Morning Routine for Body Awareness

Today on The Wizard Life I'm going to be sharing with you my Morning Routine for Body Awareness. This is a standing meditation practice that I developed over time and have been doing every morning for a several years now. The end result has been that it feels more pleasurable to be in my body than it is uncomfortable, and it's moving farther and farther into pleasurable every day.

I'll give a quick breakdown of the practice's components and then go into each of them more deeply:

I hold my hands facing each other and feel a bubble of energy between them.
I bring my attention to various parts of my body and notice how the left and right sides feel the same and how they feel different.
If I sense a discomfort or imbalance I note it, keep my attention on it and allow the body to move as it needs to in order to address the issue.

I used to think that the feeling of the energy bubble between my hands was illusory, but I now know for sure that it is really there. I can use it to move energy in my own body, and even in the body of others (they notice it without me even touching them).

At this point I can feel the energy bubble instantly if I face my hands together, but in the beginning I was easily able to generate it by doing some simple Qi Gong like breathing exercises. I would face my hands together in front of my low belly, breath in slowly while increasing the distance between my hands, and then breath out slowly while bringing them closer together. I'd continue doing this while focusing on the space between my hands until I felt the energy bubble, and it usually didn't take long.

Once I have the feeling of the energy bubble between my hands, I focus on what both of my hands feel like on and inside the skin. I then compare the feeling of the left and right side and note how they are similar and how they are different. Because they are identical in structure they feel mostly similar, but holding them in my attention at the same time seems to really draw out the differences between the left and the right, which is often a discomfort of some kind. I note the discomfort and keep my attention there, and allow the intelligence of the body to move however it wants to in order to address the issue.

I focus on the discomfort without thinking about what I need to do about it. The only thing I take responsibility for intellectually is maintaining the awareness of the discomfort and getting out of the way of the body to move as it wants. When I do this I am constantly amazed at the intelligence of the body and its ability to adjust itself.

Don't use thoughts to determine motion!

It is very important that I not think, "Maybe I should move this way," because that almost always ends up with an action which wasn't the right thing to do. When I trust the intelligence of the body... magic happens.

In the middle of the video below you can see how the practice looks for me after many years of development. Note that I have turned my hands towards my body and move them to different locations. If I've established the energy bubble between the hands ahead of time, they enhance my ability to feel the part of the body they are over when I turn them inwards.

If you try this out for yourself, please start simply and go slowly. Don't try to jump to the type of movement you see me doing in the video.