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Practical Centering: Exercises to Energize Your Chakras for Relaxation, Vitality, and Health
2013 Nautilus Silver Award Winner! Contains Barnett Formula™ Centering as featured in Pilates Style Magazine ! Practical Centering enhances physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual balance with innovative breathing techniques and empowering exercises. It provides an instant vacation in this hectic world, enabling us to elevate our energy, relax our body, strengthen our core, and quiet our mind. Larkin Barnett links her original techniques with the chakras-ancient, non-Western concept of the seven physical and spiritual centers in the body. The Chakra Rocking Massage she teaches is a movement meditation that awakens the chakra centers and offers a practical, user-friendly way to relax. Reminiscent of being rocked in a cradle, these repetitive, gentle motions are soothing and tension releasing Muscular tightness can begin in the mind. The root cause may be illness, surgery, accidents, abuse, emotional trauma, daily stress, poor movement habits, or even one's choice of sport or fitness. The Chakra Rocking Massage clears and opens the chakras, causing energy to move more freely throughout the body. Hence, muscular tension dissipates, and tissue health, suppleness, and posture are improved. To this key exercise, Larkin adds simplified breathing techniques drawn from both Eastern and Western traditions as well as visualizations. Likening the experience to creating a favorite meal, she provides "recipe cards" for each exercise, focusing on the ingredients of color, location, life lesson, natural elements, physical senses, emotions, and affirmations. Strengthening our mind/body connection in this way is the ultimate immune booster, improving circulation for better tissue nutrition and metabolism. The body acts like a natural pharmacy as it flushes away waste products more thoroughly. Altogether, the tools in Practical Centering can lead to a life of more vitality and ease. It's a great little book to pack in your suitcase or back pocket. The exercises take only minutes and can be done easily at home, at work, or wherever you happen to be.
- GenresNonfiction
168 pages, Paperback
First published April 10, 2012
2 people are currently reading
17 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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May 19, 2025Zero stars. Seriously - wtf was this? Stick figure drawings, repetitive text, overly simplified everything - this felt like a joke. Good thing it was so short - I would be upset if I had wasted time on this.
April 12, 2013
This is an interesting book with a great idea to help yourself. Unfortunately, I think it would probably have benefited me more if I had a one on one with an instructor to really get 'exactly' what they want you to experience with the exercises. The mini illustrations were hard to follow and I found it difficult to know if I was doing the exercises exactly right. I do think it would be a great book if you're comfortable with the concept of Chakras and you would be able to appreciate getting into the 'zones' in a more in-depth manner.
That being said, I do practise better breathing to calm myself and stop my brain from running amok and it has helped me. Don't ask me to repeat the chants though. It's enough that I have to remember 5 different PIN numbers.
That being said, I do practise better breathing to calm myself and stop my brain from running amok and it has helped me. Don't ask me to repeat the chants though. It's enough that I have to remember 5 different PIN numbers.
April 30, 2016
I think that the subject is interesting but explaining some techniques through funny drawings is not very useful. A dvd about this would be beneficial but the book is useless in my opinion.
April 6, 2020
(3.5 Star rating)
Practical Centering is a book that teaches you about different breathing techniques, visualization, and movements to connect body and mind. The idea is that you release tension and blockage in the body while activating one of the seven different charkas in the body. The book explains that in stressful moments we tend to focus on the stress instead of how our bodies are reacting to the stress; it asks you to recall a stressful event, what you were thinking during the event, and what was the consequence. Then it goes on to explain that we tend to breathe very shallowly and especially during times of stress and if we train ourselves to breath deeply, intentionally not only in times of stress but make a practiced meditation out of it, it can become of form of cellular healing particularly in concert with the self-massage techniques illustrated in the book. The book outlines different breathing techniques such as the deep relaxation diaphragmatic breathing and the dynamic core control breathing, and invites the reader to jump around in the book to find the best techniques that work for them in releasing tension and encourages relaxation.
