3 Brain Sensitizing Exercises that Help Your Body Relax and Return to Balance

Opening to Subtle Energy

In my previous blog post, I introduced you to the basic tenants of Brain Sensitizing, the first step of Brain Education. As you may recall, appreciation of the brain, opening of the senses, and fundamentals of energy are emphasized in this step. Although it’s best to study with an instructor to understand this step in depth, it’s possible to practice some basic things on your own, so I have provided you with a few easy-to-follow exercises below.

Not only are these exercises easy, they provide something that everyone seems to be looking for these days—stress relief. This is important because stress truly has become a problem today. So many people today spend almost their entire lives stressed out, rushing from one activity to the next and constantly worrying about what the future will bring. Researchers have linked this kind of constant stress to all sorts of medical conditions—such as heart disease, auto-immune diseases, high blood pressure, and digestive issues—so it is important to learn how to control your own stress response.

Thanks to your amazing brain, it is not that hard to bring your body back into balance. Just like your body has an automatic system for creating the stress response (sympathetic nervous system), it has a system for bringing it back into a state of equilibrium (parasympathetic nervous system). These exercises support the later, allowing the body to relax and return to optimal functioning. Use them daily to help you release stress at any time during the day.

Whole-Body Tapping: Awaken Your Energy Pathways

As you may recall from my previous post about Brain Education Step 1, there are twelve meridians, or energy pathways, which carry energy through the body and to the major organs of the body. It’s not necessary for you to know the location of all the meridians, but it is important for you to keep these pathways open. This exercise, which involves tapping the entire body with the open palm, helps to stimulate the pathways and release tension from the muscles, which may be blocking the energy. By following the order described below, you can work with the natural circulation of the body to awaken energy flow in the body.

1. Form your fingers into a cup and lightly tap over your head and face.
2. Stretch out your left arm with your palm facing up. Take your right hand and, starting from the left shoulder, pat rhythmically downward all the way to the left hand.
3. Then turn your left hand over and with your right hand, pat your way back up to the left shoulder again. Repeat tapping with the left hand and on the right arm.
4. Pat your chest with both hands several times, breathing deeply and exhaling completely. Moving on from your chest, pat your ribs, abdomen, and sides. With both hands, pat the area just below the right rib cage, where your liver is located, and concentrate on radiating positive, clear energy to the liver.
5. With both hands, tap the area just below the left rib cage, where your stomach is located, and concentrate on bringing healing energy to your stomach.
6. Bend over slightly from the waist and pat your lower back (on both sides), where your kidneys are located, and move up, tapping as far as your hands can reach. Then tap your way down to your buttocks.
7. Starting from your buttocks, pat your way down the backs of your legs to your ankles.
8. From the ankles, start patting your way up the fronts of your legs until you reach your upper thighs.
9. From your upper thighs, pat your way down the outsides of your legs to your ankles.
10. From the ankles, pat your way up the insides of your legs to your upper thighs. Finish by striking your lower abdomen about 20 times.

Abdominal Breathing: Retrain Your Body to Breathe Properly

Breathing is something we do naturally all the time, but unfortunately we often neglect to do it well. Habitual stress causes us to breathe shallowly and incompletely. I often tell my students to learn how to breathe like a baby again, because babies have not yet forgotten how to breathe well. If you watch a baby while he or she is sleeping, you will see that his or her entire chest and abdomen expands and contracts fully with each breath. Adults, on the other hand, often only breathe into the neck or upper chest at best. This breathing exercise helps you retrain your body to breathe properly again—all the way down into the abdomen.

1. Lie down on your back on a hard and warm surface.
2. Squeeze your legs tightly together and then completely relax them. They will part naturally, about the width of one foot. Your angle of your feet should be about 30 to 45 degrees from the floor.
3. Place your palms on your lower abdomen. Keep the elbows resting comfortably on the floor. If your elbows lift off the floor, allow the hands to slide down the sides of the abdomen until elbows rest on the floor.
4. Relax your body completely, especially the upper body, chest, and shoulders.
5. Curl your tailbone gently up, letting the lower back touch the floor as much as possible. As your tailbone tucks in, imagine creating a bowl in your lower abdomen to collect energy, trying your best not to tense your legs to do so. You will automatically feel slight tension in your lower abdomen.
6. Close your eyes and focus on the energy flow inside your body. Breathe deep down to the lower abdomen.

Energy Awareness Meditation: Bring Everything Back into Focus

The stress-relieving benefits of meditation have been well documented. It quiets the mind and helps bring everything back into focus. This meditation has the added benefit of awakening a sense you may not know you have—the ability to sense energy. Yes, you do have that ability to sense energy, but you must calm and focus your mind enough to feel it. If you practice this exercise regularly, you will find that your awareness of energy grows greater over time.

1. Sit comfortably on the floor or on a chair and straighten your back.
2. Place your hands on your knees, with your palms facing up, and close your eyes. Relax your body, especially your neck and shoulders. Relax your mind. Inhale deeply; let go of any remaining tension while exhaling. (Soft meditative music in the background may be helpful.)
3. Raise your hands slowly to chest level, with your palms facing each other but not touching. First concentrate on any sensation you may feel between your palms. At first, you may only feel the temperature of your hands.
4. Now create about 2 to 4 inches of space between your hands and concentrate fully on the space. Imagine that your shoulders, arms, wrists, and hands are floating in a vacuum, weightless.
5. Pull your hands apart and push them closer together again as you maintain your concentration. You may feel a tingling sensation, like that of electricity, a magnetic attraction pulling your hands toward each other or pushing them apart. You may even feel as if you were holding a soft cotton ball between your hands or moving slowly through warm water. All these feelings are manifestations of your energy flow.
6. When the sensation becomes more obvious, pull your hands farther apart or push them closer together. The sensation will not leave you; it will expand and become stronger.
7. Breathe in and out slowly and deeply 3 times.
8. Rub your hands together briskly until they are warm; then gently caress your eyes, face, neck, and chest.

A Simple Self-Care Kit

While these are only three of the many exercises that make up the first step of Brain Education—Brain Sensitizing, they are some of the most fundamental and most effective. You could look at them like an abbreviated encapsulation of step one. The most important thing they provide is an experience of energy, allowing you to feel energy and to improve the flow of energy through your body. If you use them regularly and with sincerity, you will feel an expansion of your being as you open and connect yourself to the world of energy. And if you can do that, health and happiness will come more easily than you ever imagined.