1. The Physical Body

First, we become more aware of the physical body and its needs for proper functioning, and we work to bring any imbalances in this layer back into balance. The purely physical processes taking place in it, its structure, and its composition have already been researched to a certain extent, and you can find enough knowledge about them in relevant books and on the Internet.

What not many people are aware of, for example, is that negative and suppressed emotions can also influence, among other things, the muscles in the physical body. This can lead to tension, restricted movement, changes in posture, restricted function of organs and glands, and all sorts of other problems.

Therefore, each of us has his or her suppressed, unprocessed emotional past always with him, so to speak, and this can also be experienced directly in the physical body. In order to feel more alive, freer, and more flexible on a physical level, these tensions need to be released again.

Grafics Physical Body

So what can I do on the physical level to become freer and feel better in my body again?

I. Right nutrition

Did you know that in some Eastern healing systems, when a patient comes to the doctor, the first thing they do is change their diet to cure or alleviate the illness?

In Tibetan medicine, for example, three basic energies are described that work in the body and must be in harmony for one to be healthy: lung, tripa and péken.

In the event of illness, the Tibetan doctor checks how these three energies behave in the body, and if he detects disharmony, he usually first tries to heal it by changing the food. Every food, as well as its temperature and preparation, influences one or more of these three energies.

If, for example, you have a disease where there is too much lung energy in the body and you then eat foods that further increase this lung energy, then this can have a negative effect on your well-being.

However, if you eat foods that reduce this lung energy, you will usually feel better. So food can have either a positive or negative effect on an imbalance in your body.

Picture Vegetables

I just wanted to mention this as some interesting and perhaps helpful background knowledge on nutrition. The root of illness is originally in the mind, but diet can also contribute a lot to health, and if you eat incorrectly, it can have a negative impact on your healing process.

I have tried a lot of things in terms of nutrition over the years. For example, I was vegetarian for about 6 years, vegan for 2 years, didn't eat anything for 10 days (and didn't drink anything for 3 of those days) when doing a living on light process, experimented with nutritional supplements for a long time, and tried out a variety of diets.

My personal conclusion: There are many nutritional theories, some of which can be helpful for certain people, but what I have learned is that every person has a unique structure of the body system, and therefore nutrition can often only be determined individually. This means that what is good for one person does not necessarily mean that it is good for someone else.

I personally just observe how my physical body, my energy, and my mind feel after I eat or drink something. If I notice a negative change, then I might try that food again just to be sure. It should also be noted that the time (i.e., what time of day I eat the food), the quantity, the preparation, the quality of the food, and which other foods I eat (or drink) the food with also play a role.

What you should generally pay attention to or know when it comes to nutrition

Unfortunately, at the moment, the majority of the food you get in the supermarket is not very nutritious or beneficial to your health. The food industry has changed most of our food in such a way and added (sometimes toxic) additives and pesticides that conventional food can make you sick in the long run.

That's why I would like to give just a few tips that you can consider:

  1. The food should be processed as little as possible.
  2. Buy fresh, organic, and local food whenever possible.
  3. Eat as little (industrial) sugar as possible.
  4. If you should eat meat or other animal products, then see that it's from ethical husbandry.

Detoxify

Since poor-quality food, etc., causes substances to accumulate in our body that have a negative impact on its function, it is important to get rid of these toxins. There are different types of detoxification methods; I would just like to briefly mention a simple one:

Intermittent fasting

There are different variations of this form of fasting. Personally, I do it like this now and then: on days when I feel like it, I simply don't eat anything for between 16 and 18 hours.

The body (more precisely, the cells) begins to excrete toxins approximately 12 hours after it does not receive food. For example, if you haven't eaten anything for 16 hours, your body will excrete toxins for around 4 hours. It should be noted that you can only drink water during the 16 - 18 hours - not even tea.

Dietary supplements

Can have a supportive effect on maintaining health or the healing process. They are to be considered for vegetarian and especially vegan diets, and they may even be necessary for some people.

Medicinal herbs

Can have a positive effect on the healing process. But be aware that healing work often doesn't just have to be done on the physical (chemical) level.

I would also like to mention

Certain yogis who have achieved a very high state of consciousness and mastery over their bodies show that ultimately, the mind controls matter! These yogis can, for example, survive without physical food (as shown in the film 'Am Anfang war das Licht'), or they can eat or be given poison and not experience any negative consequences (as was proven scientifically in a clinical experiment on Wim Hof (=The Ice Man) when he was injected with a virus but didn't get sick afterwards).

II. To move

1. Yogic physical exercises

A system that, among other things, was developed to resolve blockages in the body system is... Yoga. I attended my first Yoga courses in 2002 and was certified as a yoga teacher in 2008 after completing a Yoga teacher training in an ashram in southern India.

The numerous positive effects of Yoga exercises on the entire body system are widely known, scientifically proven, and 'Yoga' is now very trendy.

In many yoga courses these days, however, too much emphasis is put on asanas (the individual postures are called 'asana' in yoga) and too little on self-knowledge, holistic self-healing and achieving mastery of the mind, as actually intended in the teachings of the Yoga Sutras, the original text of yoga. To illustrate... only 3 of the 196 sutras (short, concise teachingphrases) of the Yoga Sutras reference physical posture - and even they are about the posture in meditation. There are various reasons why Yoga (especially in the West) is now often mainly limited to postures or physical exercises. One of them being that when yoga originally came to the West, religions had much more power, and it was therefore not possible to also teach yoga philosophy, for example. 

Nevertheless, physical exercises do have an important function and are a valuable aid on the way; yoga just shouldn't be reduced to practicing asanas, as is so often the case.

