I quickly looked up Yamuna Body Rolling and ordered several of the balls required for this practice. (I wasn’t quite sure what to call them, but Yamuna Balls cracks my husband up, so that’s what they’ve become.)

With book, DVD, and balls in hand (eek, this is going to be an awkward subject to write about, no two ways about it), I set out to learn how to roll the kinks out of my muscles. The balls, were, indeed, well worth the investment. They create enough pressure to relax muscles, but they’re soft enough to prevent agonizing pain as you massage a sore spot.

Recently, my Yamuna Balls have saved my ass. Literally. Being pregnant, with a belly that has expanded significantly, (actually, it kind of seems to defy the laws of physics, and I still have three months to go – yikes) has apparently upset my lower back and butt muscles. They are not happy campers, carrying this baby around all the time. For weeks, I struggled to find some way to ease the tight muscles. Movement helped, as did stretching, but I was still uncomfortable. When I asked the muscles what they were telling me (a reliable mind-body tool I use for tension/pain), they said, “Move, stretch, breathe, and roll. We’re taking a hit here with this giant change in your body.”

It was a forehead-smacking moment. Duh! The Yamuna Balls! I got them out and started rolling, immediately. Oh, sweet relief. By consistently rolling periodically throughout the day (it only takes a few moments), I can now keep my butt muscles from screaming and my lower back loose.

Now, let me explain that I’ve spent many years learning and studying about tension in the body. It’s the main culprit behind chronic pain, so I’ve become a master at digging in with mind-body tools and releasing tension in my body. For the most part, I’ve found that every area of tension in the body is holding stored emotional energy that needs to be released. Sure, there can be a physical component adding to the pain, but tension is usually a by-product of not letting ourselves fully feel emotions and connect to our bodies.

So, you can be sure that I have been practicing what I preach. My lower back seemed to be holding primarily fear. I’ve felt a huge array of emotions since becoming pregnant, and I let them flow. (I find the hormonal mania actually makes it easier to feel them than before, which is a nice experience for a chronic emotional suppressor!) Yet, there are often times when I can’t seem to access the emotion stored in a tense area without a little release of the muscle tension to help me out. This is where the Yamuna Balls come in so handy. If I know I’m storing some emotion but I’m feeling a bit emotionally constipated, I can simply roll the muscles, breathe, and invite the emotion to emerge. The combo of working physically on a muscle, breathing oxygen into that area, and being willing to feel any emotions that need to be felt is the most powerful relaxant and pain-reliever I’ve found.

I’m sharing all this so that you, too, can benefit from the ability to employ this combo in your life, should you be interested in doing so. Grab a Yamuna Ball (you’ll probably want one of the instructional books or DVD’s, too, to get started), roll out the kinks, and access stored emotion. Simple, effective, and even entertaining. You’ll likely find many ball jokes to go with your self-massage practice, especially if you live with a man. And laughter is a fabulous way to release tension!

Admittedly, I might be a massage ‘ho. Recently I had two massages in one week. Maybe I need to consider starting a Massage Addicts Anonymous group for myself. (Anyone want to join me?) I’ll borrow a page from Scarlett O’Hara’s book and think about that tomorrow.  Or next month. In the meantime, I’m going to keep indulging my massage mania, because I find massages delightfully relaxing and incredibly useful.

The basic benefit of any mind-body connection strengthener is the resulting connection to your own inner wisdom. The more your mind and body are in sync, working together, the easier it is to translate those intuitive hits, gut feelings, and moments of deep knowing into understandable, actionable directives for your life. Your inner wisdom is always on your side, helping you to create the life you want.

When you first start using mind-body connection tools, you will likely face stored emotions, unheard intuitive truths, and other uncomfortable information your body would like to share with you. We usually disconnect ourselves from our bodies to avoid this kind of discomfort, so it makes sense that reconnecting means facing that discomfort.

Think of the different elements of your mind-body system as having different jobs. Your body and emotions are the conduit for your inner wisdom/intuition, while your mind is the translator. It translates physical awareness of inner wisdom into language so you can understand it and use it in your daily life. Once you have moved through the initial phase or reconnection, your mind-body pipes, so to speak, are pretty much cleaned out. Your inner wisdom can then flow cleanly and easily through your body and into your conscious awareness. This means that nearly every time you purposefully connect to your body, you’ll probably get pure gold: creative ideas, solutions to problems, directives for the next steps to take, and insights.

