Nature's Field - July 28, 2011
GRACEFULNESS
Have you ever watched a wild animal, such as a deer, moving? If you have, you may have noticed the easy and effortless way they moved. We call this spontaneous and free movement gracefulness.
One can observe this same freedom of movement in young children at play. As they run, jump, skip, laugh, bounce and dance, children flow with the same easy, joyous movement.
Contrast this with the movement of most adult human beings. Sit in a public place, like a shopping mall and watch the people as they pass. Notice how rigid and stilted many of them move. Their movement lacks the natural fluidity and gracefulness that you see in animals and children.
Life is a function of energy and energy creates motion. A person who is full of life is healthy and a person who is healthy flows with life. When life flows freely and naturally there is a grace about it that can be both felt and observed.
Resistance is the opposite of gracefulness. Resistance creates tension and this tension shows up in many forms in the body—high blood pressure, constipation, cramps, headaches, chest pain, asthma and much more. There are physical causes for this excessive tension, including deficiencies of nutrients like magnesium, lack of sleep and high levels of stress hormones.
But, this tension is more than just physical; it’s also emotional. The inability to flow with our own feelings, resisting the messages we receive from our heart, is also part of the reason we are so stiff, rigid and awkward in our movements. This emotional tension also creates friction in our relationship with others, so that we cannot be gracious and flowing in our interactions with them.
Whether the cause is physical or emotional, relaxing this excessive tension will improve our health and our sense of wellbeing. So, the purpose of this article is provide you with some basic strategies to help you relax and rediscover gracefulness.
Herbs to Help Us Unwind
Let’s start with some physical remedies we can use to reduce tension and create more grace and flow in our bodies and in our lives. The first remedy I’d like to discuss is one of my favorite herbs—lobelia.
Lobelia has been called the intelligent herb because it seems to work on so many different health problems. It’s been used for coughs, colds, flu, asthma, muscle cramps, labor pain, headaches, aches and pains of all kinds, COPD, passing kidney stones and much more. To the beginning herbalist, it’s puzzling how one herb can “cure” so many different problems. However, as a person grows in their understanding of the body and healing, the answer becomes simple. Lobelia doesn’t work on many health problems. It only works on one—tension.
Lobelia is a powerful antispasmodic. Its healing powers primarily center on its ability to reduce tension and promote flow. Thus, it helps the body discharge toxins in coughs, colds and flu by promoting flow. It aids asthma and COPD because it relaxes and opens air passages. Its relaxing properties enable it to relieve cramps, ease tension headaches and relieve other types of pain caused by tense muscles.
Lobelia’s “cure-all” reputation demonstrates how many health problems are caused by this lack of grace, this tension in our being. You can read more about lobelia here.
Lobelia is one of many herbs that relieve tension. Blue vervain has also been attributed with “cure-all” abilities, and it, too, reduces tension. Unlike lobelia, blue vervain is more of a tonic and restorative. It is an excellent remedy for people who have burned themselves out with intense activity. Activity is wonderful, but when our efforts are too in-TENSE, they don’t flow with gracefulness and ease. Instead, our work if filled with exhausting and debilitating tension. Blue vervain helps us work in a more relaxed and free flowing manner. You can also read more about blue vervain.
Other remedies that reduce tension and help us flow more gracefully through life include black cohosh, kava kava and crampbark. You can learn more about the specific qualities of these remedies the upcoming webinar on Herbs for the Nervous System. Click here to register.
Several years ago, I helped Nature’s Sunshine put together a formula called Cramp Relief. This combination of antispasmodic nervines was targeted at women with menstrual cramps, but it’s useful for any kind of cramping tension in the body, including adult colic, cramps after exercise and tension headaches. Cramp Relief is our featured combination this week.
Other Physical Remedies for Tension
Magnesium deficiency, which also contributes to muscle tension, is a widespread problem. Probably 70% of the population suffers from a shortage of magnesium. Magnesium deficiency contributes to insomnia, trembling, nervousness, edginess, cramping, tension, headaches, constipation and other problems related to tension. People who suffer from these problems should consider adding 800 to 1,000 mg of Magnesium Complex daily to their supplement program.
Deep breathing, mediation and exercises that involve stretching like yoga, can increase flexibility and restore gracefulness to the body. Many Americans push too hard in exercise, like they push too hard in life. This creates too much tension in their bodies, which isn’t really good for health. The flowing movements of Oriental exercises like Tai Chi, not only build muscle, they help muscles to move in coordinated grace and flow. So, if you carry a lot of tension in your body, try some of these Oriental forms of exercise.
Emotionally Releasing Tension
In my book, The Heart’s Key to Health, Happiness and Success, I wrote, “The spiritual quality of grace is directly linked to uninhibited flow of movement in the body. A gracious person is a graceful person, meaning their movement through life flows in a natural and uninhibited way. To live in a state of grace is to live in innocence, without shame or guilt.”
From a very early age, most of us have been plummeted with guilt and shame. We were told, “don’t drool, don’t cry, stop jumping up and down, don’t pee, don’t sweat, don’t bounce on the furniture” and so forth. As a result, we learned to tense our bodies, trying to control and inhibit our natural desire to move and flow with life.
Instead of learning to channel our energy and passion, we were taught to suppress, control and even deny it. Thus, most of us are deeply ashamed of natural body functions and emotions. This burden of shame over simply being human causes many of us to move through life without grace—stiffly, awkwardly, cautiously and in-TENSE-ly.
I learned about the connection between grace and gracefulness from Alexander Lowen, a body centered psychiatrist, who wrote numerous books on body-centered psychology. He helped me understand the mind-heart-body connection and realize how much tension and pain I was storing in my body.
Alexander Lowen is no longer with us, but there is a foundation carrying on his work. Their website (www.lowenfoundation.com) has some short video clips of Dr. Lowen talking about his work. I’d encourage you to watch them all (they’re very short), but in particular, I recommend watching Culture is not a Body Culture, If You Lose Contact with Your Body and Feeling is Where Bioenergetics is At.
In addition to listening to what Dr. Lowen is saying I want you to watch him. These clips were recorded when he was in his 90s. How many 90 year olds have you seen that animated, that alert and that filled with life? This alone testifies to the power of what he is saying. He is walking proof of the truth that if you discover and release the emotional issues locked into the tension in your body, you will be healthier and happier.
I’ve seen this happen, in both me and my clients. When you release the emotional tension you’ve been sitting on, the body shifts, you feel more alive and you move with greater ease and grace.
This is why emotional healing cannot be separated from physical healing and why I’m shifting my emphasis away from just working on the physical towards helping people to understand the emotional and energetic issues that are behind what’s going on in the physical realm.
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