Happy Thursday (Friday for me!)
I had a very busy, but fun and productive day yesterday. I finished my second day of coaching with two brothers from Sydney, Australia. These are very cool guys who are totally motivated to achieve optimal body-mind well-being.
I began working with them a while back while on my last Australian tour and they came to do some more focused body-mind healing work with me. We did a lot of fun harmonizing through Native American drumming, chanting, rattling, therapeutic art, and we spent some great time in the gym mastering exercise principles.
While we were together, we did some healing art. Our theme with the art was expressing thoughts and emotions that feel trapped in our body-mind and may cause us to act in ways that aren’t congruent with our dream.
We did a variety of harmonizing exercises to get centered, and then we began our artistic expressions of the energies, blockages, emotions and “stuff” that needed to come out. Here’s some of it you can enjoy:
I really like this piece. He really opened up and let it all come out onto the page. This is the stuff that healing is made of!
Though those of you reading the blog may not have any training or experience in interpreting art, I suspect you can see and feel the different types of emotions and modes of expressing them by comparing the expression above with that of the one below:
Can you see that in this piece of art, the fire is encased in emotion, while in the top picture, the fire is expressed in and as emotion.
Both brothers noticed that they felt much calmer while doing their art pieces. This is very common. When people don’t get caught in self-judgment, they typically find art very soothing and relaxing.
I had a great time sharing my love of art and healing with these two amazing Australian studs. They both have a great sense of humor, and are open and willing to explore the depths of themselves honestly and fully.
It’s lovely to work with people that are willing to put the usual every-day games aside when with their coach/therapist.
Every now and then, I’ll get a client that is more invested in defending their silliness than they are in healing. It’s like watching a dog get frustrated because it can’t catch it’s own tail!
Oh well, I always have to remind myself that God loves it ALL, or it wouldn’t be here.
TIPS FOR CREATING BALANCE (Pt. 4)
Today, I’d like to continue our discussions on creating balance into the area of managing energy. Energy comes from food, rest, effective use of mind, and through effective use of movement.
Most people have a hard time creating balance through the use of movement because they don’t have any tangible knowledge of how the body works, and therefore, don’t really understand how to make their body work for them.
When it comes to creating balance in your life through the use of movement, it doesn’t take a lot of knowledge. It simply takes awareness of how one feels and what one needs to feel optimal.
Movement produces energy in our body by several mechanisms:
1. Thermal energy is created from the metabolism and mechanical stress created when we move.
2. Kinetic energy is created from the interactions of muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments and the environment.
3. Hydraulic energy is created as fluids rush past cells, charging them as opposing charges within and outside the cell meet each other.
4. Sound energy is created when muscles contract. This energy can be picked up by cells and converted into other forms of energy.
5. Piezoelectric energy is created when connective tissues are deformed. This is because connective tissues act as electrets; substances that produce energy when deformed.
6. Energy is produced by metabolizing foodstuffs, which is stimulated and supported by movement. When we move naturally, we deform our torso, causing a pumping action on our glands and organs.
This also aids the process of moving foodstuffs efficiently from mouth to anus.
Work-IN, or Work-Out?
It is not a good idea to work-out if you don’t feel you can meet and exceed your last performance in the same kind of workout by 1-3%.
The term “work-out” literally means to work energy and resources out of your body. If your energy levels and/or resources are less than optimal, working-out is essentially like over-drawing your bank account. You may get to shop more, but the long-term effect is that first you start to go broke (become broken down and suffer niggling injuries and illnesses), then you go bankrupt!
Most people will give themselves some rest when suffering the side-effects of a hard workout. Some will use that as a reason not to exercise for any number of days.
If you really want to create healthy balance in your body-mind, it is essential to work-in, to pump, clean and energize between workouts.
If you are too tired, stressed, injured, or ill to workout, you need to work-in. Working in isn’t just about “exercising”, it’s about meeting a real nutritional need.
Movement is definitely a form of nutrition. Without adequate movement, your muscles begin to atrophy, leaving you will less metabolic machinery to burn fat and clean the body.
Most people actually think the word “atrophy” means “shrinking muscles”. It doesn’t. It means “A-trophus”; without nutrition.
The diminishing muscle mass often comes with replacement of muscle cells by fat cells and doesn’t do much to enhance your body shape, or physical beauty at all.
There are also a host of negative hormonal consequences to not getting enough movement, or over-exercising.
To “Work-In” means to use movements gentle enough that you:
1. Don’t have an elevation of heart rate.
2. Don’t have an elevation of respiratory rate.
3. Could comfortably digest a full stomach of food, even while doing the work-in movement.
4. Don’t experience drying of the tongue.
As the sympathetic nervous system begins to dominate the parasympathetic nervous system, the blood is shifted out of the internal organs and into the musculoskeletal system to support movement.
This transition of blood flow is such that the visceral blood keeps that the inner-aspects of the body warm and wet (including the tongue) are diverted toward the surface.
This supports the musculoskeletal systems needs for resources to produce work and signifies that you are now working-out.
If you do this when tired and depleted of resources, you will work the life force and resources right out of you. What will be left is,!a fit sick person! I’ve seen thousands as clients!
FINDING BALANCE WITH DR. MOVEMENT
It’s this simple:
1. Get at least 30 minutes of movement daily. There is NO excuse for not doing this. If you don’t, you are either ignorant of what it takes to care for a body, or you are expressing a level of apathy toward yourself, and that is something you may want to consider getting professional help for now, before seeing doctors drains your bank accounts!
2. Don’t BS yourself. If you are tired and can’t improve on your last work-out performance, simply work-in; remember, your body DOESN’T get stronger when exercising – it gets stronger when resting and responding to the exercise stimulus.
If you master this simple practice, you will have potentially saved yourself untold amounts of time and money by avoiding unnecessary medical/drug interventions.
OK, that’s enough from me today. I’ve got to get in the gym and work-out!
OH, and we have SOLD OUT for our zen in the Garden on Saturday! It’s going to be fantastic day!
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
