Sanctuary for Heart Magic

ANATOMICAL THRESHOLDS

The body’s sacred places of passage

There are many ways to think of a threshold. Thresholds can be a tolerance that we have for something, such as a pain or pleasure threshold. They are also places of passage that are akin to portals or doorways that open us into something different. Another way to think of a threshold is as a point or movement of transition from one stage, place or identity into the next. Just as there are thresholds in our outer world and along our inner perceptual path, so to do they exist anatomically within the organization of our physical body. When we can come to understand different aspects, locations and anatomical structures as thresholds within our form, we can relate to sensations and symptomatology in a new light. Rather than viewing from the lens of determent or wrongness, we can see through the perspectives of passage and path. In this way the body is opening us onto our path, taking us through the various stages and phases of our soul’s embodied journey within this human experience, and helping us reorganize our form in response to a new threshold.

Let’s first take a look at the various thresholds, passages and portals within the body.

The most obvious passageway in the body is that from mouth to anus. Something enters the threshold of our mouth, flows down our throat, into our stomach, winds through the snake like intestines, and then exits the body. The body takes a substance, digests, refines and distills out the useful components, and eliminates the rest. Our entire digestive system is an alchemical process, taking in raw substance and turning it into all of the precise components needed for our body to thrive. Another passageway is that of our lungs. Air enters our nose and mouth, fills our lungs, infuses our blood and vitalizes our entire body with life. It then releases out what is not needed through exhalation.

We also have spinal thresholds. The first being at the junction of the skull with base of the neck. This is called the craniocervical junction and is the threshold between brain and body. We can take action on our thoughts and move our physical body through the physical world only because the brain sends messages down the spinal cord. We have another spinal threshold where the base of our neck meets our upper back. This threshold has to do with our unique written and verbal expression in the world. There are also thresholds around our solar plexus and where the lowest part of our back meets our pelvis. These thresholds have to do with our sense of self & our capacity to feel and sense our way through life.

There are also a few other doors and vaults I want to mention that exist within the anatomical body.

One are the valves within the heart. These valves allow for blood to move through the various chambers of the heart, allowing the nourishment of the blood to circulate throughout the body. There is also an important threshold in your throat that opens and closes in response to food and air. This doorway ensures that the proper nutrients take the correct pathways. Lastly there are areas carved within the bones of the cranium and between the vertebra in the spine that create spaces for the passage of nerves and blood vessels and sacred spaces that are filled with fluid where the glands of the brain rest. Without these openings vital passages and spaces communications throughout the body wouldn’t be possible.

HOW THRESHOLDS REORGANIZE OUR FORM

The power of your consciousness

Why are these thresholds, passages and doorways significant? Well for one, the body couldn’t function without them. Secondly, while we can look at these structures as purely physical anatomical configurations, what do they actually mean for our consciousness that is operating through our body and utilizing these pathways and thresholds?

Let’s start at the spine and the threshold between our brain and body.

The base of skull and the top of our neck is one of the most significant thresholds. This area, often referred to as the craniocervical junction, including the occiput, C1(atlas bone) and C2 (axis bone), is a vital doorway for brain and body connection. If this doorway is compressed then communication between the brain and body is significantly challenged. At one level this could equate to an impaired ability to use your physical body. At another level it could be pain or tension in this specific location. On yet another level it could be difficultly feeling and connecting to yourself within your body. On an energetic level this is also the passageway for your visionary, subtle awareness to enter into denser actualized expression. Blockage or stagnation at this threshold means difficulty being embodied. You might find yourself up in your head, thinking, with challenge being down in your body, feeling. This could also run in the opposite direction, where sensing and feeling is easy, but conceptualization and visionary aspects lack clarity.

Let’s look at the doorways within the heart.

There are 4 primary doors which all support the forward movement of blood through the heart into the lungs, back into the heart and out to the rest of the body. If one of these thresholds is challenged in opening or closing (ie. stenosis or prolapse) the flow of blood, which I see blood as the “substance” of unconditional love, is impaired. This creates a lack of nourishment which leads to breakdown and can have many manifestations including heart pain, muscle pain, muscle weakness, difficulty breathing, reduced exercise capacity and fatigue. On an energetic level this is a passageway for love to nourish the body and self. When we have difficulty moving through these threshold our lessons often involve expressing, accepting and becoming more of the love that we are.

Next let’s look at digestion, the passageway of receiving and elimination.

While we can all consume, receivership is something of a different frequency. To take in nourishment is more than just chewing and swallowing. For substance to enter the mouth and be utilized, it must be alchemized by the processes of digestion. This requires relationship with what is taken in so that the distilled nutrients of food may absorb through our gut and into our blood and body. When we are challenged in receiving, which could also manifest as deserving and feeling worthy, we may not enter relationship with what we consume. This can lead to difficulties with malnutrition, absorption or elimination. Lessons of this threshold often involve coming into ownership of our our worth and arriving in our wholeness within relationship with ourselves and others.

While I could speak to all of the anatomical thresholds or passageways within our body and how they are relevant to our human experience, you can see through these few examples that the body is acting as a doorway for our soul’s growth.

It is simply a matter of seeing beyond the matter. Matter is a physical representation for the soul’s journey. The problem is never with the “thing”, but rather the problem always lies in our relationship to or with the “thing.” Even though we often default to attempting to fix the structure, the structure is but an opening or doorway into something else. That something else is the next level of our soul’s configuration within a physical body.

As we see sensations and symptoms as thresholds, we can tune ourselves to the learning that is being asked of us rather than attempting to solve some seemingly insolvable problem. Each threshold we approach is an opportunity to reorganize our consciousness into a different level of awareness. This reorganization of our awareness then results in the body changing its function and form. Consciousness informs structure and when we get this we see that the power has never been held in the “thing” (ie. the body or sensation), but rather that we have had the power all along.

Dr. Amanda Lalita Love, DC, MSAc, L.Ac, OTR/L, Network Spinal Chiropractor, Boulder, CO

Network Spinal Chiropractor & Nervous System Specialist at the Sanctuary for Heart Magic, a Mentor for Heart-Led Healers at Soul Luminaries & the Writer of The Everyday Divine.