This is where the mind-body way of living gets really fun and massage becomes your creative workshop. As you lie on the massage table, enjoying the heavenly bliss, you’ll find the idea stream opening up to maximum flow. This can be a little disconcerting if you’re trying to relax, but don’t stress. You don’t have to do a single thing about the flood of ideas coming through. Think of it as mining for gold – there’s a huge stream of water, silt, and other stuff flowing, but you’ll be sifting through it for the true gold. To do this, you don’t even have to work. Your inner wisdom itself will sift for you, and you’ll remember only the truly inspirational, useful pieces.

I take a notebook with me to my massages and leave it in the car. After the massage, I take a few minutes to sit and write down everything I remember from that rush of creative, intuitive information. I trust that whatever I remember is what I need most, and whatever I forget is something unnecessary or something that will surface again when needed. I end up with blog post ideas, workshop ideas, things I want to tell friends and family, questions I want to explore, and ideas for everything from business to health to hairstyles.

All of the mind-body tools have this effect after you’ve used them for a little while, because they are all designed to connect you to this source of creativity and insight – your own inner genius. However, I love the absolute decadence of treating myself to ninety minutes of bliss and getting amazing creative flow as a result. In fact, I’m off to get another massage right now.

Guess how I came up with that one! Yep, on the massage table.

Obviously, if you hate massages, this tool isn’t for you. If, like me, you adore floating in dreamy relaxation while listening to soft music, then schedule a massage asap.

All joking aside, massage really IS a great self-coaching tool. Our bodies are magical, miraculous things that take care of us in thousands of unnoticed ways, day in and day out, for our entire lives. One of the amazing things our bodies do for us is store emotional energy. When difficult or painful experiences happen in our lives, our bodies help us make it through them.

If you’re in the midst of a trauma or crisis in your life, it is likely that you will feel mentally overwhelmed and unable to deal with every little emotion or issue that arises. For example, I just experienced a loss that involved much grieving. I was able to be present with the emotions of grief, allowing them to flow through my body and release as each wave came through. However, any additional emotional experience on top of that felt impossibly difficult. My mind revolted at dealing with the emotional detritus of everyday life on top of the grieving process.  So, my body helped me out and stored some of it for later.

In times of high stress, this is the body’s gift to us. All we have to do is remain aware that this may be happening, feel the emotions we can handle, stay aware of our bodies, and then help our bodies release stored emotional energy when the time is right. As you may well know from reading past posts, never allowing our bodies to release stored emotional energy results in physical pain – the body’s cry for help.

Like most things in life, the answer is moderation and balance. It’s a difficult task to NEVER store emotional energy in the body, and it’s also painfully difficult to ALWAYS store emotional energy in the body. What works and keeps us healthy is to allow the body to help us when the mind is overwhelmed, and the let the mind help the body when it is able again.

My body kindly stored emotional energy around issues unrelated to the grief I was experiencing. I was grateful, because I needed to focus on the grief. Then, after a couple of weeks, I felt ready to let my body release those held emotions. So, I went to my massage with the intention of both relaxing and feeling.  I sank into the dreamy half-asleep bliss for a full ninety minutes (SO WORTH IT!), and then I came home to feel.

And feel I did. Let me tell you, a good massage does wonders for bringing up whatever is being stored in your body! I let the emotions flow through, and I learned much from them. I felt the gentle re-alignment of body and mind taking place, which often reminds me of coming home from a long vacation. It’s sweet, slightly painful because the vacation is over, and very grounding. I feel settled in my own skin, my own body, and my own inner wisdom again.

That’s why I say go get a massage. If your body has helped you out by storing some emotional energy, you’ll be able to release it. (This can take several days, so simply get the massage and then wait. Feel whatever comes up, whenever it arises. It’s that simple.) Don’t try to be the perfect mind-body student and never store a darn thing in your body. Instead, recognize that we are all human, and that you need to store emotional energy sometimes. In fact, your body will take over and do it without your awareness in times of need. You’ll know soon enough, because you’ll feel a little tension somewhere. That’s when you pick up the phone, call up your favorite massage therapist, and treat yourself to a little self-coaching, disguised as R and R.

Really, could there be a more enjoyable mind-body tool?