How would you like to refresh your energies  in just five minutes, just as you refresh your internet browser?

Daily life can quickly scramble your energy, send it flowing the wrong way, and block the flow of your meridian and lymphatic systems. These disruptions lead to adverse effects such as poor concentration, fatigue, fuzzy thinking, and when the disruptions become chronic they may result in illness.

Donna Eden has distilled her extensive knowledge of Energy Medicine into a 5 minute routine which will unscramble your energies, relieve stress, boost your energy, help you function better, and perhaps nip illness in the bud.

In this 8 minute video Donna demonstrates her 5 Minute Energy Routine, which comprises six techniques. With a little practice, you’ll be refreshing your energies in just 5 minutes, and like me won’t want to miss a day!

You can do the techniques in any order.

You can focus on the techniques you feel will particularly help you.

This video alone is enough for you to learn the routine.  If you’d like to know more, read on…

The techniques in detail

For the whole routine:

• Breathe deeply: in through your nose, and out through your mouth.
• Massage points firmly. Sore points indicate blocks, so you may want to spend longer on them.

1. The Three Thumps

To get your energy flowing in the right direction, energise you, and boost your immune system.

• While breathing deeply, thump, tap or massage: K27, Thymus & Spleen points several times each.

See Donna teaching The Three Thumps:  Part 1: K27 &  Thymus; Part 2:  Spleen

2. The Cross Crawl

To think more clearly and improve coordination.

• Exaggerated march on the spot, say 20 times.

See Donna teaching The Cross Crawl.

3. The Wayne Cook Posture

To unscramble your energies.

• Place one leg across the other knee, hold your ankle and foot and take 6 deep breaths as you lift your body and legs. Put your legs down.
• Form your hands into church pose, and repeat the breathing and lifting.
• See the variation on the video if you’re unable to do this.

See Donna teaching The Wayne Cook Posture

4. The Crown Pull

To release mental congestion.

• With finger tips facing and forming a vertical line, press into the centre of your forehead and pull it apart.
• Repeat moving your hands back over the centre line of your head.

See Donna teaching The Crown Pull

5. Neurolymphatic Flush

To energise, and clear toxins and stagnant energies.

If you’re not sure quite where the points are, move around a little to find a tender point. Any points that are more tender indicate blockages, so you may want to spend longer massaging them.

Breathe deeply and massage firmly:

• Heart and Governing points below your clavicle.
• the groove between the arm and front of your body, on each side (Central meridian)
• down the middle of your sternum (Lung)
• down each side of the sternum, between your ribs (Lungs & Gall Bladder)
• with thumbs, half moon under your breasts, from each side to centre (Liver & Spleen)
• bottom of your rib cage, from centre to sides (Small Intestine)
• spleen points, below your bra line (chaps please imagine!), and in from the side of your body
• points one inch above and one inch  out from belly button (Kidney)
• points one inch to side of your belly button (Triple Warmer)
• along the top of your pubic bone (Bladder)
• down outsides of legs along trouser seam line, from hip to knee (Large Intestine)
• with thumbs down inside of legs along trouser seam, from groin to knee, (Small Intestine)

See Donna teaching The Neurolymphatic Flush

6. The Zip Up

To feel confident and protect your energies.

• Use your fingers to ‘zip up’ from pubic bone to bottom lip, and ‘lock’ at the top.

See Donna teaching The Zip Up

For more information, see:

Donna Eden’s book ‘Energy Medicine’,
Donna’s website, InnerSource.

When you’re exercising and find yourself getting out of breath

This helped me keep my breathing controlled when I used to jog, and later when I pushed our pram up a very steep hill every day!

Run a bath – hot, but not too hot so the oil remains active. Before you get in, add 3-4 drops of marjoram oil. Relax in your bath for 10-15 minutes, enjoying the aroma. As all my family know, it works like a dream – your muscles will be fine in the morning!

A friend told me that she doesn’t want to exercise for the sake of it, she wants to love her exercise. What a great idea! Then your exercise becomes a pleasure rather than a chore – you fall in love iwth it!!

3 steps to take

1.  Sink into a deep motivation

Just like falling in love, you need to have a deep, single-minded focus for your exercise. The ‘7 Why’s’ is a good way to achieve this; here’s how it goes:

The ‘7 Why’s’ is a good way to do so; here’s how it goes:

• First, write down the main reason you want to exercise. Eg I want to exercise to keep fit.
• Now ask yourself, Why do I say that? and write down your response.
• Again, ask Why? to your response. Then write down your new response. Repeat this process up to 7 times in all, until you get to what feels like a deep motivation.

For example:

“I want to keep fit.”

Why? …to have a toned body.

Why? …to look good.

Why? …to feel good in myself.

Why? …to feel healthy.

Why? …to reflect a healthy mind and soul.

Why? …because my body is the temple of my soul, so I want it to keep it in tip top condition.

Exercising with the intention of providing a healthy house for my soul is a much deeper motivation than keeping fit, so I’m much more likely to stick with it.

2.  Find exercise you truly enjoy

A deep intention alone won’t necessarily carry you through exercise you don’t like, so the next step is to find a type of exercise you really enjoy. There’s a multitude of exercises to choose from; walking, jogging, exercise routine, gym, tennis, dance, etc etc.

Here are some questions to prompt you:

• Perhaps you exercised more when you were young. What exercise did you really enjoy then? What exercise did you always want to do, but never had an opportunity?

• Do you prefer to exercise alone, or with others?

• Maybe you have friends who enjoy their exercise; would you like to try what they do?

• Could you check out local exercise classes or clubs?

Be prepared to try out more than one exercise until you find the one for you.

3.  Be fully present when you exercise

Even with a deep intention, and exercise you enjoy, you can still sabotage your enjoyment if you spend time thinking about other things, particularly the other things you could be doing!

So once you start your exercise engage with it fully, and allow yourself to enjoy it to the full. As Eckhart Tolle explains, this means gently turning away any thoughts about the past and future. Just allow yourself to be fully present with your exercise. This is quite a different experience to listening to your iPod while you jog or work out at the gym!

The Delicious Nugget:To fall in love with your exercise you need to: sink into your deeper motivation, find exercise you truly enjoy, and stay present while you exercise. Then the chore turns into pleasure!

Please let me know how this goes for you…

I knew that if I perpetuated this misalignment I might be heading for a health problem.

Thinking about my posture, I realised my mind was wanting to get to my destination faster than I was walking. For a while I would make a conscious effort to correct my posture, then I would forget, and revert to leaning forward as I walked.

Later, I came to appreciate three simple keys to an effortless, perfect posture.

Three keys to walking with ease and grace

1.  Wear flat, comfortable shoes

What your wear on your feet is the foundation for your posture. High heels throw your hips, spine, head and neck right out of alignment. Poorly fitting shoes cause discomfort to the foot, which is transmitted as tension to other parts of your body.

So the first step is to wear comfortable, dare I say ‘sensible’ shoes! Fortunately, these days there are plenty of fashionable styles which are also comfortable.

My Mother brought us up to care for our feet, so I was fortunate to have this foundation in place.

Which of your shoes are flat and comfortable?

2.  Lead from your pelvis

Like so many keys to healthy living, this one is disarmingly simple!

As you walk, lead from your pelvis.

This comes from Eastern forms of movement, including Tai Chi and Chi Gong, where you take your attention to, and move from, your body’s centre of gravity, which is located in the pelvis.

You see it in exaggerated form on the catwalk, where models thrust their pelvises forward, and end up leaning back! That’s going overboard; the aim is for a vertical spine.

Try it for yourself: lead from your pelvis as you walk, slowly at first, and notice how the whole of your upper body rearranges itself. Your shoulders drop and your arms swing easily. It may feel strange for a while; soon you’ll find an ease in this way of walking that you want to keep.

For me, walking from my pelvis, immediately changed my posture to one of grace and ease. That is, as long as I remembered to do it, which is where the third key comes in…

3.  Be present

For me, leading from my pelvis was fine, until my mind took over and I reverted to my old habit of thinking into the future about my destination, and started to learn forward again.

The third key, which finally resolved my poor walking posture, was to stay in the present, as we have been continually reminded by Oprah and Tolle in their course ‘A New Earth’.

The more I stay present with my walking, the longer I remember to walk from my pelvis with a perfect posture.

How to stay present? Be aware of your body and your breath, focus on leading from your sacrum, enjoy the sensations you encounter along your walk. Be ‘in the now’.

Question:

How is your posture when you walk? You might like to ask someone to watch, and give you some feedback.

Reflection:

If you feel you could improve your walking posture, which of the three keys will help you?

Action:

What will you do to improve your walking posture today?

The Delicious Nugget: Flat comfortable shoes, walking from the sacrum, and being present with your walking are the keys to walking with a perfect posture. Adopt these habits and you’ll feel great as you walk!

It’s all too easy just to go through the motions of exercise; that way you’ll likely gain some benefit, however it’s as if you’re treating your body as a machine rather than a living organism.

What brings life to your body? That’s a tricky one to answer, but we do know that as long as you live you breathe continually. From a Western perspective the breath provides oxygen which is circulated via the blood to all your cells. From an Eastern perspective, the air you breathe in contains vital energy (also known as chi, prana or life force) which moves through invisible channels known as meridians to revitalise the whole body.

For the past three months I’ve been practising Psychocalisthenics first thing each morning. It’s a short routine which promises to exercise all the main muscle groups, and give a flash of vital energy. I was keen to achieve both benefits!

After a few weeks my body certainly felt physically better – more solid and well exercised. But where was the energy boost? Why didn’t I feel ‘more alive’ as expected?

I read the book again (Master Level Exercise: Psychocalisthenics, by Oscar Ichazo), and realised that, although I’d been correctly linking my breath with the movements, I hadn’t been making full use of my breath. As soon as I started to pay more attention to my breathing, really fill my lungs with each breath, and visualise myself receiving life force I achieved that energy boost. What a great start to the day!

Whatever form of exercise you do, it’s likely you can gain more vitality by paying attention to your breath.

How to put the breath of life into your exercise

1.  Recognise there’s life force in the air you breathe

Two ancient practices recognise and draw on the life force in the air around us. Yogis developed a whole series of breathing exercises (pranayamas) to use the prana in the air around us. In Qigong chi is collected from the air through movement to be stored in the Tantien to promote health and vitality.

Try visualising life force coming into your body as you inhale.

2.  Breathe fully

Many of us have become ‘chest breathers’ – only allowing our chest area to expand and contract as we breathe. To make full use of the lungs we need to allow the abdomen to expand as we breathe in, and contract as we breathe out. This is a very different experience to chest breathing. It requires clothes which are loose around the waist.

3.  Focus on the out breath

When you breathe fully it’s easy to take too large an in breath, and after a couple of breaths end up feeling out of breath. I’ve found that focusing on the exhalation – breathing out as fully as possible by contracting my abdomen – resolves this problem. Following a full exhalation your body will automatically refill your lungs without you having to think about it.

When I used to jog, I found that focusing on the exhalation stopped me feeling out of breath. Similarly when I climb hills I focus on the out breath and get into a steady rhythm of breathing as I walk.

4.  Link your breath to your movements

Some types of exercise ask you to relate your movement to the breath. For example in yoga we usually move on the out breath. On the other hand in Pilates and Psychocalisthenics most movements are made on the in breath. For swimming I found the breath fitted naturally into the stroke, particularly for those strokes where my head was under water for part of the time.

For many types of exercise there’s no instruction about the breathing.

I suggest you check whether there’s a recommended to breathe for your exercise.

If not, experiment to find a way of breathing that feels comfortable with the movements you’re making.

5.  Practice and notice

While breathing fully and linking your breath to your movements may seem strange at first, with practice it will start to flow with ease, and bring life to your exercise.

The Delicious Nugget: bring the breath of life into your exercise by breathing fully and linking your breath to your movements.

It’s like sitting in your car behind the exit barrier of a car park, desperate to drive away, but the barrier is stuck so you can’t move.

Trying to force the barrier up doesn’t work; it will resist you as strongly as you push. The trick is to get to a place where the barrier lifts smoothly of its own accord.

What’s making your exercise barrier stick, and how can you get it to rise?

Get help to lift the barrier

Getting someone else involved may be all that’s needed to get started with your exercise.

1.  Get some expert advice

If you have an injury or haven’t exercised for a while, you may need expert advice on suitable exercise, and how to make a gradual start.

2.  Sign up for a class

Signing up for a class helps you commit to weekly exercise at least once a week. You’ll also get expert instruction on your chosen exercise, and be motivated by the teacher and other participants.

3.  Buddy up

On Thursday lunchtimes I walk with a friend and we have a friendly competition not to ‘give in’; consequently we’ve been out in torrential rain when neither of us would have walked on our own. With boots and waterproofs it’s actually quite fun in the rain!

And have you noticed all those joggers out in pairs?

Remove the barrier yourself

Another approach is to go inside yourself, and remove your internal barrier to getting started. You can do this by releasing the negative feelings (the Sedona approach), or nurturing yourself with the quality you’re missing (the Sufi approach). They’re like two sides of a coin, try the one you feel most drawn to.

1.  Let go of the shoulds and doubts

Think about starting to exercise, and notice the first feeling that arises in your heart. For example: I feel resistance, I’m forcing myself, I feel frustrated.

Then answer each of the following questions with a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, allowing the response to come from your heart rather than your mind.

• Could I welcome this feeling?
• Could I let it go?
• Would I let it go?
• When?

Repeat the questions until the feeling is gone.

2.  Nurture your heart

When I resist doing something that I really want to do, my heart is lacking some quality which would allow me to move forward. So a simple way to life the barrier is to drink in the missing quality you need.

• Put your hand over your heart area, and drop your awareness into your heart.
• Say ‘aaah’ to yourself – this sound opens your heart connection to the universe.
• Ask the universe for the quality your heart needs to get started with exercising.
• Trust that the first word, sound, image, colour or whatever comes up is right for you.
• Ask the universe to help you drink the quality into your heart, until it’s overflowing.
• Check how you feel about exercising.
• If necessary drink in another quality.

Select one of the above suggestions, or another idea they trigger, and use it to lift the barrier, so exercise seems the most natural thing to do. Once you get started, and the benefits of exercise become apparent, it’s much easier to keep going!

The Delicious Nugget: Getting help, letting go of negative feelings and nurturing your heart are three effective ways to lift the exercise barrier.

Ten years ago, as a mother of young children, I was physically active but aware that some parts of my body weren’t being exercised at all. After 20 years of yoga, I wanted a change, and was on the look out for a home-based system which would work all the main muscle groups in a short time.

Psychocalisthenics was the answer: a book, video, audio and poster enabled me to teach myself a series of 23 movement/breathing exercises. Being more demanding than yoga, but less energetic than aerobics, and taking only 15 minutes to complete they suited me perfectly. I also liked the way Pscyhocalisthenics sees the body as an organism rather than a machine.

Developed by Oscar Ichazo, psychocalisthenics awakens each of the five body ‘cavities’ in turn, exercising the associated muscles, and ‘producing a flash of vital energy throughout the entire body’.

I thought I’d got my exercise system cracked!

Unfortunately, two pregnancies had taken their toll on my sacroiliac joints, and one of the twisting exercises proved too much, and by the time my back had recovered several weeks later, Psychocalisthenics was out of the picture. I moved on to learn and practice a Qigong sequence take about 15 minutes as well as regular lunchtime walks, and weekly Pilates sessions.

Roll on ten years, and I felt the need for a more demanding form of exercise, and decided to give Psychocalisthenics another try. Older and wiser, I’m now taking care with the twisting exercise, first by making sure I have the movement right, and second only doing two swings instead of three.

My body is starting to feel more ‘solid’, and so far so good with my lower back.

Keys to fitting exercise into your busy life

1.  Align your exercise with other activities

Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

• Download teleclasses onto your iPod, and listen while you exercise.
• Walk short distances to do errands, rather than drive – this may be quicker too!
• Combine exercise with socialising eg by joining a tennis club.
• Integrate the exercises your physiotherapist has given you into your daily life.

What exercise can you do alongside another activity?

2.  Find a short exercise routine

• If you know yoga, three rounds of the Sun Salutation will exercise much of your body in less than 10 minutes. You might want to add an asana with a twist, such as The Twist, or Reverse Triangle.
• One of the many qigong sequences will exercise your body in a gentle way. For example Taji Qigong is a series of 18 movements which can be completed in 10-15 minutes.
• Psychocalisthenics is a series of 23 exercises, which draw on both yoga and qigong.

What short exercise routing can you do on a regular basis?

3.  Make any necessary adaptations

Be aware of your limitations, and if in any doubt consult your doctor before embarking on a new exercise regime.

If some part of your body needs rest while it heals, miss out any exercises which cause aggravation or strain. Part of an exercise routine is better than none at all.

If you’ve not exercised for a while, be sure to learn to move in the correct way, with a teacher if possible. Build up speed and the number of repetitions gradually, so your body gets used to the exercises. Listen to your body signals, and when in doubt take it easy!

What adaptations do you need to make to protect yourself?