The muscles of the chest and upper back can become tense and painful when we spend too much time at seated deskwork without balancing exercises to re-energize them. This persistent tension, in turn, can negatively influence neck and/or lower back and can even contribute to numbness and tingling in the fingers. This video features a versatile exercise that activates circulation in this area of the body through a rotative-gyration idea.

It’s important to remember, though, that while regular mechanical stimulation of the muscles, joint, and related structures through movement is important for the health of those functional compartments, it is not all that’s needed. Ancient wisdom recognizes that the body is a reflection of mind; mind includes our conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions. For the serious student of health, then, giving proper attention to areas where we feel mentally and emotionally stagnant is simultaneously a practice for preventing and eliminating places of physical stagnation–pockets of stiffness. tension, inflammation, and pain.

Consider the following statement from Pathwork Lecture 180, The Spiritual Significance of Human Relationship: “Relationship with others is a mirror of one’s own state and thus a direct help to one’s self-purification”. One can use this concept as a starting point for reflecting on and deeply examining one’s own difficult or challenging relationships. A question that follows from here is: where do you have trouble connecting in a warm, emotionally loving way with another, even though you may have known this person for many years and on some level do have a positive, constructive relationship? It’s easy to ask the question, but often the healing of such areas is deep, long-term work that requires great courage, patience, and care. Experience shows that when healing is achieved on these levels of the self, love is allowed to flow once again through places that have become cold, numb, and emotionally stressed; restoration of vitality in areas of the body that had become devitalized is the natural reflection.

I reckon we humans tend to compartmentalize these areas of our lives, not seeing how relationship difficulties on one hand intimately tie into the state of our postural alignment, and muscle tension-inflammation-pain on the other. At the very least, remind yourself that mind and body are inseparable; where we have emotional blocks, there, too, do we have causes-conditions-factors that favor the development of physical blocks. Do the work of self-facing, self-confrontation, and self-healing as prescribed by the Pathwork or other similar path of self development.

Let’s remember that to the extent we’ve invested resources and healed relationships with self, other, and Life, we will also enjoy uplifted health physically.

Copyright (c) Justin Jaucian