Activate Your Core

Core power is personal power

Imagine all your muscles working in unison with the rhythm of your breath, powered from your core. When your muscles and bones are moving in clear lines of force, your posture is beautiful. You have that look of confidence, the kind that people can’t help but look twice at you. You’re glowing, you’re vital, you’re standing in your personal power and you’re radiating your life force.

There are many benefits to activating your core – physical, emotional and mental. As you attune to the real power of the body, your breath and energy become dynamic and clarity of mind is crystal clear.

The good news is that this is available to everybody. It’s not difficult with proper focus and effort and taken in small bite size chunks. It does not need to be achieved by pushing your body to the limits of pain. We’re not talking here about a six pack. What I’m describing certainly can build up to super intense core classes, but the story is far deeper than this.

Let’s get into it.

Let me begin by telling you what the core is. We’re going to keep this really simple  and avoid a deep dive into the anatomy of movement. Essentially, the core is the whole trunk of the body, from the front, the sides, the back and all the way into the spine.

So, how do you activate it?

1. You start by building awareness of how to engage your body.
2. Next you increase your energy levels.
3. From here, you build your strength.
4. And from here, you feel your personal power – physical, energetic, and mental.

Build awareness of how to engage your body

Check in. Your body needs to be in alignment to get the maximum effect from activating the core, read our blog on ‘Root and Rise Everybody! Yield. It’s time to Shine’ to find out lots more about alignment. But for now, know that when your spine is at its full length, all the muscles activate in unison and in this, the body is in its natural alignment. This is often called the ‘natural integrity of the body’. And when you’re here, you’ll know it, and you will feel a rightness to your movements.

Increase your energy levels

Breathing a slow and steady breath begins to activate the trunk of your body more deeply. Anybody can do it. By exhaling a slow steady breath, you go more deeply into your body, moving towards your spine. And it’s probably worth mentioning here that it’s more than pulling your belly in, it is breathing the fullness of your trunk towards your spine.

Try this. By exhaling more gradually you are activating the trunk of your body to work together in unison. The power is in the depth of the breath. As you develop the practice you will come to the end of your exhale where the breath naturally pauses before it switches to inhaling. When you extend out this pause you come to notice that you are fully engaging your core and at the same time you feel effortless in the pause.

When you experience the effort of your muscles and the effortlessness in your breath, you have truly activated your core, you are shifting from physical effort to energetic effort.

From here, you build your strength

Your effort is centred from your core and radiates out to the rest of your body. You experience powerful lines of force. A simple example is when you place your hands on your mat in practice – in any posture. As you activate your hand and resist into your mat you can follow the tone up your arm, through your joint and shoulder into your ribcage, to your spine and eventually to your core. Your muscles and bones are moving in unison with a clear line of force. This is when the real strength of body, breath and mind comes to life.

And from here, you feel your personal power

Now you’re radiating core power. You’re working from the inside out. When you’re in this state you’re dynamically yielding, your muscles are working to their limit of strength, your breath is easy and your concentration is complete clarity.

Your perception of yourself and the world around you begins to adapt as you’re now living from your centre, with your core power alive and radiating. As the experience develops the same qualities begin to flow through your words and your actions. So what I’m saying is, your intentions and actions can have the same lines of force as your physical practice. Imagine centring yourself in your core physically, energetically and mentally in every room of your life, with all the people, events and responsibilities. The benefits and rewards are invaluable to your wellbeing and to your abundance. Core engagement is not just tensing your muscles, it is a lived experience of real personal power.

At Yago, we bring this experience to our members through our Core, Core Stability, Core Flow and Power Flow classes. And, we bring this energy to life through our teachers eight week themes; one of the themes is the third chakra, the Solar Plexus which is the energy centre for our vitality, personal power and abundance.