Let’s break down what a body practice is, how mindful connection to the body helps us cope with anxious thoughts, stress and tension, and let’s talk about five rituals that will bring back a sense of stability.
What Is a Body Practice
Body practice is a conscious interaction with the body. The goal of this interaction is to get in touch with your body and learn to accept its signals and detach from the outside world by switching to the inside.
Body practices are usually referred to as yoga, meditation or acupuncture, but that’s not all. A body practice can be any conscious engagement with the body-walking on the grass, improvised dance, thoughtful breathing, or a specific exercise in mind-body interaction.
How Connecting With Your Body Can Help You Feel Better
Our actions are expressed through the body, and emotions have a bodily component. The body and corporeality are the basis for regulating our emotional state. When we are angry, we tense certain facial and body muscles – we frown our eyebrows, tense our cheekbones, and tighten our chest.
We are used to listening to our thoughts and emotions, but we are much less likely to read bodily signals. In order for the body to help us solve a particular problem, we first need to make contact with it.
You can’t get rid of anxiety by clicking, but we can stand on the floor with our bare feet, listen to the sensations, feel the support beneath us, forget about positive moments we got while gambling and a Cookie casino and negativity received at work, and become aware of the moment.
Conscious interaction with the body helps us to look at the problem differently and from a different angle, and most importantly, we can change our condition through bodily practice.
Formal and Informal Practices
Formal practices are specific bodily exercises with a specific purpose: meditation, yoga, body scanning, conscious walking.
Informal practices are any actions that we do consciously. Informal practices can be self-massage, running, reading, walking in the park.
To reconnect with your body you don’t need special skills or special practices. It is enough to start with something simple – a walk in the woods or walking barefoot on the grass will help to cope with anxiety, stress and tension no worse than a specific exercise.
Aromatherapy and Body Practices
Essential oils have different properties, which, like body practices, help to relax, relieve tension or, on the contrary, to tone up. A fragrance acts in two ways – associative and reflexive.
When we smell a citrus fragrance, we imagine an orange, remembering how tasty and juicy it is, or our thoughts take us to memories of a trip to the sea, where we made orange juice from the local fruit. This is how the associative direction works.
Reflexively, aroma oils affect the receptors in the nasopharynx, which are responsible for certain parts of the brain. Thus, some fragrances are able to increase blood circulation, regulate the heartbeat or calm the nervous system.
Conducting a body practice in conjunction with aromatherapy helps to achieve better results in relieving tension or stress. To conduct a practice with aromatherapy, it’s necessary to prepare in advance the necessary oils that will solve the specific task of the exercise.
5 Body Practices With Aromatherapy
Most recently, we released a line of natural soaps that can not only be used as shower gels, but also as aromatherapy bodywork aids. Each soap has its own special scent of essential oils that help with a specific task.
We’ve put together five body practices with aroma soaps that are suitable for a variety of purposes.
A Relaxing Practice
Turn off the lights, light candles, and play a meditation playlist. Sit in a lotus pose and stretch your body a bit. Begin the meditation: turn off your mind and concentrate on your breathing. Take an incense soap in your hands and slowly inhale its fragrance for a few minutes. After finishing your meditation, take a bath with relaxing aroma oils.
A Practice for Relieving Tension
Turn off the lights, light candles and Palo Santo. Let the room be completely silent. Listen to the burning of the candles and concentrate on the pleasant crackling of the wick. Take the soap in your hands and slowly inhale the scent of cypress and vanilla. Set the soap aside and do a self-massage of your head, neck, arms, and shoulders. After completing the practice, take a bath with relaxing aroma oils.
A Toning Practice
Turn on your favorite dance playlist, stretch a little and start dancing wildly, actively moving all parts of your body (you can do it in front of the mirror). Finish dancing as soon as you get bored. Sit in a lotus pose, take a soap with orange peel in your hands and slowly inhale its fragrance to restore your breathing rhythm. After you finish the practice, take a contrast shower.
An Anti-stress Practice
Turn off the lights and light candles and incense. Turn on a playlist with the sounds of rain in the woods. Pick up some fir and tangerine soap, close your eyes, and start walking slowly around the room in your bare feet. Feel the support beneath you. Slowly inhale the fragrance of the fir. Imagine that you are walking on wet grass in the forest. Continue the practice for 10-15 minutes. After the practice, take a bath with aromatic oils.
A Practice for Relieving Anxiety
Turn off the lights, light candles, and play relaxing music. Lie on the floor, cover yourself with a blanket, take the soap in your hands and close your eyes. Slowly inhale the scent of lavender and sandalwood. Imagine that you are in a place where you have been before and that you felt good and relaxed there. You are warmed by the sun’s rays. Put the soap aside, rub your hands against each other and cover your eyes with the palms of your hands. Feel the warmth from your palms and how your eye muscles relax. After the practice, take a bath with relaxing aroma oils.