If you consciously get your body into different postures, you can elevate your consciousness.

EASING PAIN WITH COUNTERSTRAIN “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” — CHESTY PULLER I’ve had every kind of bodywork you can imagine, and it all has some value. At the right time, a skilled chiropractor or masseuse is priceless. Most kinds of bodywork are based on the theory that pushing on tissue — massaging or kneading it — is fundamental to getting it to relax. So what if I were to tell you that the secret to easing pain lies in something as simple as some gentle repositioning? You might think: “Tony, that’s ridiculous.

through the world’s body, liberating the knots of accumulated pain.

To take this posture itself is the purpose of our practice.

If you have three to ten minutes, try progressive relaxation, in which you focus systematically on different parts of your body, working either from the feet to the head or vice versa. Depending on how much time you have, you might focus on large sections of your body — e.g., left leg, right leg — or on much smaller units, such as left foot, right foot, left ankle, right ankle, and so on.

The next step is Asana, posture. A series of exercises, physical and mental, is to be gone through every day, until certain higher states are reached. Therefore it is quite necessary that we should find a posture in which we can remain long. That posture which is the easiest for one should be the one chosen.

Just let me get moving, I thought, and the pumping blood will shake the stiffness and pain from my back and feet.

simply by doing one of three poses related to power for only two minutes a day, you can create a 20 per cent increase in the confidence hormone, testosterone, and a 25 per cent decrease in the stress hormone, cortisol.7 The so-called ‘power poses’ are a quick and easy way to feel more powerful, says the report.

I have very bad posture.

For the solution to chronic pain may lie more in what goes on around us than in what is going on inside us.

that I find most useful are: kneeling hip flexor stretch, swimmer stretch, Cossack stretch, hip external rotation stretch, reverse sleeper stretch, couch stretch, downward dog, and the cow face pose.

Healing from pain is a choice. You have to consciously decide that you deserve to feel free, that you deserve to let go of the weight that has been holding you down for too long.

Mindfulness can play a big role in transforming our experience with pain & other difficulties; it allows us to recognize the authenticity of the distress & yet not be overwhelmed by it.

Cuddy’s research showed that just assuming “power poses” or postures of high power (think Wonder Woman with her hands on her hips and legs firmly planted on the ground; or the guy in your office leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, elbows out wide — you know the one) increased testosterone (the dominance hormone) by 20%, while simultaneously reducing cortisol (the major stress hormone) by 25%. The impact of this biochemical change immediately transforms your willingness to face fears and take risks.