by Roger Hollowell
Nerves fire muscles respond. Cells fire, releasing energy. Blood streams pump it in and pump it out. Lungs fan the flame and chimney the waste. This is basically your internal combustion engine at work. Processes when slowed and internally focussed upon, I call “burning your own fire”.
Gravity is the base of resistance used in most forms of exercise. “Sceptercise” brings your focus inside the body to the place where your body is counterbalancing with gravity. It creates an awareness of this place allowing the focussed practitioner to then move this place or energy within and throughout the body: healing, helping and basically transforming you in the areas of focus.
If you exercise at all you know how important it is to breathe. If you exercise to the extreme you know how important it is to make breathing the meditation. For the following exercises consciously give life and remove waste in deep full long breaths.
To start it is best to be by yourself in a place where you can hear all of the creaks and cracks of your body and your surroundings. Stand with your feet slightly wider than shoulder width. Place a Scepter or suitable four-foot staff in front of you so it makes a triangle with your feet. This is your forward body triangulation point. Hold the Scepter or staff in your fingertips and use it for balance not support. Bend your knees slightly.
There are three major points of connection in each foot: one on each side of the ball and one at the heel. These form a triangle as well. Feel all three points in each foot and adjust so your weight is evenly distributed between these points and both feet. When you have accomplished this you are in the center of your standing balance.
Now, keeping this center bend your legs a little more. If this weakens your heel points, regain them by lowering your tailbone forward. Depending on your physical condition you should feel the burn or flow of energy starting in your legs. To bring this energy up through the pelvis and lower back you must gently push your tailbone forward while pulling your stomach muscles from the lowest point possible up against your spine. This should be a stretch not a compression. To make sure of this, inhale and raise your shoulders at the same time you are pushing you tailbone and pulling on your stomach muscles. Do this slowly, if you have lower back problems like I did, prepare to find the source of the problem. Avoid pain directly but gently and slowly discover all edges of the pain. Once you have discovered the edges, slowly (over days) start to extend your mobility as far as comfortable into these edges.
If you have moved this energy past your lower back you should be able to manipulate it with stretching movements using your shoulders, head and arms all the way up and out of your fingertips. With slight pressure on your fingertips you should feel as though the body is one dynamic. Evenly energized and evenly balanced.
Now perform a simple movement, slowly rotating from the ankles around this center of standing balance. Each rotation should take at least forty-five seconds. Although your weight distribution will be rotating around the foot points and between your feet make sure all points stay connected to the earth. If you loose a foot point connection your balance is also compromised. As long as your knees are bent with the pelvis forward this energy is allowed to flow and you can rotate from any part of the body, we just started at the ankles.
This is the base exercise that I give credit for helping to heal a ruptured disc. A rupture that doctors said was only going to be healed through surgery. It might also help you to understand that I believe in a living creator. A creator that lives in all points of change; when a seed becomes a plant, when the plant becomes food or purifies our air, when food becomes fuel, when fuel becomes waste, etc. Air is the Holy Spirit, water is the blood of life and gravity is the hand of this creator holding it all together and giving us the support we need. I hope you find it beneficial as well.