One of my favorite tools for enhancing my own sense of physical ease is gravity.

Yes, gravity, that constant force that pulls us toward the planet.  It’s a comforting sensation. Being a universal constant, it’s always there for you.  The other thing that’s always there for you is the planet, so as gravity pulls on you, the planet is there to stop your motion, and to give you something to push off of.

It’s that feeling of pushing off of the planet that we use to enhance our physical ease.

Let’s try it out.

We’ll start by being more or less still.  This could be while seated in a chair or while standing.  It’s nice to try it both ways.  

You can start by feeling how your bottom and feet are connecting with the chair and with the floor, and you can visualize how that chair and that floor are connected to the huge mass of the planet.  The planet is not going anywhere…and it will always support you. As you pause and feel that, you can let go of your own effort to hold yourself up. Just sink into the planet’s support. Feel yourself letting more weight rest on your seat or the bottoms of your feet.

After you do that for a few minutes, or for several times over the course of the next few weeks, lets try moving around.

Starting from a standing position, let yourself sink into the planet so that all your weight has dropped down to your feet.  Then push one foot off the floor. This is like a feeling you might have had while being in a swimming pool and pushing yourself out into open water by pressing against the side of the pool.  It’s just like that.  

You can start out just shifting your weight from side to side, pushing off from the earth on one side, then pushing off on the other.

Then you can start to swing one leg in front of the other and see how it feels to walk this way.

Don’t expect to get it down all at once.  It’s a new sensation and may take awhile to learn.  But it’s well worth it if it means using less of your own effort to hold yourself up.  You’ll be able to use all that extra energy for something more fun.