As the first practice of the Five Bodies Yoga basic exercise series, I would like to introduce you to the so-called 'Sun Salutation'...

I. Sun Salutation

I chose the yoga exercise called 'Sun Salutation' (='Surya Namaskar' in Sanskrit) because of its complex and excellent effect on the entire body system.

Also called the king of asanas, it is designed to work on all body parts, organs, body systems, and chakras. Of all the asanas, the sun salutation is also considered the most effective exercise for warming up, stretching, and strengthening the body and spine, although it is not actually an asana but a yoga exercise in itself.

The practice of sun salutation awakens the inherent body intelligence to absorb energy directly from the sun (especially through the solar plexus chakra), and it opens the body up to being able to absorb more pranic energy from the environment.

Regular practice of the sun salutation has a tremendous healing effect on the body system. The heat generated improves metabolism, stimulates the immune system, and helps to release pent-up energies. It causes a deep cleansing and energization of our inner space and also opens the body for the following exercises.

It is taught in slightly different variations by different yoga schools and is traditionally often practiced together with 12 different mantras. Since Five Bodies Yoga is, among other things, about perceiving our different bodies more consciously when we practice, we put our attention completely into our physical bodies while doing this exercise.

Sun Salutation, as the name suggests, is a greeting (prayer) to the sun and should be practiced with a feeling of gratitude for the life-giving energy of the sun. I do this by making myself aware of it before I start the exercise and thanking the sun in my thoughts. And..., smile a little while you do the exercises; it feels good :-)

Keep your eyes open throughout the entire exercise. The breaths should last approximately the entire duration of each movement, be taken through the nose, and the movements should flow smoothly into one another.

The Sun Salutation


Individual Positions:

1. Stand with your feet together (or slightly apart) and bring your hands to your heart in a prayer position.

Picture Sun Salutation

2. While inhaling, bring your hands above your head and arch your spine backwards.
Picture Sun SalutationPicture Sun Salutation

3. As you exhale, move your outstretched arms forward with your back straight and bring them next to your feet on the floor, with your head moving towards your knees (you can also bend your knees in case).

Picture Sun SalutationPicture Sun SalutationPicture Sun Salutation

4. During the next inhalation, bring the right leg as far back as possible for odd rounds and the left leg for even rounds, and stretch the chest forward and upwards as good as possible.

Picture Sun SalutationPicture Sun SalutationPicture Sun Salutation

5. Now bring your left leg back and form a straight line with your legs, spine, and head. In this position, the hands are under the shoulders, and the breath is held.
Picture Sun Salutation

6. As you exhale, bring your knees, chest, and forehead to the floor.
Picture Sun SalutationPicture Sun Salutation

7. As you breathe in again, lift your chest from the floor and look up. While lifting up, mainly use your back muscles and only use your arms as a small support.
Picture Sun Salutation

8. Now, as you exhale, push your hips up and your heels towards the floor.
Picture Sun SalutationPicture Sun Salutation

9. Now, while you breathe in, bring your right leg forward again for odd-numbered repetitions and your left leg for even-numbered repetitions, and stretch the chest forward and upward again.
Picture Sun SalutationPicture Sun Salutation

10. Bring your left foot next to your right foot as you exhale, and bring your head toward your knees (you can bend your knees again in case).
Picture Sun SalutationPicture Sun Salutation

11. With your upper body straight, bring your arms back over your head while inhaling, and gently bend your spine backwards again.

Picture Sun Salutation Picture Sun SalutationPicture Sun Salutation

12. Now, while exhaling, bring your hands back in front of your chest in a prayer position.
Picture Sun Salutation

This is one repetition of the sun salutation. With each repetition, switch the foot with which you go back and forward again in positions 4 and 9. One repetition each with the right leg and the left leg then makes one round.

When you first start practicing, you can start with 6 reps, for example, and then increase it over time to 12 or even more if you want. You can also experiment with the speed at which you do the exercise, as practicing slowly and quickly has a slightly different effect.

II. Individual Asanas

Depending on how much time you have available, you can do additional asanas. Personally, I usually do three more exercises: one in which the spine is bent forward (seated forward bend), one in which it is bent backwards (half pigeon pose), and one in which it is rotated (half spinal twist pose).

After you have done the sun salutation and the asanas, briefly observe how your body feels after having done these exercises.

2. Fitness training

In addition to yoga exercises, you also need physical training in order to get/stay really fit and therefore feel maximally comfortable in your body. There are numerous ways to train your body. Personally, I regularly do a cardio program, go cycling, and do a few other activities to keep my body fit.

III. Other

1. Staying in nature that is as untouched as possible (e.g., in a forest), direct sunlight, and fresh air have a very positive influence on our body system - everyone should know this, but for the sake of completeness, I would like to mention it here.

2. Since the functioning of our body system is also based on electrical energy, or electromagnetism, it is important to minimize external radiation that can penetrate our system, as it can disrupt our energy field.

Here are a few tips:

  • If possible, live far away from cell phone towers.
  • Never carry the smartphone completely on your body, or if you carry it on your body, then only in flight mode or switched off.
  • Connect your computer to the router using a LAN cable, and then turn off WiFi.
  • Turn off power to all connected devices when not in use, especially overnight.
  • If possible, connect devices with cables and avoid Bluetooth, etc., as much as possible.
  • Use a blue light filter on your smartphone and computer, and perhaps also blue light glasses, to minimize the harmful rays that the screen emits.

What does science say about it?

You can find comprehensive studies about yogic postures on the Yoga-Vidya website here (you will need your browser's internal translator a translation add-on, or Google Translate as the site is in German):

Studies Yoga

Next up is... 2. The Pranic Body