The Miracle Ball Method

Are You Afraid to Move?Emotions, Effort, and Exercise

It’s not uncommon for people to feel afraid to move. A common question I’ve heard throughout my experience as a teacher is: “What’s the right way to move?” If there were a “right” way to move, none of us would’ve ever gotten out of the crib. Moving isn’t so much intellectual as it is intuitive.

There have been times in my life when I wasn’t sure if I couldn’t move—or if I was simply afraid to move.

Fear held me back. I didn’t want to do anything that might hurt my body. We begin to rely on others. If pain is bad, then we do everything we can to avoid it. We turn to professionals for advice. Over time, we lose confidence that our body can heal—even though it can. Yes, even the muscles. They know how to move.

What Causes This Fear to Make a Move?

Emotional experiences can impact the body just as deeply as physical ones. Pain, illness, or injury—whether we’ve experienced them ourselves or witnessed them in others—can stay with us in ways we don’t always recognize. These experiences become an internal dialogue.

Our bodies don’t experience emotions and physical sensations separately—they’re blended. That can make it hard to know what to do. Our intellect often fights with our intuition.

How did we ever learn to sit up, or crawl? It’s amazing how fearful we can become about simply making a move.

For example, imagine receiving great news. I remember a time when I was feeling low, stuck to the couch, barely moving. Then the phone rang. It was good news—really good news—and without even thinking, I found myself up and walking. Every muscle was awake and moving with ease. It happened so fast, I paused to notice how different I felt in an instant.

On the flip side, you can be feeling perfectly fine—until bad news arrives. Suddenly, you recoil. Your whole body tightens. It’s as if the news didn’t just hit your ears—it hit every muscle in your body.

The mind and body are deeply interconnected—like electricity: fast, reactive, and powerful. Yet we don’t always connect the dots. We don’t realize how one influences the other, and we can go years feeling stuck in circumstances we believe are fixed.

Why? Because we’ve created a narrative that keeps us there. They can complain more when you begin to move after a long time of being stuck in a physical pattern. The Miracle Ball Method can help with that. Ease into it. But never stop moving.

It’s Not Just the Circumstances

You may have had an injury or illness. That experience comes with its own interpretation—through your physical body. We often interpret pain only as negative. But many times, it leads us exactly where we need to go by moving us away from what’s hurting us.

You learn this by developing more confidence in the feedback your body provides.

Let’s distinguish between “thinking” about the body and interpreting the physical feedback from the body. That’s the Miracle Ball Method. That’s the missing link to moving freely throughout your life.

Your Body Dialogue

I call this your body dialogue—the internal conversation that tells you what’s going to hurt and what’s going to help. When you start making that distinction between physical feedback and thoughts, you realize one greatly impacts the other.

At first, this can be confusing. It can make us hesitant to move, reluctant to exercise, and unaware of how much we’ve stopped enjoying our bodies.

To make it even more challenging, this dialogue is fast—without warning. But this speed is necessary. You might be playing sports, and a ball comes toward you. There’s no time to think—yet somehow, you move. Or you jump out of the way of a speeding car. That’s the subliminal, back-and-forth language of mind and body.

It’s amazing.

But I wonder—have you been negatively impacting your body with a narrative of fear?

A simple twinge can become a sudden fear of walking on a foot you sprained years ago. Or a desire to improve may lead you to try deep breathing—and the feeling of lightheadedness makes you worry. While it’s important to pay attention to warning signs, over time you begin to notice patterns.

This Week: Notice Your Thoughts

Try noticing how your thoughts may be directing the way you move.

Do you avoid bending forward because of an old injury—or even a memory tied to that movement? Do you avoid reaching for high shelves because it reminds you of a sensation of strain or loss of control? Maybe you avoid walking because sweating feels uncomfortable, and you associate it with vulnerability.

We often mislabel physical sensations because we’re afraid of doing something wrong. The freedom we had as children to experiment and explore movement seems to be gone. Many of us walk hesitantly, awkwardly, fearing what might happen.

But you can use this body dialogue to begin exploring movement again.

Challenge some of those physical feelings. Is all that concern really warranted? Are there ways of moving that might actually be helpful—ways you’ve been avoiding?

So many of our current habits stem from single moments in our past that we’ve unconsciously turned into rules. But what if you gently challenged that dialogue?

Add a little curiosity. Ask your body to move just a little differently today. Notice what happens—not just physically, but emotionally too.

You might find that a small shift in mindset leads to surprising freedom in movement. That’s where the healing begins.

Join me for my next free webinar:
“Why Your Shoulders Hurt”
June 14th, 1:30 PM
Sign Up Here!

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More on Why Your Shoulder HurtsAnd why doing more might not be the answer.

Remember the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz?He needed oil to move. Without it, he locked up—stuck and stiff.

For us, that “oil” is breathing.
Breath circulates through the body and allows muscles to release, move, and function. But breathing isn’t just about taking in air—it’s deeply connected to our emotions, posture, and habitual tension. When it’s restricted, everything else suffers—especially the shoulders.

Why Shoulders Get StuckWe each carry a personal history of movement patterns, old injuries, misalignments, and stress. Like the Tin Man, we can become locked in positions we don’t even realize we’re holding.

This often shows up in the diaphragm, a muscle at the base of the rib cage that plays a central role in effective breathing.

When the diaphragm is tight or weak, other muscles—especially those around the shoulders—compensate. Many people unknowingly rely on these upper body muscles just to breathe. This is often referred to as shoulder breathing. Over time, this constant strain creates imbalance and pain.

Try This Right NowPlace your hands around your waist.
Just above your hands is the base of your rib cage. The rib cage covers a large area of your torso—and yet, most people don’t move this area when they breathe.

This area is central to movement and breath. Consider:

The shoulder girdle
The collarbones and sternum
The muscles around the shoulder blades and armpits

All of these parts must work together, with elasticity, for your shoulders to move freely.

Why Typical Shoulder Exercises Don’t HelpShoulder rolls or stretches often miss the mark. If your rib cage and diaphragm aren’t involved, those movements may feel ineffective—or even make things worse.

Muscles don’t work in isolation.
They function as part of a system—like an elastic web throughout your body.

When the rib cage is restricted, the shoulders are forced to overwork. That’s when pain begins.

The Missing Piece: ObservationHere’s a truth many high-performing movers miss:
Effort is not the same as effectiveness.

You can stretch, strengthen, and mobilize your shoulders every day and still feel stuck—if you’re not paying attention to how the rest of your body supports them.

That’s where the Miracle Ball Method comes in.
It helps you tune in to the feedback your body is giving you—showing you not just what’s wrong, but what direction to go in.

A Gentle Way to StartLie down.
Make a right angle with your arm and place a Miracle Ball under your elbow joint.

Don’t “do” anything—just feel your weight and notice your breath.

When we’re tight and holding our breath, we don’t initially feel the weight. You may need to cue yourself—use the ball to feel where your weight is. Try making a gentle ssss sound to activate your breath.

Your body will give you feedback.

Go on and off the ball a few times and sense any change in the weight of the side you began with.

That’s it.This simple act creates space for the rib cage to lift, the shoulders to release, and the nervous system to reset.

Over time, you’ll notice subtle, powerful changes in how you breathe, how you stand, and how your shoulders move.

You Don’t Have to Push HarderYou just have to understand what feedback is.

Your body has options—but it can’t help you if you’re overriding your nervous system.

Your body has an infrastructure. When you work with it—starting with gravity, breath, and awareness—you get results that last.

Whether you’re extremely fit or not, your body benefits from a tune-up, just like any instrument.
You might be surprised how far you can go with what I call your Body Dialogue.

Come to the Next Free Webinar on June 14th. Sign up here for more on Why Your Shoulder Hurts.

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Why Your Shoulders Hurt—And Why Traditional Fixes Don’t WorkThe Miracle Ball Method has been described as stretching without stretching. As a result of the directions, it leads you through this superhighway of your nervous system to the underlying causes of Why Your Shoulder’s Hurt?

If you want to improve how a part of your body feels, start by focusing on the areas that surround it.
The parts closest to it often hold the clues you need.

For example, when people experience shoulder issues, they often overlook one of the key areas that support the shoulders: the muscles around the ribs, the thoracic spine, and the upper back. These muscles are among the tightest in the human body.

Why? Because the head—the heaviest part of our body—rests on top of the thoracic area. And most of us are living with the physical consequences of modern life. Our heads are constantly forward: hunching over phones, texting, staring at screens, sitting for hours on planes, trains, and at desks. The list goes on.

We get stuck. The head remains forward for long periods, and the laws of physics take over. The ribcage begins to contract, the upper chest muscles tighten, and the shoulders try to compensate.

“You can’t carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
That familiar saying applies here more literally than we think. We’re not just stuck in these physical patterns—we end up living in them for years. And instead of looking at the bigger picture, we focus only on the area that hurts: the neck and shoulders. We blame bad posture. We try to “fix” it by yanking the shoulders back and sticking out the chest.

But underneath all those corrective movements is the real power source: your breath.
Notice, I say the feeling of breath—not just breathing. Many people can take deep breaths in a yoga class, during a singing lesson, or while exercising. But for the rest of the day, we return to the same stuck postures, and our breathing becomes shallow and trapped.

The Miracle Ball Method helps you notice how you breathe—and where your breath gets trapped in your body. For most of us, it never quite reaches the muscles that need it most. It stays limited by what the muscles are already doing.

Let’s do this together.
Join me for a FREE WEBINAR June 14 at 1 PM ET where we’ll address the real root causes of shoulder stiffness—and show your body how to reset itself. We’ll explore specific tools to improve your rotator cuff, shoulder rotation, posture, and breathing—so your body can begin to self-adjust through your nervous system.

It’s a completely different process—but one that can benefit you for a lifetime.

Visit miraclemethod.com to learn more about how you can feel better throughout your day.

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Don’t Try to Relax: The Surprising Truth About Letting GoIf you’ve ever tried to relax by telling yourself to relax—you know it rarely works. When people use the Miracle Ball Method, they often start by chasing a feeling they had the first time the balls felt good. But trying to recreate that feeling becomes a trap.

Here’s what you really need to know:
Relaxation is not the direction—it’s the result.

Why “Relax” Doesn’t WorkOne of the biggest misunderstandings about the method is that people focus on trying to get that same feeling again and again. They start telling themselves:

“Relax.”
“Release.”
“Let go.”

But those are outcomes, not instructions.

When you’re tired, stressed, or overwhelmed, trying to force yourself to “relax” only makes things harder. Why? Because your body doesn’t operate through demands—it responds to clear, physical directions.

Your Body Is Not EmotionalYes, emotions and thoughts affect the body, but your body itself is not emotional. That distinction changed everything for me.

I’m a highly emotional, easily distracted person with lots of mental chatter—and was very rarely at ease. I hear from others all the time:

“I couldn’t do the method at home—I wasn’t relaxed.”

That’s exactly when to do the method.

Your body doesn’t need you to be in a certain emotional state. It just needs simple, physical cues.

Give Your Body What It UnderstandsStart with Gravity

Your body has weight. You can’t deny it—stand on a scale and it shows up. We live in gravity all day, every day. Unlike a stone or a glass, we breathe. And this breath turns your body into a responsive, dynamic system.

Breathing naturally moves the body up and down. This is not a technique—it’s how your body already functions. But we often ignore this physical rhythm, and instead try to tell the body what to feel: “Relax! Let go!”

That’s confusing.

Clear Physical Directions WorkInstead of abstract concepts, try giving your body real directions:

What do I do with my 200-pound body?
What do I do with my 10-pound head?

We often don’t feel our bodies—not because we don’t breathe, but because our breath is restricted. Tight muscles limit breath, which makes movement feel difficult and effortful.

Common Symptoms of Restricted Breathing* Backaches * Shoulder and neck tension * Poor posture * Anxiety * General discomfort

Sound familiar?

For me, anxiety shows up in muscle tension. For others, it’s racing thoughts. Either way, these are all responses to internal information—your thoughts, your stress, your habits.

And breathing plays a huge role in how your body responds.

The Breath-Body ConnectionBreathing and the body are not separate systems. They’re one. Like sugar in water—they blend and create something new.

But most people try to fix their physical body, then separately work on their breath. It doesn’t work. They’re the same place.

The Real DirectionsLet’s get practical. Here’s what you can do, right now, to start resetting your nervous system and releasing tension:

Step 1: Feel the Weight of Your Body

Lie down or sit. Ask yourself,

“Can I feel the weight of my body against the surface?”

If you don’t feel much, that’s okay. Keep asking gently.

Step 2: Notice Your Breathing

Are you breathing freely? Or are you holding your breath?
If you’re not sure, try this:

Step 3: Exhale with an “S” Sound

Make a soft “S” sound as you exhale.
This helps you lengthen the breath out—and the inhalation will happen naturally.

We often think inhaling is the answer, but most of the benefit comes from the exhalation. Inhaling is a reflex. When we hold our breath after inhaling, our muscles tighten, and our breath gets stuck.

Start SmallBegin with 3 to 5 minutes:

Lie in bed
Sit on a couch
Even on a train

Just feel your weight and breath. That’s it.

Using the Miracle Ball MethodIf you’re using the Miracle Ball, try this:

Place a ball under the back of your head or neck.
Ask yourself, “Can I feel the weight of this part of my body?”
Notice if your breathing changes.
Remove the ball and ask again:

“Has anything shifted?”
“Do I feel more grounded?”

If the answer is no, that’s perfectly okay. Most of us have been trained to ignore physical sensations and rely on effort.

But your body can respond—it just needs time and consistency.

Final ThoughtsSo the next time you feel like you “need to relax,” don’t try to relax.

Instead:

Follow the directions
Get on the ball
Feel the weight of your body
Exhale with a soft “S” sound
Go on and off over 4–5 minutes
Observe what changes

If you notice you’re not breathing—great! That means you’re aware. And awareness is the first step.

Want to Learn More? Visit miracleballmethod.com for:

Free videos
Upcoming classes
Free live webinars

Let your body learn to release—without trying so hard.

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Strengthening Your Core with the Miracle Ball MethodStrengthening your core using the Miracle Ball Method is fundamentally different from traditional abdominal exercises.

When people refer to the “core” of an apple, they mean the central part that exists within the whole apple. Similarly, think of the Earth’s core: it exists because of everything that surrounds it. Even when we talk about the “core principles” of a method, those principles are part of a broader system, with some standing out more than others.

Many people find it challenging to strengthen their core because it’s often explained as simply tightening one part of the body — the abdominal muscles. Although some can accomplish this, most struggle while straining many other parts of the body to find the core. It doesn’t work long term because the body works as a whole, and in turn you will have a strong core. No part works independent from the rest.

When you participate in the eight-week Miracle Ball Method series, you’ll learn to reinforce the foundational concepts of the Miracle Ball Method while exercising. Your body functions based on a neurological spark — that “pilot light” that’s always on, connecting your body to its entire system. Your core is not isolated but is integrated into the overall functioning of your body.

This perspective makes everything different — and, to me, more enjoyable and effective. Throughout the program, we’ll focus on oppositional stretches, helping you understand how using your arms and legs can support the activation of your core. As a result, your body will lengthen and avoid locking up.

Lengthen your muscles, don’t lock your joints.

By discovering key areas around your core, you’ll begin to activate it in a way that helps it function within the entire body. Think of it like stretching a rubber band: you can’t stretch it just by pulling on one side. You need something pulling in the opposite direction to create the elasticity and strength you desire.

When you engage your nervous system and allow your body to function as it was intended, you’ll notice an increase in confidence. This is because many areas of your body that typically experience excess muscle tension — like your lower back, neck, and shoulders — won’t be under constant strain. You’ll feel a sense of ease, and you’ll realize that strengthening your core is not about simply tightening one muscle. It’s a process that’s easier than you think, and it will help alleviate back pain, knee problems, and sciatic issues. These areas will no longer feel locked up; they’ll begin to lengthen and move freely. You will relieve your pain, reduce stress and yes, reshape your body.

Join me on April 19 for the start of this exciting journey

Strengthen Your Core Using the Miracle Ball Method

To sign up, visit miracleballmethod.com.

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Don’t Give Up!I’m reminded of an interview with a famous movie producer I saw many years ago. He was asked about the famous actors he had worked with and whether he could tell which actors would make it through the years of rejection.

His answer was interesting. He explained that he would watch actors struggle year after year, believing they were getting nowhere. However, he could spot the ones who would eventually succeed. The hardest part for him was watching an actor who was finally on the verge of success but couldn’t see it, and they gave up. It broke his heart because they were so talented, yet they quit just before they were about to make it.

How Does This Relate to Your Body?

While becoming an actor may be difficult, it’s not quite the same as working with your body. However, there is a parallel. In life, there are many instances where it feels like we’re getting nowhere. But all of that experience along the way is actually changing us. When we’re doing something new — like practicing the Method — it may feel like nothing is happening. It’s not always clear how our body is responding.

In new experiences, we want immediate results, not realizing that true progress often involves venturing into uncharted territory. No one tells us this when we start working with our body. We aren’t always aware that our nervous system is working behind the scenes, processing new information. Since it’s not a language we’re familiar with, it’s easy to become discouraged and quit.

I’ve seen people give up right after they’ve made significant strides in freeing themselves from the muscle tension that was preventing them from moving in a way that could relieve their pain. I’ve also seen beginners leave astonished after just one class, feeling much better physically and emotionally, but then fail to return. It’s hard to believe the quiet voice that provides feedback from an amazing part of ourselves that knows where healing lies. It’s a different path, a road less traveled.

The Quick Fix

We all know the expression “quick fix” — and of course, that’s what we want. I jokingly say all the time, if there were a pill that didn’t have side effects, I’d take it. I’m thankful for the medications that have worked for me, but when it comes to chronic pain, they didn’t provide the relief I was hoping for. Is there wisdom that comes with the struggle? Absolutely.

But in today’s world, where we can get things so quickly, the preference is often for a quick solution — a shot, surgery, or anything that can get us where we want to go faster. We get on a plane on the east coast and a few hours later, we’re on the west coast. Do we enjoy the journey? Could you imagine how much more awe the explorers felt as they traveled across the country by foot and finally saw the Pacific Ocean? Their experience was likely far more impactful.

We’re in such a hurry that we don’t always take time to appreciate the journey. The Miracle Ball Method gives the body time to process, offering a chance to experience real change. It’s much easier than traveling by foot across the country, but it’s still unfamiliar to many — especially in a world that is focused on quick fixes.

Too Fast to Feel It

The difficulty with treatments that work quickly is that the body doesn’t always adapt to the changes. This approach also contradicts how the body truly works. You might feel good for a while, but eventually, your body will return to its familiar state because it doesn’t know how it got there. Often, pain in one area is a result of how you use your whole body.

The body is not a machine. While we often think that if we just replace a part or fix an issue, we’ll be good to go, chronic pain can arise from many different factors. Experiencing your body as a whole and relearning how it naturally functions is incredibly exciting. But like the actor, it often takes time. Progress is being made, but the world tells us it’s not fast enough. Your body, however, understands that the slow pace is for lasting change, and it helps rebuild confidence in your ability to move again.

After surgery or other treatments, many people become like wounded warriors. They’ve dealt with the pain and the healing, but they’re scarred by the experience. They may not move the same way or have the confidence in their body that they deserve.

That disbelief often stems from a narrative that tells us our bodies are simply machines that can be fixed by replacing parts.

A Leap of Faith

But just like Tinker Bell in Peter Pan, if you believe, you can fly. It’s a childlike belief, but many of us need to have some faith in the possibilities — some that might feel magical. These possibilities aren’t always written in a perfect book, because each of us has our own unique story. That’s why we must incorporate our personal experiences into our approach to healing.

Trust the Process and Enjoy It

What it really takes is a bit of trust — just a little. That’s all your body wants. Once you begin to trust, your body will start to provide more and more feedback, helping you understand which direction to go. But no, it’s not a pill. It’s not an injection. It’s not surgery. You will take the journey, and along the way, you may see experience improvements in yourself and your body that you weren’t expecting. Your body knows this landscape.

Join me for the next FREE WEBINAR

This Saturday March 29th at 1:30 pm ET. Finding your Leg Join

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How One Movement Can Change your Entire BodyOne Movement, Done Well: Connecting Your Entire Body

One movement, done well, connects to your entire body. Imagine your body like an electrical circuit, rather than a bunch of disconnected parts you need to “strengthen.” Your strength lies in your connectivity. And finding your leg joint is a key to unlocking that connectivity. It is the switch to turn on the light.

The Leg Joint: The Foundation of Movement

When people experience lower back pain, they often focus on the top of the pelvis or where the pain is located. If their knees hurt or standing on their feet become uncomfortable, they tend to focus on those specific areas. But all of these issues are connected to the leg joint.

Posture, how we balance our head, and even the feeling of lifting our torso—all are connected to the leg joint. In fact, the leg joint is the foundation for movement in your entire body.

Why Most People Never Discover Their Leg Joint

Think of the leg joint like an intersection in a busy city during rush hour. Cars are trying to get through the lights at the exact same time, causing gridlock. At that moment, nothing is moving. That’s your leg joint for most people—caught in gridlock, unable to free themselves to where they want to go.

Anatomically the leg joint beautifully intersects with your pelvis, lumbar spine, rib cage, and hip flexors. But when there’s gridlock, nothing works. Nothing is moving.

The Impact of Gridlock on Your Body

Since most people live with this kind of gridlock, they often experience pain, chronic discomfort, and limitations in various areas of their body. But by finding and unlocking your leg joint, you can begin to transform all of these areas. You will relieve the chronic lower back aches, stiffness in the hamstrings and pressure on the knees. Chronic sciatic pain, where many experience on one side more than the other, will begin to make sense when you allow your legs to move in the hip. Your entire body will find support.

It’s not about the exercises you do; it’s about how you do them. Without understanding how to clear the gridlock at the intersection, you’ll never get the results you’re looking for.

The Good News

The good news is that we can clear the gridlock—and we can do it in a way that feels amazing. By releasing tension in the right places, you’ll experience relief that can last a lifetime.

So, be a little patient at the intersection. Let the flow happen and you will start moving again. It’s a lot easier than sitting in traffic. Once you realize your body is your ally and not your enemy. The Miracle of the Method is in your body. It knows where balance is, and how to take pressure off chronically tight areas. You will begin to feel at ease again.

Join Me for a Miracle Ball Method Free Webinar

The Miracle Ball Method works through your nervous system to reconnect you, through your senses, to your body’s ability to realign and balance.

I invite you to join me for my next free webinar on March 29 at 1:30 PM Eastern Time, where we’ll dive deep into how finding your leg joint can transform your body.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to start your journey toward a more connected, pain-free life!

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Feedback From Your Body Part 2In Part One, we discussed feedback from the body, and in Part Two, I’ll go into more detail about what that feedback really is. The body is very simple, but we can complicate things because of chronic pain and anxiety symptoms. Sometimes, the body’s warning signals can be misinterpreted, rather than used positively. When you start labeling everything simply as “bad” or “good,” you’re limiting the feedback from your body. Instead, you’re focusing more on emotional feedback that often prevents a deeper connection to your nervous system through your kinesthetic sense. Let me explain.

Let’s say I put sugar in water and ask, “Taste it—Is it sweet enough?” If you reply, “I’m good” or “My shoulder hurts,” that’s not really feedback about the taste. Similarly, if I ask, “Are you cold?” and you say, “I’m uncomfortable,” that doesn’t tell me whether I should get you a sweater or turn the heat on. When people are asked to check in with their sitting posture or their breathing, many times the responses are something like, “I’m okay,” or “I don’t feel anything.” Feedback from your body gives your nervous system something to work with so it can realign, adjust, and heal your body. Non-sequitur responses are just that—irrelevant to healing, as they don’t relate to the question. That makes sense because people often don’t have an experience of truly feeling or sensing their physical body, they talk around it instead.

Feedback from Your Body

When I ask people to check in and notice how they’re sitting, many immediately jump to responses like “I don’t feel anything” or “I feel tightness in my shoulders.” If I ask them to notice specific parts of their body, they often seem complacent, as if those parts don’t matter. It’s considered okay to not feel much of your spine, rib cage, or pelvis, or to not notice if your feet are on the floor or if you’re locking your knees. This approach generalizes the body experience as simply saying “I feel good” or “No, I don’t feel good,” which isn’t connected to the possibilities of what benefits you can get from more specific feedback.

But what if I don’t feel good?

The emotional aspect of the body is completely understandable. Pain isn’t pleasant. Chronic pain is different from acute pain. Acute pain, like tripping and hurting your knee, is something you need to pay attention to temporarily—there might be swelling or a need to see a doctor. But chronic pain—such as “I always have tight shoulders” or “I can’t seem to stand up without hurting my right knee”—is more common and often becomes the background noise of our lives.

As we all know, anxiety symptoms can arise unexpectedly, and they often feel as though they come from nowhere. People tend to think back pain appears out of nowhere, and this can be very scary. It feels like the bogeyman waiting to attack at any moment. But that fear arises because we don’t address the signals from our bodies while they’re happening; instead, we react to the emotions surrounding the pain.

There is logic to the body that’s as simple as tying your shoelaces, balancing the architecture of a building, or doing everyday tasks. You don’t have to think about tying your shoelaces, you just know to pull the laces in opposite directions. Similarly, when you make coffee, you know the ingredients and how to prepare it without overthinking it. But when I ask people to get specific about their body—things that are completely within their control—they tend to dismiss it. They don’t see the importance of feeling and sensing the various parts of their body. They only notice the discomfort when something stands out.

Posture Comes from Opposition and Breathing

What I’m asking is to think logically. If you looked at a home, many of us could tell whether it’s a one-story house and assume it has some sort of foundation, walls, and a roof. We don’t need to be experts to figure that out. The same principle applies to posture. It isn’t about holding all the parts of your body in a particular position you can’t feel. That’s why good posture often doesn’t last, it’s based on holding things you can’t sense. Imagine a builder constructing a house without knowing what parts he’s using. Posture actually comes from opposition and breathing—it’s the balance between going up and down at the same time. It’s not hard to do, just unfamiliar, and much easier than trying to move based on imagination alone.

Relieving Chronic Back Pain

For example, relieving chronic back pain might be much less complicated. If you don’t sense the feeling of your pelvis or your leg joint—things we’ll explore more in the next webinar—you won’t have support for much of your body. It’s that simple. But if we keep answering questions with “I feel good” or “I don’t feel good,” there’s no real feedback from the physical body. It’s like adding salt to soup and not tasting it. Eventually, you’ll put so much salt in that people won’t be able to eat it.

We tend to hold stress and tension in some muscle groups, but because we don’t feel them, we keep repeating the same behaviors and experiencing the same pain. Eventually, we go to someone to “fix” us. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s unfortunate because if you learned to sense your body, you could bring a much more informed body to that person for help. You’d be able to sense the ingredients in your own physical experience, just like knowing how to tie your sneakers. If no one teaches you to tune into your own kinesthetic ability, you might go through life thinking there’s a bogeyman in the bushes, waiting to jump out at you. But when you look closely, you’ll see there is no bogeyman. There is logic to what your body is trying to communicate. It doesn’t send you an email.

Your body is capable of feeling all its parts, and once you sense them, it will actually give you guidance on how to change and adapt. Your body knows how to find balance, relieve chronic pain, and help with anxiety. It knows how to help you move better in any activity—whether it’s sports, workouts, walking, or just daily life. There is nothing more supportive, calming, or confidence-building than connecting with your physical body.

Our Physical Body is Who We Are

Ultimately, our physical body is who we are. All our emotions, experiences, trauma, and joy reside in our body. It’s mysterious and complex, and although psychology is still relatively new, people are increasingly exploring how the mind works. But if you simply sit in traffic, you’ll notice how different your body feels at the end compared to when you first got in the car. The body stiffens up, stressed from sitting in awkward positions, or dealing with loud noises, fast driving, and honking. Even a simple task like driving can make your body feel vulnerable. Can you imagine the toll life’s more significant stresses take on your body, not just your mind?

My Experience

Through trauma I experienced as a child—trauma that persisted over a long period of time—I didn’t realize until my twenties that there were parts of my body I simply didn’t move. I compensated with other parts, thinking everything was fine. But eventually, I hit a wall. Some parts of my body became so stiff I couldn’t move without a limp. That’s when chronic pain began to develop.

This is an extreme example, but it illustrates how the human body tends to store things, like a trash can. We throw everything in there and pretend it’s fine as long as the lid stays on. But once you take that lid off, you’ll see there’s no bogeyman. Will you feel things that are scary? Yes, sometimes the body can overwhelm us, especially if we’ve been sensitive to pain before. We tend to miss a lot of what’s going on in our bodies, but that’s why the Miracle Ball Method takes things step by step. It allows you to experience things gradually, in your own time. For me, even one minute of simply noticing was enough at first, my body was giving me so much feedback. But consistency is key. A little bit every day, or even during your day, with the right guidance you can allow your body to transform into what it knows how to do.

Join My Next Free Webinar: Discover Your Leg Joint to Relieve Chronic Pain

Please join me for the next free webinar, where we’ll explore key areas of the body and continue our discussion on sensing feedback. It’s easy—though unfamiliar to most—but once you start practicing it, you’ll get more comfortable with it over time. You don’t need to overanalyze it—just feel it.

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The Missing Link Between Pain and PleasureFeedback from Your Body

After the last webinar, I feel like I found some of my greatest clarity from listening to others explain how they do the Method. The missing link between much of our experience with exercise and what will best benefit us is feedback. The clarity I gained from the last webinar helped me understand what puzzles people the most when I ask them the first question during check-ins: “What do you notice?”. These moments are learning what feedback is. Feedback is simply a response from your body. Because it is not just in those moments but it’s happening every moment throughout our lifetime. Understanding this is then utilizing one of the greatest gifts our body gives to us, the ability to adapt to what will heal us. You will recover from old ways of moving that don’t serve you and discover new experiences with your body never imagined. That is the best news I can share, and the directions are all becoming open to how amazing that is, feedback from your body.

You can take it with you with every experience you have. Whether it be from anxiety symptoms, to recovering from an injury. Or if you want to continually improve at any endeavor you set out to do. Your body is with you all the time. It is a partner. You can either work together, understanding that its input can make everything so much easier.

To make it even easier the body will only give you two responses to notice,

What you are doing, that’s the hard one.
Allowing your body to do what it knows how to do. We usually prevent this.

The Check-in or the first question I ask in most classes makes people either want to leave the room, skip over the question, or feel confident they already understand this piece of the method. Or they might simply ignore it altogether because they don’t understand it.

We went into it more deeply. Although I know everyone wants to lie down on the balls, I know many of you do the Method on your own. I’m hoping that the more you clarify this, the more you can enjoy it and allow your body to do what it already knows how to do.

We know how to breathe, but we hold our breath.
We know how to move but stay stuck for many reasons.

It’s important to know that thoughts and our physical body connect in milliseconds. Think of switching on a light or turning on your television, it happens in an instant. It’s connectivity, it’s electrical. Unfortunately, the old paradigm of exercise (as I like to call it) many times doesn’t work because this piece of it is not the direction of most forms of exercise. I am not saying don’t exercise. I am saying bring this ability into your everyday including exercise.

What Is Emphasized?

I’ve worked in fitness centers, wellness centers, and hospitals for many years. I’ve seen a wide range of people—from young people to the elderly, from those with chronic pain to those with terminal illnesses. I’ve worked with athletes, professional dancers, and everyday people. Each person has their own experience with their physical body, but most of it is ruled by one desire: What they want to do.

It’s the focus of everything humans want—to have their bodies be well, and for some, to achieve at the highest level. People don’t want anxiety. They don’t want pain. They don’t want to experience any negativity in their physical bodies. So, it makes perfect sense that we want a beautiful, healthy body. It’s all about what we want. In some ways we are running from what we do feel. That is why the check-in is the hardest part of class, we don’t want to stop. Even though the check in is less than a minute, it can be a few seconds, we want to move ahead. It is unfamiliar to feel.

We don’t want to feel because the feelings are sometimes not pleasant. But that is how the body leads you. Some of the “bad” feelings will turn around as we begin to realize the body is leading us through these. It can’t give you lasting change until you feel what you are doing. That is the constant feedback and how powerful it is. It knows where and how to get to balance, strength, confidence, calmness, all things we crave. I understand that it’s a lot to ask because we run from these feelings and intellectually answer the questions through what others have told us is correct.

I was there, I understand. But it’s not about suffering, it’s about allowing this somewhat misunderstood and to me miraculous experience that we don’t understand. We don’t know how everything in our body works. By aligning ourselves with our body, acknowledging the feeling, gives our body a moment switch gears, deeply changing us, and always in the right direction. It might not be as hard as you think, it might be much easier than you realize.

Upcoming Webinars on a Key Area of your Body: The Leg Joint.

The next two webinars will focus on discovering your leg joint. We’ll explore how this key area of your body influences changes all other parts. Tell your friends, and I hope you’ll join me. This area of the body can transform your entire body. It’s key to relieving low back aches, sciatic pain and increasing confidence in the way you move your whole body.

As you begin to allow yourself to feel the process, you’ll realize that you’re working with your body, not against it.

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The Mind-Body Disconnection: Reconnecting the Mind and BodyHaving been on this journey for several decades, beginning with my own experience with chronic pain, I’ve considered the mind-body connection from many angles. Usually, the mind-body connection is thought of as the body listening to what the mind offers as solutions. After all, the body doesn’t seem to offer solutions, does it? However, in the world of mind-body health, our bodies may experience chronic pain for various reasons, but ultimately, the mind must find the solutions for the body. Even if we believe that low back pain is caused by stress or anger, the solution stems from an intellectual conclusion. I am not disregarding that, but the mind still directs the body on what to do.

What Your Body Can DoAs you read through this blog, its what saved me from a lifetime of chronic pain. When I discovered this, I needed to share—the benefits of the Miracle Ball Method. I still reserve the right to return to my previous life at some point. However, after decades of listening to people struggle with common aches and pain, many of which are still approached with the same conclusions—we are taught to tell our body what to do.

To me, this is the mind-body disconnection. The mind feels obligated to help a body that is limp, sometimes overworked, and stressed, return to health. But what if I told you that this is exactly where the disconnect lies? Your body knows where health is and how to get there. But while we sit with our platitudes on what to do for this weak, confused, and difficult body, we miss the connection right in front of us. I’ve been there; I know. I listened to all the directions about what to do for my body and the problems it was presenting. And when I stumbled on the opposite approach, I was frustrated. How could such simple instructions result in such monumental changes?

My pain was overwhelming, taking over my entire physical and emotional self, so a simple solution seemed ridiculous. After a period of skepticism, I began to understand why it works.

Your Body Is Giving You Feedback Every Moment of the DayThe Miracle Ball Method teaches a language of feedback from the body. When you begin to sense this feedback, you realize your body already knows the positions that relieve stress on the lower back. It moves with strength, even though we may be convinced we are weak. It breathes easily when we stop holding our breath. In the past, we may have been giving our bodies directions from the intellect, without considering the personal experiences of our own body. We have been gravely misguided, and it’s especially sad for those who lose hope. They spend a lifetime believing in information—usually from others—that’s reinforced by their own best efforts to do right by themselves, but they remain trapped.

What You Can DoWhile teaching for many years, I’ve learned that my biggest job is to help people believe again. That’s why, when my publisher proposed the name “Miracle Ball Method” for my first book, I went with it. We can dive as deep and intellectually when it comes to healing, but the healer within us is often simple. But you must learn the language. We’ve become desensitized to how responsive our bodies are and how they communicate, because we don’t fully believe in the miracle of how they work.

I don’t heal people; I share the language that helped thousands of others over the years—believe in their own healing. Consistency is key. There will always be outside forces that challenge you, making you say, “Yes, I believe in all this, but…” There is no “but.” Explore the Miracle Ball Method with an open mind and body. You may not understand it at first because your body might not provide feedback immediately. But it will. It won’t come in the form of written words or an email; it will manifest as real sensory, physical responses. You will develop your own language to understand your body.

You see, there is no one like you. Once you immerse yourself in this simple process, you can apply it to any physical endeavor you choose. You are in partnership with your body every moment of your life; it’s not a dictatorship.

Join Me for a Free Webinar this Saturday, Feb 22nd at 1:30 PM ET
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What Exercises Can I Do to Relax and Relieve My Lower Back Aches?I get asked all the time, “What exercises should I do?” The Miracle Ball Method works through your nervous system, so it doesn’t follow the same rules as traditional exercise. I should clarify—this isn’t the same type of exercise you’re used to. But, like exercise, it’s not the ball placements you do, but how you do them. It’s not the exercise itself, but how you approach it.

While traditional exercises may work for some people and not for others, it’s not the exercise itself that’s changing your body; it’s the experience. For example, two people are going on a walk. One person is enjoying the scenery, taking in the fresh air, and feels invigorated. For different reasons, the person next to them on the same walk may experience something completely different. This is the missing link for why your exercises work—or don’t work. We all experience life and exercise differently.

Recently, someone diagnosed with a new condition reached out to me with a question. She promised she would diligently follow the exercises I suggested. This was someone I had worked with in the past. It’s understandable that this one small detail can be so challenging for many of us because traditional exercise programs often suggest you can simply “plug in” a routine, like downloading a file on your computer, and expect it to work.

However, that doesn’t apply to the human body. We are not machines. Our bodies respond to exercises based on our unique ability to feel different parts of ourselves. We all have different emotions, experiences, and perhaps past injuries or illnesses that inhibit our ability to move freely. Instead of seeing movement as repetitive or imitative, we need to focus on our ability to feel our body physically and kinesthetically.

Experiment

Try this the next time you exercise: Pay attention to how your breath feels and notice the weight of your body. This may seem abstract—and it probably is at first—but it’s important. The first thing people often do is try to breathe deeply. For most, feeling the weight of the body feels almost imaginary.

When using the ball during the Miracle Ball Method, people think it’s a tool to roll on, massage the body, and relieve stiffness. The ball, however, is a neurological tool that helps you regain the sensation of your body’s weight. This is how you assess tension and how much effort you need to use. The change can be almost instantaneous.

When I started, I had to overcome my own skepticism, thinking it was too simple. Our bodies do tend to return to old ways of moving. This isn’t a setback, though. It simply helps us understand exactly what we’re moving away from, and what feels so much better to move towards.

There’s no right or wrong exercise. There are only exercises done without feeling your body, and those won’t work. Yes, some people naturally have this connection, but unfortunately, many of us don’t have a good experience with this process that exists in all our bodies—the ability to heal chronic aches and pains. To complicate it more there is a large part of the medical community and even the fitness world that doesn’t believe our bodies do have this ability to realign and recover. They have ingrained in most of us that our bodies give us little feedback so we have to “manufacture it” with the right exercise and diagnosis for it to work again.

So, what should I do?

When deciding where to place the ball, it doesn’t really matter. I still use some of the same ball placements I’ve used for many years, but I get more benefit now because of how I allow my body to realign and adjust. The key is learning how to continue engaging your nervous system.

When you go into a gym or watch dancers warm up, they often do many of the same exercises you might be doing. It looks different because of the way they are doing them. They may have developed a different connection with their body.

Unlike muscles, your nervous system doesn’t age in the same way. It’s always ready to give you more feedback. Muscles rely on this connection, and by sensing the weight of your body and your breath, you can trigger many more responses from a single movement, rather than endlessly repeating exercises and getting the same results over and over.

Choose something you love—one ball placement—and enjoy the feeling. Re-read the directions and notice the feedback. Without the feedback, you are basically telling your body that it doesn’t know where balance is, how to heal, or how to move. But it does.

Coming Up:* Next Free Webinar: Why your back hurts and neck shoulders and knees……. February 22nd 1:30 ET * Prenatal and Postpartum classes begin in March: * Bulk Orders on 4 in. balls One more week for discount. Follow Us on Social Media!FacebookInstagramThe post What Exercises Can I Do to Relax and Relieve My Lower Back Aches? first appeared on The Miracle Ball Method.

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What They Don’t Know Could Be Hurting YouTools You Can Use When Working with a Physical Therapist, Personal Trainer, or Any Expert in the Fitness Field

The missing link between a treatment helping you or hurting you is you.

While working in hospitals for over two decades, I’ve heard many comments from massage therapists, personal trainers, and physicians. They often express how impressed they are with individuals who attend Miracle Ball Method classes. They described them as more “in touch” with their body, and can be active participants in their treatments.

We all know that we learn from those who have more experience in a given area. Whether we’re looking to improve our appearance, feel better, or heal from a chronic injury, we often seek guidance from experts. In fitness and rehab, many times, the “right” movements and exercises are used. Chiropractors, massage therapists, acupuncturists, and kinesiologists each have their own specialized skills. While treatment may work for some, it doesn’t always for others—and sometimes, it can even cause harm in the long run. Why is that?

The Old Paradigm of Exercise Doesn’t Work

Let’s explore this further. I believe the way exercise is taught is the problem. It’s not the exercise itself that heals—it’s the person’s body. If exercise alone were the solution, no one would suffer from low back pain, chronic shoulder issues, or knee problems. Many top athletes, who exercise constantly, still struggle with chronic pain. Chronic pain and physical challenges don’t discriminate between those in perfect shape and those who avoid exercising altogether.

In fact, I’ve always found it fascinating that people who don’t work out often seem to have the worst alignment issues but experience little to no pain. Meanwhile, those with seemingly perfect bodies can struggle with chronic injuries of all kinds.

The Missing Link: Why Exercise/Treatment Doesn’t Always Work

One of the most curious things I do in my practice is ask people to feel what they don’t feel. We ask people to move their bodies, but I’ve found that many individuals have key areas they simply don’t feel. This lack of awareness can prevent natural adjustments in the body and limit the benefits of treatment. You can’t move what you don’t feel.

Bodies move through coordination, and all parts must adjust during any movement. Some areas need more tension during certain actions, while others must accommodate that added effort. There are countless natural adjustments our nervous system makes to help us move effectively.

Common Key Areas Most People Never Move

When you neglect key areas of your body—such as the pelvis, thoracic region, feet, or jaw—these areas can become tight, weak, and inefficient. Injuries, trauma, chronic pain, and illness can separate us from parts of our bodies that would otherwise serve us well for a lifetime. But how do we know what we’re not feeling?

Personally, I contracted an illness during a visit to my father’s village in Greece when I was 15. It took a long time for doctors to determine why I spent most of my days sleeping. Eventually, I was hospitalized and had a spinal tap. The illness left me weak and disconnected from certain areas of my body. I never returned to sports the same way, and by 19, I began losing feeling in my right leg as my sister’s was terminally ill. As with most people, what we experience physically is many times complicated with many aspects of who we are, and what we have experienced.

Through my experience, I learned first-hand how strange things can happen to our bodies. It was a long journey with many doctors, treatments, and misdiagnoses. Though the initial illness was treated, its repercussions on my physical health—chronic pain and weakness—were often mislabeled or misunderstood.

The Missing Link

Tension is a good thing. The body doesn’t want to be limp or afraid of movement. Often, a fear of movement arises—especially when pain has been present for a while. Classic advice from many professionals, particularly in the medical community, sounds like this: “Don’t do that. Don’t move that way. That movement will hurt you.” But how does one move? The body knows. The professional can offer guidance, but without engaging the body’s ability to realign, adjust, and reconnect, it feels like digging a deeper hole. Many people become more confused over time, relying solely on outside advice that many times doesn’t fit with what we are experiencing.

While such advice is often well-meaning, I’ve seen its consequences during my 20 years of working in hospitals. People unknowingly trained themselves to move less and less, leading to greater weakness and fear of movement. The less you move, of course, the weaker you get. And when you move less, you also start to believe that certain movements are the source of your problems. But I don’t believe that’s the case.

It’s not the movement that’s the problem, it’s the ability to feel your physical body again.

Reconnect: Use the Amazing Asset of Your Nervous System

Using your nervous system is something we can relearn and different from what most fitness professionals are offering. Once you do most treatments, your body must be tuned up like a guitarist would tune their instrument to play a song. The exercise is the song, your nervous system gets you ready to move by being tuned up. It’s in the nervous system—the electrical current that runs through our muscles and bones.

This is the missing link: the ability to sense your physical body and allow the nervous system to coordinate and engage key areas that may not have been active before.

Why Is It Important to Have a Class?

Life experiences can leave people physically and emotionally damaged—much like what happened to me. These issues can persist for a lifetime. Take something as seemingly simple as back pain. It may seem confined to the lower back, but it can be one of the most debilitating pains a person can endure. The muscles in this region are strong and interact with nearly every movement, whether standing, sitting, or reaching for something.

When you experience pain, you become hyper-aware of every movement, afraid that even the smallest motion could trigger it.

When you go to physical therapy, you’re likely doing the right things, but can we also address the emotional and psychological aspects of the pain? Can we tell people that pain isn’t inherently negative?

