Peter Ralston Exercises Mega Thread

[AION]

These are all the exercises from the book Zen-body Being:

 

Chapter 2: Origins and Influences

Mental Training Practice (implied exercise) Ralston describes his process: Sit in a chair and mentally rehearse techniques. Don't just visualize what it looks like - recreate the exact feeling of doing it. Feel your body position, your partner's weight on each foot, the texture of the gi fabric, the pressure on your legs, the arc of motion as you turn, even the sweat. Make the mental experience identical to the physical one. Practice until you're just as bad mentally as physically, then work to correct actions mentally. Check results physically at the dojo. Go back and forth between mental and physical training until you achieve perfect execution mentally, then test it physically.

Chapter 3: Feeling-Awareness

Lifting Your Hand Exercise Lift your hand several times while investigating: How do you "will" your hand to go up? What actually gets the hand up? Notice that you generate a feeling-impulse - it's the feeling of "lifting your hand." Now close your eyes and raise your hand. Notice how you know your hand is moving and where it is once lifted. Excluding sight, you perceive the arm's position by feeling it's raised. Study the subtle sensation, the feeling-impulse responsible for lifting. Isolate the sensations that let you perceive where your arm is in space. Notice that without this sensory feedback, you'd have no idea where your arm is. Practice until you can consciously experience both the feeling-impulse that lifts and the feeling-perception that tracks position.

Whole Body Feeling Exercise Put your attention on your whole body at once. What's there? What do you feel? Do you feel every part? Now, starting with your toes, consciously feel every cubic inch of your body up to the top of your head. Unless you've practiced extensively, you'll miss a great deal - and some of what you miss, you won't even notice you're missing. Repeat this practice. Each time, you should feel your body a little more. Continue developing whole-body awareness as an ongoing adventure rather than something to finally accomplish. Freshly and repeatedly seek what's present, remaining open and excited about discovering something new.

Feeling Your Feet Exercise Can you feel your feet? Put your feeling-attention on the heels, arches, each toe. If you can't "find" them through feeling alone, wiggle your toes or rub your feet together. This is a tiny but crucial shift - feeling as opposed to thinking about feeling. When you suspend your habit of knowing and authentically question something "simple" like feeling your feet, you immediately increase awareness possibilities. Continue feeling your feet for a while. Over time, notice real increase in awareness, perhaps warming sensation. Try to relax the whole foot - only possible by feeling the whole foot. See if you can feel the foot more and more until you're very aware of and sensitive to its presence. If you honestly let go of assumptions about feeling your feet and opened to deeper awareness, you've enhanced your experience. The next step is feeling the whole body this way.

Pure Feeling Exercise Put attention on your body. Feel the most basic sensation of you and your body simply existing in this moment. Forget about space around your body - let it go. Don't concentrate on the inside of your body either (that makes the outside show up). Put all attention on whole-body feeling. Even though body sensations may be primary, concentrate on the feeling itself. Let go of considerations of "cause" and the specific form feeling takes. Don't search for the feeling of all of it - just feel all that's there. Don't think. Feel.

Relax (concentration may elicit tightness). Simply feel without knowing where feeling comes from or what it means. Feel as if the feeling-sensation of "body-being" is detached from everything. Simply feel the presence of feeling. See if you can get to pure feeling without association to it being a sensation attached to body, or emotion, or cause. Just feeling.

Now concentrate on this feeling. Amplify it, go further into it. Keep it free of attachment or meaning. Dwell on the feeling. Fall into it. Keep feeling. What is that? Try to experience the essential nature of feeling. What is feeling itself? Wonder about that for a moment. Try this exercise multiple times at different times to experience it from varying states of mind.

Spatial Awareness in the Shower Exercise In the shower with eyes closed while shampooing, notice: Do you know exactly where the soap dish is in space? Can you reach and grab the water handle as if eyes were open? Try it. Make a game of sensing where everything is: each wall in all directions, soap, shower head, shampoo bottle, ledge, each corner, hanging items, whatever features you have. Don't forget behind you.

Choose several items representing three-dimensional awareness. Try reaching out to lightly touch each exactly where it's located. With practice, spatial sense improves and you learn to pay more attention. Do this exercise in any dark place with irregular terrain (safely navigable), observing where it's most comfortable to shine a flashlight and why.

Chapter 4: Learning, Being, and Creating

Internal Dialogue Exercise Sit quietly and attempt to have no thoughts. Since you'll likely have thoughts anyway, watch them arise. Notice how you talk to yourself in your head. This impulse is ongoing, so practice anytime. Observe how internal dialogue persists even as you attempt to stop it.

Now concentrate on what you're going to say to yourself next. See if you can grasp it before you say it. Work on this until you can grasp the thought you're going to think before it becomes a sentence in your head.

You actually conceive the thought before speaking the sentence to yourself. Notice this - if not completely prior to hearing words, at least notice what the whole sentence will be before you finish saying it.

Once you've reached this sensitivity level, try having a thought without representing it with a sentence. It can be done. Notice you can "know" a thought in a moment without any sentence filling it out.

With this degree of sensitivity, notice how hard it is NOT to talk to yourself about thoughts. The intellect is irresistibly drawn to map what's already there so we can examine or "think" it. This practice helps you work at the source where thoughts originate, enabling better "control" of mental processes.

Generating Feeling Exercise Think of a sensation you could have in your body - warmth in belly, buzzing in hands, lightness in space around body - and concentrate on this feeling in or around your body until you can "physically" feel at least something close to it. This gives experience of the possibilities of creating feeling.

The sensation must seem real to your nervous system for it to influence body and mind. Practice making generated feelings vivid enough that your brain perceives them as physical reality. Examples: standing on high poles, molecular vibration throughout body, warm sensation in lower belly or feet, tingling in fingers, feeling like sinking under floor or floating above head, flowing feeling throughout limbs.

Chapter 5: The Principles of an Effective Body-Being

Relaxing Practice Send a feeling-impulse through your nervous system telling muscles to let go. Whatever tension you're immediately aware of will let go - like flopping on couch after hard day, dropping raised shoulders while typing, loosening grip when handing over telephone.

For deeper relaxation: Keep sending the "letting go" signal. The longer it's sent, the more deeply tissues relax. Once initial relaxation occurs, more signals can be sent to same tissues and they'll respond with further relaxation. Flood whole body with this impulse, relaxing generally rather than responding to specific functional demands.

For third-stage relaxation: Maintain feeling-impulse for long periods, perhaps continually. After muscles relax deeply, they still respond to the letting-go impulse by slowly changing condition over time, obtaining greater suppleness. This requires long, steady exposure to deep letting go - potentially hours daily over extended periods.

As you relax body, mind also relaxes. Attitudes, moods, emotions, thought processes are necessarily affected. Mind is where tension originates - relaxation cannot be accomplished without letting go in mind. "Relax your mind" and discover this is the same as feeling and relaxing your whole body.

Feeling the Whole Body Practice Begin by attempting to feel your body. Notice areas you don't feel or don't feel clearly. Repeatedly concentrate on these areas to yield sensation. The more you train, the more you feel. At various points, set out to feel whole body at once, not just sum of parts. Practice feeling any one area, each detail, or groups of body parts, but also practice feeling the whole.

When walking, sitting, lying down, feel your whole body doing these things. At first, this is eye-opening as you comprehend the missing unity. Continue even as interest lessens. It's your body and life. Feel how every part is involved (or not) in each activity. This turns mundane events - taking out garbage, sitting in chair, picking up pencil - into practice opportunities and often exhilarating experiences of being alive.

Spatial Awareness Training Imagine walking with large billowy cape flowing behind you. This helps lift posture, brings consciousness to your "back" and space behind you, increases sense of presence.

Put attention on space around you. Try to stay centered within awareness so you don't exclude back in favor of front, one side over the other, or focus on what demands attention to exclusion of space elsewhere. Work to keep comprehensive sense of spatial awareness - inclusive rather than exclusive.

Make up exercises to assist training spatial awareness. Simply remembering to feel whole body or relax will go far as an exercise. You're best person to guide yourself to greater awareness.

Centering Exercises Physically sense the lower abdomen area. This should locate the center of body mass. Practice putting attention there, making this central location the hub from which you direct body actions. Generate a feeling of your center being the control point for all movement.

Rag Doll Exercise Stand where you won't bump into anything. Relax whole body, put awareness on center. Start moving center slightly, rotating one way then another. Drop shoulders, relax arms, then relax more until able to totally let go of arms so they flop freely as center rotates slightly.

Now, using only the center, increase pelvic movement and use it to toss your completely limp arms out and away from body. As you turn hips rotating left and right, arms will arc out and may slap against body, but don't control arms - let them move wherever they go.

Work up to tossing every part of body solely from center, letting it freely flop around, being completely relaxed. This loosens joints and muscles, gives good sense of center, and practices moving whole body literally from center. Your body must feel as limp as rag doll or wet noodle for practice to change tissue and nervous system habits. Stay with it even if initially difficult.

Aligning with Gravity Exercise Stand very still and relax. Slowly move awareness throughout whole body, relaxing every muscle. As you relax, feel how gravity's pull and your need for balance work together to "stack" body from ground upwards. Keep relaxing and allow body to adjust itself.

Feel your feet resting on ground. Create sensation of allowing feet to fall right into floor. Begin working up, letting each body part relax and fall onto the one below it. As you let go of holding body, some parts (like pelvis) may shift to more natural position, causing upper body to adjust to maintain balance without effort. Allow these changes and keep feeling like you're dropping downward - simply arrange whole body so you're dropping into your feet. Seek and find the most effortless way to do this. Don't fight gravity's pull - align to it.

Force of Gravity Exercise Lie on back with arms and legs flat on floor. Relax whole body. Using no strength (or as little as possible), lift one body part after another just a fraction off ground. Lift head, arm, leg, finger. Feel the force pulling it down. By using no strength and remaining totally relaxed, feel how heavy everything is to lift, revealing the force pulling everything down.

When presence of this force is fully felt, begin process of standing. Slowly go through each stage of standing, being fully conscious of gravity's pull throughout. Notice movements and muscles used for standing, usually ignored or taken for granted. If at any time you find yourself skipping over feeling present force of gravity during some motion, go back to beginning and start again. Do this until standing. Once standing, continue feeling gravity's pull through whole body into feet.

At another time, starting upright, try reproducing the feeling from above exercise (feeling gravity's force), and adjust body accordingly. Practice until you can move into this feeling-alignment at will.

Standing on Pilings Exercise To increase sense of grounding, balance, and alignment to gravity, imagine standing high atop thick poles sticking up from ground. Really use imagination until you create sense of standing up high on these pilings. Shift or step from pole to pole, concentrating on feeling pressure on foot moving straight down on top of pole all the way into ground where pole is buried.

Chapter 6: Structural Alignment

Find Your Footing Exercise Practice standing on both feet and feel pressure in every part of each foot. Is it mostly on outside edge, inside edge, ball, or heel? Feel bottoms of feet and relax whole foot and ankle as much as possible. Move body weight ever so slightly until you can feel ankle is loose and floating, and foot is not disturbed by body movement.

Stand still and try feeling pressure evenly distributed over whole foot and centered in middle of foot. Imagine foot is like soft clay being squished evenly onto ground.

Test yourself by bouncing up and down ever so slightly without letting feet leave ground at all. Feel where pressure is in feet. If it isn't even and balanced, make adjustments in body's movement or structure until pressure is even and centered. Make sure feet remain relaxed and aren't themselves trying to compensate for this slight body movement.

Relax legs and pelvis and feel them connected directly to feet. When clear that weight of lower body is resting on ground, focus awareness on entire upper body and allow it to rest on pelvis, which rests on legs, which rest on feet, which rest on ground.

Once established, align structure with gravity's pull until you develop sense of whole relaxed body balanced directly on feet. When you've done this enough and feel confident in feeling weight balanced and settled in feet, take a few steps trying to maintain this feeling in motion. If you lose this relaxed and balanced sensation, stop and re-establish before stepping again.

