Did you do a double take when you read that title? We've all got piles of articles pinned, with titles like: "8 Quick Ways to Happiness," "21 Simple Ways to a Stress-Free Life," "5 Quick Ways to Lower Your Anxiety," "6 Fast Tools to Help You Get in Shape for Summer," "9 Simple Tricks to Get Your Kids Off Their Computers and Go Outside"… On and on…We all pinned those with the best of intentions. Surely if I have 11 easy ways to stick to my diet, I'll do at least one of them. 5 ways to stay organized? Eat your heart out Marie Kondo. But do you do them? Or do those 7 ways to feel happier jump out of your mind when you're feeling low? Can you find those 5 ways to organize your office when you're finally ready to clean? Listen, marketers know what we're looking for: Ease. Simplicity. Clarity. They know we have a lot on our to do list, they've done the research, and giving us a few "easy" things to do gets the most clicks. Well, I'm not a marketer. I'm just like you. I'm a regular person with a lot on her plate. And, I'll be totally honest, I'm kind of lazy. I want the easiest path for everything. So why did I write an article with a title like this? A million ways to health?? I'm going to let you in on a secret that I've been studying and practicing for decades now. If you want to optimize your output, if you want to be healthier, happier, more sane, more calm, more at ease in everything you do…If you want to be like a tuned-up orchestra, playing in perfect harmony and time, there is really only ONE thing you need to do. And that one thing is to work with your energy. By that I don't mean to figure out if you're tired or buzzy. I mean the very energy that you are in fact made of. That energy, the tiny, singing, bits of information that make up YOU, can be in tune, or out of tune. Out of tune, and you're sick, tired, and miserable. In tune, and you are on your way to healing, joy, and manifesting your dreams. I'm not making a joke when I say I'm going to give you 1,000,000 easy ways to get healthy right now. In fact, it is so easy to start working with your energy that you will actually get more than a million. Every second your body performs trillions of functions. And when you are functioning at your best, it is because all of the energy systems that make up your body (you have nine!) are functioning together, in perfect harmony. So, you don't have to worry where you pinned those articles. You just have to do the Energy Medicine Wake Up technique every day, to start the cascade of millions of health-giving transactions in your body, mind, and spirit. The Wake Up is essentially thumping on different points on the body, combined with a very basic movement pattern. It might sound simple, but it has profound effects on your energy. It gets your energy awake and moving forward and crossing over, which are the most important directions energy must move in the body for you to be able to heal. This crossover pattern—which shows itself in the twisting spiral of your DNA, at the smallest level, all the way up to the hemispheres of your brain, which operate opposite sides of your body—is present in every cell, tissue, organ, and system in the body. If your energy isn't working in this crossing pattern—isn't, in effect, crossing or spiraling—then your body is in a major deficit. In fact, your energy moving forward and crossing over is the very primary need of the body in order to heal. Conversely, every single disease pattern in the body has this lack of forward and crossing energy as part of its root cause. If you're stressed or in trauma, the energies in your body are not working in the ways they're meant to. Imagine if bumper cars were trying to move down the highway. They would just go in circles, hitting each other, getting stuck, creating chaos. This is your body's energy under stress. The Wake Up is the first introduction of coherent energy into this chaotic system. Think of your body like a sweater. You find the sweater on the floor of your closet, crumpled up in a ball. This is your sweater in stress! You pick up the sweater and shake it out, getting all the dust and dirt off it. Then you give it a rinse and wring it out to squeeze out any dirt. Next you stretch it out to reclaim its shape. You smooth it out to get the wrinkles out of it, and then you let it "rest" until it's dry and ready to wear. This is your body! You need to do the same thing to your body: shake it out, wring it out, stretch it out, smooth it out, and let it rest. You need to do this on a daily basis, like changing the tablecloths at a fancy restaurant or simply mopping up your own table after breakfast with a little dishcloth. A daily check-in. I recommend doing the Wake Up in the morning, preferably before you start your day. You can also do it whenever you feel triggered, tired, stressed out, or off-kilter. The Wake Up is your baseline energetic practice: something you want to do every day to get your energies on the right track, moving in the right direction, and working in harmony and coherence for you. Doing the Wake Up regularly helps your energies form beneficial habits instead of habits that aren’t serving you. Especially if you're recovering from stress or trauma or pain, chances are pretty high that these simple energy patterns are not on the right path in your body. When you have extreme stress, trauma, tragedy, or shock to your system, do the Wake Up. This is how you begin to work with your energy and take charge of your healing. Practice: The Wake Up Breath: First, before you begin, take a few deep breaths. Breathe in the nose and out the mouth. In the Wake Up, you'll always breath in the nose and out the mouth. This breath activates the parasympathetic nervous system, helping the body and mind to calm. It also allows you to release excess emotion or energy from the body. If you're in an intense emotional place, this is the breath to use to help bring you to calm. The Wake Up is made up of five steps, not a million:
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Lauren Walker has been a yoga and meditation teacher since 1997. She created Energy Medicine Yoga while teaching at Norwich University, and she has also taught at the Kripalu Center, Omega Institute, Feathered Pipe Ranch, ...