Have you listened to your body health cues lately? I don’t mean the cues that your stomach is growling telling you that you are hungry. Of course, we all understand simple cues like a yawn. Specifically, tuning into your body cues can help you to improve your health. In other words, think of it like a tune-up. Just like we maintenance our cars, we need to tune-up our health.
The Morning Tune In
To demonstrate how I tune into my body health, I sit on a yoga mat cross-legged. If you don’t have a yoga mat, sitting on a chair with your feet flat on the floor will do just as well. Place your hands on your knees and close your eyes. Then, as you breathe in through your nose and exhale from you mouth, allow your mind to focus on your body. Breathe and exhale three times and take a mental inventory of aches/pains or other physical feelings. For example, perhaps an area of the body is tingling, has tightness or a warm sensation. This tune in may take some practice, but the idea is to learn to block outside distractions while centering the attention on your body’s health.
Finding the source of Discomfort
By all means, if your meditation reveals a more alarming pain, certainly seek medical help to improve your body’s health. Physical therapy can be a great choice to work on healing physical pain. But, sometimes we don’t need to go that route. Having said that, I primarily use the tune in meditation to slow down my mind and detect where I have aches. Once found, my favorite go to for healing are the meridian exercises on Brain Education TV. Similarly, Yoga Journal: Poses by Benefit has a wonderful library of yoga information if yoga is your thing.
A better body for the long haul
Building strength and flexibility is the goal to building a strong, healthy body. Of course, we all want to remain strong as we grow older. So, the sooner we tune into our body cues, the better off we will be as we age. Ultimately, beginning the good habit of listening to your body will lead to better health so you can work on building strength.
