bodymind alchemy

THE EDGE OF EMOTION

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THE EDGE OF EMOTION 

Risking feeling

Feeling feels risky.  So much so that we often stay on the edge of it.  Feeling emotion means something is going to change, which is destabilizing to our sense of the known.  It is a mini death and rebirth, and most of us don’t like the death part very much.  Death of an idea, dream, or way of being.  Oftentimes we think we are feeling emotion, but we are just on the surface of what is really going on.  To authentically feel, rather than regurgitating triggered surface emotions, is the difference between acceptance of what is and resistance to it.  Acceptance is hard for most, so rather than feeling we stay in the spin of frustration, irritation or mental activity, which keeps us from having to actually feel even though we think that we are.  

Why is it that we avoid feeling like it’s the plague?  It boils down to the fact that in general most of us don’t like to feel heartbreak, and heartbreak is what authentic feeling feels like.  It’s tender, raw, and vulnerable.  The heartbreak we feel is in association with something occurring that we wished was different.  Perhaps it was a way we were treated that we didn’t like, a need or desire that wasn’t met, or some situation that went down in a way we wished it wouldn’t have.  The tendency for most people is to start to think about the situation or event rather than feel what they feel about it.  They rationalize, they judge or condemn, they feel irritated or maybe aloof and disconnected, they can’t seem to let it go no matter what amount spiritual self-talk they do around it.  There is a tendency to feel at a loss or confused about “what to do” and many attempts to figure it out.  The intense mental thought of needing to figure out what to do or say is a high indication that there is resistance to what is, and deeper more real feelings to be felt.

There is a phrase I heard in chiropractic college that went “you have to feel it to heal it”.  What it boils down to is that healing is accepting what is.  When we accept what is, change then effortlessly flows from acceptance.  There is no more needing to figure anything out or mental looping about it.  We simply know what to do if anything needs to be done.  Sometimes there is nothing to do and that can be super challenging for our minds, particularly when we really want something to be different, hence our prolonged resistance to actual feeling.  However as soon as we do feel the heartbreak of the dream, the idea, the hope, or the thing, acceptance ensues and it becomes easy to let be what is.  This leaves us with inner peace and spaciousness of mind.  We become receptive rather than insistent.  In our receptivity the path of what’s next is revealed to us.   

FREEDOM THROUGH EMOTION 

Action from love

Sometimes the difference between thinking our emotions versus feeling our emotions can be tricky for us to discern.  A good indicator to use for yourself is that if you don’t feel freer than you aren’t actually feeling, but rather you are caught in a story about feeling.  Another way to discern this is the amount of time you are “feeling”.  Emotions, when felt, have a very short time span.  Typically a few seconds to a few minutes at most.  If you are going on hours, days or weeks of “feeling” something then you are often in the story of it rather than the feeling of it.  Now after you feel something deeply there can be residual feelings, but your general disposition is lighter and more free even if some residual effects are still present.  Also after feeling there you are softer and in a slower pace of being.  

Emotions are simply energy.  When we feel the energy of emotion we liberate fuel.  Fuel for acceptance and change.  That acceptance or change can be of ourselves, or it can be in relation to the outer appearance of our lives.  Change occurring through acceptance, or said another way, change occurring through love, is different than the way we typically try to make things happen.  While there is still intention, vision or goals, there is also more of a listening to the unfolding and participating with it rather than an attempt to push or force to make happen.  While this might seem more apparent for our outer world, it goes for our inner world as well.  Say for example you have a tendency to think you are not valuable or have nothing of value to give.  You could try a million self-help methods to change these thoughts about yourself, go to every class and workshop, and on and on, really throwing everything at it.  Yet when you start with acceptance, coming from love in your attempt to change these thoughts, you don’t insist that they need to be different.  It’s a bit of a paradox, but as soon as we stop insisting something be a certain way or be different than it is, it relaxes and often reorganizes itself.

All the things we desperately think need to be different about ourselves or the world find resolution through acceptance.  The mind can’t grok this and yet it is so.  Acceptance doesn’t mean inaction, rather it means action from love.  To be clear action from love doesn’t mean that our perspective, idea or way of approaching something wins over because we think it’s more altruistic, evolved or better than the alternative perspectives.  This is called righteousness of which our world is rampant with.  Action from love is listening to the inner impulse to move in a particular way or direction, taking action in that direction, and then listening.  Seeing what you feel now and now and now, and following.  When you allow your emotions you see that they guide you moment by moment.  This doesn’t mean that all of your ideals will be met or creations created, but it does mean that you will always be coming from your alignment, from who you are, from what you desire to be, now and now and now.  This is to fulfill your destiny.  It is to be your mission.  It equates to success at all levels of your being.  

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

NOTHING IS LACKING

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NOTHING IS LACKING 

Key to perceiving all as is

We have an almost incessant persistence to view from the perspective of lack.  It appears to us that things are missing, out of place, or somehow not present.  We attempt to create that which we view as not from seeing it as not, which often comes with feelings of frustration and fruitlessness as we work really hard to get nowhere.  We create definitions and meanings about what is not that further reinforce our perspective of not-ness and frustration about what isn’t.  What if not-ness is not?  What if our perspective of lack is actually the presence of something?  Perhaps our focus on what we view as not, blocks our view of what is.  

