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When I first thought of writing this article about mind-body connection, I thought I’d start by introducing you to all of the mounting evidence and research demonstrating its benefits. I have books upon books about the subject. I began to scan through PubMed gathering this bit of evidence and that piece of data, and before long, I was overwhelmed. Ironic, no? Overwhelmed by exercises that bring peace to the soul, slow the heart rate, modulate blood pressure, reduce chronic disease, lower inflammation in the body, change the brain, create resilience…and here I was sitting in front of my keyboard, feeling NONE of those benefits!

Instead of wasting your time on a sales-pitch for meditation, I thought about something better for you. You’re tired of being sold minute-by-minute anyway, right? Pushing the multitude of benefits aside for a moment, let’s spend the time instead on exploring the many ways that you can connect body to mind. I was once frozen with this idea that it was meditation or nothing, but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t make meditation work for me and it was one more thing to add onto my extremely negative “failure” list. That didn’t feel so good—quite the antithesis of what mind-body exercises are supposed to do for you!

Then, I stumbled upon the world of tapping. I wasn’t looking for it; it found me in the form of an email sitting in my junk folder. Intrigued, I opened the “junk” email and began reading. There was a call to action (you know one of those “CLICK HERE” buttons) and in seconds I was thrust into an online YouTube tapping session. It’s not like you might be thinking…I didn’t don tap shoes and start dancing around my office. (It’s NOT that type of tapping!) Instead, I sat in front of my computer (the last place to seek solace) and began speaking the guided script on relaxation while tapping specific acupressure points gently with my index finger, moving from the top of my head, to my eyebrow, to my eye, to my lip, to my chin and so forth. A few minutes later, I felt relaxed, calm, and restored. The tapping, otherwise known as the Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT, had delivered on it’s promise in a way that meditation had never done for me.

I couldn’t wait to tap again! I wondered, “Would it hurt to tap two times in one day?”. I waited as patiently as I could until the next day to tap. I played the same YouTube video and a few minutes later…nothing. Ugh. I felt just as deflated and frustrated as I did when I tried to meditate on my own. I didn’t give up, though. I began to incorporate tapping sessions into my routine; I stuck with it, and it wasn’t long before I felt restoration, fulfillment, and a “shift” in my mindset.

So, before I lose you, the whole point of my rambling post is to share with you a couple of ideas about mind-body connection exercises.

  1. Mind-body connection exercises come in many forms.
  2. There is no one size that fits all.

I equate trying mind-body exercises to shopping for clothes. Trying on clothes at a department store can be daunting. You gather the clothes off of the rack in the store; sometimes it’s all things that you want to try on and sometimes it’s things that your loved one has picked out for you. Either way, you gather yourself and your clothes, you march back to the fitting room, and sequester yourself behind a flimsy louvered half-door with one to two or even three mirrors staring back at you. You try the first shirt on and pair it with some pants. The pants are a bit snug at the waist; they don’t rest on your hips quite the way you want them to. You wonder if you’ll be able to sit in these pants, especially since they don’t feel quite right just standing in them—so you do the crouching test or you sit for a second on the tiny little bench in the fitting room to see if the pants split. Ultimately, you try on a couple different pairs of pants, and on a lucky day something fits just as it should and you take it home (after paying for it of course!).

Mind-body exercises are the same way. Sometimes you “try” it on for size and it just doesn’t “fit”. Sometimes it doesn’t fit that great the first time around, but on a second try it suits you much better. Again, the whole point of sharing this with you is that I want to impart the message that not all forms of mind-body exercise are going to suit you right off the bat. Try them on and if they don’t fit at first, try them again!

Here’s a list of the most popular mind-body exercises that we share with patients at The Center for Ultra Health:

  1. Guided meditation (We heart meditationoasis.com!)
  2. Phrase meditation
  3. Breathing techniques like 4-7-8 breathing “CLICK HERE” to see a demonstration
  4. Progressive muscle relaxation
  5. Walking meditation
  6. Tapping (Emotional Freedom Technique) “CLICK HERE” for an introduction to tapping!

I hope you’ll explore some of these on your own and stay tuned to our Facebook page as we go over some of these techniques in more detail!