How to Relieve Chronic Aches and Pains in the Process
Superficial versus real. I wonder if any of us really know the difference between what is fake and what is real.
We use the word superficial often when describing people. “They’re so superficial.” But that is usually a judgment based on our feelings and our own perceptions. We also say someone is “real” or “down to earth.” Again, these are feelings. But what is the truth? How do we really know the difference?
The pursuit of knowing the difference between what is real and what is not is almost like the pursuit of the Holy Grail. Think about fake diamonds, artwork, or photographs that can look almost identical to the real thing. Yet, ultimately, what people seek is authenticity. We want what is real.
What about our body? Are you using your superficial body or your real body?
It is the one place you cannot fake it.
Your body can’t send you an email. It talks to you through chronic aches and pains, anxiety, fatigue, stiffness, and tension. It is always communicating with you.
Although we try to do all the right things, the body always wins unless you meet it where it is.
You can look great on the outside. You can have perfect clothes, beautiful hair, a strong body, and defined muscles. You can hold everything together and appear amazing. But the body knows what is happening underneath.
The superficial body is the one we think we have to fix. It is the body we try to change through willpower, effort, exercise routines, posture correction, breathing techniques, or simply trying harder.
The real body is the one we have never really been taught to experience.
The Miracle Ball Method is not anti-control. It is anti-superficial control.
That distinction is important.
The body does not need us to abandon direction or intention. The body actually loves direction. But we have to learn to listen before we try to change anything.
That is why I often say in my classes:
“Don’t fix it. Feel it first.”
When you feel your body as it is—not as you want it to be—you begin to discover that your body is giving you direction. Instead of constantly telling your body what to do, you begin to recognize what it already knows how to do.
I once taught a group of fitness professionals in New York City. They were yoga teachers, Pilates instructors, and personal trainers. They were all in amazing shape and appeared to be the picture of health.
Yet every one of them suffered from chronic pain.
At the end of the class, they were amazed because much of their pain had disappeared. What surprised them most was that we had not exercised.
What changed was that they experienced their real body.
I didn’t use those words at the time, but ultimately that is what all of us are trying to discover. Beneath all of our efforts to improve ourselves, we are often trying to cover up what we feel.
But when we finally feel what is real, the body does something miraculous.
It changes for us.
Knowing the difference between the superficial body and the real body is the Miracle Ball Method—and it is a journey well worth taking.
All the superficial ideas we have about exercise, beauty, and movement cannot create lasting change without the experience of feeling your real body.
Physicality without feeling eventually becomes something you fight against. You may become stronger, more flexible, or more capable, but something is still missing. Eventually, you find yourself working harder and harder to control a body that is asking for something different.
Physicality with feeling your body changes everything.
Then you can do any exercise, and it feels different. It becomes more effective because you are no longer forcing your body to perform. You are working with it.
Part of the superficial body is convincing ourselves that what we believe or feel must be true. When it comes to the body, we often believe that if we look good, we must feel good.
But it is how you get there that makes the difference.
You can look beautiful while working through feeling. You can become stronger while connected to your body. You can move with intention while still listening.
The problem is not caring about how we look or what we want to accomplish. The problem is when the outside becomes more important than what is happening inside.
The superficial body convinces us that we have to control every aspect of ourselves. How we stand. How we breathe. How we move. How we exercise. Even how we relax.
And that is exhausting.
Most people think the body is only superficial. They believe the body needs us to tell it how to move, how to breathe, and how to stay in shape.
That could not be further from the truth.
It is that very belief—the belief that we have to control every aspect of the body—that makes it difficult for the body to do what it already knows how to do: help us move with greater ease, reduce excess tension, lower anxiety, improve mobility, and enjoy movement throughout our lives.
This is why the fitness professionals in my New York class were so surprised. They understood exercise. They understood movement. They understood how to make the body stronger.
But the Miracle Ball Method is not exercise. It is learning how to experience the body differently.
What I love about the body is that I have to understand how to get out of its way so it can do what it already knows how to do.
This is not relaxation. It is not an intellectual exercise in simply “letting go.”
It is something much deeper.
When we discover that we are holding our bodies in ways of moving, breathing, and being that prevent the body from fully functioning, we begin to understand what is possible.
The body begins to self-adjust.
Not because we force it.
Because we finally give it the opportunity to work.
With all our ego wrapped up in controlling everything and making something happen, we discover another path.
This was a gift for me.
I learned the directions so I could share them with others.
Your body knows. But instead of trying to make it look good on the outside, instead of trying to force it into an idea of what you think it should be, you learn to experience it as it is.
And what you discover is better than what you were trying to create.
We have spent our lives believing we must control every aspect of the body—how to stand, breathe, move, exercise, and even relax.
The Miracle Ball Method showed me something completely different.
The body already knows how to recover, realign, and move with greater ease.
My job isn’t to fix it.
My job is to feel it first.
When I stop trying to make my body fit an idea and begin experiencing it as it is, something remarkable happens.
My body begins to change itself.
That is the difference between the superficial body and the real body.
Once you experience your real body, you will never want to go back.