There are some things that we can start to do to run the energy through our body that will allow us to feel more stable, to feel less emotional. If we feel like we’re upset about something and it’s reeling out of control, and we need to stabilize, there are some things that we can do from an energy flow standpoint in the body to have a triage; when you’re in trouble, do this, do this, do this. It will stabilize you instead of just going on and on, and ruminating about the story, and getting distracted for the rest of your day because you’re all bent out of shape about something and not being able to focus on the things that you need to focus on to meet your responsibilities in life, or to show up for work the way you need to, or to show up for your children the way you want to, to show up for yourself the way you have to.
1. Root lock technique for embodied living
There are a couple of little techniques that I’d love to share with people if that would be helpful. There’s a practice that’s considered locking the energy at the root of your spine, which is important because we have a tendency to live up here in our heads. We have a tendency to be constantly ruminating about things and figuring things out. Our energy field gets pulled up out of the body in a great way, and it starts to just be all about up in here. What we first have to do is anchor it back in the body. When you do, you will immediately feel more comfortable in the world. If you’re ever driving down the road and you’re all up in your story, and talking about things that you want to say, and all of that “I should have said this to them,” and all that.
Then if you’ll just do this next thing I’m going to teach, you won’t be able to get a good upset going like you had just a minute ago; it’s totally going to mess with your upset addiction. If you happen to be addicted to being angry, you’re going to have to find a new addiction. I’ll help you with that, as well. The way we do this is by contracting the muscles at the base of the pelvis in the pelvic bowl. It’s like a Kegel exercise if anyone’s familiar with that; if you’re not familiar with that, it’s the tissues and the perennial right at the base of the pelvis if you squeeze them together and try to lift them upward toward your heart space.
It’s an uplifting or a squeezing of those muscles deep, deep in the pelvis. If you can’t really get your mind wrapped around that or feel any contraction in that area, don’t worry. There are some other things that we can do that will get you in the neighborhood. Then later, as you continue to practice it, we’ll refine and refine and refine for you. So, don’t worry if you can’t get this sensation going today, but the things that you can do on top of that would be to contract your lower abdominal muscles like below the naval. If you were not going to do a sit-up, but if you were going to lay on the floor and raise your legs, you would contract the muscles below the belly button in order to do that. If you can track those abdominal muscles, and you can track the gluteal muscles, the muscles that have the buttocks, the sitz bones, and everything in there, squeeze everything from the waist down; basically, you’ll get it.
You’ll get going in the right direction. If you’re squeezing all those outer muscles, now try to squeeze inside from there, like the rings of a tree if you were going inward toward the center. You’re contracting the muscles underneath, inside from the abdominal muscles and the gluteal muscles. Try to contract that and then relax those abdominal muscles and the outer gluteal muscles, but keep something quickened in there, some kind of pressure. You’re in the neighborhood right there. The more you work with that over a period of days and weeks, you will be able to, in an instant, just right there, Mula Bandha is what it’s called. It’s an Eastern term. It means “root lock.” It means, pull your energy in your body and claim it for yourself. So often, we try to make a decision with our minds.
If it’s not an anchored decision, it’s not integrated. We haven’t embodied it, and it just floats up and out of us again. We have to anchor, and anchoring in the core of the body is going to make this easier. So, we’re going to stack that up with a couple of other things. Root lock is number one. Mula Bandha. It’s fun to say; it’s like, “hula,” and it’s spelled M-U-L-A. “Bandha” is B-A-N-D , like “band,” and then “ha.” That’s the root lock.
2. Hug your heart from the inside
Then, the next thing you’re going to do is squeeze your loving, compassionate heart in the center of your chest; not your heart muscle, but in the center of your chest. Just on the inside, give it a hug; just hug it on the inside.
You’re not using your arms. You’re not doing anything. You’re just squeezing your heart on the inside. What that does is, it brings you in. They’re like, “Wow, I never did that before. I never did that on purpose.” If you can’t make that happen, and sometimes people will say, “I’m trying to squeeze my heart. I don’t know what you’re talking about; I can’t feel it.” So, contract the pectoralis muscles, and on the back, pull the shoulder blades together and down; pull them down. Contract the deltoid muscles. Pectoralis muscles. Now go inside from there. Toward the middle, from there, and try to do something to stabilize that, and then start releasing the outer bigger muscles, and keep something squeezed in there just a little bit. If you can’t get either one of these muscle groups to work that I’m talking about, if you lay on the floor and raise your legs 50 times tonight before you go to bed, tomorrow morning, when you wake up, you’re going to feel the muscles that I’m talking about, regarding those abdominal muscles.
If you can’t get this heart to squeeze, go on a bench and do some bench presses with some weights; lift something heavy. And then, if it’s not one bar but it’s separate weights, whatever you have to do to stabilize those weights, you have to get real steady in the core of your body. That’s going to get you in the neighborhood. you do those two things, this root lock, and squeeze the heart, and then there’s one more thing. If everybody would just roll your eyes up, you can feel some tension behind your eyes. In the middle of the head, there’s tension because of those muscles that you’re raising your eyes.
3. Breathe through the imaginary line
Now, relax your eyes back down to neutral so that you don’t get a headache or anything, but just gently, periodically, raise your eyes up like that and feel the tension behind them; memorize that place in the center of your head.
Then, bring your eyes back to neutral so you don’t get too much energy going right up there, but imagine a line from that area of the tension in the center of your head, down through your throat, into this heart squeezed place. Then, a line that continues down through your solar plexus and into this Mula Bandha root lock place, like a plumb line that you’re just dropping down through the center of your body. If you keep squeezing those tissues and memorizing that line, the last thing we’re going to do now is taking a breath from above your head and imagine that you’re breathing through that line, through that tube right down through the center of the head, through the throat, through this squeezed heart, and into the heart, and then exhale from the heart down through the belly, down through this root lock, and into the earth. This line of breathing, if you practice that, you’re going to start moving energy through your body. You won’t believe that simple thing has helped so many people get in their bodies instead of living in their heads.
When we’re living in our body and not in our head, everything changes. You will start to notice that you give different answers to questions. You will start to notice that you have different ideas that occur to you when you’re in the shower. When you’re driving down the road, when you’re just walking in the park, different ideas will occur to you. There are many, many, many, many practices we can add on top of that, which I do in the coursework that I teach, which is called the “energy codes,” but this is enough to get you started in a whole different direction because everything is made of energy. You are made of energy, and that energy is trying to flow through this system in an organized fashion, but we’ve been living in a super chaotic, rapid-moving mind, kind of way.