I get asked all the time, “What exercises should I do?” The Miracle Ball Method works through your nervous system, so it doesn’t follow the same rules as traditional exercise. I should clarify—this isn’t the same type of exercise you’re used to. But, like exercise, it’s not the ball placements you do, but how you do them. It’s not the exercise itself, but how you approach it.
While traditional exercises may work for some people and not for others, it’s not the exercise itself that’s changing your body; it’s the experience. For example, two people are going on a walk. One person is enjoying the scenery, taking in the fresh air, and feels invigorated. For different reasons, the person next to them on the same walk may experience something completely different. This is the missing link for why your exercises work—or don’t work. We all experience life and exercise differently.
Recently, someone diagnosed with a new condition reached out to me with a question. She promised she would diligently follow the exercises I suggested. This was someone I had worked with in the past. It’s understandable that this one small detail can be so challenging for many of us because traditional exercise programs often suggest you can simply “plug in” a routine, like downloading a file on your computer, and expect it to work.
However, that doesn’t apply to the human body. We are not machines. Our bodies respond to exercises based on our unique ability to feel different parts of ourselves. We all have different emotions, experiences, and perhaps past injuries or illnesses that inhibit our ability to move freely. Instead of seeing movement as repetitive or imitative, we need to focus on our ability to feel our body physically and kinesthetically.
Experiment
Try this the next time you exercise: Pay attention to how your breath feels and notice the weight of your body. This may seem abstract—and it probably is at first—but it’s important. The first thing people often do is try to breathe deeply. For most, feeling the weight of the body feels almost imaginary.
When using the ball during the Miracle Ball Method, people think it’s a tool to roll on, massage the body, and relieve stiffness. The ball, however, is a neurological tool that helps you regain the sensation of your body’s weight. This is how you assess tension and how much effort you need to use. The change can be almost instantaneous.
When I started, I had to overcome my own skepticism, thinking it was too simple. Our bodies do tend to return to old ways of moving. This isn’t a setback, though. It simply helps us understand exactly what we’re moving away from, and what feels so much better to move towards.
There’s no right or wrong exercise. There are only exercises done without feeling your body, and those won’t work. Yes, some people naturally have this connection, but unfortunately, many of us don’t have a good experience with this process that exists in all our bodies—the ability to heal chronic aches and pains. To complicate it more there is a large part of the medical community and even the fitness world that doesn’t believe our bodies do have this ability to realign and recover. They have ingrained in most of us that our bodies give us little feedback so we have to “manufacture it” with the right exercise and diagnosis for it to work again.
So, what should I do?
When deciding where to place the ball, it doesn’t really matter. I still use some of the same ball placements I’ve used for many years, but I get more benefit now because of how I allow my body to realign and adjust. The key is learning how to continue engaging your nervous system.
When you go into a gym or watch dancers warm up, they often do many of the same exercises you might be doing. It looks different because of the way they are doing them. They may have developed a different connection with their body.
Unlike muscles, your nervous system doesn’t age in the same way. It’s always ready to give you more feedback. Muscles rely on this connection, and by sensing the weight of your body and your breath, you can trigger many more responses from a single movement, rather than endlessly repeating exercises and getting the same results over and over.
Choose something you love—one ball placement—and enjoy the feeling. Re-read the directions and notice the feedback. Without the feedback, you are basically telling your body that it doesn’t know where balance is, how to heal, or how to move. But it does.
Coming Up:
- Next Free Webinar: Why your back hurts and neck shoulders and knees……. February 22nd 1:30 ET
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