Why You HAVE to Move Your Body Every Day

Whenever we find ourselves resisting life, even with just a thought, our bodies tighten and contract. You’ve probably heard me say before, emotions are energy in motion. Fear, sadness, disappointment, anger—if we don’t have a way of releasing these emotions… this energy, it starts to accumulate in our bodies, and we start to contract around it. And we call it tension.

If you are alive, and unless you are an enlightened spiritual master whose only goal is inner peace, chances are you experience tension.

Tension in and of itself is not a bad thing. It signals an opportunity for growth. There’s good information to be gleaned from the things that we resist . . . that cause us to contract. It only becomes a problem when we stay contracted, or allow the energy to accumulate to such a degree that we find it hard to relax, let go and be free. Because then there is no joy.

This is why it’s so important to move our bodies.

Whether it’s yoga, jogging, bicycling, dancing, or martial arts—anything that allows energy to move through us, we have to move our bodies. Because with movement, stuck energy is released, our body is able to open, and our minds are able to clear.

Think of yourself as an antenna. Unless your body is open and energy is able to move through you, freely and unencumbered, your antennae starts to get kinks in all the places where you resist, and it becomes harder and harder to think clearly with stuck energy cluttering the process. Suddenly, our ability to open and receive Divine Guidance, to trust our intuition, to open ourselves up to our own innate wisdom, is blocked.

Essentially, we get in our own way.

But when we take time to move our bodies every day, even for just thirty minutes, energy is given a pathway to start moving through us, our channel opens, and our metaphorical antennae unkinks and aligns. Our bodies relax, our minds clear, and things start to fall into perspective.

One of the reasons yoga is so effective is because, unlike weight-lifting or some of the other activities that focus on contracting our muscles and hardening our bodies, yoga brings balance by opening up and expanding all those areas where we have contracted, and is ultimately a tool preparing the mind for meditation. In truth, as with anything else in life (including the breath), true health and happiness is about finding the balance between expanding and contracting. But let’s not complicate things . . . perhaps that’s a topic for another conversation.

KEEP IT SIMPLE. If you truly want to be happy, relaxed and at ease, you have to move your body.

FIND AN ACTIVITY THAT'S FUN. If it’s not yoga, go for a walk, ride a bike, take a dance class . . . or, even better, mix it up and do some of each.

THINK ABOUT IT. You rarely see a miserable active person.

The ones that are suffering are the ones that have stopped moving.