Think of a simple cut. You know what to do: stop the bleeding, clean the wound, and treat it. If you didn’t feel the cut, you wouldn’t stop the bleeding, clean it, or prevent further damage. Similarly, pain is your body’s way of telling you that something needs attention. It’s not necessarily a signal that something is “wrong,” but rather that your body needs movement and care.

Regaining Confidence during Chronic Pain

Physical pain is complicated, although your body knows how to move and heal there are many ways it which we can feel fearful and completely not trust this. It tells you to move, but how do you do that without worsening the pain? Remember acute pain is different than chronic pain. Acute pain is something that has recently occurred and you need to attend to it, like an accident. Chronic pain is when you have been living with the pain after treatments and are not making the progress you would like, and it becomes part of your day to day life.

One of the greatest gifts of being alive is the confidence to move our bodies. But when people are told that because they hurt their ankle, their entire body is now injured and incapable of healing without special instructions, we diminish their ability to heal naturally.

The Role of Professionals

Physical therapists, personal trainers, exercise instructors, dancers, and martial arts experts are all valuable professionals who can help.

But let me tell you this: they are not the instrument. They may be the type of music a person wants to play, but they are not the piano.

The Miracle Ball Method

The Miracle Ball Method teaches people how to feel their bodies again. It helps them tune up their “instrument,” find key areas of their body, and re-engage them. That’s the miracle: the human body knows how to realign itself, take stress off chronically strained areas, breathe again, and heal.

When a person regains confidence in their body, they are empowered to heal. They can go home after treatment, workout, or their favorite sport and allow their own body to realign and adjust sometimes in minutes. Feel your body again, only then can they truly begin to heal.

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What You Don’t Feel Might Matter the MostImaginary Moves

I’m convinced that many people imagine their body moving, rather than actually feeling it move. I know I do. It’s like how many of us think we’re great singers in the shower — we imagine we’re performing at our best, but it’s all in our heads. In the same way, many of us imagine the way we’re moving. Another way of saying this is that many of us move in theory, not reality.

Consider this: a teacher gives you a stretch to do. Let’s say it’s reaching your arm up over your head. You can do it now. Just imagine you’re reaching your arm, stretching effortlessly.

But then, if you actually do the movement, it becomes a whole different sensory experience. Here’s another example: imagine making a fist, a very tight fist, and squeezing it really hard.

Now, actually do it. Isn’t it a completely different experience?

The reason I’m explaining this is because, over the years, I’ve noticed that when it comes to more challenging areas of the body, I can do them in my imagination, almost perfectly. I can imagine the movement, and it feels easy.

It’s fascinating to me — and somewhat exciting — just how different the human body is from that imagined experience. Although I love the ease of the imaginary, the challenge or feeling muscles tighten, yes tense, does not only feel good it can relieve so much of the chronic injury people live with. And yet we are told to avoid so many movements, until we train ourselves to age. The less you move, the less you will move.

Tension is a good thing! Through a bit of exploration and experimentation your body will help you know the difference between good and bad tension.

For example, many of us have trouble with certain movements: moving the ribs, lifting the back, finding the top of the leg and understanding how it rotates, or moving the shoulder joints and engaging the lats.

We might think we’re doing these movements when asked to make a big movement — maybe when hitting a tennis ball or trying to relieve stiffness in the lower back. We repeat the same movements over and over, but often we experience the same muscular tension we’re familiar with. It feels good because movement usually benefits us by bringing circulation to the muscles.

However, for some of us, movement doesn’t feel good, especially if we’ve been dealing with chronic pain. In this case, the thought of moving may feel limited or even daunting. A common solution is to “relax”. I see people in the classes all the time who believe that if they had no tension, they would have no pain. That can’t be further from the truth. It’s how and where we use our tension and your body can help you. That is the basis of the Miracle Ball Method. Feeling more parts of the body allows your nervous system to realign and introduce you to new parts of the body to use. This is not in your imagination.

The reality is, we have to move. Imagination is a wonderful tool, but the physical body becomes more powerful when you actually experience its movements. A little imagination can certainly help, though.

The next time you tighten your fist or reach your arm, try to notice how it connects with other areas of your body — your rib cage, neck, shoulder, legs, and hips.

But don’t just imagine this connection. When you tighten your fist, you’re experiencing the physical connection throughout your body.

Sometimes, our imagination can actually trap us if it’s only in our heads. If we rely only on someone else’s idea of how to move — which is very common — we may miss out on fully experiencing our own body. We may be moving in theory, not reality.

Your physicality is worth exploring. But to do so, add more detail to what you’re doing and get more specific.

When you reach your arm, notice how the arm itself carries a certain level of effort. That effort can vary from high tension to low tension, and this will create a variety of responses in muscles throughout the rest of your body.

This isn’t about imagination — it’s about how our nervous system works to protect us from straining or overworking the same areas repeatedly.

As creatures of habit, we tend to avoid moving certain areas of our body. We keep repeating movements that work specific parts of the body with intensity, while other parts don’t even make it into our awareness. The areas we don’t pay attention to may be the most influential in our overall well-being.

So, the next time you begin to move, try to invite all parts of your body into the movement. This may sound like it would be difficult — like you’d have to think about so many different parts of your body at once — but actually, it’s easier than you might think.

Your nervous system is designed to coordinate these movements naturally. It’s the miracle behind the electrical connections that link all parts of your body. One part, like an aching back, a stiff shoulder, or tight knees, can influence other areas. Understanding that your body has the ability to move fully can help release tension and improve mobility.

You can’t just imagine it — you have to actually feel it. And when you do, it’s a very different, but incredibly rewarding, experience to explore.

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Start Taking Classes in 2025What You Don’t Feel Can Be Hurting You

You will benefit greatly from taking classes because your body is an instrument—you have to learn how to play it. Nobody sits down at a piano, picks up a guitar, or grabs a violin and just starts banging away, hoping to make music. Are there prodigies? Of course. Are they rare? Yes. And could they still benefit from learning more? Absolutely. Most of the time, they want to improve.

It’s not about what exercise you do. A person who plays an instrument may choose to play Jazz, Classical or Rock. They love the instrument, or perhaps simply attracted to it at first, and then begin to explore. You may be exploring moving your body and sidelined by an injury, chronic anxiety or stiffness. Albeit exercise is great for your body, the benefits are much deeper and more effective when you know your instrument more deeply.

It’s exciting when you form a connection with your body. I might say a personal experience with your body because no two bodies are exactly alike. Whether you’re great at it or, like me, not so great at it, it’s a way to discover what you don’t feel. That is the benefit of the Miracle Ball Method. It’s the hidden potential we all have.

I might be asking the dumbest question

Every time I start a class; I ask people what they notice about their bodies. Essentially, I’m asking them to feel what they don’t feel. I often get confused looks, and some people, for sure, make things up. They use their imagination, come up with platitudes, or express their emotions.

What I love about the body is that, while we are emotional, creative, and full of imagination, the body is like any instrument. It has a specific functionality inherent to that instrument. Whether you get emotional, decide to get angry at the instrument, or imagine what’s happening, you still need to learn how to play it. Many times, the thinking about the body is simply that. We “think” the body and rarely have that personal sensory experience of our own body. That is essential to activate your nervous system which coordinates so many aspects of your moving.

Do you Love your Body?

Consistency is the Key to lifelong changes.

That’s a loaded question, and perhaps not a fair one. All I can say is that at certain times in my life, I truly couldn’t have imagined saying, “I love my body.” I dealt with so much discomfort, sensations of anxiety, chronic pain, and a loss of mobility in my right side. Honestly, loving my body was the last thing on my mind.

Follow the Feeling

However, after years of learning from my students and gaining experience, I’ve come to appreciate the power of simply meeting my body where it is. I’ve learned to leave my emotions at the door. I’ve learned to leave my misguided intellect behind and just notice how my body feels. It’s quite simple. The instructions are straightforward.

Through this process comes a miraculous discovery that through your ability to sense your body it realigns, adjusts, and breathes. Most of us spend lifetimes trying to control what would happen easily it we allowed our body to function and understood how to get out of its way.

Then it becomes a true partnership. If you do yoga, play sports, dance, or simply enjoy taking a walk, your have more potential to enjoy it without the aches and pains so many of us have come to think of as normal.

Why take a Miracle Ball Method class.

As anyone who has taken a class knows, it is not like an exercise class. The directions are completely different. Many don’t want to feel their body because, perhaps, if they do, they will have to acknowledge something unfamiliar. The truth is, we don’t control every aspect of our bodies. We don’t know what will happen to them. That’s a lot like love—it’s there for a while, you enjoy it, and sometimes you must let go in order for it to come back. Sometimes it just leaves.

It’s not about ego or power over your body. It’s a relationship—like any other. What I love about the body is that I can’t try to manipulate it or make deals to make it feel better. I can’t convince myself that it’s always going to stay the same. When I have a great day, I can’t expect the next day to be identical. Your body lives in the moment, and that’s what makes it one of the most peaceful instruments to sit with. The instructions of this method are simple, which is why I encourage you to take a class.

The Power of the Method at Home

When you do the method at home, you can keep it simple. Your body will begin to give you feedback, just like tuning a guitar. You’ll hear a song you really love, and something inside of you will stir. Sometimes, the feedback may not be what you expected. It’s possible that uncomfortable feelings will arise. But that’s okay—it’s easy to revisit the basics and enjoy the process again. You don’t need to force yourself to play Chopin on your first day at the piano.

But unlike any other instrument, your body is incredibly forgiving. It just wants you to meet it where it’s at. It knows what direction to go in and it will not mislead you.

Join Me for Classes

Join me for online classes! The Winter Weekend Workshops begin on January 25. You can also join the Membership to receive a Live ZOOM class every month and access a library of recordings to work through at your own pace.

Consistency truly is the key. Having taken lessons for years sometimes its just showing up. You don’t have to work hard at this. When you show up something happens over time. You will begin to maintain new ways of moving, gain strength and confidence in this amazing body.

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What Is Your Body Trying to Tell You?Your Body Is Talking, Are You Listening?

Your body can’t send you an email or text message. It communicates through pleasure and pain. How we interpret what we feel is what makes each of us unique. We are also challenged by outside forces that bombard us with a lot of information. Our experiences with our bodies can be very difficult. We often just want whatever pain, sensation, or discomfort to disappear, and in our desperation, we can quickly latch on to more pain and discomfort, believing that someone else has the answer. Of course, sometimes there are simple and obvious solutions, but many times, the “road less traveled” requires us to take a few moments to ask: “Is my body talking?”—especially when experiencing discomfort.

Your Body’s Dialogue

With every movement you make, a direction is coming from your nervous system. You may not notice it, but like electricity, it happens in an instant. It’s a very powerful force. We can harness this energy by trusting it more and discovering how it works.

The good news is that the Miracle Ball Method can help bring feeling back into your body by using what I call your “Body Dialogue.” Take more notice of it. Discover that it’s there and explore directions you might not have taken before.

Go Deeper and Discover the Miracle Ball Method

It has always fascinated me to watch people’s responses to how differently they feel at the end of a class. Yet, even when their bodies give them a positive review, some can walk away. Maybe they just didn’t believe it. Some people might experience sensations that scare them—thinking, “Why would I feel that part of my body? Is it bad? Am I afraid to move it?” Others embrace the change, and that’s the key. The process is very positive. It’s not about simply relaxing or letting go—those are terms often used by the larger narrative that feeds us information about our bodies.

Experience your body for yourself. Have a personal relationship with it. Take classes. Believe in the power of this amazing instrument. It’s about discovering who you truly are—and it’s waiting for you. Give yourself some direction. Take classes, ask questions, stay curious, and believe.

Start 2025 with a Commitment to Doing Things Differently

Join me in our next 8-week Saturday Workshop Series beginning January 25th at 1:00 PM ET. These are 90-minute workshops where you’ll have time to understand the method, ask questions, and develop a daily routine of Whole Body Moves.

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Don’t Fix It, Feel It, Using the Miracle Ball MethodThere’s an expression: You don’t know what you don’t know. Let me change that a bit: You don’t know what you don’t feel. This perfectly explains why many of us feel stuck in our bodies, desperately wanting relief and to move freely, but somehow can’t.

We can’t move what we don’t feel.

This brings me to today’s topic, which, I apologize in advance, might be answering questions many of us don’t ask. I’m suggesting we take a leap of faith based on some empirical evidence. Often, we learn the hard way. We may get warning signals, but we ignore them or don’t feel their effects. We keep repeating the same mistakes, not recognizing the signals—even though they might seem obvious to others. The discomfort can be overwhelming at times, but somehow we continue with the same routine.

I once read that we use only a small percentage of our brain’s intellectual capacity. I imagine the same applies to our ability to feel and move our physical bodies. This ability is rooted in our nervous system, which connects our brain to our muscles and movement. The body has an incredible capacity to adapt, even if it adapts in ways that hurt us or aren’t helpful. Our bodies warn us through discomfort or chronic pain, but we often interpret these signals in convoluted ways.

Three Pieces of the Puzzle

Interpreting feedback from our bodies can be very personal. No one likes pain, and no one likes to stop what they’re doing. Change is hard, yet we often continue behaviors that harm us rather than change them. The solutions are usually simple, but they often face resistance.

When dealing with chronic pain, the solution may seem complicated, but it could be much simpler than we think. People often say, “I have a bigger problem,” or “My doctor says I can’t do that anymore,” and the excuses continue. I’m not suggesting you ignore others, but rather listen to yourself as well.

The answer might be simpler than we think—perhaps it’s about becoming more educated about ourselves and our bodies. Emotions play a significant role too.

There are three key components to consider:

What we do in our everyday lives that may be contributing to stress or chronic pain.
The feedback our bodies give us.
How we respond to that feedback.

Feeling Is One Thing, Responding Is Another

How we respond is crucial. If we continue unhealthy patterns, we know it won’t help. Our world often repeats its mistakes across generations, sometimes doubling down on them and adding hysteria. This can lead to a misguided belief about our bodies, which is why pain becomes chronic. I know this from personal experience with chronic pain.

Our bodies are not emotional—we are.

Fear of change can lead us to create a narrative that isn’t based on reality, making us hold on to things that ultimately harm us. If we keep doing this, we’ll continue to experience pain. But the solutions are often simpler than we think.

For example, after a workout, you might simply need to rest on the floor—something we practice in the Miracle Ball Method. It’s amazing how your body can recover if you just let it. Or, if you sit for long periods, try standing up more often. Use your own body weight to lengthen the spine, improve breathing, and relieve pressure on your lower back. You don’t need a complex exercise program—sometimes small, specific changes are enough to make a big difference.

Rather than overcomplicating things—like rebuilding an entire house because the front door isn’t working—sometimes the solution is simple. If a door won’t close and cold air is coming in, fix the small issue. Similarly, the solutions for your body are often just as simple—small, specific changes that take only five minutes.

We may not like doing things that challenge us, but these small adjustments can make a huge difference.

Our established narratives, but that’s often the best sign that it’s time to try something new.

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Healing Chronic Pain Part 2Here are some specific directions to help relieve chronic pain:

Checking in: Notice your body and describe what stands out, rather than focusing on what you want or hope it will do. You can start sitting comfortably in a chair, on the floor, or lying down. Be as specific as possible in your description. Try to avoid emotional platitudes, which can sometimes confuse your physical body. Making this distinction between what we think we “should” feel and what we “do” feel gives your nervous system what it needs to guide you with feedback. If you do not get feedback, that is normal for beginners. Beginners want to know how to do it right. If you don’t feel anything, it’s not because there is nothing to feel. You are looking for the answer ahead of time.
There are two cues you can use once you check in. Ask yourself if you notice your breathing or if you feel the weight of any parts of your body. What stands out to you?

The check-in process takes about 15 to 20 seconds. Think of it as a first impression—a way to distinguish between thinking about the body and feeling your physical self. You can do this anywhere and at any time. You take your body with you wherever you go, so why not practice this in any moment? You can do it on a train, sitting at your desk, or out to dinner with friends.

It’s not hard to do; it’s just unfamiliar. As you begin to use this more, you will receive feedback from your body. If you notice you’re getting uncomfortable or your back hurts, your body will make adjustments.

How Does This Break the Cycle of Pain?

Most of us spend our lives thinking about our bodies, noticing where they might hurt, feeling anxious, and focusing on where we want to go. Few of us truly feel our bodies as they are in this moment; we often force them to move in a certain way or sit or lie down in specific “correct” positions. I encourage you to notice if you’re doing that, because it’s unsustainable. Your body knows how to sit stand and move. It will rebel against being forced to being held in superficial ways.

If you notice your shoulders are raised up to your ears or you’re holding your breath, you can then ask yourself to simply “stop” doing that. It takes a lot of effort to hold your breath and to keep parts of your body tense because that is what you are used to. You begin to learn there are options. Many of us confuse this with relaxing. I would use the cues feel the weight, notice if you’re holding your breath. Otherwise, we get focused again on the need to feel better, rather than simply to feel.

Our bodies rebel against all this thinking because they’re not being attended to. Imagine if you had a pet or a child: if you only thought about feeding the pet but got distracted, or thought about taking your child to school but didn’t do it.

Many people are stuck with what someone else told them about their bodies—the way they should sit, stand, or move. This simple process can change chronic pain because the missing link is feeling what you are doing rather than what you think you should do.

A miraculous thing happens when you truly feel your physical body: you get a response from your body. It might not be the response you want, but you will receive feedback. This is something real, and then you can begin to apply the method. This is your body’s method. The more you incorporate basic elements of this method into your initial check-in, the more your body will continue to provide feedback.

A Brief Note About Feedback

Many people, when they receive feedback that isn’t positive, are convinced they are headed in the wrong direction. What’s even more confusing is when people become very emotional about their responses, elevating simple physical sensations to life-and-death emergencies. I know I was good at that. My ultimate goal was to suppress all feelings, which meant I was blocking a tremendous amount of feedback my body was trying to give me.

Remember, your body knows balance, how to breathe, how to move, and how to alleviate anxieties. However, we often fear our bodies. We have disconnected ourselves through an inaccurate emotional narrative.

After your initial check-in, notice specifics like breathing or if you are lying down, how your weight rests on the floor. Your entire body experiences sensation because you are moving through space and breathing. This is something we all start out doing when we learn to sit, stand, and walk. Just watch a baby lift its head for the first time.

Breathing cues,

Then begin to exhale with a “Haaaaaaa” sound. Let gravity help your jaw open. Do it gently. Then give a few moments for any breathing responses. Repeat this on and off for five minutes. What are some ways your body responds? Notice I am not saying how your body should respond or how you should sit.

Feel the Weight of your Body,

Use Whole-Body movements, like bending forward, to improve circulation throughout your body by feeling the weight and letting yourself breathe naturally. When you return to sitting, is your body giving you any feedback about how to sit differently?

You have only two choices: remain in your habits or allow your body to do what it knows how to do. Learn and experience movement again.

I encourage you to try a class, attend a free webinar, learn more.

Go to miracleballmethod.com and sign up for our Next Free Webinar: Change the Course of the Way You Exercise: Tight Hamstrings, Stiff Back Muscles, Knee Problems?

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Healing Chronic Pain Part 1Healing Chronic Pain
Part 1

I’m always amazed at how many things in life, from the simplest tasks like tying your shoelaces, require direction. There is even a learning curve.

Some of us are more patient than others. Some can be frustrated but still persist through the process if we want to wear sneakers with laces. As adults, learning new things is essential—whether it’s adapting to new jobs, technology, or interacting with others, we’re constantly learning strategies.

However, when it comes to our bodies, we often throw these rules out the window. We expect our bodies to accommodate the complexities of everyday life without complaint. We shouldn’t experience backaches from sitting for hours at work or anxiety from unforeseen challenges. Our bodies should just conform. But isn’t that like expecting a child to already know how to tie their shoelaces, use the potty, or learn to read?

We do people a disservice when we teach sports or bodywork without encouraging them to use the feedback from their bodies as a learning process. Physical and emotional responses, which can include injuries, chronic pain, or panic attacks, often lead us to avoid them. This is commonly known as the fight-or-flight response. The same principle applies to chronic pain; it’s easy to run from pain because who would want to run towards it? But your body can’t send you an email. I have learned that pain, whether from injury or anxiety, is a learning experience much like tying your shoelaces. It requires different directions for success.

With my chronic pain and anxiety, I truly wanted an escape. As I feared it more and more, it worsened. I lived with it, leading to a compromised life. Others even supported my management approach, confirming that I would likely live this way. There was no “cure,” just management. I gave up. Oddly, that’s when I peeked behind the curtain. Exhausted from years of this experience, I began to see glimpses of relief when I stopped listening to others’ gloom and doom and started to simply observe what I was feeling. In that moment, with the most rudimentary directions I still use today with myself and my students, I calmed the storm that had been trying to help me, not hurt me. It got louder because I never stopped to listen.

The body is simple; people are not.

The body has only two responses: it provides positive or not-so-positive feedback through physical sensations. The language you assign to that is what I call your Body Dialogue. You must interpret and develop your own language so you can build a relationship with your body—not just rely on the person in the gym teaching you to lift weights or the instructor guiding you in dance or sports. At the end of the day, that’s what your body is capable of. You must engage your body through feeling, rather than mechanizing it based on imitating and listening to others.

Part 2: Don’t Fix It, Feel It

Because most of us misinterpret physical sensations, we often exacerbate the situation. The sensations become louder. I truly believe that when you face these sensations, even if only for a few seconds, you change the trajectory of your life. You have to believe that. Like the message in Peter Pan, Peter couldn’t fly unless he believed. I don’t want you to blindly trust what I’m saying—that wouldn’t help you. We already blindly trust too many people, yet our bodies still rebel. We must believe that our bodies know more than we can comprehend. We need the most basic of directions. You will then begin to tie your shoelaces effortlessly. More importantly, with your body, you will find that it knows how to move, breathe, and enjoy life without pain. In Part 2, I will start with the most rudimentary directions. I encourage you to visit miracleballmethod.com to learn more, sign up for classes, join the membership, or attend the Free Webinars. One step at a time. It is a language unique to you, and you will fly.

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Everyday Movements Can Heal or Hurt Your BodyUsing the balls feels amazing, but an invaluable byproduct of The Miracle Ball Method is tapping into your body’s ability to move freely without stiffness, or the everyday aches and pains many of us experience. Everyday movements done differently, using the benefits you get while on the ball, is a combination that will benefit you throughout your life.

Exercising Without Exercise

I’m always exploring better language to help people bridge the mental gap between practicing the method and applying it to everyday life. I call it a mental gap because your body will naturally integrate the benefits of the Method into your daily movements. While lying on the balls is incredible, using your body’s feedback can be applied to how you move throughout your day as well.

We on the other hand are creatures of habit. While our bodies will transition from the great feeling on the balls and improve the way you do everyday movements, our habits, meaning the way we have trained ourselves to move, prevent those adaptations. This happens unknowingly. Just like the Method teaches, by understanding this power your body has to adapt or change, you will sense options for how you do everyday movements. This will not only relieve the aches and pains of rotator cuff issues, low back aches, stiffness, poor posture and just about everything and, you might actually enjoy moving throughout your day knowing it is benefiting you.

In a recent webinar, we explored what I term “exercising without exercise.” For example, tasks like putting on a coat or lifting something onto a shelf can be challenging when raising your arms is difficult. We focused mostly on everyday shoulder movements. But as those familiar with the method know, no part of the body operates in isolation. In our next webinar we will be focused on many movements requiring you to bend forward and stand on two legs. How can you use the Miracle Ball Method to improve feeling to key areas so you can do these everyday movements with ease?

You Can’t Move What You Don’t Feel

During the webinar, I encouraged participants to become more aware of how they move. Notice the sensations you experience when reaching for a top shelf or putting on a coat. That sensation is your body providing feedback. First, you feel; then your body begins to understand. Many of us skip this step, immediately thinking, “It hurts, I can’t do that, how do I fix it?” However, you can’t effectively address the issue until you notice how you’re moving. It only takes a moment! This principle applies to everything in life, yet we often overlook it when it comes to our bodies. You do not have to stop your day and focus on putting your coat on. Think about it, these movements happen all the time. What an opportunity every time you do reach your arm through a sleeve or reach for something on a top shelf, you keep noticing improvement rather than discouragement. Don’t blame your body. We all know you can’t keep repeating actions in life the same way and expect anything to change.

First You Feel, Then What? Do It Differently!

Once you become more aware of how you move throughout your day, use that feedback to adjust your movements. This again, takes a moment. Your body will probably want to change because it has been knocking at your door. Your body can only speak through pleasure and pain. If it hurts when you move, let your WHOLE body help you.

The Miracle Ball Method helps you understand that your body’s feedback provides the answers, not just a general sense of well-being. For instance, when reaching your arm, you might notice other parts of your body that can assist, reducing strain on your shoulder.

In the webinar, the goal was for participants to grasp how to incorporate the method into their daily lives. This can be a matter of milliseconds, but getting specific about your movements can yield significant long-term benefits. Your brain’s remarkable ability to process new information will facilitate this change.

Feeding Your Body New Information

It doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, the simpler and more specific the adjustments, the more your body will adapt. During the webinar, participants practiced movements involving reaching their arms and began to identify obstacles and made adjustments easily!

We also used the elbow-on-the-ball placement, which allows for a deeper understanding of your body through the nervous system. The changes people experienced were remarkable, though they might not have fully acknowledged them, it will get deeper over time. You will always have room to improve. If you haven’t seen the Webinar from August 24th you can see it at miracleballmethod.com.

Join Us for the Next Webinar: Everyday Movements Can Heal or Hurt your Body.

October 2nd, 1-2pm ET.

Our next webinar will focus on bending over, using your hips and lower back, standing on two legs, which will be beneficial for strength, core muscles, knees, and feet. NO MORE BACK PAIN! I hope you can join us!

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Good Pain, Bad PainGood Pain, Bad Pain
I remember when a friend of mine had a car accident. He was in his early 20s and might have been under the influence. He ended up with 123 stitches in his face, running under and along the bottom of his cheekbone. Remarkably, he walked away from the car wreck, strolled down the street into an apartment building while holding his eye in its socket, and went to see his mother’s boyfriend. Just as an aside, her boyfriend was a famous musician at the time.

He walked into the man’s apartment with his eye being held in place by his hand. In shock, his mother’s boyfriend asked him, “What are you doing? What’s going on? You have to go to a hospital!” Despite the severity of his injuries, my friend had very little feeling. You would think the pain would be overwhelming, but between being under the influence and being in shock from the damage, he was able to walk down the street and act as if nothing was happening.

Misinterpretations and Misunderstandings
Although thankfully few of us have the experience my friend had; pain is a very odd experience. Often, we categorize pain as entirely negative, but as in my friend’s experience, severe physical trauma doesn’t always equate to severe pain. His face needed to be put back into place and his eye reinserted into its socket, yet he felt no pain at that time.This contrasts with how people typically react to daily aches and pains. When people do experience pain, from a slight twinge to severe, they can become immediately concerned and anxious. They might begin interpreting it as a sign that something is terribly wrong. But is pain always bad? Aren’t we grateful when our body tells us to jump out of the way of an oncoming car? Aren’t we thankful for pain when we touch a hot stove? Pain serves as a warning signal, guiding us away from danger. Isn’t that a good thing? Acute pain happens quickly when something is wrong and goes away quickly when the cause is alleviated. Chronic pain is pain that lingers for months with no clear, identifiable cause. In this blog, I am referring more to chronic aches and pains and how we interpret those associated signals.

When it comes to chronic physical pain or panic attacks, which can be filled with intensely physical sensations, these experiences are often misunderstood. The key lies in how we interpret these sensations. Due to the overwhelming nature of pain, and how it can happen in a millisecond, we often label it as “bad,” which can exacerbate the discomfort. If you think of pain as the worst thing ever—such as fearing a ruptured disc and impending surgery—you might find that your pain worsens as you reinforce this negative narrative. There are two parts: the physical experiences and our thoughts while having these experiences. These are very difficult to separate but extremely beneficial when you do.

As we become adults, the aches and pains, whether emotional or physical, can get all mixed up. If you had anxiety that made you nauseous and then you got nauseous again from the flu, it’s all nausea. But the next time you get nauseous, it might make you remember the anxiety, so the flu is then so much more impactful. We build narratives that are not accurate and consequently misinterpret what is actually going on. This cycle of pain leaves many of us stuck. The truly unfortunate part of that is some of us then don’t go out as much as we might like, pursue endeavors we want to pursue, or move freely because of these misinterpretations. And the narrative around the fears builds and gets bigger. We want to break them down a bit, but that requires being a bit more specific with what we notice and where we are feeling certain sensations, and then responding differently. And you must respond. If you do not respond, you remain stuck in the fear and dread and keep the experience alive.

Our body communicates through pleasure and pain; it doesn’t send you an email; it sends you sensations.

The body is not our enemy. It communicates through pleasure and pain. It doesn’t send emails or detailed reports; it simply tells us whether a direction is good or bad.

Conversely, many of us misinterpret good responses. For example, if one drink feels good, we might think five drinks will feel even better. While we know intuitively that more often leads to feeling worse, in our desperate attempt to escape pain and embrace pleasure, we overlook these nuances.

In the moment, we often want to feel good and avoid pain. However, sometimes taking a moment—just a few milliseconds—to talk to yourself differently can change how your body responds to pain. Many of us don’t do this; instead, we create more pain by trying to avoid it. Those few seconds of reflection can alter the pain’s trajectory and prevent potential problems down the road.

What You Can Do
Next time you experience an achy back, hip problems, or a panic attack, consider taking a moment to reflect. Ask yourself if you’ve encountered this before and if there’s anything you could do differently. Here are a couple of suggestions:

Change the dialogue: Ask yourself if you have been here before, and answer your questions. Don’t pretend the feelings aren’t there. Acknowledge that these are physical feelings based on your responses.
Do something physically different: Instead of panicking and holding your breath, try longer, slower exhalations to help your body breathe easier. It might take a couple of minutes, but your body does know how to return to normal.

While you can’t change the severity of immediate trauma—such as my friend’s car accident—you can intercede and break the cycle of exacerbating chronic aches and pains. By reframing your response and taking different actions, your outcome changes. Pain might have prompted my friend to get to the hospital quickly and might similarly be guiding you to make better choices for your health. The Miracle Ball Method can assist in this process, as your body knows how to move in a direction that aligns with its needs. Embrace the guidance of pain and pleasure as they help you navigate through life.

Come to my Free Webinar August 24th 1pm ET

Exercising Without Exercising How Everyday Movement Can Heal Your Body

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Exercising without Exercise, How Everyday Movements Can Heal Your BodyDo it different.

With the challenges I had with my body, looking back, I needed to make significant changes in how I moved my body to avoid living a life with chronic pain. I learned I could move differently simply while getting out of bed, walking to the kitchen, reaching for a cup of coffee or bending over to wash dishes. We are all constantly moving. Make your movements free of imitation, repetition, and do them differently. Most of us are riddled with confusion “how do I do this movement without hurting myself?”. Your body knows how to move.

When we hesitate in fear, its like that dog that senses you are afraid. Your body is much friendlier than that dog, but it will give you strong feedback if you live in fear of moving and think if you do one wrong move you will do permanent damage. This Blog is leading to an invitation to my next Free Webinar, Exercising without Exercise where I will go over 5 common everyday movements that you can do differently to relieve chronic aches and pains while strengthening your entire body. But first here is why the Miracle Ball Method is so different, Feedback from your Body.

Feedback from your Body.

I’m always pondering new ways to describe the Miracle Ball Method. It’s less about a detailed explanation and more about describing the sensory experience it provides. Many people think the focus is on the ball itself, but it’s the experience the ball offers that matters most and what you do when you are on the ball you can do off the ball. When done with clear intentions, the feedback from your body will be more profound and lasting.

For those of us who are attuned to visual experiences, some might find them more vivid than others. The ability to feel your body deeply has significant benefits, including moving without pain, avoiding recurring chronic backaches, reducing shoulder stiffness, and maintaining flexibility and coordination throughout your life. But few of us are naturally attuned to that somatic experience. The Miracle Ball Method can greatly enhance your ability to receive and interpret this bodily feedback.

How to More deeply benefit from the Miracle Ball Method

The Method explains how we can use the feedback from your body and makes it meaningful. To illustrate, imagine two people driving through the mountains of Colorado. One person is engaged in conversation and thinking about their plans for the day, while the other person is deeply immersed in the scenery. They are both seeing, but one is experiencing it in a different way. Similarly, with our bodies, most of us are distracted with other experiences day to day. Few people are noticing what their body might be experiencing until it hurts or gets stressed and anxious. By acknowledging and utilizing this feedback, you can make significant changes in the outcome of things like your back aches, chronic anxiety, poor posture and all the negative effects of sitting for long periods.

Exercise, dance, martial arts, and sports all involve physical experiences. But we are moving in different ways all day. However, as we go through our lives, many of us carry injuries from youth, such as sports-related injuries, scoliosis, or chronic stress. These can be compounded by sitting at computers for long periods or mimicking others around us. Even if you’re not consciously aware of it, your sensory experience is always at play. It can become heightened or dull depending on what you are paying attention to.

Just like the people in the car ride who may or may not be fully engaged with their surroundings, many of us don’t fully engage with our bodies, especially when pain or injury is involved. Pain can be overwhelming and often isn’t fully understood or addressed by conventional medicine.

I’m not referring to pain related to a specific medical diagnosis but to the more general chronic pain that doesn’t fit neatly into medical categories. Chronic back pain, for example, can be more debilitating than many other life experiences. This type of pain is significant because it affects how you experience living in your body.

The Miracle Ball Method helps you experience your physical body in a new way. Much like enjoying a car ride without needing to analyze every detail of the scenery, you don’t need to overthink the Method. Instead, you need some guidance to tune into your body effectively.

I often compare this to when people ask me for directions to a store. I might not know street names or landmarks because I wasn’t paying attention to them; I just knew how to get where I needed to go. Similarly, without proper guidance, you might not fully appreciate or benefit from the ability your body has to adjust, realign, and rebalance you on a daily basis.

Exercising without Exercising: How everyday Movements can heal your body.

If you suffer from chronic back pain, knee problems, or if you simply want to maintain movement and health throughout your life, the Miracle Ball Method is a valuable tool. It helps you tune up your body, allowing it to recover and build new movement patterns. This method enhances your nervous system’s ability to use sensory feedback effectively.

Join our next free webinar, “Exercising without exercise: How Everyday Movements can Heal Your Body.” This is about exercising without traditional exercise. We move every day and perform basic movements repeatedly, yet often in ways that are disconnected from our body’s full potential.

Learn five everyday movements you can do differently each day to transform your body, prevent chronic pain, heal yourself, reshape your body, relieve anxiety, and feel better.

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Emotions and Chronic PainSo much of our day-to-day life is charged with some level of emotional response. We constantly ride the roller coaster of our emotions. From the seemingly simple act of of sitting in traffic, we are tightening our neck and shoulders, to the rush of packing lunches and the worry of being late. These are everyday emotions, yet they affect us deeply physically as well as mentally.

Then there are the more profound losses and traumas that linger with us for years, often unnoticed but ever-present. They can be the undercurrents of emotions that we don’t always notice. But they are fueling our day-to-day experiences. All these emotions are affecting our breathing, our thoughts, and ultimately how we move. How can emotions and thoughts do that?

I have never been a person, having had my experience with chronic pain to say, “it’s all in my head”. Unfortunately, people think it’s an either-or decision of how you understand your body. Its not. The emotions and the physical body, our thoughts and our behaviors are all the same body. One effects the other. I am writing this blog as a reminder, there always is a choice with the body and usually it’s the last choice for many. It was for me. I didn’t realize that the experiences of how I lived were exacerbating my chronic pain. Whether we could say the pain was from an injury, a misalignment or illness, it didn’t matter. The other aspects of worry, fear, constant anxiety fueled my physical responses to the point where my body’s ability to adjust, realign, rebalance and heal, were not possible.

The Mind Body Dis-connection.

I would like to say with the rise in understanding of the mind body connection that this would be common knowledge and we would be reaping the benefits of that. But over the last several decades the rise in chronic pain, the treatments provided, and narrative that supports the separation of our thoughts and physical body is deafening. There is no mind body connection. It’s a disconnection that’s growing.

It surprises me that we often view our bodies as separate from these emotions. In reality, our bodies respond to every emotional nuance, moment by moment. This interplay isn’t a negative; it underscores how deeply connected our thoughts are to our physical well-being. When we make that connection, in many ways we become free of its power. You begin to realize all the ways you might be afraid of moving, afraid of pain, as it has less of a hold on you. You invalidate the old paradigm of the “mechanics” of the body as the only option, and it becomes much richer with possibility.

If we don’t make that connection, we can spend a lifetime wondering why all the treatments we have for our back, neck shoulders knees, chronic anxiety, don’t seem to work. Then we develop stories that are fully supported by many. It’s an old injury, the MRI says this, and my friend told me that. These responses all support the erroneous convictions that our bodies don’t really heal from most things and are completely unaffected by our emotions. Its unfortunate because as most people know, once you get on that train there is no getting off. Usually, you go from one injury to another. You either have an injury or are waiting to get another episode of chronic pain.

Here is the good news, if we can be so affected by our emotions to the point of chronic pain and injury, this understanding also allows our emotions to heal us. That does not mean have no emotions, that would be unrealistic and unfortunate. There is a great side to emotions. They tell us a lot about us as individuals. There were many a class I taught when I would look over at someone on the ball and tears would be running down their face. Your body can quell the storm of emotions as well. We can use our body to sense what’s behind the emotions. It will rise on its own. Your body knows how to heal, adjust, realign and move. Let’s trust that again.

From Personal Experience

What I love about The Miracle Ball Method is it allowed my body to do what it knows how to do. Through a series of simple directions your body is allowed to stop holding. Let’s avoid the word relax. When it stops holding, it allows you to experience something maybe unfamiliar. There are so many layers that can unfold, you begin to discover not just the physical realigning, but also the mental ease that does exist. For me allowing that experience helped the emotions to settle down. That gave me the awareness of how the body was trapped by so much emotion. The emotion wasn’t bad, and having the Method to help my physical body gave me a way to reframe how I lived my life. I was transformed.

When I first began the Miracle Ball Method, I was emotionally overwhelmed due to the gradual loss of use in my right leg at 19, with no clear diagnosis. Over time, I learned that my body was communicating with me in subtle ways, demanding my attention.

It took years to fully understand this had not been merely a physical issue. The Method proved powerful; it alleviated, if not entirely resolved, the discomfort and challenges of my limp. Yet, childhood traumas manifested in other ways, moving through my body and influencing my healing journey.

I realized healing isn’t always verbal or characterized by specific movements; it’s a profound, and might I say spiritual process. Emotions run deeper than surface-level pain or competitive urges. Real joy in life can be as simple as sitting quietly, breathing without striving to achieve more or be someone else, even if it means facing pain. Sometimes acknowledging pain allows it to dissipate, embracing complexity brings peace. There are other options. But it is we as individuals that can discover those options. Be open minded to your journey, and don’t be on someone else’s journey. Injuries, chronic pain can be a blessing in disguise and lead you to places you will benefit from greatly.

To conclude

I know some of you reading this may think you don’t want to wait for relief. You want it now. I understand that. But it’s not years of study. There isn’t a lot to do but maybe more to “un” do. Your body is much more forgiving than you realize when you show up for it, just be there. I am reminded of a student before my first book came out saying, “this will never sell its too profound”. She said people will never get it. Decades later she is still doing the method and has never had a back problem since. Well, I knew what she said wasn’t true. I get it. I didn’t invent this. Its in our bodies. The book is sold all over the world and translated in several languages. The directions are simple. People are not. Stick to the directions. Let your body give you answers. And in a world of loud voices listen to the quiet voice inside you.

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The Third OptionHealing therapies, exercise and The Miracle Ball Method: What’s the Difference?

Every day, we make decisions not just about what we’re going to do, but how we’ll do it. From choosing our clothing to deciding how much food to pack for lunch, which is the best route to travel, there are details. Thoughts underlie every moment of our day. We often take them for granted, adjusting based on circumstance. When it comes to our bodies, I hope people explore more details. This blog aims to distinguish between different movement therapies, exercise, and The Miracle Ball Method.

The Miracle Ball Method

Having worked at a hospital-based wellness facility for over 15 years, it became clear to me that most people perceive movement as either active or, in the case of relaxation, inactive. But just as in our daily choices, every movement involves a network of responses that we often overlook. The Miracle Ball Method helps you become aware of these responses and determine whether they help or hinder you.

Recently, I was teaching a man who I’ve worked with for some time. Despite rarely getting injured, he was recovering from one that had left him emotionally shaken. He couldn’t understand how, despite warming up, he got injured playing his favorite sport. He said, “I even warmed up.” Having observed his progress, I realized he still hadn’t grasped the basics of the Method. As we focused on his hips, I noticed he was holding his breath and tensing his shoulders. His response was, “I’m trying to relax.”

“Relax” isn’t a cue our bodies easily comprehend.

At that moment, I realized these are the two primary choices for most people: relaxing their muscles or tightening them. The Miracle Ball Method offers a third option. “Relax” is the outcome of our actions, not an instruction the body can easily do. For many, including myself and thousands I’ve taught, simply saying “relax” doesn’t work. Our muscles may be tense for various reasons. They need directions that include our senses, not our intellect alone.

The Third Option for Chronic Pain and Injuries

For those experiencing chronic pain or recovering from injuries that don’t seem to heal fully, the Miracle Ball Method operates through the nervous system. The nervous system underpins many bodily systems. When we move, countless sensations occur simultaneously; focusing solely on one area while neglecting the rest is impractical. Each part relies on the next part. Its how those other parts respond, or in many cases, don’t respond, that either keep injuries chronic or allow us to be flexible. These are the details that need to be observed, not even fixed. Like my student who was “trying to relax” those words meant little. I would likely connect to the feeling of holding rather than trying to get rid of it.

What Can We Do?

Recognizing this third option allows you to sense your body’s feedback. There’s a constant dialogue between body and brain that we can’t fully manage throughout our day. However, practicing the Method acts as a reset. Learn its directions: it’s not about exercising on the ball or deep breathing to relax. These directions introduce a third way, allowing your body to provide feedback for you to respond to. It can be remarkably straightforward, applicable even during intense workouts or meditation. The third choice is your body’s miraculous ability to adapt, change, and realign itself—simply by feeling it.

Sounds Too Easy?

It’s not. Like my student, our intellect tends to categorize our body’s actions: “I’m relaxing now,” “I’m playing a sport.” Don’t put yourself in the box. It prevents the body from adapting to new ways of moving that it can provide. However, underneath every action lies an instrument that needs periodic tuning, a reboot to function optimally. The process is simple yet counterintuitive. Your body can vastly improve, becoming your ally rather than your adversary when you learn to work with it. Don’t fix it—feel it.

Getting started:

Go to miracleballmethod.com. Watch the videos. Learn more with The Miracle Ball Method book: Revised Edition.

Come to the Next Free Webinar August 24th : Sign up for your link.

Movements you already do every day that Heal Your Body Join on our newsletter to get the link.

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Using Everyday Moves to Heal Your BodyIt’s not necessary to isolate exercise in a gym, at a sporting event, or on your yoga mat. Moving is something we do all day. This should be good news for those who haven’t found their preferred “exercise” yet. It also doesn’t mean that every day movements can’t relieve pain, reduce stress, and reshape your body. You don’t really need “special” exercises but to do exercises differently. Everyday movements are an opportunity for you to lengthen and strengthen the muscles of your body while improving circulation. Over time they can relieve the chronic aches and pains you might be convinced you have to live with. By everyday moves I mean just that. Reaching for a cup, bending down to pick up something, emptying the trash, sitting in a restaurant, we are rarely if ever completely still.

The Miracle Ball Method works through your nervous system which is in a way quite miraculous. The way most exercise is taught is somewhat superficial. It works for some but not everyone. Many people find deep relaxation while using the Method. I ask people not to “try” to relax, but enjoy the feedback your body is giving you. Most of us are unaware how much we hold our breath and keep muscles engaged for extended periods in areas where circulation doesn’t reach. Many of us live with this feeling of anxiety and overwhelming tiredness that sometimes extends into a bad night’s sleep. When you do the Miracle ball Method the directions allow your body/brain to stop repeating habits that are not helping you. This relief can cause the deep relaxation while your body recalibrates.

What’s beneath the surface?

Our bodies are remarkably adaptable; they compensate for our alignment, injuries, or stress which can unconsciously make us hold our breath while tensing muscles. Bodies are meant to adapt—they do so without complaint with no warning system, until they begin to give you feedback. Ultimately, we are the ones controlling everything, much like the man behind the curtain in “The Wizard of Oz.” But no one gives us the antidote, we grin and bear it. Its just the way the body is. But that’s not true. Our body knows how to not only stop doing what hurts, but how to do it differently. But like our computers, we must feed it new information in the form of a kinesthetic experience.

The good news is we do have control. This is another way our bodies adapt. When we use the Miracle Ball Method or understand this process, we realize our bodies adapt to new information. The Miracle Ball Method provides new information, connecting us deeply to how we hold ourselves—our backs, our breath, our shoulders, habits we may have held for years. It’s a relief when we stop, allowing our bodies to feel the weight and the wave of breath coming like the tide. The body can be surprisingly resilient, but many of us lack imagination about its possibilities because we don’t believe they exist.

A simple start, find your parts.

In my book, I discuss the Body Dialogue—a tool you can use anytime. It brings unconscious adaptations to a conscious level. For instance, reaching for a cup on a high shelf can be done differently. It doesn’t have to be formal exercise; many exercises are done without considering these instructions. Most people don’t consider how they reach or how their muscles engage until prompted.

They don’t explore if their pelvis is engaged—a fundamental part of the body—we simply don’t engage it. We don’t even know its there.

I remember teaching a class once with James, a 70-year-old man. Using the Miracle Balls, he suddenly exclaimed, “I never knew I had a pelvis!”

Here’s the good news: bodies are not as demanding as we think. With a little information, they begin to change quickly. You might not notice the changes, as you focus more on superficial things—like someone telling you what good posture should be or what your exercise regimen should include. It’s like putting a child in a box and dictating their future preferences, limiting their experience and spending years trying to break free.

People do this with their bodies—imposing rules on how they move yet neglecting to give simple directives throughout the day. Let’s explore some everyday moves this week to start your own Body Dialogue:

Remember I’m not asking you to feel good, just feel. That would be too much stress! Begin to simply notice how you move, your limitations, your fears about moving, and how you breathe, or hold your breath.

Five Everyday Moves:Its more important to sense how you move, than trying to fix what you don’t feel.

I’m not asking you to force anything—just feel these parts. Your nervous system integrates and coordinates them with your body. Don’t feel overwhelmed; simply notice these five parts and begin a dialogue. Even walking down, the street can be a time to start.

Where is your head? Is it lifted, lowered, tilted left, or right?
Am I standing on both feet comfortably? Do they feel different?
Do I feel my pelvis? Is it engaged, connecting to my legs or lower back? Can I move it?
Breathing: Can I feel my breath? Am I holding it? What if I let out a soft exhalation?
Shoulders: Are they resting? Do I feel my hands at the end of my arms? How are my shoulders connected to my ears or the back of my neck? Is one side different from the other?

These are a few areas of the body that the Miracle Ball Method can help you connect with as you move. Remember, your body knows how to coordinate and move—it’s developed through movement, not something you force. I hope you enjoy exploring a bit, whether with the balls or simply by trying different movements—lifting, lowering, breathing, lengthening muscles, squeezing shoulders together.

Each of these moves creates more space for your diaphragmatic muscle, easing breathing, reducing stress, increasing circulation, and relieving chronic pain.

Join me for one of our free webinars at miracleballmethod.com. Register on the Home page. You can view past webinars as well. These webinars offer both information and a personal experience with the method—we can delve deeper and address your questions. I look forward to having you join me.

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Enjoying Moving Your Body: Relieve Everyday Aches and PainsDo you enjoy moving your body?

The body is a peculiar place. One might assume that basic, practical principles we use in everyday tasks—like balancing on a seesaw, distributing weight evenly; layering a three-tier cake; bouncing a ball; or reaching for something on a high shelf—would apply straightforwardly to the body.

Movement is essential in daily life. Yet, many of us seem to view movement as somehow disconnected from logic. Despite countless exercise programs, healing practices, and therapies, we often treat our bodies as if they defy the laws of physics and basic principles of movement, surrendering control to others.

Somewhere along the way, we relinquished our power. Was it a gradual process, a quiet surrender? Perhaps we started believing that the body is so complex that we shouldn’t interfere. When our bodies give us trouble—aches, pains, poor posture—it’s easy to feel even more detached.

Even those who exercise daily can seem disconnected from their bodies. In the gym, movements become mechanical and regimented, leaving me to wonder if they truly enjoy moving their bodies.

At the heart of success with your body lies a genuine love for movement.

Observe small children—they revel in movement. They roll, lift their heads, reach, and jump with joy, naturally connected to their bodies. The idea of perfect alignment doesn’t enter into it because their nervous system is learning as it moves. Ours is as well. But when we move with such hesitation there is little joy because we have lost the trust that this body works, and much better than most believe.

As adults, bombarded by information and emotions, our bodies often become vessels for anxiety and fear.

It might sound deeply psychological, but it doesn’t need to be so complex. The challenge often lies on the surface. Some people possess a natural affinity, but many lose touch with the joy of movement when they relinquish control to others. Oddly enough moving your body can lower your anxiety, yet many of us who have anxiety develop fears that every movement is somehow scary, or can set up more unwanted sensations.

Begin to change the dialogue by noticing what you are doing, not so much a list of what you think you should be doing……whoever decided that.

Take a sincere exploration of your body. Notice where your head, feet, arms, hands, and rib cage are. Movement stems from connection.

It’s as though we isolate body parts, treating the hand as unrelated to the foot.

When playing an instrument, you wouldn’t disregard one note for the next. In cooking, ingredients blend; in gardening, relationships form. These concepts are intuitive.

However, observing people move reveals a stark disconnect from what is natural or connected to our bodies.

Allow me to leave you with two thoughts to ponder:

Exploring different thoughts and directions holds value because your body responds to them.

At some point, choose to do things differently. You don’t need to aim for Olympic feats or professional dance routines. Simply inhabit your body daily—it can be enjoyable. Begin noticing how you move. The Miracle Ball Method can help with that as it strips away much of the old paradigm of how to move.

Don’t strive to change how you move; simply observe it. Notice the relationship between your head and feet. Are you breathing as you move, or holding your breath? Feel the difference between bending forward and lifting up. What are the challenges? What feels different or difficult?

Realize that moving your body isn’t solely a mental process; experience it fully, like blending paint to create art. Your body is your canvas—move it.

Remember, not everything will feel good. Emotions can complicate our physical experiences. We often are convinced any level of discomfort means something is wrong or that difficulty will lead to injury.

Remember, your body is a circle. One well-executed movement can transform your entire body.

Think of your body as a circle rather than a collection of separate parts. The disconnect lies within the mind. Our thoughts constantly guide our bodies without our full awareness, often charged with emotions when we dislike what we feel. This impacts our confidence in movement.

Without movement, the body stiffens, anxiety rises, and chronic injuries may develop—signs that suggest we shouldn’t move.

Observe how you move without knee-jerk expectations that it must be a certain way, free from emotional interference. As you truly discoverer what you are doing, and the thoughts and emotions that go along with it, your body will, just like when you were a small child understand how to move differently. Trust that.

Join our next Free Webinar on August 24th at 1pm ET for an in-depth exploration of five key areas of the body often neglected due to tightness and accumulated tension. We’ll start with the leg joints to help you experience newfound freedom.

Go to miracleballmethod.com to learn more about connecting to your body through your nervous system. Your body knows how to make adjustments, breathe freely and find key areas of the body to rid you of chronic aches an pain.

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The Miracle Ball Method: Making Exercise EffectiveMeet Rose, a regular gym-goer who diligently practices the Miracle Ball Method. She finds great relief from it, but recently, she’s been experiencing hip pain after exercising. While the Method helps relieve residual tightness in her hips post-workout, the pain returns after her exercise class. She reached out to me, seeking guidance as usual.

To enhance the effectiveness of exercise, it’s crucial to integrate lessons learned from using the Miracle Ball Method into your daily routine and everyday movements. Let me share a few important ways to achieve this. First, it’s important to clarify that aiming to “Relax, Release, and Let Go” is a result of the Method, but these are not specific directions for your brain to adapt to new movement patterns.

Neuroplasticity,* defined below, teaches us that our brains can adapt to new experiences, preventing us from getting stuck. The Miracle Ball Method enhances this adaptive capability by fostering a “Body Dialogue,” as described in The Miracle Ball Method Book Revised Edition. This dialogue is an unconscious exchange between your brain and body in every moment. It’s not something we’re meant to analyze consciously; for example, the split-second decisions we make, like jumping out of the path of an oncoming train. We appreciate how quickly our mind and body work together. But when we do slow down as when doing the Method, we realize our body can adapt to dramatic changes that will influence chronic pain, anxiety and day to day physical experiences.

When practicing the Method, introducing new pleasurable sensations offers your brain new movement options, akin to learning new vocabulary words to express thoughts more effectively. By noticing and acknowledging these new physical sensations, you can begin to move differently. Here are two basic steps to start your Body Dialogue:

Observe and describe what you notice about your body.
Acknowledge how these sensations change as you introduce new experiences.

To take advantage of this gift that our brains are able to continue to learn throughout our lifetimes, engage in diverse experiences such as art, music, learning, or taking up new hobbies. This stimulation encourages new thoughts and ideas, allowing you to make choices that bring joy and relief from daily routines. Most of us don’t do this fully when it comes to the body. Exercise many times is repetitive and imitative. We can make it much more by working with our bodies ability to adjust, learn new ways of moving, and even something I find exciting, take feedback from your body. It knows how to move!

When practicing the Miracle Ball Method with specific directions, you provide your body with new experiences. By acknowledging these experiences, your brain can adjust its repetitive dialogue with your body, leading to new ways of moving. This approach can alleviate chronic issues like low backaches and tight shoulders, reducing stiffness and allowing you to explore movement naturally, akin to how children move.

Your brain requires precise cues, such as recognizing when you’re holding your breath, clenching your glutes, or adjusting your posture during exercises. Though this may seem complex, it’s simply about adaptation—your brain learns to change based on the information it receives. Pay close attention to the sensations you experience, especially when using the ball; acknowledging is key. Soak them in, linger longer your brain is learning while you enjoy the feeling!

Rose is now discovering new ways to perform lunges and squats, making subtle adjustments that lead her body in the right direction.

Rose is progressing well. Through her workouts, she’s discovering refined techniques that enhance her movements, ensuring effective exercise without unnecessary pain.

UPCOMING WEBINARS AND WORKSHOPSLast week’s webinar covered the basics of the Miracle Ball Method, exploring fundamental approaches to counteract aging. Now, we can begin to apply these methods more practically. Consider joining our Summer Workshops and upcoming Webinars on Making Exercise Effective, ensuring you stay active without the aches and pains that sometimes sideline you. Whether walking, dancing, or squatting, it’s not the exercises you do, but how you experience exercise that matters.

Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to adapt to changes in the environment and experiences*. It involves creating new neurons and connections, as well as modifying or deleting existing ones. Neuroplasticity allows the brain to grow, learn, and recover from injuries or diseases.

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Don’t Get Old: 5 Antidotes to AgingHere are five antidotes to aging:

Breathing
Discovering five key areas of your body
Moving five key areas of your body
Doing the Miracle Ball Method
Never stop moving

In the webinar this Saturday, I will go into more detail on each of the 5 antidotes. For example, many of us understand the benefits of improved breathing, and how exercise can help improve the way we move. But for many there is a missing link between this information and experiencing the benefits. One reason is most of us are not familiar we how common it is to “hold” their breath. We also don’t realize you can be clenching key areas of your body that would take pressure off tight backs, improve the range of motion in shoulders and hips and much more.

My hope is to give you a personal experience with your own body so you can experience the benefits which are profound when you find your natural breathing and key areas of the body. No two bodies work alike or breathe alike. This explains why one exercise works for some and not others. This is where the Miracle Ball Method is an antidote. It gives you access to your nervous system. This leads to the 5th antidote, never stop moving!

We must personalize the information we are all getting about what we need to do, so we can enjoy the benefits. You are not going to do something you don’t enjoy, especially when moving your body, unless you like it. I hope to make it enjoyable on Saturday for you to feel how adaptable your body is and always will be when you work differently. Don’t work from information and thought alone, but through the kinesthetic feeling of YOUR body.

As we become adults, these five antidotes often face challenges due to common life stressors such as job and family stress, injury, illness, or alignment issues. Our bodies are very adaptable. But that doesn’t mean they feel good doing it. We get stiff muscles; our breathing is compromised and yet we soldier on. We never realize that our bodies have their own alignment system that’s just waiting to help them feel better. I want you to have access to this and build in your understanding that it works.

The Miracle Ball Method increases feeling in your body. Your brain uses that feeling. This is the key difference. Most people try to move their body without increased feeling, and it doesn’t work. Our habits will always take over and there will be a constant underlying fight with doing things differently. But when you realize your body knows where balance is. It knows how to realign and take stress off chronically tight areas of the body. Your body knows how to breathe. But it can’t do any of these things when you are stuck in your habits of movement and breathing. These habits as we age take the feeling out of the body as we train ourselves, unknowingly to age. We move less and less. Our breathing as a result is affected and we become very vulnerable to weakness, lack of circulation and chronic pain.

Many of us have a good deal of information and we may even do exercise or deep breathing with a predetermined outcome. But that is not how your body will fully benefit. Our bodies have years of habits built into the way they move and breathe. To simply use information on breathing to improve flies in the face of how strong our habits are and how transformative your nervous system is.

I hope to see you at the webinar. It will be a combination of information and experience with your own amazing body.

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Don’t Get Old: The Antidotes to AgingOvercoming Fear of Physical Sensations

Many individuals struggle with fear of certain physical sensations, often creating a narrative around these sensations that can become disabling yet oddly inaccurate. These sensations can be a momentary twinge in the neck or knee in that same moment we are defending against what might happen next. What if, and remember when? Traumatic events in our lives can amplify these feelings, making even momentary sensations seem extremely overwhelming. Sometimes, our fear of these sensations leads us to cling onto them, perpetuating a cycle of discomfort.

While writing about this with no physical sensations I am concerned about, it seems somewhat illogical. But if you have ever had this, you know what I am referring to. There are thousands of different physical sensations or feelings. How we interpret them is key, and what we do in response can be inspiring. But first we need to learn a bit more.

This internal dialogue can spiral into excessive worry, leading to physical manifestations like shallow breathing and tense muscles, creating what I call the “cycle of pain.” Consequently, we become hyper-aware and overly reactive to every physical sensation, feeding into a sense of vulnerability and dependency.

It’s essential to acknowledge and address these sensations without catastrophizing them. While it’s prudent to have concerning symptoms checked by a medical professional, changing how we talk to ourselves about these sensations can make a significant difference.

Don’t Get Old: 5 Antidotes to Aging

This is where The Miracle Ball Method is extremely helpful, providing us with tools to build a what I describe as much-needed kinesthetic vocabulary to engage more parts of our body. It takes the old narrative, along with the sensations we are constantly on edge to feel, and replaces them. Our bodies adapt. This is an important piece of building confidence in your body. Understanding that your body is listening to what you tell it. It is very hard to do this only with our intellect without following through on moving our body. This can be very counterintuitive. Our body does adapt to what we tell it. Yet when we begin to move, we might misinterpret those sensations because of the narrative we believe is true.

Many people are “stuck” like a deer in headlights when we are overly vigilant about what our body might do next, creates more sensations and ones that are not helpful.

Discover Key Ares of Your Body

During the upcoming webinar, we’ll delve into five key areas of the body, exploring how they adapt and respond to movement. By unlocking the potential of these areas, we can reshape our body’s responses physically and emotionally.

Too often, we treat every sensation as a sign of injury or physical weakness, leading to fears and anxieties that further debilitate us. We seek external solutions, such as exercise routines or therapeutic interventions, but often approach them with a fearful mindset, hindering their effectiveness. We are still stuck, and perhaps moving with these Key areas locked and ineffective. We might find ourselves having new challenges with our body, like a knee problem or backache. We blame our body again, wondering why while enjoying exercise your problems got worse.

You don’t have to be stuck!

But it’s not your body. Think of reading a book. You are in first grade and in the beginner reading books. You have a very limited vocabulary, but it works for you. When it comes to being in an adult body, most of the time we just expect our body to work. Stresses, past illness or injury, bad advice on how to move, all can contribute to feeling vulnerable to pain and stiffness. As we age, we tend to move less, and less. We just think it’s a natural part of aging. It’s not. Just like the first-grader needs to graduate to more challenging books, you need to challenge yourself to move more, not less. There is a learning curve.

We move less because our body is listening. If it can listen to all the negative fears and worry, it can listen to new directions to go in and enjoy the outcome. Bodies want to move. It will listen when I explain more about these key areas and how you can free yourself by capitalizing on how your body adapts when you are able to sop being stuck.

Embracing these key areas of the body can be transformative, but it requires patience and confidence-building. Children, uninhibited by the fears and worries that often plague adults, serve as inspiring examples of uninhibited movement. By bringing our internal dialogue and blending it with our body’s responses, we will find we can get stronger not weaker, feel more confident and look more comfortable and beautiful in our own skin.

We can learn what we once knew. It’s still all in your nervous system, ready to work again. The Miracle ball Method works through your nervous system to reconnect the wiring to all these vital, key areas. Watch the uninhibited movement of children and apply it to your own way of moving.

Come to our next FREE Webinar June 15th 1pm ET.Don’t Get Old : The Antidotes to Aging.Follow us on Social Media:FacebookInstagramThe post Don’t Get Old: The Antidotes to Aging first appeared on The Miracle Ball Method.

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Feedback from your Body: To relieve pain, reduce stress and reshape your body.Interpreting the feedback from your body.

Throughout my years of teaching, I’ve valued the feedback from those in my classes. It’s been gratifying to witness the transformation—from the initial apprehension and tension some students bring to class, often accompanied by neck, shoulder, or back pain, to the end of the session where they express surprise at the disappearance of their discomfort. They not only experience relief but also find joy in the process. It’s a profound change, one that often leaves them asking “How do I do this again, I don’t know what happened?”

This sense of accomplishment is deeply rewarding, and it’s what led me down this path in the first place. Wanting everyone to be able to “do it again” and “know what happened” has been and continues to be my mission. In order to “do it again” you have to recognize your body is giving you feedback when you do the method, and how you respond to that makes all the difference.

But there’s more.

While many people appreciate the physical sensations that arise using the Miracle Ball Method—such as the feeling on the ball—there’s so much more. I cherish the miracle that occurs when we follow the instructions, surrender to the experience, and allow ourselves to rest while feeling the weight of our body and our breathing.

However, there’s an even deeper layer to explore. Perhaps I’ve dwelled longer on this aspect than most, but I’ve come to understand the significance of the instructions through personal experience. It took me at least a decade of grappling with chronic pain to truly comprehend what I was doing. The fear of the pain’s return, coupled with a lack of understanding its origins, left me feeling helpless and controlled. Yet the relief was so tantalizing, impactful and profound I couldn’t ignore that my body was leading me in ways no one had explained well enough for me to feel confident in my outcome. I knew something was going on and having spent countless hours a language developed. This was the feedback from my own body. But I had to put a language in order to find directions that worked.

“You only have two options with the body, to stay stuck or to allow your body to change. Intimately knowing the difference between the two is freedom.”

The Classes

In our classes, I often find myself emphasizing that there’s much more to the process, yet you needn’t make drastic changes in what you are doing. The subtle shifts that occur when you experience the soothing effects of the balls can be easily overlooked yet in those lie your body feedback. This can be a dialogue between you and your body, that improves the way you feel and move throughout your life.

The great feeling you have on the ball can include acknowledging specific responses from your body. They are not arbitrary, or simply relaxing muscles, they are taking you in a direction. If you linger longer, you can begin to put a language to what you are experiencing. This is a language of physical feelings. Your body never stops giving you feedback. Everyone is getting feedback all the time, but if you don’t understand or simply find the language, we can misinterpret what it is means and how to respond.

The concepts of release, relaxation, and letting go which are everywhere in the marketplace beg for clarity. They are very general. Those are the results of what you are doing and more of an emotional need. To get there is a different process. The great feeling of relaxation, releasing and letting go needs a physical direction that our body understands. Our body wants to take you from the protective, fearful, and historically entrenched patterns that dictate our movements. But it can’t do that if you are unclear of what you are doing. And, if you don’t have a language that your body will understand, it remains stuck.

For example, taking a ride in a car.

There are three parts to doing the method in every hour you spend or any moment, it’s always the same.

Sense what you are doing
Linger with it longer for feedback from your body.
Add cues or directions to your body

Your approach shapes the outcome; by allowing your body to guide the process, you facilitate meaningful change.

It’s a simple process, really. Yet many of us find ourselves on the wrong path, searching in the wrong direction. Directions determine outcome. Its as simple as taking a drive to a restaurant. But you have the wrong directions. You are driving around in circles and continue to follow the wrong direction. What could have been a five-minute ride might take an hour. It is that aspect of giving yourself directions not to complicate, but for clarity.

While driving in the car with bad directions you might become upset, frustrated, angry, and ask “what is going on here?”. Its similar with our body but we have to realize we can get emotional with the body, frustrated, but ultimately our body is listening. We have to give it the right directions. They are not difficult but very specific. They will help you get the feedback your body is craving to give you.

That incredible feeling you experience is a testament to the fact that you’ve ventured beyond what’s familiar. Even if it begins with discomfort or pain, it’s a sign that you’re on the cusp of transformation.

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A Journey to Inhabiting Your BodyIn the quest for holistic well-being, we often overlook a fundamental aspect: inhabiting our bodies. It’s akin to attempting to operate a vehicle without being behind the wheel. In this blog, we’ll delve into the significance of truly inhabiting your body.

Many of us are familiar with the concept of an “out-of-body experience,” often occurring in the wake of traumatic events. Shock can numb us, serving as a shield against unbearable pain. However, these encounters leave lasting imprints on our physical selves. Long after the event, we might find ourselves disconnected from our bodies, unable to fully embrace movement or plagued by persistent discomfort, like nagging back pain, or in my case parts of my body that didn’t seem to respond the way I wanted.

Observing others and reflecting on personal experiences, it’s evident that many of us exist in a state of detachment from our bodies. We’re spectators to our own physicality, perplexed by its responses. Anxiety, for instance, can manifest in perplexing symptoms seemingly unrelated to our emotional state, leaving us bewildered and apprehensive about our bodily functions.

Consider the discomfort felt during exercise, the sensation of lagging behind while others thrive. It’s easy to blame our bodies, to perceive them as obstacles. I’ve encountered such feelings myself. Yet, distancing ourselves emotionally from our bodies can offer clarity.

Our bodies crave movement—it’s an intrinsic need. But often, we’re oblivious to this call. To inhabit our bodies means reconnecting with our physical selves, acknowledging our histories may have hijacked our present moment, and our imaginations may be what we are left with.

We have to know that the way the body feels is the way we are unconsciously directing it. If we can be objective, it’s about experiencing the weight of parts of our body, the pull of gravity, the rhythm of breath—a level of awareness many of us lack simply because we don’t talk about it. Our bodies know how to move, but most of us don’t let it. Maybe we don’t trust it.

A common response to chronic anxiety, tight muscles and even chronic pain, in the body is to avoid tension. Relax, release, and let go seem to make tension something to avoid. That is misleading. Tension is necessary and feels good. It’s extremely beneficial but we can’t use it if we are not actually able to inhabit or fully feel our physical body so we ward against it. “What if I do this movement, and that happens?” Better to do less or be careful.

Our bodies are our own resistance machines, waiting to be engaged. But without presence, without actively experiencing movement as we did in childhood, we miss out. Children intuitively learn to move by shifting weight, unencumbered by fear or stiffness. We lose this innate ability as we grow, often without realizing it.

Trauma, whether physical or emotional, can sever our connection with our bodies, leaving us feeling estranged. But therein lies the importance of reclaiming this connection. It’s what prompted me to develop the Miracle Ball Method—a tool for reconnecting with our bodies, regardless of the reasons for our disconnection.

You don’t need an extraordinary excuse to be out of touch with your body; the mere act of existing in today’s world can render us unconscious to our physical selves. There is too much information and not enough exploration. Let’s challenge the notion that our bodies are solely responsible for our limitations. Your body is capable of more than you know, but it requires a different dialogue.

Ultimately, inhabiting your body is about more than just physical movement, physical movement is the result of you as a whole person. And how you feel as a person is equally dependent to how you experience the pleasure of moving freely without fear, pain, or expectation.

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Why the Ball Works When your Back HurtsMany years ago, there was a neurologist who came to me for a session. She described perfectly why the ball worked. She said it was a neurological tool for the brain. She, being a neurologist, had a completely different vantage point than I. But I sensed her clarity in how she understood the Method. She is an example of how information works. She understood the Method very accurately through the information she had from being a neurologist, but had yet to experience its full benefits by having a personal experience. When it comes to the body especially, information alone without experience doesn’t work.

In this world filled with information, I continue to make this distinction between information vs. a personal experience with your body because of how your nervous system works. Without a personal experience with your body, not what someone else told you to do, or how to move, you will miss the benefits that will come. You will miss the feedback your body can give you to relieve pain, reduce anxiety, sleep better, and move freely.

Why is this important?

I was working with someone who had lower back aches that were extremely difficult. They would get worse, then better, but he was always worried when they would come return and they could be debilitating. He was in fear of turning right or left. He was constantly in the chiropractor’s office and getting massage. He worked out regularly and yet he was always looking for that magic pill or exercise that would make it all better. But you see, the exercise can’t do it without the experience of understanding your body through feel. Its like you can’t know a great meal without tasting it. Someone else cannot tell you.

When you begin to understand this, you get intimately connected not with what you want to change, or what someone told you about your body, but how your body is right now in this moment. He learned that all the exercises he was doing, he never moved a key area of the body, his leg joint. He was constantly clenching those muscles and had no idea as a result he was clenching his lower back and holding his breath. Once he got a taste of what he was doing to prevent his body from self-correcting, he felt a huge weight off his back. He began to allow his body to “un” do years of habits that all the exercise just couldn’t change without this connection.

What you can do differently when you exercise:

Bodies work through a physical feeling. That physical feeling is not just muscles but a connection that goes back to your brain and your nervous system. The more articulate you can get with different parts, the more varieties of movement you can do free of pain, and the backaches will not return.

Finding the leg joint is a key area of the body, but there are several other key areas that I point out in the classes. Think of your body like that instrument that you are turning up. It’s not the song you play, or the kind of music, it’s the sound. Your instrument has a sound. Your body has a physical feeling. The more you feel different parts, you begin to realize your nervous system is an ally for you. It organizes these parts as it did when you were a youngster to create movement. You can learn from your body.

When that gentleman came to me, he showed me the exercises he was doing. He had a stretching routine. And yet in every exercise, the one part of the body that would give him relief he was not moving. Having worked in a hospital-based wellness center for 20 years, I saw this consistently. Many times, people were given great exercises and yet imitated them the best they could, but the relief was not there. They went in moving one way and came out moving the same parts. They didn’t have any experience with key areas of the body like the leg joints that would create a domino effect throughout their own body. They remained stuck and blamed their body.

But once he added an experience of knowing he was fighting the movement with old habits he had from a young age and incorporating some sense of creating circulation into the muscles, he began to not just “let go” but have options that his body was giving him. Moving without pain, what a concept and your body knows where that is.

Whether you are doing yoga or Pilates, taking a walk, or playing tennis, it doesn’t matter. Your body is your Steinway grand piano. You can play it however you want. Don’t be stuck. Begin the Miracle Ball Method and let your body find ways of moving that won’t be information alone but inspiration.

Join one or all of our upcoming SUMMER WORKSHOPS. They are filling up. Space is limited for individual attention.

See our upcoming times for Webinars

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Webinar Review: The Miracle Ball Method for Posture and BalanceJust like getting feedback from your body gives you direction, so do the comments from those attending the webinars give me direction. In our recent webinar, the discussions on posture and balance resonated deeply. I urge you when you do the method to linger longer on the nuances of bodily awareness and movement. The feedback you get from your body is not random. There is a lot of intelligence in your body, and it knows what direction to go in. Its not always quietly speaking. You can feel frustrated when your body is tight, has chronic backaches or scoliosis, poor posture. Many of you know exactly what you want, just not sure how to get there. We do try a lot of things. There is more information now than ever. But information alone does not change your body. We are missing that personal experience with how our body responds to what we do and then do it different if necessary.

What others were saying!

Right from the outset, participants engaged with remarkable clarity, shaping the trajectory of the discussion. Many articulated their struggles with maintaining good posture amidst the demands of daily life, expressing a desire to understand the mechanics behind their postural challenges.

A pivotal moment in the webinar was when Dan inquired about somatic exercises, sparking a dialogue that delved into the intricacies of somatic practice versus traditional exercises. This exchange not only shed light on the nuances of somatic techniques but also highlighted the distinctiveness of the Miracle Ball method.

What sets the Miracle Ball Method apart is its emphasis on proprioception—the ability to sense one’s body and use the feedback. Unlike traditional methods, which often focus solely on external cues, the Miracle Ball Method encourages practitioners to delve deeper into their physical sensations, lingering longer in each movement and cultivating a profound understanding of their physical being.

By honing this heightened sense of bodily awareness, individuals can unlock new pathways to healing and transformation. Rather than battling mysterious aches and pains, they can embrace a more intuitive approach to movement—one that honors our body’s ability to know where balance and posture is.

What to do each day.

What I find amazing about the body is how uniquely connected one part is to the next. Unfortunately, many of us simply tighten our muscles, not allowing many parts of our body to make adjustments and breathe. It can be frustrating and prevent the freedom that your body has to be able to accomplish lifting up, while feeling the effects of gravity pulling us down. It is truly an amazing experience to move; even the smallest movement done well is better than hundreds of movements done against what is natural for the body.

We practiced one movement: raising the arms up into the air. Reaching up can be profound. Use words that help you like lengthening, use your hands, your elbows and arms. Your body is relearning. Take it in stages. Forcing without feeling can cause frustration. Gradually, you will begin to notice this simple movement requires every part of your body to adjust, if we allow it. Raising the arms is incredible because it lifts the upper body away from the lower body, allowing the body to breathe. It gives you a sense of where balance comes from standing on your legs or sitting on your sits bones.

Summer Workshops: take one or all six!

I hope to see you in classes or at the next webinar. If you chose membership, you have one complimentary group class a month along with hundreds of recording to use on your own time.

Remember, one movement done well is better than hundreds of movements done badly. This summer, I am offering my Summer Workshop Series. There are six two-hour workshops related to one of the past webinars. You will have time to linger longer and use what you learn throughout your days. Remember, you don’t just have to make changes in a gym or during an exercise routine. I have found that just about anywhere, even on the couch or in bed, at meetings, and on trains, I can do it differently. I can take advantage of allowing my body to recover. I urge you to go to miracleballmethod.com to learn more.”

Here is more information on the workshop Series Coming up.

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The Miracle Ball Method for Posture and Balance Part 2Relieve your Pain, Reduce your Stress, Reshape your Body.

Gaining an understanding that your body knows where good posture and balance is will allow you to enjoy the process. The old idea of the static stiff laborious way people think of posture and balance must stop. It is based on the idea of imitating a position of the body. You imitate what you see as good posture and then hold on! Nothing can be more miserable than fighting with your body to stay in an unnatural position or holding on to balance. In the next Free Webinar on April 27th 1pm ET, I will give you one movement that will change your posture and improve balance.

One movement done well, is better than 50 exercises done badly.EP

Posture and Balance Part 2Your body is listening to everything we tell it. As a result, our thoughts are very important to how your body is going to feel and move. Because most of us aren’t aware of this we don’t make the connection that our body is simply listening to how it has been trained, by us, to be.

Most of us are familiar with the subconscious thoughts of our mind. We are not usually aware of how these are fully impacting us. It is similar with our body. We are not aware of the thoughts that are moving us one way or another. I believe the body is much simpler to work with because it is less emotional. But without this understanding, we can become extremely emotional when we have things about our body we want to improve and everything we try doesn’t work, until now.

Your Subconscious Body:

I was speaking with a man recently who came to my studio. He saw all the balls and said when he goes to the gym, he uses balls similar to what he saw. He said it feels great. Since I knew he had chronic lower back aches, I responded to him. “You roll on the balls all the time and it feels good while you are doing it, but the backache comes back”. He nodded yes.

When we do things with our body, a massage, acupuncture, many of us feel great while it is happening, and even for some time afterwards. Our bodies are each unique and there are many contributing parts to when and why the stiffness, aches, pain, fatigue might return.

It’s the same with balance and posture, we might feel amazing while we workout, or hold positions of posture and balance, but it easily disappears somehow.

This is where the Body Dialogue comes in, or the subconscious body as I was describing above, like the subconscious mind. We have been training our body for years to stand and use certain muscles more than others. Even our breathing is unique to our body. If you don’t understand this, your body will always return to the subconscious body, you will feel like its inevitable to be stuck with poor posture, weak lower back muscles and many more aches and pains most people suffer with.

Using this Knowledge.

When I teach others, I remind people that I am asking them to feel what they don’t feel. I remember being in therapy many years ago. I thought it was a waste of time. Week after week I went to the therapist until one day the therapist slowly walked to the door and opened it. Was my session over? I had only been there a short time. He looked at me and said there was nothing he could do. I didn’t feel I had any problems different from anyone else. My point here is I couldn’t feel anything. I had significant challenges, but I couldn’t feel anything, and it was frustrating me, as much as it was this doctor. I could describe every aspect of my life, and even laugh about it. But the underlying thoughts, well I didn’t go there.

The fear of leaving that safe environment made me get emotional. For some reason, that began an interesting journey. It wasn’t so much what I felt, but there was a lot more underlying my day to day. I was managing my life nicely from the outside. Well, this is another story.

It’s not so much what you are doing, but what you notice.

In my time in therapy, the doctor described me like the orient express. That is how quickly I moved through life. That was my strategy for feeling good. I missed a lot, and it was exhausting, but I felt at least I was moving. My life was more quantity, not quality.

I have a son who as he grew up, he was great at a few things. He stood out. But he had no interest in those things at all. He never developed them, and he moved on to something else. I have a friend who is an artist, he sees things that I do not. He uses his art to express himself. He notices things. I know great dancers, mechanics, that do the same. They notice things and if they are interested and moved by what they notice they become good at what they do. But that piece is essential, becoming moved by a feeling, a sense of wanting something. My son didn’t care that he was good at those things, so nothing happened. He didn’t even notice he was good. He just moved on. I’m asking you to notice your body. You may not get any feeling, but since it is your body, let’s see what you might discover. You might really like the journey.

How does this relate to posture and balance?

Anything you want to do with your body is very much based on what you feel, in this case your posture, balance. Feeling the physical body is not hard, but it’s not superficial. Just as I was doing with that doctor, I was confident my life was completely under control. I just couldn’t leave my house!

With our bodies you decide if you are feeling it based on how you feel, right? Most people only notice things that are wrong. But that is your body giving you information. Just like my son, its how you respond to that information. If you believe your body can’t make changes, you don’t. that is pretty much what the world tells you. Your body doesn’t self-adjust, it doesn’t know balance, you have to make it happen. That is inaccurate.

Feelings are sending new messages back to your nervous system. It is essential to acknowledge what you notice. Then it becomes much easier to change, almost too easy for some. If your head is forward lift it up. If you hold your breath, notice how you do that. Your body knows what to do once you begin to change the dialogue. Is there a process, yes. But anything you love is worth learning more about. Or, maybe you just want to feel better, and loving your body will come.

Come to the Free Webinar this Saturday and begin this journey with me.

See video of recent workshop where I am addressing oppositional stretching and how it affects your whole body.

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The Miracle Ball Method for Posture and BalanceRelieve your Pain, Reduce your Stress, Reshape your Body.Gaining an understanding that your body knows where good posture and balance is will allow you to enjoy the process. The old idea of the static stiff laborious way people think of posture and balance must stop. It is based on the idea of imitating a position of the body. You imitate what you see as good posture and then hold on! Nothing can be more miserable than fighting with your body to stay in an unnatural position or holding on to balance. In the next Free Webinar on April 27th 1pm ET, I will give you one movement that will change your posture and improve balance.

One movement done well, is better than 50 exercises done badly.
EP

Most of us are looking in the wrong direction because there are no options. The Miracle Ball Method is the missing link as it works through your nervous system, developing your kinesthetic sense. I know that might sound like a mouthful, but think about it, your nervous system knows how to balance and achieve good posture. Your body does not work as a bunch of isolated parts, but integrated parts, together to make movement happen.

Remember stand up straight, shoulders back, stick your chest out. That didn’t work for most of us. You are working from an idea, a thought. Develop the feeling of your body, all the parts. It’s easier. Even if you could achieve it by forcing, your body will return to the inner dialogue, or what I call your own personal Body Dialogue. Most people are only familiar with this kind of superficial way of “holding” positions, which cause your back to hurt more, or your body to fatigue after a while. There are reasons you are hunched forward, or why some injuries become chronic. Why fight with the direction your body is going in, you won’t win. Your body knows what direction to go in, we have to “un” do the ace bandage most of us have around our torso.

What you do all day, perhaps sitting in front of a computer or standing long periods of time, can make us feel stuck in one position. Perhaps you have alignment issues like scoliosis. Maybe you’ve had an injury and simply don’t want to do anything that might hurt you. Using the Miracle Ball Method allows the excess muscle tension to ease up, so your body can realign. You will have to and want to enjoy how this works. Most of us have bad posture because we simply know little about how our nervous system realigns us. Letting the nervous system realign you is easy with some direction, and consistency. It won’t be hard to be consistent because it feels good.

Incorporating these benefits into your everyday life:

When you exercise instead of just focusing on the exercise, notice how you do the exercise. Incorporate the feeling of your breathing, the weight of your parts and develop your Body Dialogue. In the next webinar, we will go over key areas and then movements you probably do every day. After being on the balls, you will have more of a sense of your body, more circulation, and you can begin to move differently. We will incorporate that into the next Webinar.

Posture and Balance are the result of using your whole body.

Come to the next Miracle Ball Method Free webinar! Sign up to get the link!

Experience the Miracle Ball Method for Posture and Balance!

April 27 from 1pm ET

Do it different!

Using the Miracle Ball Method, learn how one movement done well, that you probably do during your day, can improve your posture and balance. It will also relieve stiffness from tight neck and shoulders and take stress off the low back, all while improving the shape of your body.

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Finding your Natural Posture and Balance Using the Miracle Ball MethodUnderstanding Posture and Balance can alleviate chronic pain, improve scoliosis, low back problems, and neck and shoulder stiffness. Join me for a Free Webinar on April 27th at 1pm ET.

What do you think when you think good posture? Or balance? Do you think it’s something hard to hold? Do you have an image in your mind of a position?

Most people, when they think of posture, think of something rigid, stationary. That’s part of the old paradigm of exercise I’ve talked about in other blogs. Because exercise has us focus on one part of the body and then moving onto the next, we tend to move by imitating or holding our whole body stiffly as we move one part. It couldn’t be further from the way our bodies naturally function.

Although it’s not so much the exercises that are not beneficial, It’s the way people approach the exercises. That’s the old paradigm and people hold rigidly to those ideas of the body as something that they place and position not something that they may need to learn and understand a bit, and then reap benefits throughout their life. You need to undo what you’ve learned, and your body might give you most of the information you need after that.

Posture and balance have nothing to do with rigidity. In fact, there’s nothing about the body that benefits from being stiff at any time. There’s always movement. There’s always the undercurrent of the movement of breath because breath is moved by muscles. Since most of us “hold” our muscles stiffly to try to achieve movement, we rarely feel how that inhibits our breathing and the bodies’ natural ability to find good posture and balance.

Posture comes out of using your whole body, which is how your nervous system works. It’s like electricity, the switch is not the electricity. The lamp is not the electricity. The wiring alone is not the electricity. It all has to be connected to something else, and so do you.

I don’t want to make it more complicated because it’s much easier than the way most people move, but you do need some direction to begin to utilize your body’s own ability to self-align, adjust balance, and yes, even have posture that is not fixed and held, but is responsive. Because the Miracle Ball Method works through the nervous system, you can improve at any time during your life and anything you desire to change. This is different from the decline most people feel from sitting at desks. Most of us just assume the poor posture of aging and all the negative side effects that go along with that are inevitable.

That image is simply not true. Most people unknowingly train themselves to get tighter, more stiff, and exercise alone can’t change that. Yes, your body can heal you, But similar to anything in life, there is so much to discover.

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About the Webinar: Finding Your Core Using the Miracle Ball MethodSharing the Method with others has always been about listening to what people are wanting. Last Saturday’s webinar, Strengthening Your Core using the Miracle Ball Method was amazing. For me, it’s listening to what those attending, are saying. The answers many times are in their own questions.

Connecting to your core

We all want that connection to our body. Forming the sentences of what we are experiencing, and where we want to go, are not easy. There isn’t a language for that. Most of us are simply taught what we should do to get what we want. You must feel where you are, physically and in many ways emotionally, first. This provides clarity. Jumping ahead of ourselves to solutions has proven to be hit or miss. It’s usually motivated by an anxiety, to “fix” our problems. Clarity, or a sense of where we are, is the missing link for most of us. There seems to be a significant disconnect from the sensory experience of being in our body, while simultaneously looking outside our body for solutions. This keeps us stuck and prevents us from moving freely throughout our lives. We can’t try to do movement, whatever movement it is, without feeling the instrument. In this case, the instrument is your physical body. I hope that becomes clear to those attending the classes and the webinars. Then the sky is the limit. First you feel. You can’t move an idea. The idea must connect to something real, an experience.

Why is it so different when we have that experience of feeling

Notice I don’t tell you what your experience should be, or whether you will like it or not. The reason is your body uses what you feel and knows how to give you feedback. Your body will always take you into a positive direction. Without that ability to sense the body, which is very natural, we are all doing it to some degree, our nervous system can’t make the adjustments necessary. The phenomenon is you are retraining your body to move as it once did or better through this process.

People have very different needs. In fact, I can’t say any two bodies are the same. We all have similar parts but use our bodies differently. Our thoughts are intricately connected to how we move our bodies. Our bodies are trained by information they’re getting from our thoughts. The way our bodies respond is instantaneous. It happens so fast, that we think if our body doesn’t do what we want, our body is doing something wrong, unguided by us or our history, and we are the victim of it.

Think of it this way, anyone can stretch, cook a meal, perhaps sing, or play an instrument. But as I know from doing many different things in my life, some things I do well, and other things not so much.

We assume when we exercise, doing the traditional sit-ups, crunches, and core work our bodies should just make it happen. That is where the old paradigm of just giving someone an exercise and assuming they will feel what you feel is not helpful. That is like giving someone who has never played the piano sheet music of Chopin and saying, make it happen. And most of us diligently try. And for some of us, we hit the notes and feel great. But many of us want more. We really do want to play that song, feel our body and enjoy it as well. Maybe we need some guidance.

Exercise doesn’t change your body, it’s the feeling of exercise that changes your body.

Bring your whole self into your movements. That is what makes movement fun. No one can teach you that. When you go into an exercise class, or play a game of golf, or simply take a walk, it’s how you feel your body, not how someone else told you to feel. Can trainers give you great direction, absolutely. They can also train the feeling out of bodies as well. That can cause a lifetime of challenges for some. Many times, it happens very young, in gym class or dance class for children. Remember dance, yoga, Pilates, tennis these are all kinds of movement. It’s like a musician who plays jazz, rock, classical. They are a musician and can use that ability to do many different kinds of music. The Method does not say one movement is better than the next. It is what you crave to feel and experience. It’s learning how to move your body that makes it unique.

Our bodies are giving us very clear responses when we do some exercises, and of course we blame our body rather than the input that our body is getting. Remember, instantaneously, you may not even notice the messages are coming from your past history with your body how you move.

So how do we change that? How do we improve that connection to strengthening your core? Reconnecting to your “instrument” is what the miracle ball method is. It’s getting a sense of learning through your kinesthetic sense, through feeling your body, and not through thinking about your body. When I say that for the most part people who haven’t taken the classes, attended the webinars, or read the book immediately say oh yes, I know exactly what you’re saying. I think a lot of people know intellectually, but when you get those complaints from your body, that’s when you know viscerally it’s not happening. The chronic backaches, injuries that don’t heal, stiffness and yes, the core exercises that seem to move anything but the core. How amazing that our body is giving us information, even the stuff we don’t want. But that can be a blessing in disguise to lead you further in the right direction.

The webinar really was the tip of the iceberg, and I always wish I had another hour. Perhaps get on the balls and put the webinar on in the background. Go to miracleballmethod.com, and you will find the recordings of all the webinars and more. Just like we can’t learn an instrument in a day or even learning to read took quite a while, the body is the same. But it can be such an enjoyable experience. What direction do you want to go in?

Our next Webinar is Finding Posture and Balance using the Miracle Ball Method. This webinar is April 27th 1pm ET. Go to Miracleballmethod.com to sign up and learn more.

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Look up! How One Small Movement Can Change Your Entire Body.Looking up.

