Understanding the Body: It Goes Both Ways
Most of us think we can control how we physically feel. If we take care of our body, eat a certain way we will feel good and reap the benefits. That works until it doesn’t. When I first began to have difficulty with my right leg, to the point of not being able to move it without a limp, I had been in what most would call perfect shape. I was young and very active. It made no sense, and the doctors didn’t have answers, and treatments weren’t working. I had many different diagnoses.
The body can be very complicated. Especially when it’s backaches, tight shoulders, TMJ, sciatic pain, there are so many different opinions on what to do. We can get confused. We think we are doing all the right things, but that’s the problem, thinking alone doesn’t work. Theres an expression, “Man does not live by bread alone”, well “thinking” alone is true too. It goes both ways, we can think the body, but we also must feel it. There is a moment to moment, back and forth between thoughts and feelings. That is the Miracle Ball Method. We are relearning what we once did effortlessly.
Bodies lose feeling over time from stress, injuries, alignment issues, illness, and that lack of feeling makes us try even harder to use the old paradigm of telling it what to do. But you can’t move what you don’t feel. Our bodies, as in my case, become less and less responsive. We feel at a loss how to fix this. Don’t fix it, feel it.
Most of us are never told that we are getting feedback from our bodies all the time. We can use that feedback if we understand how. In fact, most people overlook the feedback their body is giving them because maybe its not what they want to hear. For example, pain. I’m not talking about acute pain, like putting your hand on a stove, or breaking a leg. I’m talking about the kinds of pains or aches that you have had checked out, and you’ve tried different things, but they don’t seem to improve. That is when it is a good time to learn to listen to your body. It’s like learning an instrument, it tells you when you hit the wrong note. It’s a sensory experience. So is your physical body. Pain is your bodies way of telling you something. What it is telling you is different for each individual. We are that unique. But it is telling us in a language most of us don’t consider because this is not taught.
It goes both ways, you teach your body, but our bodies also teach us.
When you do the Method, you begin to increase feeling, but you also learn to feel what you feel. Don’t sugar coat it, don’t think it has to be good, just feel what you feel physically. That is what I truly respect about the body, its honest. Its not trying to cover anything up, be sophisticated, or take on a role of some kind. It will tell you how to move, what feels good, and what doesn’t. It knows where balance is, and it knows how to take the stiffness out of the muscle so your can free the lower back, tight shoulders, and breathe freely again. It will do what YOU need. Its not about the person next to you. That’s why one exercise doesn’t work for everyone.
We have all trained ourselves to move certain ways, breathe certain ways and think certain thoughts. Be open minded. One last thing that always slips people up is that it doesn’t always feel familiar, but it does always take you in the right direction. That is a journey worth going on.
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