Where does our desire to create come from?  What is the fuel source of our desires?  Are you motivated to create because you perceive something to be lacking or because it’s simply your joy to create whatever it is you are?  When you create are you creating from the perspective of seeing what you are creating as not, or do you see it as already present?  These are not trick question, nor are they law of attraction, spiritual, new age hogwash.  There is more than semantics happening here.  The truth is most people create because they perceive something to be lacking.  We then take that perspective of lack and attempt to create that which we see not present.  One of the key indicators that you might be doing this is that you are secretly miserable in your creation attempts of whatever it is you are wanting to create, despite the fact that you present good face to your friends, family and social media.  Even if whatever you are attempting to create is altruistic and service oriented, meaning it’s goal is to support others in some way, if you come from the perspective that whatever it is you are wanting to create is lacking, and that the world really needs it because its not present, you will only create more lack rather than than the thing you really want to create.  

The key to know here is that we create with our perspective not with our hands.  That is not to say that we won’t need to use our hands to do things and move stuff around in this material reality, but actual creation comes from how we view.  The perspective of seeing something as lacking creates more of that lacking.  The perspective of seeing what is as already here, actually seeing it here, creates it.  Seeing creates what we see.  Seems obvious, but we often don’t recognize the source of our seeing and rather focus only on what we see.  The source of what we see is the seer, or the perceiver, or you.  It now becomes obvious that you are the creator, and what has been unconscious is the how of how you create and how you’ve been creating this entire time.   

BEYOND DISBELIEF

Getting things to reveal themselves

We are riddled in disbelief.  We use our disbelief to validate our perspectives in order to be right about whatever it is we are insisting on, while simultaneously shooting ourselves in our own foot.  Our “healthy” skepticism keeps the ordinary magic of our everyday reality just out of our reach so that we can keep experiencing our reality in the same rote, lacking, and scarce ways we always have.  As much as we might “believe” that it’s hard to change our beliefs, it’s actually not.  It’s easy as pie.  What’s challenging is letting go of our sense of rightness, or that we know.  The blatant truth is that none of us know shit, even though we really like to think we do.  Pretty much everything is cloaked in mystery, yet that amount of magic (aka present moment spontaneously arising aliveness) is often too much for us to take.  So we find a way to generate certainty for ourselves by creating “facts” of reality, which are really just beliefs that we’ve come fully believe in as law, the truth, or the way things are.  The good news is that we can actually make this work for us rather than against us.

Our “hardcore” belief in lack is really just our insistence, one of the prime ones, of how reality is.  We accept this belief so blindly, meaning most don’t even think to question it.  Reflect on the following example: you look out in front of you and see that there is not a zebra in the room with you.  Let’s say that you take the perspective, based on this tiny little viewpoint of you in a room, that a zebra is lacking in existence because it’s not here in this room with you.  Rather than zooming out (ie. in this example zooming out would be doing something like turning on the African nature channel) you conclude that you must create a zebra because it is lacking.  This becomes very important to you because you view zebras as pivotal creatures to this planet.  You do your best to find all the parts of a zebra in order to create it from scratch, but you find that it’s super hard work, pretty much impossible to create, but none-the-less you persist and devote your entire life to creating zebras.  

Even though this is an absolutely ridiculous example it makes an important point.  What if rather than looking at the situation and concluding that a zebra is lacking because it’s not in the room with you, you set out to find its existence, because you believed, or somehow intuitively knew, that it already exists.  How far would you have to go to discover it?  Would discovering the zebra be more fun than creating it from random pieces and parts that don’t really fit together?  Believing, or choosing to know, that what we want to create already exists takes a tremendous burden off of us, a burden that nearly all of us carry around.  Rather than us having to figure out a bunch of stuff that we don’t know how to figure out, and do the seemingly impossible, we simply get to be in the curiosity of how to find the thing or how to get it to express itself.  We tempt and tease it into existence like a strategic game of hide and seek.  When we realize/believe that it already is, that nothing at all is lacking, it really just becomes a game of discovering how to get things to reveal themselves.  We may midwife them into form, but we are not responsible for the form.  The only thing we are responsible for is that we have fun while we curiously tease life to express itself.

You can exchange the word zebra with any of the following words: partner, business, project, finances, house, car, baby, healthy planet, healthy body, and on and on.  You can see how this becomes relevant for you now.  Just because any one of these things aren’t in the room with you doesn’t mean they don’t exist.  If you go about attempting to create them from the perspective of lack, it will be not be very much fun.  You will probably suffer, struggle and cry a lot.  That’s what it’s like to create from lack.  However rather than taking on the burden of creating from lack (which is actually impossible) you choose to see them as already existing, then you get to play the game of revelation.  It is absolutely imperative, critical, crucial and necessary that you have fun playing the game and not get too focused on what the revelations that reveal themselves look like, meaning what form the forms decide to take.  The zebra may be striped purple and black rather than white and black, but it’s ok.  The form is less important than the play of creating from existence rather than lack.  When things are allowed to be themselves they naturally reveal themselves, they naturally express.  The better you are at allowing what is to be as it is, seeing what is as whole and complete, it will show you that, and the more proficient and easeful creator you will be.

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

RESPOND TO EVERYTHING WITH LOVE

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RESPOND TO EVERYTHING  WITH LOVE

Dancing with the mind

We tend to live quite polarized.  Liking this thing, not liking that thing.  Feeling joy when life looks like we want it to and frustration when it doesn’t.  As much as we like to think that we are always going with the flow and living in a state of surrendered acceptance, the truth is most of the time we are not.  The moment something looks or feels other than our preference we tend to go into some level of resistance.  Rather than welcoming what is present we tense up, get anxious and begin to strategize how we are going to survive or get what we want.  Our minds create worst case scenario stories about how what is, isn’t good, isn’t right and is going to turn out badly for us.

