How to Move Your Body to Change Your Mind

Create a new Fabulous Body and Life story & move into Body Confidence, Wellbeing & Vitality!

Your body is the storyteller of your life. Within your muscles, tissues, blood and bone there is a wisdom that is timeless, ancient and full of knowing. The body cannot lie – it simply tells it as it is.

Our body reflects and mirrors all that we are and all that we have ever been. It is the story keeper of the past and also the doorway to our best and brightest future. It is also the messenger of the moment as it is continually speaking to us in the forms of feelings, insights, sensations, and textures (lightness, heaviness, expansive, contracted, cold, warm, dense, roughness, fluidity and rigidity).

When you feel low or unhappy, your body contracts in on itself. It closes down as it seeks to protect you from what hurts. Equally, when you are joyful and happy, your body opens up like a flower. It expands as it seeks to express more joy and freedom. This is the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle language of the body).

The body speaks your story

Your body is continually expressing and telling your story, right from before you were born. Everything that we have experienced from our earliest moments are stored and felt within our body. The story that others told us about who we were also becomes part of our early body beliefs. For example, I was always told that I was too big – too exuberant, too much! This was reflected in the unfolding years of my own life as I unconsciously sought to dampen down my energy, my life force and shrink my size. We begin to “wear” these core beliefs that have shaped our early destiny (both positive and negative) and these are carried energetically in the body through our physical habits, posture, breathing and sense of aliveness. Essentially, the body is a transmitter of the energy you carry through the thoughts you believe.

However, much of the time we are not aware of the story that is being told. This is key, because when you realize that every single movement you make in your life has a meaning, you can begin to pay attention to what your body wants, where your life (story) is changing and how to create more health, abundance, body confidence and wellbeing.

Make the mind movement connection

Every single response in our body has a meaning and a message. When your shoulders rise in tension or you find yourself grinding your teeth, your body is giving you clear signs that there is a sense of unease, resistance, pain or unhelpful thoughts at play. However, because we are living in our heads so much of the time, we fail to notice these whispers of energetic clues of dis-ease from our body.

However, when you begin to recognize that you have the ability to speak to your body in a way that it understands (through movement, feeling and embodied imagination) you can create a new life and body story through this conscious awareness.

Wear a new body (and life story)

The amazing thing is that when you consciously choose to change your beliefs, perceptions and the way that you move, you create a new body story and therefore a new body reality. One that is based on joy, vitality, body confidence, health, freedom and wellbeing.

When you change the way you move, you activate and access a new neural and body pathway that can transform your experience of your life, health & wellbeing.

Try this simple exercise for a day and see what happens

Make a decision that you will open all doors, car doors, windows, bags, packaging etc. with your non-dominant hand. Notice what happens and how easy or hard it is. Just by engaging in this simple (but not necessarily easy) exercise, you begin to shake up old patterns and habits that have resided in your body-mind for years. The mind “wakes” up as it tries to adjust to your new ways of doing things and as a result, you are living more in the moment.

The ultimate movement that banishes feeling depressed!

There are certain movements that simply promote joy, body confidence, freedom and wellbeing. For example, try this wonderful exercise to help banish depression and negative thinking. Sit (or stand) tall, with your spine long. Raise both arms high into the air to make a high “V” shape above your head. Stretch your hands and wiggle your fingers. Lift your head and look upwards as you smile broadly. Feel that your heart area is broadening and opening and say out loud, “I’m depressed!” The first thing that people do when they try this exercise is laugh! The words “I’m depressed” simply don’t match with the body posture. This is the extraordinary power of the body in action. It is extremely hard to feel depressed in that position. So, if you are looking to make changes in your own life, health, body confidence and wellbeing, begin with the way that you inhabit and move your body.

For me, more than anything else, this kind of conscious movement helps me to connect with all of who I am. When I return to the rise and fall of my breath, when I stretch or dance or go out walking I am guided “home” again to the truth of my authenticity and what it means to be fully and joyfully alive!

Article written by: Astrid Longhurst

About the Author: