From head to heart 

Safety in our head 

Living in our head and using our thinking mind is pretty effortless for most of us.  In fact it is the dominant way that most of us interact with ourselves and the world.  We as human beings often identify who we are with our thoughts.  Thoughts can work for or against us.  They can help us develop aspects of ourselves and give us a sense of confidence and certainty or they can hinder our development.  For example you may have the thought “I am pretty”.  If you believe that thought than you believe that you are pretty and that becomes part of your identity.  Same thing goes for if you have the thought “I never get things”.  If you believe that than you become someone who never gets things.

People develop an illusionary sense of safety by identifying with their thoughts.  It allows them to be analytical, matter of fact, logical, certain and avoid any sense of emotionality, vulnerability or humanness.  This feels “safe” to most people, but in actuality it is a defense we use to not feel ourselves or others and thus remain separate from the world in our own little bubble of reality.

Closer to the truth is that we are all interconnected beings living in this intricate web of organized energy.  Innately and intuitively we all sense or know this on some level, however most of us feel too uncomfortable to navigate outside of our mind based bubble of certainty about who we are, who we are not and how life is supposed to work.

Dropping to the heart 

True safety in the heart

After some time of living a mind directed life people begin to wake up and realize that they don’t actually feel safe.  In fact they feel relatively disconnected, separate and cut off from themselves, others and life.  This is often realized when one experiences a life altering or unplanned event, but it can also occur more gradually over the natural course of life.  Its like the walls that the mind created to keep itself safe, contained and comfortable begin to crumble.

With this comes a sense of loss of control and feelings of uncomfortableness.  If this is allowed and welcomed a vulnerability and rawness of being reveals itself.  It is this soft, tender aspect of ourselves that gives us the capacity to drop from our head into our heart.  When we don’t resist our vulnerability but instead welcome it to simply be present our heart begins to break open.  We break open to ourselves.  Self-love is born.  True safety is the result of this as we are in our fullness, hiding nothing, seen, revealed and allowed to be without needing to justify, rationalize or make sense of anything.  This is the safest we can be.

Network care assists this process of moving from head to heart.  It is not to exclude thoughts or the mind, but simply to help allow a more organized and coherent level of intelligence, that of the heart, to run the show.  This is accomplished through developing strategies in your nervous system that help move your system out of the need to defend and protect itself into openness to receive and connect with the organizing intelligence of the universe.  Through the development of spinal gateways, access points are created within your nervous system that allow you to interact with life, energy and information in new ways.  As this occurs your separate bubble of reality begins to pop and you experience the interconnective nature of life.

Dr. Amanda Hessel, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado