Part 2: enlightening exercise

in Part 1 of your training you felt your body in a deeper way when you did an exercise. In Part 2, you will practice feeling the exercise movement.  You will use your mind to follow the movement, learning to become one with the movement. 

Step 1

Step 1 is a sort of "pre-work."  The purpose of the pre-work is to get your thinking-only way of exercise in the background and replaced it with the intelligence of the body.  If you do this, a new thinking takes over.  We are wanting to strengthen your being, as well as the doing.  Generally speaking, SLOW DOWN.  Resist the urge to "just do it."

Continuing from Part 1, stop and take a moment to feel your inner body, your presence.  Take an inventory of just being.  That will slow you down from just doing.  

Know the exercise you are about to do.

Think about and know which muscles are going to be used, and know the correct form of the exercise.  If you intimately know what muscles should be used and you engage them, you will find yourself being more precise with your movement. You will have a road map in your mind of what you want to “do.”  You will strengthen your muscles more quickly and efficiency if your mind is engaged.  This may seem like a lot of work, but you are exercising for a purpose.  If you exercise this way, you will need to exercise for a shorter amount of time.  So put effort into keeping your mind engaged, and you will need to exercise less.  Once you make this way of exercising a habit, your mental effort will lessen until it’s automatic.

Your body has recovered, and you are now ready to do another set of the same exercise.  

Notice your posture - get and stay in good posture.  (In many exercises, this means to pull in your abdominal.)

Notice your body without any push on it.  How is it to just “be” before the exercise begins.  

Step 2

As you did at the end of Part 1, start by feeling the exercise in your body.  All your attention should be on the body and the muscles that are going to be doing the exercise.  

Step 3

Become One with the Movement:  Now that you are feeling your inner body, as you move, your awareness is going to stay with the movement.  Each movement has a complete motion to it.  Within that complete movement, there are many, many micro-movements.  For example, if you are raising your arm from the side of your body to the shoulder level, there are many many micro movements as you raise your arms.  Your job is to feel the micro movements within the whole movement.  How does your feeling of the muscles shift from one micro movement to the next?  Is there a change in You as you move through the movement?    

If you stay focused on the micro movements, Oneness and Presence will naturally arise.  Oneness and Presence is not a mental construct, it is a consciousness that arises from doing moving in this way.  You don't want to think of Oneness, you want to feel the Oneness.

Have no separation between the movement and You. You are tied to the movement.  

Jot down what you noticed, if anything.

What happened after you put awareness on your body?

What did you notice about your various body parts?

What did you notice, if anything, about your breath?  

After you finished the exercise, did you notice anything different in your presence or state of awareness? Were you quieter (are you quieter now)? Did the room feel the same? Were your senses altered?

Step 4