When you exist in “The BEING ZONE®,” everything in life is more manageable. You flow through the day with ease and grace and synchronicities happen all the time. You are very calm and present and do not tend to worry or get stressed. You feel happy and joyful inside and work well with others. It is your natural state. It is where you experience happiness, health, harmony, abundance, friends, and laughter. Sounds pretty good, right?
What is “The BEING ZONE®?”
I liken it to how you feel during or after a soothing massage. It’s when your mind is quiet and not racing or moving onto the next thing. You feel calm, incredibly relaxed, and very much in the moment. It is a very much Zen feeling! Jon Kabat Zinn’s book title, “Wherever you go, there you are,” says it best. When you learn to quiet your mind so you can become present in the moment, it soothes your body, and you move into what I call the “BEING ZONE.” Some people accomplish this through meditation or mindfulness, but the trick is to stay in that zone after you come out of your meditation.
How to Get Into the “BEING ZONE®!”
The key is to start each day (even if you only have 5 or 10 minutes) putting yourself in this “BEING ZONE” state. Most people I know tend to jump out of bed and hit the ground running, which does not bode well for spending most of your life in “The BEING ZONE®,” where you can create a life you love. A daily practice of exercises that move people into The BEING ZONE is life-changing. Below are a few basic, easy-to-do, life-altering steps to build into your everyday life:
Step 1: Breathe!
Breath is essential to life. We tend to breathe in a very shallow way and do not oxygenate our bodies enough. As a result, we get more tension in our bodies or tend to get more anxious and stressed. When you take the time to breathe consciously, it helps to restore balance in your mind and body while centering you. You will immediately feel calmer and more relaxed. I recommend 3-Part Belly Breathing. Belly Breathing requires you to focus on filling your belly with air. You can test this by placing your hands over your rib cage right under your chest and take in a big breath of air. Your ribs should move out in the front, sides, and back. If you felt them move this way, you are doing it right. The 3 Parts are as follows and should be repeated three times for maximum results:
- Breathe in through your nose filling up your belly completely (on a count of 3)
- Hold for a count of 3
- Release through your mouth (on a count of 3) letting everything go that does not serve you. Your stress, your worry, any tension, etc.
Step 2: Get Grounded
The Tree Exercise which I am about to share is something I learned from an Olympic Athlete that I coached. I later learned in working with collegiate athletes, this is a common type practice among many world-class athletes, and it gets them out of their head and grounded in their “Zone” for their competition.
Visualize yourself as a tree. It can be whatever type of tree you love. I want you to put your hands up in the air like they are your branches. I want you to visualize the warm rays of the sun above your head coming down and warming your branches and your leaves (your head, shoulders, fingers, hands, and arms). Feel that warmth flow down into your truck (the core of your body and legs). Feel that warmth flow all the way down into your feet where the roots of your tree flow out of the bottom of your feet into the soft soils of the earth. Then feel the powerful natural energy of the earth begin to flow back up those roots into the bottom of your feet. Feel your feet start to tingle and warm. Just resonate in that powerful grounding feeling and then allow that warmth and tingling to begin to flow up into your calves where you feel them begin to tingle and warm and allow it to move up into your thighs feeling the tingling and warmth. Then visualize that feeling moving up through your hips and into your core where it flows gently up into your neck and head, then across your shoulders down your arms to your fingertips. Then just sit in that warm, tingly space and turn up the volume of that feeling and resonate in it for a minute or two. When you feel amazing all over, take a deep breath, and come back into the moment. You should feel very centered and grounded at this point.
More “The BEING ZONE®” Practices
You can also adopt a meditation practice or pick up Tai Chi or Qigong as regular practice as these two will get you in a grounded state. Restorative yoga practice is suitable for both breathing and grounding. If you have time to add any of these modalities to your life once or twice a week, you will find yourself learning to exist in “The BEING ZONE®” even more!