All of this puts us in a state of vigilant survival, which then activates us to react with self-protection.  Some of our ways of self-protection are more primitive and others more sophisticated.  The more primitive reactions are to shut down, withdraw, check out, avoid, attack or disappear completely.  More sophisticated reactions are to manage, rationalize, control, or contain whatever is occurring that we don’t prefer.  Be clear that whether we are utilizing a primitive or a more sophisticated reaction, both are means of self-protection in order to attempt to not experience what is occurring or manipulate it in some way.  Some of the more sophisticated self-protective reactions are viewed as “normal” or commonly accepted behaviors, but are still are coming from resistance to, rather than acceptance of what is.

It’s a tricky dance to not be taken by the mind because we often believe the stories it tells.  It’s hard not to as we’ve learned to look through the lens of it’s perspectives and have created an entire life through those lenses, both individually and collectively.  What we believe is so, or better said, what we believe is our experience.  This makes it hard to refute the mind because we will always experience validation of our beliefs of the stories it tells.  When it says “this is bad” we believe this is bad.  When it says “this is good” we believe this is good.  Hence the near constant state of polarization we live inside of.    The thing that many people don’t realize is that when the mind says “this is bad” you don’t have to believe it, or when they mind says “this is good”, again you don’t have to believe it.  See the bigger truth is that you, me, and everyone in between has no idea what is bad or what is good.  The best we can do is make assumptions about stuff and have preferences for things to be a certain way, but we have no freaking real idea what’s going on.  However because we think we know what is bad and what is good, we suffer and go into self-protection attempting to get things to be good again when we believe they are bad.  We appear to not suffer when things are good, but even when things are good we are often still suffering because our state of goodness is contingent upon things appearing/being a certain way that we deem as good.   

BEYOND STORY

Become the Creator

I have found that there is only one assumption free, agenda free, polarization free way to respond to the occurrences of life, which is to respond to everything with love.  It’s the only way to not personally suffer and to not create suffering through your insistence or perspective of bad or wrong.  Seeing things/self as bad, wrong or somehow lacking something, is the root of suffering.  To respond instead with love to everything that arises is to see it as complete, full, and perfect even if the mind views it as distorted or messed up.  Even distortion and mess is a perfect expression of the creator’s creation.  We somehow know this, yet refuse to believe it when it looks, feels or becomes personal to us, to our preferences, lifestyles and survival impulses.

Something we often forget, or perhaps don’t know, is that we are ultimately the story tellers.  It often seems too simple to us that we could just tell and believe a different story, yet we can.  In fact we are the only ones that can.  When we start the practice of responding to every single sensation, feeling, thought, world event, relational interaction and life experience with love, we open up the doorway inside the mind to write a different story or to end the stories all together.  You can write and believe whatever you so choose.  You can also stop writing and stop believing in anything at all.  There really are no rules here except the ones that you create.  For some this may seem or feel challenging.  One thing I hear people say is that they can’t get themselves to believe a different story.  For example if they feel bad, they just have to keep feeling bad and don’t see a way out if it.  They don’t see how by creating a different story they will feel better because they aren’t quite ready to let their current story go.  They want the appearance to change (their sensations, feelings, thoughts, some event, some experience) before they change their story.  However life works in the other direction.  We are the creators of what is.  What is does not inform us, we inform it.

We sometimes have strong attachments to the stories we believe about what things mean and how life works, and to our minds it may feel bad or wrong to turn our story around, even though the new story feels better.  Its’ a strange thing, but sometimes we want to hold onto grudges, wrong doings, or insisting that life, our body and everything else is not supporting us in some way.  This is a core story that runs deep throughout the human psyche.  You can transform it and you can thus forth have a different experience of life.  One that is free from insisting that the appearance of life look a certain way that you think means good.  One that is free from bad and good.  One where the only response is love, which is the response that always knows exactly what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.  The more we respond with love the less “we” have to do.  The less life is up to us.  We rest more into trust and faith and the knowing that life is orchestrated in ways far beyond what our individual minds could ever fathom.  It is total possible to have this be your experience of life.  All that is required is that you stop insisting that you know anything.  You invite in whatever is present.  You respond to it with love.  You remain open to the magic and the mystery that reveals itself moment by moment.  You can’t know before you know.  You can only be present and know.  

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

YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING

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YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO  ANYTHING

Fear of badness

So often we feel this pressure, pull or weight to do.  That we have to do against our will or desire to do.  There seems to be an ultimatum if we don’t do.  We fear that if we don’t do whatever it is that we think we have to do, then something bad will happen.  We don’t even typically know what will happen, we just think that it will be bad.  This fear of “badness” and of not wanting to feel it, keeps us locked into the feeling state of being trapped, and the thought that we must do even when we aren’t sure what to do or feel strong opposition to the doing we think that we must do.  

One of the pivotal things to accept is that as humans we are essentially blind.  Spiritually blind that is.  In many ways we are masked, muted and confused.  We can see the appearance or expression of life, but we can’t see the source of it.   We don’t know who we are or what’s really going on beyond what we’ve been taught by other beings who are similarly confused.  When you accept that you are, by nature of this human experience, highly confused and that its okay to be confused, its much easier to take the pressure off of yourself.  That pressure to do something because you fear badness is alleviated when you accept your own state of blindness.