As we become adults, most of us spend a lifetime looking down. Its only small children that are looking up, at their parents, the sky, in general the entire world around them. Looking up for a child is much easier than for most adults. Their whole body is still very responsive to accommodate the weight of their head, shifting in space, and balancing beautifully over their pelvis, their core, their center of gravity. It’s a great example of how every movement we do requires a tremendous amount of spontaneous adjusting, so beautifully crafted by your nervous system. Unfortunately, people take this incredibly complex and beautifully organized system and minimize it to moving one part at a time. What if you read one of your favorite books, but just one word, or chapter? There would be little connection to the momentum of the storyline. It’s similar with your body.

I don’t suggest that you just start looking up and forcing that movement because for most the neck and the upper body is incredibly tight. We are slumped over computer screens, desks, kitchen counters, steering wheels, and are even told don’t look up. Many have been told, that’s “not” a movement that’s good for your neck. As we become adults, we pretty quickly acquire a list, that gets longer, of what we can and cannot do with out body. The “cannot do” part of that list gets longer until we no longer feel free to move and begin to further disconnect from our bodies natural alignment system. Look up but do it different.

There are no bad movements, only movements done badly.

One movement does change your whole body.

Doing one movement, like looking up can change your whole body, gradually. Start extremely small. There’s no reason to force it or fight with it, but just to notice how comfortable you are.

What happens when you do that movement?

Do you feel it in any other parts of your body?

Do you find other parts prevent you from looking up, like tight shoulders or stiff back muscles?

The power of our nervous system is it will adapt to anything you try if you go about it, gradually. Because, as I said, so much of your body will have to adjust and our bodies are not used to making adjustments. In many ways a common underlying message in the world of exercise is our body is not too bright and have to be totally controlled. Responsiveness is out of the question.

The control is in the experience, not the information alone. Most people never really experience what is possible for their bodies, and not just for children or young adults, everyone!

The benefits of looking up:

From looking down, much of our body gets compressed. The lower back gets pressure. The neck gets strained the shoulders round forward. But even more important, you’re breathing has really no room of which to expand. As your head gets free to move, the whole body will have to change and lengthen. This will improve breathing, and take pressure off chronically tight lower back, knees and feet.

If you would like to try, looking up, take it in stages. Be a bit of a scientist, experiment, explore. It’s not necessary to force or try to fix anything. Do it differently. Believe it or not, your body learns through the experience, not the perfection of the experience. It will adjust you as you explore.

Here are a few things you could try.

Neck on the ball is a great way to simply feel the weight of your head and neck. Feeling eight is the way for your body to sense if its straining or trying to “hold” too tightly. Most of us when we lie down on the floor do not feel large parts of our body resting on the floor. Our body fights the feeling of the weight based on well trained habits of posture and exercise.
Remember to feel the weight!*
Try the open mouth breathing. Also, a great way of getting a sense of easing the muscles of the jaw as you improve your breathing. This works beautifully with neck on the ball. You can also do this sitting at your desk or lying in bed on a pillow.
Try this Whole-Body Move, one of my favorites of many of my students. let the weight of your head bend forward t gently, which, of course is the opposite of looking up. This will help you begin to loosen the muscles of your neck, using the weight of your head. Then gradually lifting your head back up. It will give you feeling of the weight of your head. Do you notice how responsive or unresponsive, other parts of your body are? Do you stop breathing? You can also do this at your desk, or while sitting.
See video for neck on the ball. If you do not have a ball, watch the video and simply let the weight of your head rest on the floor. The weight is there. The ball helps you to feel it.

These three things are something you can do almost every day to begin to get that sense of the chain reaction that takes place just like children when we move and how breathing naturally responds.

Look Up

I haven’t talked to much about looking up. Think of looking up as the “hook” to a great song. The whole song really leads you to that hook that you might hum over and over again. Doing some of what I suggest today is the movement before looking up.

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Beginning to enjoy, the feeling of movement is something we all secretly crave. But I truly believe we don’t believe it’s attainable because we’re all trying to move one part at a time. Pulling a word out of context from a book so that there is no meaning to the sentence, taking your arm and trying to stretch it, doesn’t work. It’s frustrating when it isn’t connected to any other part of the body. We blame our body, when there is so much your body will naturally do if we stop doing movement from information without experience. Feel your body.

Learn how looking up will also strengthen your core at the next FREE Webinar:

Strengthen your Body by Using the Miracle Ball Method

March 30th 1pm ET

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Finding your Core using the Miracle Ball MethodHow the Miracle Ball Method can help:

How can the miracle ball method help you find those elusive abs that seemed to disappear as we become adults and even more so by middle age? It’s not just how we look, but those muscles have so much to do with how our whole body stands, feels, and moves freely without pain and stiffness.

If exercises worked, then everyone would have a strong abdominal core. The question becomes why do the exercises work for some people and not for others. It’s not simply exercising that causes the ab muscles to engage. It’s the way we approach exercise. Most of the way exercise is taught is through isolating one part from the next, you might be working on your abs focusing on your core, and somehow your neck or shoulders are doing all the work, your glutes and pelvis seem to keep firing up. When you stand up your core might feel firmer. Why does your core seem to still stick out.? Maybe you avoid even doing any core exercises because other parts of your body strain too much.

The person next to you might seem to have what you want, and you think you’re doing something wrong. Everyone feels their body differently, similar to everyone thinks differently. With bodies we tend to think of them very mechanically and figure if that person can do it, why is it so hard for me.

The Miracle Ball Method uses the ball, along with your body’s own ability to sense the best ways to move. It connects you deeper into your nervous system. Key areas of the body which are integral to finding your core can be chronically tight without us even knowing it. That makes it impossible to find the core. By relieving that stiffness, we can move differently. We will go over that at the next webinar.

What is a core?

When we think of core exercises, we think of that abdominal area that we want to flatten, I would ask you to consider the word core. The core of an apple, the core of the earth. Core implies middle, the center of something else. Your core also is your center. When you exercise, you want to include that thought, and what changes goes along with that when you begin to move. Are your muscles involved in a different way?

In the next webinar coming up March 30, 1 PM, Eastern time we will go over what that means by the core being the middle. But most of all to understand that you can’t have a core without knowing what’s around it. You would never see the core of an apple, growing at the end of a branch of an apple tree. It’s part of the whole apple. I would even go so far as to say the core of the apple is connected to the tree.

Your core is part of your whole body. Your body has a core based on the way you move your whole body. Some people seemingly do that naturally, and their core seems to be work different than yours. You think you might be doing something wrong. What the Miracle Ball Method does is use your body’s ability to adapt to different ways of moving. You can’t do that without having a sense of changing your own Body Dialogue.

It’s knowing that all parts of your body create your core, and in order to strengthen that part of your body you need to use your whole body when you do any exercise.

In the next webinar, we will go over the meaning of oppositional stretch while discovering some key areas of the body essential to finding your core. We will explore how to move your whole body differently.

Additional benefits

Wanting to have a strong core, not only looks pleasing, but it also benefits the way you stand, the comfort of moving freely, balance, posture proves, low back stiffness. Whatever motivates you whether it’s to look good in a bathing suit, to feel good in your clothes or to relieve chronic pain and improve the feeling of the way you move, it’s all fine. When we start out learning an instrument, we’re happy when we can just learn how to play chopsticks are happy birthday. Our motivation might be to entertain people at parties. But when you love an instrument, it becomes a lot more rewarding to simply play the instrument. My hope is that you will find that the experience with your body becomes richer and more deeply rewarding.

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Don’t Get Old Part 2Changing your thoughts, changes your body.

Our thoughts are directing our physical body without our knowing it. Its why our body won’t always do what we are asking, it’s listening to that silent boot camp I spoke about in Part 1. Those thoughts have been working out in our minds for years and are very strong. We are trained to age, by this silent Boot Camp. We march right along with everyone else. It’s listening to what others tell us about our body, and how we feel about our circumstances, but it’s not your body. Making that distinction means actually recognizing the thoughts when you have them, and responding, differently. It’s not hard to do and your body will begin to respond to a very different message. Otherwise, we keep repeating the same patterns of movement and we justify the results, we’re getting older. Do it different!

Part 2: Do it Different!

Thoughts, vs. physical feeling!

I want to clarify what I mean by distinguishing thoughts from the feeling of your physical body. Most people take it as a criticism, if I say you’re not feeling your physical body. Let me explain a bit. Think of a coach, or a teacher. You have a singing coach let’s say, and that coach is pointing out that you may be singing, but you’re not exactly hitting the notes. Your love of singing; makes you desire to understand what they hear. Just about anything you are interested in, you seek out those who know something you don’t. In this case it’s your physical body that will point things out for you, through this process. Then you can, do it different. You can choose how you want o move. You can’t move what you don’t feel.

I’ve gone to teachers for years, with what I think is a great ability to feel my body. But good teachers, even mediocre teachers, can bring your attention to things they see. They can make you realize there is always more. Learning is not always getting the feedback you “think” is correct. Get used to that, especially with your body. It cannot send you an email. It talks to you through pleasure and yes pain. But trust me, it is saying something about what you can do to improve. The confusion of what to do sometimes takes us quickly into only responding to our thoughts. Especially when it relates to chronic aches, stiffness, anxiety, or pain, we tend to respond to these thoughts in an almost haphazard way.

Discovering your own way of moving.

Many of us, as we become adults, and continue to mature, develop a lot of physical habits, that prevent us from improving the way we feel. We become stuck. Sometimes we get sidelined with illness or injury. Perhaps our jobs are extremely stressful, and we find ourselves sitting or standing long periods of time developing pain in the feet or the back. Our bodies can become somewhat of an enemy. We need them to support us through our life. Getting relief, and having your body be your ally and not your enemy is essential. We can’t fight with it. There are things you can do that are very easy, but you have to work with the instrument. Knowing how to do this is realizing the body works through feeling, or your kinesthetic sense. Just like your vision is a sense, and your sense of hearing, you have a kinesthetic sense, to feel your body.

Thoughts alone can interrupt our body’s ability to feel and be responsive.

That’s where understanding your thoughts comes in. Thoughts can come from a long history unique to each person. Many of us decide the way we feel by how we look, what others tell us, and if we can move in the same way as the person next to us. Fortunately, our body is much deeper than that.

Our fears, that we will be like our brother, mother, the guy up the street are familiar to most of us. Back pain is so common that most people feel we are completely at the hands of someone else. Its not just back pain, it can be anything that doesn’t feel right. Many are scared to death if they get a twinge in the body and interpret it with negative thoughts that can go very dark. This is not just one or two people, this is most people. We have really let our thoughts, from our own emotions and others trap, our body’s natural ability to move, to realign adjust and heal.

Our thoughts kick off physical responses. Our muscles get tighter, responding to these thoughts, which create anxiety, and then our breathing begins to get affected. Its what I call the cycle of pain.

Once our muscles tighten, our breathing gets affected by our thoughts, you’re in that cycle where it becomes a knot difficult to unravel. So, here’s what you can explore.

What you can do!

Thoughts:

You might even want to write a couple of things down. When you sit, take notice of what your body feels like and possibly write down a few lines about what you notice. For example, you could respond I’m very tired. Or, my back is tight, I have things I need to do. My physical therapist told me I should hold my shoulders back, but they’re rounded forward. I can’t feel my breathing, this isn’t helping.

All of those would be thoughts and you want to be clear that that is you thinking about your body. Even the tightness in the back, you’re probably more responding to that tightness, than feeling it. You can’t get rid of your thoughts. But your physical body can change your thoughts.

Try to be specific using a sense of your parts and breathing:

These are examples of feeling the physical body. I noticed my right shoulder feels like it’s rolling forward. My head is forward, and the back of my neck is somewhat arched back. I can feel my left hip and not my right. My breathing seems to be in the upper chest. My ribcage is sunk. Even saying, you don’t notice certain areas is helpful.

Here’s a way to look at it. You look at a statue in the park. It gives you a feeling of some kind. You are describing it to a friend. If you say to a friend, “I love this statue”, they will most likely ask “What did you like about it”? Describing it to your friend requires something about the statue, not just whether you like it or not. If your response continues to be “I love this statue, or it’s a terrible statue” your friend has no idea what you see. It’s the same with your body. You might have a lot of emotion about what you feel when you first sit down, or thoughts distracting you, but your body knows the difference when you describe it through feeling, or just describe whether you like it or not.

You might get more specific to help your friend understand what you are seeing, “I love the way the arms are folded on top of each other. There were birds sitting on top of the head of the statue……. ”

Finally, why is this important?

This is important because this is feedback to your nervous system. That is central command for how your body can make adjustments that will help you and regain confidence that you can move. Yes, your body makes the adjustments, that’s what the difference is with The Miracle Ball Method. Just like learning anything there is a mystery to what is most amazing in life. We don’t quite know how it works but somehow babies are born, we can see or hear. We feel touch and dance. We don’t have to over-analyze. But when it comes to bodies, we have lost the ability to sense them freely and to trust. They will help free us to a much richer way of living. Don’t Get Old, means live your life. You can move. But you can’t ignore this ability your body has to feel and feel amazing. Your body wants you to describe the statue. It wants more than random thoughts.

All day, every day!

Through the years students have often asked how long should I practice when I get on the balls? All day every day is how I would respond. You wouldn’t lie on the balls all day, but you can check in as I have suggested today. Why not? You are in your body all the time, at any moment you can use this ability to notice if you have been holding your breath, stiffening your back. Your body will begin to respond to new directions. It will more easily give you feedback. How silly of me to ask you to feel what you don’t feel??? You will!

Using this ability to feel the physical body more, is like developing any skill. In March here is what is coming up:

Membership: Join 3 months for $75. Take advantage of live classes and recordings and more.
Free Webinar: Finding your Core using The Miracle Ball Method. March 30th 1pm ET click here
Interested in learning more and teaching others? Online Training: click here

Consistency is the key to change.

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Don’t Get Old Part 1*My thoughts from the “Don’t Get Old” Webinar, February 24th.

When teaching the recent ‘Don’t Get Old Webinar’, I had a plan. I wanted to clarify that as adults we may want to improve the way we move, not be sidelined with injuries or other physical challenges. But, there are many influences from the outside, things we are told about our body, as well as our own thoughts about our body. The thoughts are just as important to changing the body as any exercise. Our body is listening. We are subliminally guided by these influences from others and from within. Let’s describe it as a kind of silent mental Boot Camp.

But after asking the first questions, I pretty quickly realized that those who were attending the webinar had a very clear sense of what they wanted. They wanted to move freely without pain and continue to move and improve throughout their lives.

As I was bringing up some of what I had planned on talking about, I realized that I had to somehow connect the mental boot camp I explained earlier, and how that can be preventing us from getting what we want from our body.

The mind-body disconnect.

There’s a disconnect that’s significant. It’s one I’ve seen for years and is more of a challenge to our body than people realize. I know from years of experience, what those in the webinar were expressing, what they wanted from their body, could happen easily with some good directions.

Most people don’t achieve what they want, because of this mental Boot Camp. The body is listening and will respond even if we don’t think we have any negative outside influences. For example, here are a few common ones you might be familiar with. What about, comparing ourselves to others, and listening to others, “My next-door neighbor had this problem and it never improved. I’m sure it’s going to be the same way with me”. “I must be old now, so I can’t change that back problem I’ve had for years”, it’s bone on bone”. “It’s a herniated disc, and a bad rotator cuff problem, I can’t move anymore”. “The therapist told me not to do that movement”. This is only the tip of the iceberg of thoughts rolling around in our mind. This is information given to us. Usually, we believe what we are told, and our body really doesn’t have much of a chance. A personal experience with your body is completely different from the information.

Those thoughts are directing us without knowing it. Its why our body won’t do what we are asking, it’s listening to that silent boot camp. Those thoughts have been working out in our minds for years and are very strong. We are trained to age by this silent Boot Camp. We march right along with everyone else. It’s listening to others tell us about our body, but it’s not your body. Making that distinction means actually recognizing the thoughts when you have them and responding. There is no other way. Its not hard to do and your body will begin to listen to a very different message.

Let me be clear, I’m not saying disregard all information. What I am saying is for every therapist, doctor, chiropractor who has a diagnosis for you, there are multiple of ways to treat. You’re understanding and knowing your own body through this process, will align you with the best solutions.

Changing the thoughts, changes your body.

Next week, in Part two of this Blog, I’m going to give you some ways of distinguishing between the thoughts about your body, information from others, and the feeling of your physical body. Making that distinction can be a eye-opener. Once you can recognize them, then you can respond to them. We will go over ways that you can respond differently. Then you will begin to notice how differently your body responds going forward.

When somebody first asked me, “What do you notice about the way you’re sitting?”, I was almost irritated by that question. My internal thought was ‘What does that have to do with anything”. Boy was I wrong. The truth is the fact that I really couldn’t answer the question. I had no sense of the feeling of my body, I just wanted to “fix” my body. I was only 19. It’s as if we all think of our bodies as mechanical devices, we can replace this, and move that. It became the missing link between getting out of the chronic pain I was in, and freely moving again. It was the difference of being stuck with volumes of information much of which didn’t apply to me, and actually learning from my body. Your body is giving you feedback all the time. It knows what direction to go in to improve.

Join me June 1, 1pm ET, for Part Two of the Don’t get Old Webinar, and next week the continuation of the Don’t Get Old Blog.

For upcoming webinar dates, and to sign up for webinars click here.
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Free Webinar Don’t Get OldMiracle Ball MethodRelieve your Pain. Reduce Stress and Reshape your Body.Join Me
Free Webinar
Don’t Get Old
February 17th 3pm ET

This is a blog about the upcoming free webinar Don’t Get Old. Most of us pretty much assume getting old means moving less, and as a result not being as active. Or is it we are not as active, because we move less? We train ourselves to age. It can be a slippery slope. There are so many images of what old is, and what young is. I was talking to a 40-year-old man who wanted a young woman. Once the woman was 30, she was old? So, age is subjective. Not everyone feels like that young man. Age is not a number.

I would ask you to be clear what you feel. This is not so much about a number as it is what makes you feel old. Is it the way you move? Is it injuries or depression? Is it feeling trapped in your body and not feeling like you are getting younger? What would make you feel better? Remember this can be any age. Its best to start where you are now, because quietly…… our body is listening.

Our Body is Listening

As we become adults our thoughts are guiding our body in many ways. Most of those ways we are not aware of. In this culture, youth is in the teens and twenties! Although we like to say 50 is the new 40, we think that, but do we feel it? As soon as there are any signs of aging, whether it from slowing down, changes in activity level, or out of shape, you’re older. The way we move affects our thoughts. Our thoughts affect how motivated we are, and our physical body are caught in a bit of a trap. The old paradigm of exercise doesn’t always help.

The body doesn’t lie. It tells you when you feel tired, your posture is slumping forward, you’re getting the spare tire and your tired. Some of us can ignore it and feel young, but most just feel old when they look in the mirror. And that can happen very young, maybe even thirty! We all want that fountain of youth. We are always fighting to be something illusive. It is illusive because we are missing an important piece. Our thoughts are not necessarily accurate. They can even prevent us significantly from feeling young, even when we are very old…because our body is listening.

Why not start now to use a key ingredient in your body, that is a game changer. It is the fountain of youth because it’s the truth. It is using what your body is telling you, and then responding to that, and not someone or something else. The key word there was responding.

Transition time!

In the past if I had something wrong with my body and I took a pill, sometimes it was miraculous. There was no transition time I would notice it would alleviate the symptoms very quickly. When you begin to do bodywork, sometimes you don’t get the changes very quickly and there’s even a transition time, the transition time for many people is when they give up. These are when the thoughts come in again. “Oh, this isn’t working. I’m never going to look like Timmy or Tina up the street, I should give up I can’t do this.“ Sometimes the thoughts can be so fast we don’t even know its happening.

Even the physical body during a transition time will sometimes give you a lot of really good information but it might not be what you expect. Responses are a gift. It is through this transition, recognizing the responses and then doing things different. If you are interpreting how to move, what looks good, what old is, through someone else’s eyes you might always be disappointed. Your body can take you to possibilities you never imagine. But as they say, timing is everything. There will be a transition time. Without it, you will continue to be led by others, that’s not fun and will only train you to age.

Come to my free webinar,
Don’t Get Old
February 17 at 3 PM

Do it different!

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Do You Believe Your Body Can Transform Itself?While teaching for many years, one thing that’s consistent is how unique each person is in their relationship to their body. What is also similar is people don’t believe they can really change and improve the way they feel. Believing is a big part of trying things. You won’t even try something, if you believe your outcome is going to be unsuccessful, no matter what it is, you are hoping to achieve. If you feel defeated going in, well why would you even try?

Most people don’t feel they have much control over how their physical bodies feel. I am here to tell you when it comes to most of the common, sometimes even painful physical experiences, related to tight muscles, anxiety and stress, injuries, your body knows how to transform itself.

Your body is worth taking that leap of faith. We have in many ways given up our control to others. The personal trainer, chiropractor, doctor, massage therapist provides much information. In many ways all these people are very helpful. But even with their expertise, those benefits are based on you believing your body can really change and be better. I think most of us have experienced months of going to a therapist, or a chiropractor and the results don’t last. As one of my students pointed out, he felt amazing until he got to his car and his pain was back.

I’ve said in classes for years, more than anything, my job is to help you believe. I look around at the room, at faces that are somewhat discouraged, tired. Perhaps they’ve had a chronic injury or a backache from sitting all day. The last thing they want to do is learn something new, they just want to be transported to a new place, something that feels great. But they really don’t believe that’s possible.

That’s where I come in. I don’t change people’s body when I teach the Method. Your body is your best teacher. I help you believe it knows the way. I lead you to increase feeling when using the balls, your breathing, and the Whole-Body Moves. All of these change the body. Through your senses your body begins to respond again. It knows how to breathe. It knows how to move.

I remind the class of the story of Peter Pan. I’ve seen that movie many times over the years and remember that scene with Tinker Bell flying around Peter ‘s room. Forgive me if some of the details are incorrect. But I remember after seeing it many times that a keyword was believe. “If you want to fly Peter you must believe”, there was a bit of resistance until finally he took off. He began to fly. I’ve seen that look on peoples faces so many times after the classes. They are pleasantly surprised but have that look of disbelief. How did this happen?

We do tend to resist, just like Peter did at first. Perhaps in our youth we’re a little bit more willing to take the leap of faith. But when it comes to the body, I feel a lot of us lose our power. It is taken away from us because we think of our bodies as machines. We need a service person to fix this inanimate object we drag around with us. We don’t believe, just like Peter Pan did not at first. We need a little coaxing and then the experiences lead us to a new place we haven’t experienced. That will never end.

