When we feel pain, we can often find ourselves feeling stuck, unable to fully express ourselves, pessimistic, and like we are falling into a victim mode instead of a more positive mode. Wouldn’t you say?
When we feel pain, let me know if this resonates with you, but I feel like everything cringes from the outside in. When I am in pain, my forehead starts to frown, the eyebrows come together towards the midline of the face, the jar clinches, the tongue is pressed up against the roof of the mouth, the shoulders go down and forward, and the psoas muscle in the hips and the thighs contract inwards, like if I was holding a yoga block between my knees. Does it feel like that for you as well when you feel pain? Let me know in the comments below.
The exercise I will share with you is the most effective way to not only release pain without medication, but it to help you create space in the body so that the inward cringing tension of the muscles actually gets opened and released.
So instead of feeling a contracted motion of the body, you will feel an uplifting and open sensation. Are you ready to do the exercise with me?
You can either stand with both feet planted into the ground, or sit at the edge of a chair with your spine in its natural curve. If it’s comfortable for you to sit in a cross legged position, allowing your spine to be lengthened, do that. Laying down is not the preferred position for this exercise right now as I’d like you to please use the 360 degrees of your rib cage (and it can be more difficult when we are laying down).
Now I ask that you please do the same motion wherever the pain is in your body. If I feel like the pain is on my right knee, I will bring my hand to the right knee and I will do the hand gesture as I inhale and exhale. OK?
The motion of spreading the fingers is to help you to visualize the spaciousness created by the breath. If I am to tell you simply to bring your breath to your right knee, you might look at me with a very weird face! So by using your hand as a reference, it is easier to bring together the brain, the motion and the inner visualization of the spaciousness of the breath.
If you are feeling pain in the back of your body, and unless you are a contortionist you cannot access it, that’s when the visualization comes in handy. You don’t need to have your fingers on your body all the time. But you can practice it somewhere you can touch and see, so that when comes the time to make space in a part of your body that is in accessible to you physically, you can do it with your eyes closed and feel it anyway. Does that make sense?
I often find myself with pain between both shoulder blades, and I imagine that this balloon is between my shoulder blades and as I breathe in it expands with space, with breath, with healing, and when I exhale, instead of feeling like the balloon, or in this case the space, deflates or diminishes, I imagine that it stays spacious and open. And when comes the next inhale, I create even more space.
This is a very effective practice to not only bring you in the present moment, but to align your heart with your mind. Because when your heart believes that you can create space, your mind believes that you can create space. Therefore, your body creates space. It is as simple as that.
You are welcome to watch this exercise in video format inside the free and closed You Have It In You Facebook Group by clicking here
OR
you can check out the Breathing & Space Meditation video to help you create space between the to be exact ribs for more heart and chest awareness (and feel less of a pressure at the heart from stress or pain). Click here to watch it (but be sure to join first).
Grateful for you,
Claudia-Sam
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