When we accept that we mostly don’t know anything we can realize that even our projected fear of badness is inaccurate.  The truth is we don’t know if something bad will happen or not happen based on our doing or non-doing.  We may create elaborate stories based on ideas in our mind or on previous life experiences, and yet even so we don’t know what will truly happen, ever.  All of the doubt we feel in our decision making processes (i.e. the pressure we feel) is simply rooted in the perspective that one way is good and another is bad.  One way is right and another wrong.  That the result of one choice is preferable and the other un-preferable.  

Rather than forcing yourself to do, take some kind of action, or make a decision, first giving yourself the permission to not know and not act is key.  Even though it seems like there are deadlines and timelines remember that all of that is made up.  It’s true that if certain “timelines” don’t get met than certain things may not occur, but remember there is no badness in the occurrence or non-occurrence.  Only the perspective you take on all of it matters.  There are truly no missed opportunities.  There is only what happens.  That may be hard for you mind to accept and your acceptance of that is key to your peace.   

WANTING EVERYTHING IN YOUR LIFE 

Doing from choice

Conjure up something in your mind that you think you have to do.  Maybe its your taxes, paying your bills, or a project for work or for hobby.  Perhaps its a conversation with someone, an email to write, a new diet or exercise to start, a relationship to end or a new job to start .  Make sure that whatever it is you bring into mind right now is something you think you have to do, rather than something you want to do or that you feel in neutral acceptance about doing.  Notice the pressure, heaviness, tension or perhaps scatter that occurs when you think about doing the thing.  Listen to the stories and thoughts that are occurring in your mind about having to do the thing.  Some of those stories that are flittering their way through your mind might have flavors of failure, dread, uncertainty and confusion.  Notice what ultimatums you are giving yourself if you don’t do the thing and how you might feel bad about yourself or about the outcome of doing or not doing.

Now feel what its like to give yourself the permission to not do the thing.  There might still be that initial dread or fear that something bad might happen, but let that story lift as well.  For just a few moments stop making all assumptions about what you think might happen and fully allow yourself to not know what the outcome might be or not be.  Be in the mystery.  Allow the not knowing to be present.  Give space for potentiality before making a concrete reality-assumption in your mind.  Now simply notice how you feel.  You should notice that you feel lighter.  That its easier to breathe.  That you are more present.  Continue to allow yourself to not have to make any decisions or take any actions in this moment and continue to notice your energy and feeling state.  

I recommend aiming for this more neutral and easeful state of being before taking any actions.  If you don’t you are simply reacting to illogical stories and disempowered patterning.  From your now current state of being check in and see if whatever it is you conjured up to do still feels relevant to do.  If it doesn’t then just let it go as its not serving you to keep entertaining it.  If it does still feel relevant than begin to see how it is something that you want to do rather than continuing the story that you have to do it.  In the shift to wanting to do it perhaps you notice that you feel like you don’t know how to do the thing, or maybe like you don’t have the resources (physical, emotional, mental or other) to do it.  Notice if this is the case.  These are the situations to seek support and advise from others.  Find the “how” so that your mind doesn’t put a stop to it or insist on keeping you victim to it.  In this way you begin to learn that there is nothing that you have to do.  There is only what you want to do or get to do.  When you have this as the relationship with everything in your life the pressure and tension is gone because you stop being in conflict with yourself.  When you are aligned with yourself there is still work and energy expenditure, but the tension of dread of what bad thing might happen is transformed into excitement for what you get to do instead.  You open more into the mystery and worry less of the outcome.  

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

MAGIC OF THE HEART

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MAGIC OF THE HEART 

Lived Remembrance 

The birthplace of all magic, mystery, fun and play lives within the heart.  Heart is not outside of you.  It lives and breathes you, and everything else in creation, into form.  Heart is that essence of which you are, of which we all are, yet remains unseen to the physical eye and unknown to the physical senses.  Heart is all pervasive and yet illusive to our ordinary reality and ordinary minds.  To reconnect and re-find our heart is to reconnect to the magic that lives inside of all things.  

The channel to heart is always open.  We must only tune ourselves to it in order to discover it.  The frequency of our unique soul essence is the gateway into the remembrance of what we are and the knowing, seeing, sensing of the love that simply is that primordial substratum, matrix, and information behind all things we perceive.  Even though sometimes heart seems distance and hard to find, in truth it is always here, present and ready for us to realize it.  Part of participating in this human experience is the forgetting of ourselves, of our essence, of love, and the unification of all in love.  We come to experience separation and forgetfulness and to find our way back into ourselves.  There is no right or wrong on this journey.  There is only the following of the breadcrumbs of excitement that guide your unique path.  

Tuning yourself to the frequency of your soul is the work.  It is the work of this incarnation if you choose remembrance as your intention for being here now.  For many this is relevant and desired.  There comes a time when one must stop talking about all things spiritual and instead live their essence.  Rather than think about what they want to be true or what they want to be their lived experience, they must simply live it.  This is the magic.  This is the alchemy.  Lived remembrance.