The seven different chakras are explained in brief detail on recipe cards in the book. The recipe cards identify the chakras name, the color that they want you to visualize when focusing on that particular chakra, the location of the chakra on the body, what the chakra represents or the “life lesson”, the keyword of the chakra, the element, the sense, and gland associated with that chakra, the feelings or emotions, and maybe the most helpful when unblocking that chakra, the affirmation that you can use while concentrating on that chakra. Before each exercise, the book identifies which chakra you are concentrating on; so again the location and color associated with the chakra because the visualization part is important in the process, and the position and movement of the body. After they give the run through of all the chakras exercise, they run through different breathing techniques that can be used with the exercises, so the horizontal balloon breathing, the sagittal balloon breathing, and the three-dimensional balloon breathing. The book ends with simple, relaxing, yoga techniques to unzip, strengthen, and stretch your body.
This book was not overwhelming and was a very easy to follow instructional outline for people that want a simple explanation of how to intentionally breathe. Since breathing is part of the autonomic nervous system, it isn’t something that most people stop to think about. Intentional breathing can have so many benefits beyond unconscious ventilation of oxygen. This book aides in really pointing out how taking the time to intentionally breathe, and move with the breath, can release toxins and congestion in the body, in the muscles, and as they point out enhance physical, mental, and emotional balance.
Practical Centering is a book that teaches you about different breathing techniques, visualization, and movements to connect body and mind. The idea is that you release tension and blockage in the body while activating one of the seven different charkas in the body. The book explains that in stressful moments we tend to focus on the stress instead of how our bodies are reacting to the stress; it asks you to recall a stressful event, what you were thinking during the event, and what was the consequence. Then it goes on to explain that we tend to breathe very shallowly and especially during times of stress and if we train ourselves to breath deeply, intentionally not only in times of stress but make a practiced meditation out of it, it can become of form of cellular healing particularly in concert with the self-massage techniques illustrated in the book. The book outlines different breathing techniques such as the deep relaxation diaphragmatic breathing and the dynamic core control breathing, and invites the reader to jump around in the book to find the best techniques that work for them in releasing tension and encourages relaxation.
The seven different chakras are explained in brief detail on recipe cards in the book. The recipe cards identify the chakras name, the color that they want you to visualize when focusing on that particular chakra, the location of the chakra on the body, what the chakra represents or the “life lesson”, the keyword of the chakra, the element, the sense, and gland associated with that chakra, the feelings or emotions, and maybe the most helpful when unblocking that chakra, the affirmation that you can use while concentrating on that chakra. Before each exercise, the book identifies which chakra you are concentrating on; so again the location and color associated with the chakra because the visualization part is important in the process, and the position and movement of the body. After they give the run through of all the chakras exercise, they run through different breathing techniques that can be used with the exercises, so the horizontal balloon breathing, the sagittal balloon breathing, and the three-dimensional balloon breathing. The book ends with simple, relaxing, yoga techniques to unzip, strengthen, and stretch your body.
This book was not overwhelming and was a very easy to follow instructional outline for people that want a simple explanation of how to intentionally breathe. Since breathing is part of the autonomic nervous system, it isn’t something that most people stop to think about. Intentional breathing can have so many benefits beyond unconscious ventilation of oxygen. This book aides in really pointing out how taking the time to intentionally breathe, and move with the breath, can release toxins and congestion in the body, in the muscles, and as they point out enhance physical, mental, and emotional balance.
September 30, 2021
Fun, useful book.
April 30, 2016
This book does offer a few practical tips for chakra-centering and relaxation, but I'm troubled by the fact that it is deeply redundant and fails to refer to any of the seven chakras by name (instead offering only the Western versions of each, and occasionally, referencing them "incorrectly," or at least, differently than most other texts on the subject reference them). If you are looking for a short-guide to self-meditation and chakra-balancing, this book could help (it could be read in a half hour...). At the same time, there are much better chakra-centering books out there.
October 25, 2014
Simplifies and de-mystifies meditation, and has sections for focusing on each chakra.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews