My walks take on more meaning since I read  Free Your Breath, Free Your Life- How Conscious Breathing Can Relieve Stress, Increase Vitality, and Help You Live More Fully by Dennis Lewis.  He offer forth the following Conscious Walking Practice:

1. Learning the Art of Walking: First step is awareness or being mindful about yourself. How do you feel and what is your motive when walking? Are you in a hurry, anxious, or tense, which will bring on discomfort and quick exhaustion?  The art of conscious walking depends on the rhythmical and harmonious movement of all parts of your body without unnecessary tension.

2. Opening and Closing the Joints of  Your Body:  Allow your pelvis to swing naturally to open & close the joints, support movement of blood, exercise all internal tendons, ligaments and muscles.  Conscious walking opens up your breathing spaces. Neuroscientist Candace Pert tells us “Let the opposite hand swing forward with each step…Somehow this sets left brain-right brain information flowing, breaking up old patterns of worry and rumination.”

3. Becoming Aware of Your Feet:  See if you can discover a gentle rolling motion, in conjunction with the swinging motion of your arms and pelvis?  This helps release tension in the feet, legs, pelvis, and relaxes the shoulders.  Bring your awareness to how grounded you feel.

4. Sense Your Breathing: Breathing reaches deeper down in the body when tension is released from the way we walk. As this occurs, the efficiency and capacity of your respiratory system increases.  You are able to walk longer with less fatigue and feel more energetic.

5. Walking Inside the Energy Atmosphere of Your Breath: Visualize you are walking inside the atmosphere of your breath. This atmosphere surrounds and interacts with the body as you walk.  This breath energy is your life force.

6. Walking Exercise Begins with Awareness: Mindful walking supports our health and well-being.  Awareness Walking shares  the same benefits as practicing tai chi or qigong.

(This Post Originally Debuted September 16, 2013, in Categories Energy Healing).

Join me during the month of September Walking with Awareness! 

Looking at the ‘Mystic Heart’

In Angeles Arrien’s book Living in Gratitude, for December, she has us look at the ’Mystic Heart’ (the moral capacity within the heart for selfless service and compassionate action).  She recommends that we take time to reflect and give gratitude for our own Mystic Heart and how it has expressed itself this year in our work, relationships, health, well-being, and difficult circumstances.

The utterances of the heart-unlike those of the discriminating intellect-always relate to the whole.

In this sense, the heart shows the meaning of things in great perspective.

What the heart hears are the great things that span our lives,

the experiences which do nothing to arrange

but which simply happen to us.

~ Carl Jung

Studies show the more we extend gratitude, appreciation, and compassion, the healthier our heart and immune system become. I am extending all my heartfelt gratitude to all authors, healers, teachers, students, clients, and family members that have contributed to my mystic heart journey this year.

“Where have you experienced humility of heart and simplicity of spirit this year?”

 (This Post Originally Debuted December 1, 2013)

Revisiting February Feature Post 2013 is very appropriate and personal for me.  There are challenging situations, which could be either physical or emotional, that show up unexpectedly in our everyday lives.  It is during this time that “Being In Gratitude” is important.

I continue to refer to Angeles Arriens’ book, Living in Gratitude – A Journey That Will  Change Your Life.  One of the sentences from the February Chapter of this book states,  “The month of February offers daily opportunities to both say aloud what is in our hearts and communicate our love through our actions: our own unspoken verses of love.”  The following quotes are also found in the February Chapter:

Attend to the Heart

We are given a gift of 86,400 seconds today.

Have you used one today to say

“Thank you”?

WILLIAM A. WARD

A Gratitude - Building Exercise – from The Dali Lama

1.  Spend five minutes at the beginning of each day remembering that we all want the same thing; to be happy, to be loved, and to feel connected.

2.  Spend five minutes cherishing yourself and others. Let go of judgments.  Breathe in cherishing yourself,  and breathe out cherishing others.  If the faces of people you are having trouble with appear, cherish them as well.

3.  During the day, extend that attitude to everyone you meet,  with “I cherish myself and you too  (the store clerk, the client, a family member,  a fellow bus-rider).”

4.  Stay in the practice no matter what happens.   (Disarmingly simple, though not necessarily easy.)

JOIN ME THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY BEING IN DAILY GRATITUDE!

EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) is a very simple and effective tapping practice for adults as well as children.  It is universally used by professionals as well as novice for physical, emotional, and performance issues.  Before beginning a series of tapping, rate the intensity of how you are feeling from 0-10 (10 being the most upset).  This will measure how often you may need to repeat the tapping series. The Tapping is done with two or more fingertips.  Read the script out loud, allowing your emotions to be heard.

Start with the following Karate Chop Set-up Script For Fear:

Begin tapping side hand and repeat the following out loud before each of the rounds you do.

1.  Even though I am so afraid and don’t know what to do. I love and accept myself.

2.  Even though my stomach does a flip whenever I think of.___,  and how afraid I am.   I love and accept myself anyway.

3.  Even though I don’t feel in control,  and that makes me even more afraid, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

You can tap with the fingertips of either hand, most people use their dominant hand.  Where there are two identical points on each side of the body, you can choose to do only one side or both.    Again, reading the script out loud allows emotions to be heard.

Karate Set-Up (above script)

Tap five times while repeating script on each of the following points: 

Top of Head:  This fear

Edge of Eyebrow: It’s everywhere

Side of Eye:  It feels bad

Under Eye:   It just won’t go away

Under Nose:  I’m afraid

Under Chin: I’m not safe

Collarbone:  This awful fear

Under Arm:  I don’t want this…

Continue rounds:  Until  fears decrease.  MAKE MARCH TAPPING FEARS AWAY MONTH!

 (A post on EFT Fear Tapping was published  on March 18, 2016. It seems appropriate during this unsettling time, to revisit Emotional Freedom Technique).

This month bwb is revisiting our first Feature Post dated December 1, 2012.  Have you ever wondered why we associate matters of love with the “heart area” of the body?   Why do we often hear following phrases such as; ‘weight off  your shoulders,’ or ‘pain in the neck,’ or a ‘feeling in the gut?’  Below shows the Emotional Energy Centers of the body.

Our mental, emotional and physical lives aren’t separate after all.   How often do we ignore what our bodies are telling us?  The next time you are wondering what that random pain in your torso is from, perhaps referring to the above diagram will be beneficial.  Also included below is a chart showing the possible physical and emotional signs of blockage for each Chakra.

The following chart points our the possible physical or emotional blockages for the individual Chakras.

There is always more….