When you train and move your body in a natural, wholistic and flowing way, something amazing happens on the inside. You start to awaken and develop the more subtle muscles and connective tissues. These provide an inner support that we need for life, chores, exercise, sport and postural alignment.

Before we get to today’s focus, here is a quick note about body balance. Ideally, your body comes to balance with itself… a balance:

• From left to right
• Front to back
• Core to periphery
• Upper body to lower body, and one more thing:
• You need flexibility and strength to come to balance with each other

Too much or too little of either one and movement efficiency declines while risk of physical tension/injuries increase. To help you achieve this balance, the Dojiva membership site has a category called Mobility with over 175 videos.

Although these seven day clusters give you a suggested themed guide, you can use the site’s search icon 🔍 and rehab section to find just the class you need.

This week’s focus and classes are all about developing awareness, flow and movement from the centre of your body. And I would like you to extend this into daily life, sport and gait.

We have dedicated the last two months to sensory awareness and how your choice of household product can affect your health. These write ups are all stored as blogs on my website, so you can re-cap at any time. 

For the next two months, the focus shifts to movement. Aside form individual sporting preferences, there are four maintain disciplines that I recommend you strike a balance of.

This week and next week will we concentrate on functional core strength and mid-line support which come form the world of Pilates. Then we’ll dedicate two weeks to the flexibility, flow and presence that arises form yoga. July will start with strength and conditioning that we enjoy from the gym, (and this includes body weight exercsie, callisthenics and the use of dumbbells and bands at home). Finally we’ll embrace the phi...

“I believe that a heightened state of awareness is not just reserved for deep meditation and extreme sports but can be experienced in day to day life”.

I like to view proprioception as ‘a three dimensional knowing of your body as it moves through space’. But this knowing is also subtle and applies to stillness. It’s an integration of the five senses and a key factor in presence or… simply feeling alive!

A common theme has emerged from these recent write ups about the five senses and that’s about returning to nature…

• Natural tastes with whole foods verses processed foods.
• Natural smells with time outdoors and for household and personal care products to be non synthetic versions (e.g. with organic essential oils and using vinegar and bicarbonate of soda for cleaning).
• Natural vision with plenty of time viewing nature to balance out screen time/indoor lighting.
• Natural sounds - again, back to nature for outdoor time (and inner) listening.
• Natural touch with skin awareness, receiv...

Skin is our protective barrier from the outside world and is a good indicator of health.

We have recently had clusters on sight, sound, smell and taste. We now get to touch, including information about general anatomy and physiology of your skin. Then next week we’ll finish focus this series with touch on the inside (proprioception).

Before we dive into some fun facts and anatomy, here are some notes about the subtle side of touch.

Present moment

Our sense of touch is always in the here and now, so another doorway to the wonders of presence. However, a bit like breathing and postural awareness, it can easily get forgotten about with life’s distractions. E.g when deep in thought, busy at work, watching TV or caught doom-scrolling on social media!

Now, a little day-dreaming here and there is just fine and can actually be a very creative time; during artistry, gardening, music and projects. However, an over-riding tenant of Dojiva is to be…

more conscious of your body in daily life

This week’s cluster is about how your health and wellbeing can be affected by smell… a sense that gives you: 

13,000 opportunities to be present (everyday)!

With millions of epithelial cells in the nose, humans can distinguish between tens of thousands of different smells. With each complete breath cycle taking around 5 seconds, you get over 20,000 breaths per day, which in waking hours equates to about 13,000 opportunities to smell! 

A clear example of preference over presence

Unless you have an olfactory deficiency, smelling is a continuous process that never switches off. If you grew up on a farm then farm yard smells could remind you of home and be a welcome and enjoyable experience.

If someone from the city drives out to the countryside and opens the car window then they might wretch at the same outdoor aroma! So, smelling is a great example of human differences and preferences.

Our smell also has an intricate tie in to taste

The full flavour experience and enjoyment of foo...

As we continue our journey through the five senses, we now get to taste. A sense that is influenced by individual preference, beliefs, marketing and where you shop.

