How do I make my body, mind and soul work together?
There are four key ways to strengthen the connection between your body, mind and soul. They are:
- Listening to your intuition;
- Listening to your body;
- Deep breathing; and
- Posture Integration.
1 – Listening to Your Body
The body is the barometer of the mind and soul. Your body will tell you if you are in or out of flow with its natural rhythms. These messages come to us in the form of pain, discomfort, stiffness, heaviness and the list of unpleasant sensations goes on.
The state of your body, mind and soul is reflected in your:
- Body shape – its size and distribution of muscle and fatty tissue;
- Body posture – the bone structure; and
- Bodily function – the health of individual organs and blood flow.
Even without the presence of pain or illness, you can see so much from the state of your body. At ease, the body’s natural state is to be firm yet flexible with suitable tissue covering a well balanced bone structure. At dis-ease, the body becomes either frail and thin or rigid and fat which can then cause distortion of the bone structure. To find out more about what your body can tell you, go to Psychosomatic Healing.
2 – Listening to Your Intuition
Until you experience it, intuition can seem like an abstract concept that only gurus can achieve. It’s really not that way at all. But one thing is certain: listening to your intuition takes practise.
What exactly is intuition?
Intuition is how our soul communicates with us. It is an essential part of balancing the body, mind and soul because it guides us to do things that are in our our best interests (remember, the soul knows best). So when we are listening to our intuition, we are guided through life with ease and grace. Without hearing the voice of our soul, life can be unnecessarily difficult and confusing. (For more ‘soul wisdom’ go to Soul Balance)
Intuition comes into our awareness as a feeling. Many people make the mistake of thinking it comes as a direct, explicit thought in our minds. But intuition is more subtle as its language is emotion, not thought. This is why we call it our ‘gut feeling’.
The quandary arises when we need guidance from our intuition but there is no sign of a gut feeling. And most people don’t know what to do next. There are practical strategies that we can apply that strengthen our connection with our intuition.
One effective way to strengthen intuition is to be guided by what makes you feel good. It sounds impossibly simple but the soul communicates by triggering emotions – good or bad. When we are going in the right direction according to our soul’s plan, we are happy and content. When we are not doing something that is in our ‘highest good’ (that is, when the soul ‘approves’), life is a struggle and doesn’t feel good at all. Without intuition, we struggle to find harmony in our body, mind and soul.
Be aware that sometimes it’s not what we are doing that makes us feel bad, it’s how we perceive what we are doing. For example, a child may not like going to school but is that because they ‘should’ be doing something else or simply because they resist the lessons they have to learn at school (like discipline, focus, making friends etc). Try it, trial-and-error style, and you’ll find what works for you.
3 – Posture Integration
The way in which we hold our bodies delivers an unconscious message to our brains about how we feel. The body’s shape and strucutre reflects how healthy we are in body, mind and soul. When we feel down, our bodies reflect this emotion by becoming hunched, curved and bent in all the wrong places. When we feel good, we stand tall and our bodies reflect their natural alignment. The same works in reverse: when we stand tall, we feel tall. This means that we can consciously influence how we feel by how we hold our bodies. Sound strange? Try it for yourself and see how you feel.
Posture Principles
- Walk with even pressure along the soles of your feet, making contact with the whole sole. Try not to walk heel first – balance the pressure between the balls of your feet and the heels.
- Walk with your shoulders level and chest pushed out slightly.
- When standing, stand with your knees slightly bent and even pressure across the soles of your feet (don’t dig your heels in as it will lock your knees!).
- Ensure your lower spine is relatively straight and not over-arched – tucking the pelvis under is a great way to encourage this posture. You will feel your pelvic muscles work for it!
- Walk with your feet facing straight forward, not outward or inward.
- Elongate your neck with your chin level with the ground, as it will help to stretch your spine into a straighter position.
- Allow your arms to swing freely by your sides when you walk. Try not to hold them too close in to the body.
4 – Deep Breathing
Breathing is how we consciously intake life force energy to fulfil our bodies…but did you know that the act of breathing has a profound effect on the body, mind and soul? When we breathe in, we invite new energy to enter our bodies and as we exhale, we release old energy that has expired within us.
Breathing is not only the source of our life force, it symbolises how we experience life…
When we breathe shallowly, we are restricting the amount of life force energy in our bodies, which causes us to recycle old energy. When we breathe deeply, intaking as much new energy as possible, we are consciously in the moment because we are re-newing our energy. The body, mind and soul benefits immensely from deep, full and exhilarating breath!
Breathing Guidelines
- Try to be conscious of the way in which you are breathing as often as possible.
- Inhale from the lower abdomen (diaphragm) upwards to fill the upper chest cavity.
- Try to expand the rib cage when you inhale to stretch the intercostal muscles.
- When relaxing, practice the 3-3-3 rule. Breath in for 3 counts, hold your breath in for 3 counts and exhale for 3 counts.
- To breathe more deeply, raise the arms to the sides when inhaling to increase the size of the chest cavity.
- Practise specific breathing exercises at least once per day.
To find out more about bridging the body, mind and soul go to Body Balance.
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