How to stay vital throughout your whole life!

Most people associate vitality with endurance in the bedroom or staying young when we have reached old age.
Vitality is relevant throughout our whole lives and at every age: vitality is our birthright and the most valuable resource that is truly undervalued in our modern times. In today's society we have learnt to rely on medication, drugs and booze to get the highs we should be getting naturally from life. Little do we realize that if we could tap into our life force we can easily have the vitality that we need to live life to the fullest, naturally. The full and active presence of vitality signifies a healthy and happy mind and body. Vitality is in effect our life force (or essence) in action.

Whenever I start coaching clients that come to see me recovering from rape or depression I always start by asking the client to breathe. Now this sounds simple enough and most of the times I get very perplexed looks.Most people breathe shallowly because they go through life holding on to fear. This is the start of any illness.If a person learns to breathe deeply, it has been proven that even long held pain in the body can be minimized or got rid of altogether. I usually work several sessions establishing a correct breathing procedure and many clients feel dramatic improvements in their lives very quickly: from the ability to have better quality sleep, the ability to think more clearly, tension release (stress reduction) is quickly noticeable, the reduction or elimination of pain, the list is long, but breathing correctly has got some amazing benefits that do not necessarily take long to manifest. I work with several different breathing techniques that are all beneficial, but for anyone starting out on their own the simple act of standing up straight upon waking up in the morning and taking in a deep breath and then slowly releasing the breath, is a good place to start. I recommend doing this slowly for a count of 10 and if possible ensuring that you are outside in the fresh air or that the room you are in's windows are open. As you progress, start doing the breathing exercise at night before you go to bed too. This is very helpful with people who struggle having restful sleep.

The second step for my clients is the ability to stretch. Stretching when done after breathing exercises can have astounding effects on the body. As a coach much of my work is done incorporating the body and mind. When a person experiences a gross imbalance that could be due to trauma, illness, depression etc...it is not just the body or the mind that takes the impact of these: it is the whole body and therefore when re-balancing a person needs to heal the body as a whole and not just necessarily where the pain can be felt.

A human's inner compass is always life-ward.Most of us find it difficult to heal because we have become impervious to the imbalances in our lives that have contributed to the continuing lack of vitality we experience because of something negative that happened to us. By correcting our breathing we are saying to ourselves that we are honouring the life force inside us, by stretching we are telling ourselves that we are honouring our bodies, and these two are the beginning to not just fully loving and accepting ourselves exactly as we are, but it sets the stage to enable us to experience our energy and the essence that makes us who we are.

The last step is release which I will discuss in a separate article.

The reason I do the coaching work is because every day I am witness to the real possibility of change. That no matter how much hurt,pain,illness,denial,guilt,self hatred we hold in our bodies that create gross imbalance, once we are ready to heal ourselves the result is nothing short of miraculous.
I always give this exercise to my clients. Now this exercise is simplicity itself, but it works:

1.Take a deep breath and stretch fully so as to undo any tension or knots in the body. If you are not able to stretch, due to a physical impediment, simply breathe deeply and imagine in your mind's eye physically stretching fully.

2.Close your eyes and concentrate on your heart area and imagine your heart beating. Allow the image to become so real in your mind's eye that you can now hear the heart beating rhythmically. Sit with the image and sound for a while then imagine a ray of warm bright light coming into the crown of your head and settling in your heart and see it completely fill the heart area.

3. As you do this imagine that this white light is becoming warmer and then when you can feel this fully connect with the feeling of what love feels like to you. Still concentrating on the heart and the warmth of the brightness of the white light expanding your feeling of love, allow the white light to move to other parts of your body.

4.When you have spread the warm,bright white light to every part of you body in your imagination , be sure to accompany this with warmth and feeling of love as intensely as possible. Allow this state to be as long as possible, I will usually recommend doing this standing up because if you do it lying down you will most likely fall asleep. The whole point of this is to feel the warmth, the brightness of the light and the complete feeling of love.

If done correctly, you will feel actual warmth travelling throughout your body, many people have reported a tingly sensation, and some people have reported an overwhelming sense of love that it felt like they couldn't take it anymore they had to cry or laugh, without knowing why exactly. I have had some people report to me that they have felt a warmth accompanied by a coldness, which left them a bit scared. All these reactions are perfectly normal. You are re-calibrating your energy,(and many others would say that you are opening the heart chakra hence the odd sensations). If you feel light-headed make sure that you do grounding exercises before you start this exercise (Google Grounding exercises to find our more info).

What I can tell you is that every single person I have given this exercise to do on a daily basis for at least 15 days, reported back to me with some interesting positive results, that have gone on to be life changing. This exercise works in that it starts to work with each person on an energetic level and the person will start noticing that they are changing in very subtle ways. Perhaps becoming less judgmental,less hateful, less critical, less self loathing etc...The changes that occur are as individual as the person doing the exercises. Some of the people that I have given the exercises to find that they cannot go a day without doing the exercises because it allows them to be less fearful and more in the moment.

In future articles, I will discuss the importance of understanding the basics to get to in touch with oneself. And most importantly fully coming to terms with what makes each person unique, with their own life force/essence and so unique vitality. For there is nothing more important to life than the access to authentic self expression and being able to live life fully. So few of us know exactly what that means and it's a shame because we were born to feel good about ourselves and share the true expression of ourselves with others in the world.