Our body is the one thing we are guaranteed to have throughout our life, and the body holds all the answers and has all the wisdom. Because our mind and emotions are difficult to understand, paying attention to the body is a good way to see changes and transformation – any of our unresolved negative emotions show in our body.
If you start to look after your body, it will help you to release stress, tension and negative emotions. The physical is a good medium for shifting the intangibles out of the body, like anxiety, tension and fear.
As I interview people for my podcasts about their running, a theme that occurs time and again is the awareness of learning through running, learning through stretching to ‘see if’, to find out what’s possible, but also about the benefits and the powerful and positive effects of simply going out running.
People express a reduced level of tension, more confidence, a way of thinking that is more positive and uplifting. Returning to the body and paying attention to what it is saying can lead us to a place of self-awareness and self-knowledge that ultimately will shape how we are in all areas of our lives.
Healthy body, healthy mind…
A body that is well nourished and rested will perform, feel and look better, and allow our true essence to emerge.
It works both ways – by releasing the tension and stress and attitudes that stick us and hold us, we will discover that we are more likely to be free of pain in the body. But also, the body is the place where all the invisible pain becomes visible, and running, more than anything, will find out these pains and imbalances. It highlights where we are angry or sad, or maybe where we have had years of keeping quiet, feeling disempowered, lacking belief that what we have to say counts.
Starting to run is more than just ‘going for a run’. It is a journey of exploration to finding out how to express all of you, freeing from the negative – running free!
Lee Saxby talked to me about this when I went to learn to run barefoot in a way that would reconnect me more fully to my true self. By running barefoot, he is teaching people to run free but more than that, he is teaching people to realign, to release the tension, to release the patterns and allow the body to remember,and so teaching people to re-learn how to be themselves and to be free.
Julia Armstrong, is a former international marathon runner, and RF’s roving reporter. Her podcasts can be listened to weekly on
www.runningfreeonline.com and you can read her daily blog at
www.runningtolearn.com