If having difficulty: Try standing with feet on ground and lifting weight from tree limb or pole just overhead. Slowly lower weight onto feet as you focus on allowing pressure to spread evenly on ground.

Walking Line Exercise While walking, note whether feet naturally fall straight ahead or turn out or in. Find some line on ground - groove in sidewalk or painted line in parking lot - and use it to closely observe any deviation as you walk. One foot may fall straight while other turns in or out.

If feet turn inward or outward, try making them point straight ahead with each footfall and walk that way for a while. Pay close attention to sensations in legs, hips, back. You should be able to isolate feelings of tension or mild pain somewhere that are origins of misalignment. Once sources are identified, set out on program to relax, stretch, or otherwise rehabilitate the area(s), and feet should turn straight again.

In some cases, problem may be substantial - genetic or result of trauma early in development. Correction may require serious attention (bodywork, great commitment) and may be more work than it's worth. Such cases are rare. Don't confuse having to take on work with impossibility. If having challenges, go slowly at first and wait a day or two to see how you feel before proceeding.

Moving an Object Exercise Find movable object (chair on smooth floor, sliding glass door) and choose simple task: pushing chair or sliding door open/shut. At first, line up to task and go through motions so gently that it doesn't even move object. Feel where in body you may be moving in direction that isn't aligned with task. For example, you may push with just upper body, "pinching off" at waist. Feel the whole until you find unity, but continue looking into details. Are you pressing out elbows or shoulders? Are wrists misaligned? Perhaps you find you're moving knees in direction that doesn't serve this task.

As you discover these subtle "leaks," make corrections until every part functions together as whole. Now, keeping body relaxed, use as little effort as possible to move object. As you do, feel where in body there's slightly more strain or pressure. Try again until you can smooth out these areas and perform task with even distribution of pressure throughout whole body.

Now concentrate on hand(s) touching object and practice moving slightly until you can feel connection from hand to foot. Beginning with this connection and maintaining it throughout, move object without allowing any strain to build anywhere in body. Remember to stay very relaxed so you can sense slightest misalignment.

Same approach applies to virtually every task. For example, practice lifting lightweight kitchen chair. Position yourself so you can bend knees. Keep back straight (even if slightly bent forward) and grasp either side of seat. Keeping arms relaxed, simply feel weight of chair in hands. Before lifting, feel chair's weight stretch up through arms to shoulders. Keeping arms outstretched, feel this pressure connect down shoulders to pelvis, then to legs and feet. Once you feel unity and connection from chair to floor, drop pelvis down and forward slightly and into legs to lift. Practice until you can find alignments quickly and do it without any strain.

Nose with Navel Exercise Practice turning head and pelvis together as one unit. Wherever nose points, keep navel pointed in same direction. This helps familiarize you with sense of whole-body integrity. Combine this with Rag Doll Exercise. In this way, get sense of using center to move whole body as one unified piece, with torso, arms, and legs all moving together.

Chapter 8: Mind and Perception

Walking with a Cape Exercise Imagine walking around with large billowy cape flowing out behind you as you move. This helps lift posture, brings to consciousness sense of your "back" and space behind you, and increases sense of presence. Practice this visualization until it affects your actual body carriage and spatial awareness.

Chapter 10: Life Practice

Lifting a Melting Candle Exercise Imagine whole body feels like soft, melted candle wax, and on top of head is wick of candle. Lift body from squatting position as if wick on head is pulling body up. As you lift up, feel whole body drain downward like melting wax - only thing moving up is wick. This image-sensation helps align with gravity and embody "reach up while sinking down" rule. Also assists relaxation and helps establish stronger grounding.

These are all the major exercises explicitly detailed in the book. Each requires regular practice to develop the consciousness and sensitivity necessary for transformation. The book emphasizes that exercises must be practiced, not just read about, and that you should also invent your own exercises based on your particular needs and discoveries.

Edited October 2 by AION

[theleelajoker]

Interesting stuff