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Tuning Your Body - Increase Awareness & Become Physically Tuned

If you stand in one spot and close your eyes, do you find you begin to wobble? Are you lacking activities in your life which require you to think and move? Are you able to really feel the muscles you are working when you exercise or weight train? If you answer yes to any of these questions then you need to think about adjusting your workouts. Read on and find out how you can improve your results by becoming in tune with your body.

Yoga and Pilates are not the only ways to become more in tuned with your body. There is something called Kinesthetic Awareness which basically is what happens when you can be aware of your place in time. You close your eyes and are aware of your balance, blood movement, sounds, smells, feel. Weight training, exercise and sports all help with this awareness.

With weights you learn to listen to the muscle movement, the feelings upon exertion and return. You learn to differentiate between heavy and light, and how that feels to the muscles. Higher and lower reps, larger or shorter rests will all feel like different stimuli.
Cardio tunes you in with your breath, heart rate and blood flow. You learn that after a good cardio session you feel chemical changes, the surge of serotonin and its euphoric effect. You learn pattern, speed, balance, and coordination in any of the cardio activities chosen even on machines.

Sports especially enhance your abilities since for each sport there will be a focus to the training. Hand eye coordination is utilized in most sports. Footwork and pattern movements along with agility and power force you to distinguish minute levels of force, control of these levels or exertions and enhance the body's ability to adapt. All is sharpened and you feel it, you feel fitter and stronger.

Dynamic and ballistic activities can have just as much mind to body connection as does the slower static choices where meditation and slower deliberate holds are incorporated.
Some easy ways to richen your kinesthetic awareness is to make use of simple items and drills.

Standing with one foot on a Bosu ball and closing your eyes suddenly makes the exercise extremely difficult. Those of you who have mastered wobble and extreme board balancing should now try basics again but with your eyes closed. Being able to stand and not fall suddenly changes and you are forced to become acutely aware in other ways, but still using body functions teamed along with your muscles. Ears and touch work harder when site is removed.

Balance exercises done with the stability ball are also taken to a higher difficulty when done with blindfold. Even some of the yoga and pilates exercises become harder when site is taken away from the dynamic. I suggest trying this, within safe measures of course. And I do realize that most martial artists are already well versed in this type of energy as their training embraces body mind connection in every way. Another suggestion if you are lacking, try some martial arts classes!

By Linda Cusmano