Movement helps move energy, meditation helps build energy. Mindful movement is meditation in motion. We can use movement to release emotions, destress and achieve a sense of balance and harmony. Without movement energy stagnates in our body and we feel fatigued and uneasy. This is why mindful practices such as Yoga, Tai Chi and Han Su Do have such beneficial effects on our being.

In the last decade I went through a deep tranformative experience with my physical body. During this time, after a significant amount of weight loss, I was feeling pretty good about myself. People responded differently to me and for the first time in my life I felt confident and happy in my body. At this point I had completely transformed what I ate and I had for all intents and purposes made a huge lifestyle change and felt very happy with my accomplishments. Little did I know that there was yet another hurdle for me to cross. There were still some unconscious fears and blocks around my body and health that I had yet to confront.

Transformation is not a straight ascending line. It is more like a wave with ups and downs and the discover of deeper layers hidden within us. If we don’t fully heal our unhealthy patterns, they just change forms and come back to haunt us in a different shape. That is what it was like for me as well. I went from compulsive eating to restrictive eating. I found myself anxious again, this time about gaining all the weight back and losing my hard work and losing this new way that the world was treating me. I still had healing to do. This is where the ancient practice of Han Su Do movement came into my life as a game changer. I started this training in this form of martial arts and it helped me ground myself back into my body. It was an interesting experience because it made me realize just how unaware I had become of my body and all its sensations. I noticed the tensions and the tones within my body, and the old injuries and traumas that I hadn't paid any attention to for a while. Our emotions are energy in motion and finding a way to work with where we are holding our emotions on a physical level can create huge shifts in our lives.

Through my Han Su Do training I started to connect with my physical being in a completely different way and soon enough I felt another shift starting to happen. I noticed that my relationship to food changed yet again. I started getting excited about eating and creating healthy meal plans and desserts and feeling good about satiating my body and it’s needs. And this physical shift created a corresponding shift in my mind and I felt lighter and happier emotionally as well.

Movement helps move energy, meditation helps build energy. We can use movement to release emotions, destress and achieve a sense of balance and harmony. Without movement energy stagnates in our body and we feel fatigued and uneasy.

When we get injured, or when we hold trauma in our bodies, they get tighter and less flexible. Similarly when there is stress and trauma in our lives, our minds get ‘tight’ and this slows down the healing process. Here is the good news, since the mind and body affect each other greatly, we can actually use our bodies to help the healing process of injury to our minds. Movement then is key to healing, growing and becoming stronger in our bodies and minds. Mindful movement then, can help us release the tensions created by trauma and injuries in our live.