First up, a few fun facts

Your tongue has around 10,000 taste buds, each with around 50 receptors. When we add chewing and smell, we shift from the experience of taste to that of flavour. It allows you to perceive five main tastes:

•  Sweet
•  Salty
•  Sour
•  Bitter
•  Savoury (umami)

Compared to other cells of the body, there’s a fast turn around with taste buds regenerating about every 10 days. That’s good news if you have an injury (like gulping a hot drink) because the taste buds usually repair on their own quite quickly.

Aside from enjoyment, taste also helps us decipher if food is fresh or spoiled and more importantly if it’s toxic (bitter cells towards the back of the tongue help with this before swallowing). Plus we have receptors for hot, cold and spicy!

The mouth (with enzymes in saliva) is also the beginning...

Today, we continue our exploration of the five senses with a final cluster for the eyes... we have information about diet, foods that could be potentially harmful, better alternatives and about the best nutrients.

And, here’s a quick re-cap from the last two week’s that summarises what to do and what not to do for general eye care. (If some of these pointers resonate, why not write them down?

Can you:

• Blink often? If reading a book or lines on a screen, blink every line or two (you can do this one straight away).
• Soften your gaze? There are many opportunities in your day to include your peripheral vision.
• Be consistent with your eye exercises such as cupping, near and far and tracking.
• Spend more time outdoors and take a good walk outside everyday? While out…
• Look at nature? Trees, leaves, flowers, the sun/sky… be present and really look at the colour and texture of what’s there).
• Practice looking into the long distance at regular times in your day?
• Set your lap-top, tablet,...

Building on last week’s eye focus, this week we get detailed on what degrades eyesight, about the subtle side of seeing and a great mindfulness practice that you can do now. 

First up though, a few notes about aging and beliefs

When it comes to genetics verses environment, I have a different view than the mainstream. As the wise saying goes: 

‘gene’s might load the gun but lifestyle habits pull the trigger’!

So, whether you’re considering your fitness level, ability to do complex math, how many press ups you can do or you likelihood to get an illness…you do not have to go down the same route as your parents, grandparents and beyond down your blood line. I think a better path/thought focus is to focus on optimising your surroundings.

Here is a reminder of ten basic lifestyle ideals that I harken on about quite often:

1. Spend more time outdoors
2. Enjoy daily walks
3. Where possible expose your skin to safe sunlight
4. Enjoy 7 - 8 hours of sleep
5. Take time everyday for R n R
6. Enjoy a cle...

 My goal with seven day clusters is that you feel positive change over a relatively short period of time. For this week, and the next two, it’s about your eyes and vision. I am curious what a 21 day focus will do!

We have just finished two clusters about hearing and sound and now we get to eye health. As usual, we will explore both the physical side and the subtle (energetic) side of seeing.

Here’s a quick question to kick things off…

“what if you could slow, halt or even reverse illness related to aging”?

Well, I believe that in many cases that positive change and yes, disease reversal is entirely possible. 

Before we get to this week’s focus on the eyes, I would like to re-cap the significance of some day to day lifestyle ideals.

The short and the long term view

I say this a lot…

“what you do on a daily basis determines your health outcome in years from now”

If we take the example of eye health, imagine just seven days where you dedicate good care for your eyes… that you:

...

Dojiva is not just about good posture and working out… I want you to feel good mentally and emotionally too!

“I have found that above all other modalities (self enquiry) is the most effective method for reducing stress, healing physical tension and releasing long standing negative emotions”

The second best is hitting strike pads with everything you have!

From last week’s focus on hearing on the outside, we now journey to listening on the inside. On the Dojiva membership site, our MIND tab now has over 180 audio and video classes and many of these include guided practices of self enquiry/inner listening. 

The practice of enquiry is an non-judgemental way to experience the moment directly. When you do this authentically it can help develop a deeper understanding of any mental/emotional disgruntlement’s and to find some resolve within. For many years, this has been a key part of my 121 sessions. It really is the a key step on the path to release inner tension and long standing negativ...