I’ve often told my students that one of the hardest things I ask of them is to feel what they don’t feel. If you think about it, most exercise systems assume you already feel your physical body completely. This is where an important distinction needs to be made. When I say feel, I mean physical feeling—your kinesthetic ability to sense your body. I am not talking about emotional feeling.
That distinction matters. As we all know, emotions can strongly affect how we feel physically. Anxiety, for example, can tighten the shoulders, dry the mouth, change the heart rate, or cause sweating. Our emotional state influences the body in real and immediate ways. The human body is remarkable. It’s not always easy to know, is it all in my mind or my body?
So when I ask someone to feel their physical body, many assume they already do. But often, what they are sensing is only part of the picture. It’s like having pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in place but there is much more to the picture. In a way, the Miracle Ball Method is somewhat like we are tuning an instrument. It helps bring an extraordinary instrument—the body—back into tune when life, habits, or stress have pulled it off balance.
We need to “feel” how we are moving which is usually preventing our body from making the adjustments back to balance so movement is easier. Experiencing this will develop new muscles to help you relieve the chronic stiffness in the joints, the tight postural muscles and low back aches.
Your body knows how to adjust, realign, rebalance, and reconnect neurologically to the full physical feeling of itself. We see this naturally in young children learning to walk, stand, reach, bend, and shift weight in space. They move with an effortless connection to all their parts.
You didn’t need an exercise class to learn how to walk.
The capacity to feel is already within us. But over a lifetime, patterns develop. Perhaps you played a sport from a young age, and your body adapted around those movements. Perhaps a coach emphasized hundreds of abdominal exercises, and your body learned to organize itself around that effort. Bodies learn whatever we repeatedly ask of them. That is why giving ourselves new experiences is essential. The phenomenon is your body adapts.
If your body is working beautifully and you feel great, there may be no reason to change anything. But if something feels off, restricted, disconnected, or uncomfortable, then a tune-up may be exactly what is needed. Think of a guitarist tuning during a performance. They adjust not because the instrument is broken, but because they know it can sound better. They know their instrument. That is the joy of playing it well.
Myths and Misunderstandings
The same is true of the Miracle Ball Method. It helps clear away misunderstandings about the body. I’m not asking you to relax. I’m not asking you to collapse or “let go.” And I’m not asking you to tighten up or hold a rigid pose.
That’s why the directions can sometimes feel counterintuitive, as one of my students once said. I’m asking you to feel what you don’t yet feel. And when you discover that missing piece, everything else begins to change. Suddenly, the body organizes differently. You feel more connected, more supported, more whole. Those chronic aches and pains are many times the way your body is communicating. And when we feel the discomfort, do not run from it, our bodies can realign which to me has always been miraculous. How that happens is as mysterious to me as a beautiful song, a view of the ocean waves, the taste or smell of my favorite food. And yes, emotions are immediately triggered and your physical body experiences it as well. Is it in your mind or your body? They are the same place.
It asks us to recognize that some parts of the body may have been doing the lion’s share of the work, while other parts have been neglected entirely.
Know your instrument. We are all unique. We all have relatively the same parts but experience they differently. Discover those great feelings the way a musician discovers great sound. Learn where your body wants to go when it is truly connected.
For me, it began with one moment. I felt a complete sense of a part of my body I had struggled with for a long time. Suddenly, feeling the weight of my leg and my knee resting on a ball, I knew there was something there. I had no idea it would lead to all of this.