Teaching the MethodWhen I teach, I lead people to these unfamiliar places, I don’t create them. Those initial moments when a person begins to pass the baton. They move from holding tightly on to what they “think” their body needs, to responding to the feelings they can’t deny are happening, when they stop holding so tightly. They don’t let go to nowhere; they go to a different physical experience. It is without the strain, and it’s a place you can go to often.

People begin to realize their body has options, it is somewhat magical, or miraculous. Just for a while you might sense your body moving freely, your energy increasing and stiff tight muscles that make you feel trapped are moving differently. These are not accidents. This is what your body knows.

For those of you who are doing the method, want to do the method, or even if you want to begin teaching others, become familiar with the directions. It is a different language. Believe you can fly, and feel that joy of moving without fear, to new places.

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Understanding the Body: It Goes Both WaysMost of us think we can control how we physically feel. If we take care of our body, eat a certain way we will feel good and reap the benefits. That works until it doesn’t. When I first began to have difficulty with my right leg, to the point of not being able to move it without a limp, I had been in what most would call perfect shape. I was young and very active. It made no sense, and the doctors didn’t have answers, and treatments weren’t working. I had many different diagnoses.

The body can be very complicated. Especially when it’s backaches, tight shoulders, TMJ, sciatic pain, there are so many different opinions on what to do. We can get confused. We think we are doing all the right things, but that’s the problem, thinking alone doesn’t work. Theres an expression, “Man does not live by bread alone”, well “thinking” alone is true too. It goes both ways, we can think the body, but we also must feel it. There is a moment to moment, back and forth between thoughts and feelings. That is the Miracle Ball Method. We are relearning what we once did effortlessly.

Bodies lose feeling over time from stress, injuries, alignment issues, illness, and that lack of feeling makes us try even harder to use the old paradigm of telling it what to do. But you can’t move what you don’t feel. Our bodies, as in my case, become less and less responsive. We feel at a loss how to fix this. Don’t fix it, feel it.

Most of us are never told that we are getting feedback from our bodies all the time. We can use that feedback if we understand how. In fact, most people overlook the feedback their body is giving them because maybe its not what they want to hear. For example, pain. I’m not talking about acute pain, like putting your hand on a stove, or breaking a leg. I’m talking about the kinds of pains or aches that you have had checked out, and you’ve tried different things, but they don’t seem to improve. That is when it is a good time to learn to listen to your body. It’s like learning an instrument, it tells you when you hit the wrong note. It’s a sensory experience. So is your physical body. Pain is your bodies way of telling you something. What it is telling you is different for each individual. We are that unique. But it is telling us in a language most of us don’t consider because this is not taught.

It goes both ways, you teach your body, but our bodies also teach us.

When you do the Method, you begin to increase feeling, but you also learn to feel what you feel. Don’t sugar coat it, don’t think it has to be good, just feel what you feel physically. That is what I truly respect about the body, its honest. Its not trying to cover anything up, be sophisticated, or take on a role of some kind. It will tell you how to move, what feels good, and what doesn’t. It knows where balance is, and it knows how to take the stiffness out of the muscle so your can free the lower back, tight shoulders, and breathe freely again. It will do what YOU need. Its not about the person next to you. That’s why one exercise doesn’t work for everyone.

We have all trained ourselves to move certain ways, breathe certain ways and think certain thoughts. Be open minded. One last thing that always slips people up is that it doesn’t always feel familiar, but it does always take you in the right direction. That is a journey worth going on.

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Commentary on: Finding your Stuck Body WebinarThe second magazine I wrote for was Glamour. It was on “the Mysterious Ribcage”. No one ever cares too much about the ribs. They don’t get fat. No one says my ribs are putting on weight like they do the buttocks, belly, or face. But the ribs, torso, have always been one of my favorite areas. As I learned the Method, I discovered it was forgotten territory. Also, I was never someone who breathed easily, my ribs were a big part of regaining a true sense of freedom of movement without pain, and simply enjoying what I had missed for so many years.

As I looked around the ZOOM ROOM, all the different angles of bodies sitting, you could see the great divide between the upper body trying to posture with neck and shoulders stiff, and the lower body, pelvis and leg joints, somewhat disconnected from the rest. If you have a three-layer cake, think of the ribs as the middle layer. Then picture the middle layer sliding forward, down, or back from the top and bottom layer. Some of us artificially use our shoulders to puff up the chest. That looks like good posture, but if we are straining one part to hold up another, it will be exhausting. It can also be a source of chronic pain in other parts of the body.

The rib cage is half your spine. It is connected to the back muscles in a wonderful way, and at the same time allows for the movement of air in and out of the body. The arms and legs beautifully connect to this area of the body. All parts of the body coordinate movement. There is not an important part, and others that don’t matter. The muscles around the ribs can sometimes feel like a tight ace bandage wrapped around your skeleton making it difficult to move or connect to other parts. The tighter our muscles are, the less we are able to feel them. Our body uses the physical discomforts, stiffness, backaches, tight neck and shoulders as a way to help you improve.

What we don’t feel I would argue, is more important than what we do feel. We all want to focus on our challenged areas. The areas that hurt. I did too. But our bodies don’t work that way. They work as integrated parts, affected by our thoughts, and our quality of movement is dependent on our breathing.

Back to the Webinar, I could see people moving and discovering more parts. I wanted to reach through the computer screen and put my hands around your waist and lift you up. Explore this amazing area of the body. It is as easy as simply noticing what you do feel. Then observe the spaces in between the areas that you know are there, but you are not quite sure how to move them. Don’t force or fight with your body. Let it reveal itself to you over time.

Breathing was my way into my body. I have discovered it’s not that people have trouble breathing, they hold their breath. They hold the exact muscles that would allow them to breathe easily throughout their day. As I allowed my body to feel how I was breathing, not how I hoped to breathe, your body changes. That is the phenomenon few explore, and it is at your fingertips with specific instructions and attention to details. It is not hard to do, just different. Do it Different, Don’t fix it Feel It.

It is through this truth. I believe your body is one of the simplest and most honest places to explore because it doesn’t lie. It gives you information. When doing the Method avoid trying to work hard at telling yourself what you “should do” or imagining how to move. Know the difference between thinking about your body and feeling it.

Simply follow the easy direction. Make sure you give some time for feedback. You may not get a lot at first, because we are trained to continue in the directions we have developed. But as you make the sss sound, or feel the weight of your body, that will produce the feedback I am speaking of.

No two bodies are the same. Enjoy this amazing instrument. Go to miracleballmethod.com for more information, free videos, join classes and do it different. Discover what you may have thought impossible.

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Why Its So Hard to Feel GoodWhen most of us think about pain, we focus on the part of the body that hurts. That makes sense. If you burn your finger you’re going to attend to your finger. If you twist your ankle, you’re going to deal with what happened and take care of it. Chronic Pain is a bit different. I’m talking about the aches and pains that seem to come and go and they’re not associated with any particular thing you did. For example, things like your lower back aches, the stiffness, tight neck and shoulders, sore feet. Of course, there are many more to add to the list.

Breaking it down into three parts to improve the way you feel as a whole:

You may have had an illness or an injury. Something may have set it in motion or maybe it feels like it came out of nowhere. These physical feelings can linger, and they seem to rule your life. In fact, a lot of us do try to put some kind of narrative around these chronic aches and pains, and in some ways makes things worse because usually they’re not accurate. Its an emotional response to the discomfort. I’m not downplaying that. I did that better than most. We use these narratives as a way to solve the problem. But it actually can cause more problems. I write in my books about the Body Dialogue. Many of these thoughts are on auto pilot. But your physical body is responding to these emotions, directions, behaviors. We need to change that Dialogue. Your body will respond differently.

Another common challenge is we have SO much information. It may even be good information, but for many it simply doesn’t work. It can reinforce the narrative. It can be confusing. Think about these thoughts or emotions, along with all the information and then add in what is really happening you’re your body. In other words, do we feel our body? No we don’t. We don’t feel it in a way for it to effectively use what it does naturally, realign us, make adjustments, improve our breathing. Thoughts, and information, are different than the actual physical feeling of the body. You must break it down into parts.

Review, breaking it down.

Your emotional responses, Fear, anxiety, anger, frustration for example.
The information you may have about your body. Its your posture, discs, lack of strong core.
And your own personal experience with your body. The ability to actually feel your physical body. That’s the missing link. Don’t fix it Feel it.

Why is learning more, or trying a class so important?Classes in the Method break down the different parts I just described. Once you begin to acknowledge that, then you can work on your body. Its kind of like discovering gold. You find it buried in a stream. The good feelings are possible. Your whole body knows how to align, breathe easier and make adjustments. There’s just too much noise in the room. They are not able to do what they can do because you don’t even know the feeling.

We break down the clump of confusion and allow the body to do what it knows how to do.

Do it different:Be open minded and do something good for your body. Just like learning anything in life, there’s a learning process. It’s well worth the journey to feel good again.

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Simple Solutions for Lower Back AcheThe body is simple people are not. When it comes to many chronic aches and pains that people have there are simple solutions. Unfortunately, the pain is sometimes so big we think a solution must be equally as complex. But it’s not that way, these thoughts can complicate what the body does naturally.

Finding your leg joints:For example, a key area of our body is the leg joint, a simple joint where the leg connects to the pelvis. Foundationally it is the support for your whole body. The muscles are extremely strong in this area, they tend to get very tight, stiff, locking the pelvis into positions that put a lot of stress on the lower back.

Since most people with lower back ache want to work on their lower back, they miss a simple solution to find releif, finding the leg joint. Think of it as a hinge connecting a door to a wall. Although it has a much bigger range of motion, it is a good analogy. It you lock that hinge between the door and wall, there will be no movement. The door will not open, or you will rip the wall to get it open.

You can try something on your own, very simple to do to see if you can begin to feel the connection between your leg muscles and your lower back. We tend to use the old ways of thinking about exercise and just focus on the part we are moving. The Miracle Ball Method works through the nervous system. Your nervous system connects you to your entire body. It’s more like electricity. When you do movements begin to notice if you feel responses throughout different parts of your body.

Lie on the floor, if possible, stretch your legs out notice what kind of arch you have in your lower back, big, small, tight, anything at all. Notice other things about the way your body touches the floor. Is your lower back lifted off the floor? do you tend to hold your breath? What do you notice about your shoulders? Be specific. Remember its not about fixing but feeling.
Then gradually bend your knees, rest your feet on the floor, notice any changes through all the parts of your body that you just noticed. Then stretch your legs back out. Especially notice if your lower back begins to sink against the floor, try this a few times. Do you feel the connection between your legs and other parts of your body? DO you stop breathing? Your body will always give you feedback in one way or another.

When you want to relieve your low back, you need to make a connection to your legs by getting that sense of how you might be locking that leg joint, preventing it from lengthening your lower back as it does when the knees are bent. It is possible when your legs are stretched out or when you’re standing, that your lower back muscles stretch due to this amazing joint. There are just two options, the old way or the new things you observe. You either lengthen or lock your leg joint.
-If you don’t know where the joint is, or if you don’t know that your leg joint is being held like a fist holding on tightly to a pen or pencil, then you’re not going to be able to get the benefits to relieve the tight back muscles.

Hips on two balls is a great one to try on your own. You can go to miracle ballmethod.com and see the video of hips on the balls and try some simple solutions. Your mind will always want to interject a sense of confusion and anxiety. There’s so much information out there about the body, and that can never replace your experience with your own body.

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Rushing Part 2The Miracle Ball Method

Relieve your Pain, Reduce your Stress, and Reshape your body.

I thought about the recent Blog on rushing, and wanted to address how the Method might help. What makes the Method unique is understanding our body is giving us feedback all the time. The Method takes that feedback and uses it during the classes. But we can also use it during our day when we find ourselves rushing from job to job, or place to place.
For example, when most of us rush we begin to hold our breath, or even over breathe, which is very common. These kinds of awareness’s give our body an opportunity to make adjustments. Those improvements can be instantaneous once you realize the body doesn’t want to hold the breath, stiffen the neck, or clench the jaw, we just never notice it while we are rushing. It takes a bit of learning, but the feedback can improve you instantaneously! But you do have to acknowledge details. Each of us has our own unique ways of making ourselves stressed and miserable.

Feedback:I think the best thing I discovered when first doing the method, is feedback. No one had ever explained that to me. Because most of us are “thinking” about our body, that feedback doesn’t happen. We tend to just do one movement after another after another. We figure the more we move the better. But more of something ineffectual doesn’t really help you. You can’t think the body you have to feel it and then get more specific with what you feel.

Feedback is multilayered, it’s your bodies own alignment system adjusting. Think about that, your own body knows how to adjust you into a better place. But it can’t if you are “holding” it in your stuck place.

The Devil is in the details!I would argue in every other thing we do in life we are very specific. We know when we like a certain food, what ingredients taste good. Then we may want to cook it ourselves and get more detailed in how long to cook and how much of each ingredient. There are so many variables. If you like to eat, that can be very motivating. I love to move, without pain, so doing the Method was extremely motivating. It’s also very easy to do once you understand a bit of directions.

When most of us think of feeling better, we want to “relax, release, let go”. We think, these muscles are tight that’s why I hurt. In some ways that is true. But it’s only the tip of the iceberg. That is why so many get a great massage, meditate, and feel better. But they really don’t acknowledge physically what’s different, and how it got that way. As a result, the body returns to its habits because it wasn’t replaced with anything new. You liked the feeling, just don’t know how you got there. You liked the meal, just don’t know how to make it….

Similarly with your body, you need the physical language the details, to create more feeling and then get different responses. Your nervous system will then use this information, almost in a miraculous way, to make those adjustments. It will lower your stress and help you to move with ease. Those are the results when you let your body give you feedback. If those are your objectives, that’s what you will get, temporarily. Then your body will gradually return to its previous stress responses, ways of moving and the same backaches, tight shoulders and poor breathing will return.

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RushingThe Miracle Ball Method

Relieve your Pain, Reduce your Stress, and Reshape your body.

Rushing is something most of us take for granted as a part of everyday life. It certainly can’t be as bad as chronic stress, poor diet, drug addition, alcoholism, and all those things we think of as obviously bad for our health. Its just a part of life.

But if rushing is simply a part of our lives, patience which is said to be a virtue, is probably not. For most of us rushing is somewhat like a tornado. It has a fierce power that draws in whatever is around it and pulls it along throughout our day. If we are in traffic, getting things done at home or at work, standing in line at a store, or being on hold for hours with the cable company, all these things are slowing us down. Like that tornado we have a direction, and nothing is going to get in our way. We carry all these things with us as we go through our day. They also affect us when we think we are resting or at least wanting to rest.

Anxiety, Sleeplessness, chronic pain.It may be subtle. I’m just trying to get my work done. I’m a good person, it was that driver that cut me off, I am so angry now. I’m going to cut someone else off. The receptionist better hurry up, I can’t wait here, I have things to do. Its always someone else. This underlying current may be happening so fast, we don’t notice it. But our neck is stiff, breathing is shallow. The lower back begins to ache, and our muscles get tighter and tighter. Sleeping is difficult. I simply can’t let go and relax into sleep. We rarely make the connection in any significant way, that rushing builds and builds and so do the negative responses on our muscle tension, and breathing. This in turn effects chronic pain, stress, and a variety of health issues.

What do we do?Most of us treat the problem. It’s my back, my tight neck and shoulders, the stress in my life. All of that is true. But I would ask is it possible to do the number of things we try to do in a day? And if it is, is it worth the toll it takes on our lives. We try to “relax and take it easy”. I think of rushing as a habit that is a highway of thoughts going throughout our days and into years. We are constantly in a state of agitation and simply don’t even know it. Its like those children’s toys, the tops that you spin. You don’t see the movement behind it because it’s turning so fast.

My mom used to visit me. The older she got, the less amount of time she spent visiting. She was always on her way somewhere. I knew she had nowhere to go. There was a constant need to rush on to the next thing and get there. Her body was spinning like that top, you couldn’t see it. But she was gone, on to the next thing. She was now letting all the years of rushing, to something, or away from something, take over. There was little peace.

For me it has always been recognizing the connection to my physical body. My excess tension is less about the deep meaning of life, as the cumulative pressure I am putting on myself. When I do the Method, I am not looking to stop the muscle tension, breathe deeply or relax. That never worked for me. I am not even trying not to rush. It felt like another chore.

I allow my body to experience the results of the way I live. I feel the shallow breathing. I sense how hard I am holding my neck and locking my hips. And as I clearly give myself time to feel it, my body then can begin to change. Your body cannot change what it doesn’t feel. Your body/brain connection is so powerful it makes connections when you do.

It doesn’t matter how much you tell yourself to “breathe deeply” or “relax” you will be fighting what you have trained it to do. Acknowledge what you feel and feel what the body does.

Don’t Fix it Feel ItBodies are very accommodating. It may not take a two-week vacation. The body works by feeling it. We are confused to think its about making it something different. The tornado is still there. You can make it what you want, its too powerful to ignore. Notice how you breathe, the way you are holding. Someone in another state is not holding your neck and shoulders, you are. You don’t need to make yourself breathe, that alone is stressful. People need to stop holding their breath. The body knows how to breathe.

Enjoy the gift that you can feel it. The miraculous nervous system will begin to sense the breath as small as it is. Begin to do the method. 5 minutes might be all you need and that awareness during your day that you are in this life with a body, that is giving you a lot of feedback. When rushing, you cannot feel the feedback.

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Muscle Tension is a Good ThingMany of us do a dance between straining our muscles to work and then relaxing them completely. We think, if I didn’t have so much tension in my neck and shoulder, or lower back, then I would feel better. That is probably true, but no tension is not good either. It can be just as responsible for chronic aches and pains in the body as those areas that are stiff all the time. Its probably more the areas of your body you don’t feel, that are controlling what you do feel.

Discover your Body Dialogue to improve muscle tension?In my last Blog, Beyond Relax, Release and Let Go, I was leading us to what I call the Body Dialogue. When we think “too tight” or “relax” we really only give our muscle tension two options. They are each on different ends of the spectrum. Tension at a 10, very high, or then down to a 1, very low. Its all the levels of tension in between that allow your nervous system, the part of your brain that controls movement, to coordinate you to move freely without pain. Give your nervous system a “sense” of feeling new parts of your body. The more parts of your body you move the easier it is to move without strain. Our Body Dialogue can help with that. Think of it this way, if you move a piano, isn’t it easier if 5 people are helping, than if you are alone?

There is always a communication, or what I call Body Dialogue, happening moment to moment between our body and brain. Our physical feelings are always directing us, and we are always directing our physical feelings. This is not something we are meant to focus on. It’s like blinking, or the way a cut heals. You don’t focus on it. When it comes to moving our bodies, and healing, there is an underlying “training” that has been going on in all our lives directing how we move. The Body Dialogue asks you to simply notice what you feel.

Don’t Fix it, Feel It!Some might say “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” , but however you want to describe it, we have been adapting to ways of moving throughout our lifetimes. When we do the Method, we begin to acknowledge that Dialogue and that gives the brain/body connection choices it can use to “do it different”. Its really that simple. Its not fixing, as most of us are taught, its feeling.

With The Miracle Ball Method, the “new” feelings that you experience will allow your body to make those adjustments I talked about in Beyond Relax Release and Let GO. These adjustments are not arbitrary, the body knows where balance and alignment are. But if we stay “stuck” in the unconscious Body Dialogue, then we never really free ourselves into the possibilities our body holds.

What if you already do breathing techniques when you exercise or meditate, is that the same?I believe exercise , meditation, breathing exercises are all good, especially while you are doing them. But that unconscious Body Dialogue, will return if we don’t change it. I am not talking about fixing your breathing but becoming more intimately connected to your breathing. You don’t have to make it stronger, just notice how you breathe from time to time. Since you are breathing all the time, you can do it anywhere, and it only takes a few seconds.

You might be surprised muscles are very integral to breathing as well. If we don’t acknowledge the way we breathe, and the muscles involved, you will still be controlled by the man behind the curtain.

There are only two options, you either hang on to the old, or you begin to feel what the body can do. The result is a completely different experience. this makes moving easier, exercise more effective, and allows you to feel more at ease in your everyday life.

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The Flip Side of Release, Relax, and Let GoMiracle Ball Method: Relieve your Pain, Reduce your Stress, Reshape your Body.

Yesterday I was teaching a gentleman who is very high energy, and at the end of class he said, “I feel so relaxed”, Whenever I teach a class, there is a common response people have from “letting go”. Those are their words. I hear them often. I avoid those words when I teach. I want you to build a vocabulary of physical feelings.

I remind people, once the body stops holding it doesn’t end there. It shifts to the right places. These new experiences take the pressure off the lower back, improve your posture, and help you to freely move. When you get off the floor, or stand up, just notice what you feel. Take a walk, do your favorite stretches, is it different? Yes, relaxing is pleasurable, but there is a flip side.

If you can acknowledge what that is, then you can use it to move freely without the aches and pains so many of us live with. That is the flip side. Your body doesn’t just relax, it adjusts to balance and alignment. It’s always trying to go there; we keep in stuck even when we exercise. If you just simply let go, then you return to the habits of movement you are familiar with. Unknowingly your body returns to how you have trained it.

Last week I wrote about when exercise doesn’t work. I don’t want to imply that exercise is not good for our body. But, if exercise did all we wanted, then there would be one exercise for low back pain, one exercise for carpal tunnel, here’s the exercise for strong abs and better posture. And that would work for everyone. But that is not the case.

We feel good while we exercise and then the low back stiffens or the knee pain returns. Some of us think we must be doing something wrong. Why does that person seem to get what they want, and I don’t? The missing link is exercise doesn’t change your body it’s the feeling of exercise. Its letting your body give you feedback, and make adjustments because you know your “instrument”. No guitarist would walk on stage and begin to play an out of tune guitar. But we do that with our bodies all the time.

The Good news is there is a flip side to Relaxing and Releasing.If you release those tight hamstrings, relax your neck and shoulders, don’t end it there. That’s like getting the appetizer but missing the main course. Once you begin to acknowledge with just a little more specificity what physically changed, you can take what you feel on the ball when you are off the ball. You can do that while you are exercising or simply walking down the street.

A little homework

This week if you are using the balls, or releasing and relaxing, take notice if you feel different afterwards when you move. Just acknowledging something, anything, you might be surprised what happens! You begin to build a Body Dialogue different from the habits that might be keeping you stuck. Your body will continue to take you in the right direction. The possibilities are endless.

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