought.

You have to feel it.

That’s why lying on the floor is so beneficial. You can even do it in bed. Just lie down and feel the keyword: weight.

The second part of the Body Formula is breath. Notice where you feel your breathing.

If you had asked me that when I started, I would have thought it was a ridiculous question. I joked that I didn’t breathe for the first 18 years of my life. But in truth, I had never felt my breathing.

Even lying down or sitting, if someone had asked me to notice my breath, I would have been annoyed. It seemed inconsequential.

But I’m not asking you to “breathe better.”

What the body responds to — just like we do — is being listened to. How powerful is it when someone truly hears you? When there’s curiosity back and forth? That’s dialogue.

That’s what observation creates.

There is so much to learn from your body.

A Member of the Class

A few days ago, a gentleman came to class for the first time. I asked if there was anything specific he wanted to work on.

He smiled and said, “My issue is really more emotional. Can you do anything about that?”

I thought to myself, No, I can’t do anything. But what I said was, “It’s funny about the body — when it changes, your thoughts change as well.”

Again, it turns the paradigm upside down.

Isn’t the body just something we exercise and keep in shape? Don’t we believe that relaxing our mind changes our body? But what if you can’t relax your mind?

Your body can.

The Hurricane

For me, my mind was intensely focused on life, stressors, anxiety — like a hurricane constantly blowing.

When I began working with the same principles I’m sharing here — weight, breath, sensation — I was stunned. The simplicity of the body changing shifted my emotional state. My body was doing the work, and that was different.

That was my way in.

All the fighting with my thoughts, trying to control them, was like trying to stop a hurricane. I couldn’t.

But when hurricanes hit land, they slow down.

The physical presence of the human body — the simplicity of feeling “I’m here” — was like my hurricane of thoughts hitting land.

Skepticism Is Welcome

There is a distinction between mind and body that feels appropriate — and yet it’s difficult for most of us to have a true dialogue with our body.

We’re not entirely comfortable with it. We don’t think talking to it, learning from it, or listening to it has merit.

I would say: keep your skepticism.

But do the work. Do the Method.

In the webinars, we explore the basics of this connection — feeling weight, sensing breath, observing change. Notice I’m not asking you to be something or do something. I’m asking you to notice what you’re already doing.

That’s the key ingredient to listening and receiving feedback.

Next Free Webinar

February 21st – 1:30 PM ET

Join the next webinar. Bring a friend. Bring your balls if you have them.

We’ll continue discussing how to conquer the Computer Body. There is much to explore, and the basics of The Miracle Ball Method allow your body to “undo” much of what long hours in front of screens create.

At the end of that class, the gentleman had a gentle smile on his face. His body had moved into unfamiliar places — or perhaps he had become unfamiliar with his body.

But there it was — that smile, and a happy wave as he walked off.