To live intentionally, devoted to why you are, is the only real tuning you need.  To run that pathway over and over and over again until it becomes the default program in your consciousness.  Until all you know and all you be is why you are.  This is the end of getting anywhere.  You’ve arrived.  There is simply the being and sharing of your arrival.  It is the air you breathe and the water you swim in.  No longer do you perceive separation of you and your purpose.  You are your purpose.  You are your intention for existing.  You know yourself.  Love is.  Love remains.  The channel is open and you have tuned to its frequency.   

YOUR HEART FREQUENCY 

Sound of Love

Heart could never not be yours.  You are not undeserving or unworthy of it.  You do not need to earn it or meditate your way into it.  You can’t be separate from it because it’s impossible for you to be separate from yourself, and heart is what you are.  Just try for a moment to be separate from yourself.  You can create content such as thoughts, feelings or sensations that seems to interfere or stand between you and heart, but there is not two of you.  You can’t exist over there and over here.  You can only exist, you can only be, there is just one.  Therefore its impossible for anything to be separate from anything else.  This is the teaching of the heart.  This is what the heart reveals when you tune yourself to why you are.  In that tuning you come into the knowing of the unity that is.  The one that expresses itself in a myriad of forms, some of which you have mistakenly identified yourself as.  

In the subtle, quiet stillness you can more clearly hear yourself.  You can hear the frequency of your heart, the sound of love.  Even when your thoughts, feelings and sensations appear to disrupt your frequency, in truth they really don’t.  While you are having the experience of disruption or interference, you still are, you still exist, and therefore love still is.  Untouched, unwavering and present.  It really is as simple as shifting your awareness to that knowing that love still is here now.  You can focus on the stuff, the thoughts, the story, the feelings, the sensations, the content of your experience, or you can focus on the fact that you are existing, being, and that love is what is present in being.  

Peace really is much closer than you think.  You can experience it in an instant.  That dropping of tension, of weight, of pressure, of constraint, is available just as soon as you stop focusing on the content of your experience.  Being is rested in love.  Love is, when you are.  This is when magic becomes your experience.  Rather than logic, linear awareness with cause and effect, black and white, and matter of fact thinking ruling your experience, you experience the dance, the flow, the rhythm and movement of intelligence at work, of love at work.  Synchronicity is the norm, life unfolds nonlinearly, and while the mind can’t make sense of it, the heart giggles in delight.

The frequency of heart is pure delight.  It naturally gives without doing.  It is so totally and completely energized.  It needs nothing from anything.  It knows how to move itself.  The body and mind obey the intelligence of the heart when you tune to the frequency of your soul.  Open into that channel of love over and over and over again, as much as you possibly can, each and every day.  Find whatever excuses, whatever reasons you can, to tune to your heart’s frequency.  Make it your number one priority no matter what experience is showing up, no matter what thoughts or feelings or sensations you are having.  Tune to love, to bliss, to God, until you remain rested there, until you no longer ever leave again.  This is the completion.  This is everything I know.

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, CO

STRETCHING OPEN

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STRETCHING OPEN 

New ranges of motion

We tend to live in a pretty comfortable range of motion of ourselves.  This range is a container, box or bandwidth that includes who and what we know ourselves to be.  We often don’t even know that we are living our life inside of this range, it’s simply what we know.  There wouldn’t even be the thought to question or stretch it because we are merged as it.  However there comes a rhythm where we know we need to stretch.  We feel the confinement and don’t even really know what we are confined in.  We simply feel that the clothes we are wearing are too tight and a sense of restlessness and impeding uncomfortableness is on the horizon.  

When we hit the point where the way we have been living, operating and viewing ourselves from is too small or limited we must stretch.  That stretch occurs outside of the normal range of motion.  Due to the fact that it is beyond where we normally hang out, or perhaps have ever been, it feels uncomfortable and unfamiliar.  That uncomfortableness can deter people from stretching.  If the stretch is deferred then we will go back into our familiar range, inside our familiar box of self, but feel slightly miserable.  Often our tolerance for misery is high, some people even pride themselves in this.  Yet this high tolerance to low level misery is the enemy of stretching out of our current range of motion.

The pain of staying inside of our limited perspective, with it habits and ways of functioning, must become greater than the perceived pain of uncomfortableness, uncertainty and the potential lack of something we aren’t even really clear about, but which boils down to loss of love in some form or another.  If the pain doesn’t become greater, or our tolerance is exceptionally high for misery, then we will stay un-stretched and feel ourselves slowly wither away as we resist our own change and progress.  When we thwart ourselves in such a way we remain in a sea of our own frustration, often feeling like nothing works and like we will never be different than we are.  If instead we use the fuel of misery, and allow, feel and actively participate with the stretch, even though its uncomfortable and we don’t know what’s on the other side yet, we start the journey of going beyond the box of our current self.  The truth is that the range that we have been in has someway and somehow served us, perhaps even really, really well.  We must however be willing to un-attach to our ranges and release the aspects of our identity that are connected with those ranges, when the rhythm of stretch presents itself.   

EMBODYING YOUR STRETCH 

Inviting change

When the rhythm of stretch presents itself it is ultimately stretching us open into more of ourselves.  It is not stretching us into some bad or wrong place even though our mind might try to convince us in these ways.  Stretching does however imply change.  Change in experience, change in feeling, and change in sense of self.  When I have you stretch certain parts of your body on the table it is the activation of stretching your range of motion and thus range of self of sense.  You may find it hard to stretch certain areas and easier for other areas.  You may feel not entirely present during the stretch or find yourself mechanically moving your body without your awareness behind it.  You may find yourself meet some resistance to the stretch or you may go into automatic pilot mode having stretched that area before.  

It is important to notice your experience of stretching.  How does it feel to stretch?  Where do you go?  Are you present? Does it feel hard?  Does it feel too easy?  Do you want to give up in the middle of it?  Do you want it to be over?  Are you bored and not present?  Are you slow to move?  Are you fast to move?  Do you release into the stretch?  Do you resist the stretch and maintain your holding patterns?  You can use these questions as a way to see how you respond to stretch in your life.  How we respond to stretch in our bodies is how we will respond to it in our lives.  

On a physiologically level when you stretch your body in the spots that I am touching it activates certain receptors in the tissues in that area.  The activation of those receptors allows oscillation to occur at the tissue level in the area of stretch.  That oscillation can be felt as vibration or energy at the area.  In Network terms this is the development of the energetic portion of the spinal gateway.  Remember the spinal gateways are those areas that get touched during entrainments and which grow into little energetic vortices as you continue to stretch them open.  As you stretch they grow.  They grow into your subtle energetic body, first reaching into your emotional body and then beyond that into your mental bodies.  When the spinal gateways are in subtle layers of your mental bodies you are able to more clearly see the boxes, stories and limited containers of self that you are in.  Through this sight you gain more energy for transformation and greater fuel to be ready to relinquish those more limited ranges of self that come from your limited perspectives.  

The stretch is the beginning of something anew.  It’s the birthplace of a new range.  You must stretch in order to come out of the birth canal so that the new expressions of you can come into form.  Yes it’s uncomfortable.  Yes it’s uncertain as to what will come out exactly.  Yet we must move forward.  We must emerge and we must be fully in.  Along the way of our emergence all that no longer works and no longer serves must go.  There simply isn’t room for it.  Holding onto it weighs us down and interferes with what’s coming through now.  There is a sweet love and a sweet goodbye to who we were.  There is deep gratitude for how it served and shared.  Now there is this here, a new range, a new expression, a new experience, a new sense of self, a new way to participate, and a new contribution and sharing.  

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

NO WHERE TO NOW HERE

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NO WHERE TO NOW HERE 

Stop trying to go somewhere

It’s curious where we are all trying to get.  Seems like there is always somewhere to go, some other destination to arrive at and some other experience to be gotten to already.  We live in this forward trajectory of next and next and next, while never realizing that we are living our former next now and that the nexts will keep coming indefinitely.  To pause our focus on what’s next and be where we are now seems trivial, mundane or as if its lacking something that we must get.  

One must wonder what fuels this quest to get something or somewhere other than where we are.  If we really just cut to the chase here, all trying to get somewhere other than where we are (which is impossible by the way) is rooted, fueled and motivated by a perception we have of lack.  We believe that something is not in our experience that should be or that we want to be in our experience.  So we attempt to fulfill that seeming void that we perceive.  That lack could be of anything.  Perhaps it’s lack of happiness, lack of feeling good, lack of freedom, lack of movement, lack of connection, lack of resources, lack of money, lack of love, lack of purpose and on and on.  

I promise you that however tempting and true it may seem that what you are looking for exists somewhere else, it does not.  There is nothing that exists “over there” that doesn’t also exist here now.  If we take it a step further there isn’t even really an “over there” or anything other than now.  Try to find proof that something outside of now exists.  To find proof you would somehow have to prove that you could be other than existence, essentially that you could not exist.  Try to not exist, to not be, to not is, to not be here and let me know how it goes and if you find success.  

There is only now happening and now is all that ever happens.  To live this is to be in eternal peace.  This is the end of resistance and of all getting, striving, attaining, moving towards, and progress.  To not fight with where you are, which is now and to not fight what is, relaxes everything inside of you and therefore your experience relaxes as well.  When now is recognized and received you work inside the moment, with creation, with the unfolding, rather than as a separate object that is trying to get somewhere else or to the next thing.  Experiences and appearances continue to move and change, but there is no more trying to get things to change.  You are, all is, and this moment which is all moments, can be nothing other than fully perfect and complete.  No lack.  Nothing missing.  No where to go or get.  All remembers and sees what it is and that nothing ever left itself.   

LETTING EVERYTHING GO 

Release all wanting of things to be different

Let everything go.  Let everything be.  Want nothing from anything.  This is the way to know freedom.  This is the way to be at peace forever.  This is the way to have everything you truly desire, which is everlasting presence.  To want something or someone to show up differently, act differently, be differently than they are, is to attempt to control life or control others and not allow them to be themselves.  When we hope, pray, or plea that things will be different than they are, we lose our center and act in ways that are not in alignment or integrity with who we are in order to get what we think we want.  We then doubt, question, over-analyze, lash out, withdraw, react and endlessly stir in the thoughts of our mind.  The result of this is that we feel stuck, trapped, lost, powerless and at the mercy of others or to our experience of life.  

Our attachments to our ideas of what we want and the forms that those ideas take, steer the boat of our life if we let them.  In fact most people spend their life trying to get all of their desires to manifest so that they can give themselves the permission slip to relax and feel good.  Our desires are the guiding light, the spark that fuels the choices we make and the directions we choose, however when we attach to the outcome of our desires in order to get a perceived need or want met that we feel is missing, we have a recipe for suffering.  

In letting everything go we are open to receive everything as it is.  We allow our desires to take on whatever forms and shapes that they want to take on rather than the ones we think they should take on.  In this way we let the mystery of what will be reveal itself to us here now rather than fixating on how it will turn out, which puts us in the “next” mode.  This frees us from having to control life or others.  For most of us controlling isn’t our most natural state so it feels bad to us yet we continue to do it because we perceive lack.  Letting everything go means letting go of our control, letting go of our insistences, letting go of our rights, wrongs and and injustices, and letting go of our ideas and perceptions of lack.

To let go is to live love.  It is to be love, to be your natural state, to receive everything as it is.  It is to be here now, to be present and experience the bliss that is presence.  It doesn’t mean that you will never have painful sensations, intense emotions, unpleasant thoughts or challenges.  It doesn’t mean that you will never experience discomfort or dis-ease.  It doesn’t mean that all of your dreams and desires will be made manifest.  It only means that you will be present, you will be awake, you will be here.  You will stop trying to get anywhere and you will be where you are.  You will learn-share everything you are meant to learn-share.  You will stop missing out on your life because you realize you can’t miss out.  You will stop resisting, pushing away or forcing anything.  Instead you let whatever comes to you come.

The thing about now here is that it never leaves.  There is no situation, circumstance, event, activity, or experience that is separate from here now.  This means that presence is all pervasive.  There is no anything that needs to push you into next mode.  Full permission to be here, just as it is and find peace inside of now.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, CO

THE GIFT OF YOURSELF

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THE GIFT OF YOURSELF 

You are the gift you give

For many people there is an innate drive to give to others.  To serve, help, and support others generally generates good feelings inside of us as long as our giving comes from a place of true desire rather than obligation or agenda.  We are taught early on that we must learn skills, trades or other tools and means in order to have something to give.  Those things become our contribution to others.  This is the whole idea of work, and of trading services and resources.  

While our skills, services and abilities can add value to people’s lives and create ease, flow or greater efficiency in the world, they are not the gift that we give.  Two different people can have similar skills, services or abilities and yet they give an entirely different gift.  Sure on the surface it may seem that two architects can write up similar plans for a building, and yet they produce very different feels or results with their plans.  You may wonder why this is so.  It is so, because it is the energy of you that brings the gift of what gets produced.  It is the heart, the core of who you are, that is the actual gift you give.

Now this may seem very obvious to you conceptually.  Of course you understand that it’s you and the not the thing, but also notice how much of your mental and physical energy you spend on searching for the next cool thing you are going to create, the next career you will have, the next relationship you will start, all the while thinking that it will be your new purpose, the new thing that will define you and give you some sense of contribution.  It is very easy to pin the thing, meaning it is very easy for us to say “oh there is this thing that I can do or give to others and that makes my existence worthwhile.”  To say to yourself “I created this product, shared this service with others or did this thing and it changed people’s life, it’s so amazing!”  It is innocent enough and perhaps even true that your skill or ability did change their life and yet it is still not the gift you give.  

See in order to recognize the gift, you must be able to recognize and see yourself.  We are quite blind and distorted in our perspectives of how we view our own self.  We are not very clear mirrors for our own reflection.  We tend to not view ourselves as very worthwhile in general and therefore it’s easier to project our goodness on things we do rather than on our own selves.  We project our worth onto things.  Then to top it off the world reinforces all of our do-gooding all the while also telling us that if we think too highly of ourselves we are selfish and arrogant. Oh the conundrum! 

BEING WORTH 

Self-gratitude

Unless you know your worth you can’t give, because your giving is giving you.  If you see nothing of value in and of yourself, naked and without skills, abilities and stuff, then nothing will radiate out of you.  Sure you will still do stuff, create stuff and function in the world, but you will grow tired because you are running on empty inside trying to generate worth through what you do.  Until you know how worthy you are you will always have agenda, because you will always be trying to get love rather than realizing you are it.

Your radiance is your gift.  How you shine is your gift. It is really, really simple.  You could never attain worth or get more worthy and valuable based on any skill or ability that you may have or acquire.  Again it doesn’t mean that your skills won’t help out the ease and flow of this human existence, but they are not your service.  You are your service independent of anything that is done.

Since it is impossible to increase our worth this begs the question of how do we elevate our sense of self-worth.  Our sense of self-worth and our actual self-worth are two very different things.  The journey is in how we bridge the seeming gap in between without it being based on things that we accomplish or do.  Since most of our confidence comes through feats of walking into the fire of our own fears and limitations it is based in accomplishment or doing.  

There is one fast and short easy way to elevate our sense of self-worth and that is gratitude.  Gratitude for ourselves just the way we are in any given moment.  Appreciating the quirks, oddities, subtleties, nuances, particularities, and the way that we are exactly as we are.  Ending the desire to change ourselves or make ourselves different in any way brings greater and greater self-acceptance.  

Anything other than total gratitude for self is self-absorption, self-denial, self-hatred and the true selfishness.  It’s the true selfishness because when we don’t feel amazing about ourselves then we focus on ourselves.  We focus on what’s wrong with us and how to be different or better.  When we are focused on ourselves our energy goes in rather than radiating out.  The result is that we feel depleted rather than energized.  Giving/being ourselves is energizing because it’s effortless.  It doesn’t need to be more or less.  It is complete in and off itself.  None of this means that we won’t grow or change, but instead simply that growth will come through acceptance of self rather than through non-acceptance.  

Develop a daily practice of self-gratitude, not for what you do, but for who you are.  Nothing added, nothing subtracted.  Just you as you are.  This will be your portal into a sense of stable, infinite self-worth where you will naturally radiate the gift that you are.   

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

YOUR BODY IS NOT SEPARATE FROM YOU

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YOUR BODY IS NOT SEPARATE FROM YOU 

The catalyst of bodily symptoms

Most people don’t like it when their body behaves in ways that seem dysfunctional.  People’s relationship to novel or chronic sensations, pains, or symptoms that don’t make sense often throw them into a state of alarm, panic and distress.  The struggle to attempt to change the expression through figuring out and controlling one’s self or environment can become life consuming.  Often the journey can feel exhausting and like it isn’t achieving the desired outcome.  

If you see from the perspective that this entire life experience is about learning, then including the experiences that you have in relationship with your body is no different.  Oftentimes however rather  than viewing from the perspective that life is about learning we attempt to find some solidity or permanence inside of our experience, particularly when it comes to our physical body.  Since most people identity as their body rather than the presence that makes their body come alive many feel intimately threatened by certain bodily sensations or symptoms.  That threat can come in the form of not being able to do things we feel we want to do, loss of certain functions that seem vital to our existence and a general hopeless or powerless perspective towards the body and its expressions.  

First I want to offer the perspective that you are not your body.  Your body is an instrument of you.  It is what you utilize inside of this human experience, but it is not you.  The body also does not function independent of you.  Just like a piano does not play without the pianist, your body does not function without you playing it.  Without you your body does not make a sound, a beep, or a single move.  This is important to fully understand.  See when things go “awry’ in our body we tend to view the body as separate from us and while your body is not you it does nothing without you.  

When we view our body as acting independently from us we disown ourselves in the equation and thus any power we have.  This is why we feel powerless, helpless and try to figure it all out as if it is something other than us.  It is not that we are actually powerless or helpless to our body, but only that we have the perspective that we are somehow separate from our body.  When we see through and dissolve the story of separation we no longer perceive disconnection or otherness.  There is no other thing inside of your body running the show.  It is only you inside your body running the show.  How could there be something or someone else inside of your body?  That one that is you is the one that is playing this instrument of your body.   

EMPOWERED YOU = HAPPY BODY 

You are the Creator

All learning is to help us realize more of ourselves, and the more realized we are of what we are, the more empowered we experience ourselves to be.  To say this another way the more we know ourselves, the more aware we are, and the more resourceful we are in navigating with the forms of life because we see more clearly how we are the creator of them.  The body is one of those forms of life, one in which we are seemingly more intimately connected too.  

In times when we perceive greater separation there is often the feeling that life and our body are against us.  Maybe we see our body’s symptoms, pains and expressions as punishment for something, or as unfair, or as wrong.  However our body is not against us as that would be absolutely impossible.  That would be like saying the piano is against the pianist.  How could that even be so?  Who would be inside the piano to be against anything.  The piano is inherently neutral and so is your body.  What chooses for or against is you.  

What I am pointing to here is a high level of empowerment and knowing yourself.  Not everyone is ready to take full responsibility for knowing themselves and therefore will keep trying to fix and manipulate the form.  The form will change in response to those manipulations, however it may or may not change your experience.  This is why people don’t arrive where they hope to arrive.  They are waiting on the form to inform them.  They are allowing the form to decide for them rather than deciding for themselves.  

The way I see it is that the body’s expressions are catalyst, meaning ways to help us wake up and realize ourselves.  They are learning tools.  They are not meant as punishment, or to harm us, and they are not wrong or unfair.  They are pointers, pointing us to pay attention to ourselves.  To see, choose, act, respond, think, and feel differently then we currently do.  To expand our range of life and possibility and move beyond our current perceptions of limitation.  To ultimately turn our awareness towards ourselves rather than the stuff of life.  To come to know ourselves.  This is how I see all of life.  There is nothing in this entire universe that isn’t moving towards greater self-recognition.  That is the impulse that drives all movement, all energy and all direction.  It drives your entire life even if you don’t yet see it.  

No forms are permanent.  We all know this despite our great efforts to try to make them so.  You are on an epic learning journey with the only destination being greater awareness of self.  The one stable, non-changing element is you.  Not your mind, thoughts, emotions, sensations or ideas about who you are, but your very essence.  Come to know that.  Realize that is all any of this is about.  Find safety in yourself, not in the ever changing world of forms.  

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

GIVING YOUR LIFE OVER TO WHY YOU EXIST

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GIVING YOUR LIFE OVER TO WHY YOU EXIST 

Focused on the things of life

As human beings with faculties of mind and memory we create images, stories and ideas about our life. What it should look like, how it should feel, what should occur and not occur, and the like. We are nearly constantly investing our energy and attention into the things of life. This is so natural and second nature to us that we don’t question or entertain that any other way of being/doing would be possible. This investment of our resources (i.e. our energy and awareness) into the things of life creates a dynamic where our well-being is contingent upon those things. With this we become fused, merged and attached to the things of life, including our stories and ideas about them, and we lose touch with the essence of our nature and why we exist at all. This creates an inner experience of simply trying to get through life as if there is some destination to arrive at and we miss out on the experience of what it is to be living.

When our focus is on the things of life we create agendas and expect outcomes. No matter how agenda-less and detached from outcome you think you are, the truth is you probably aren’t. Most people still want things and perceive they need things and therefore subtly, or not so subtly, attempt to get those needs and wants met through their thoughts and actions. This is agenda. As long as you perceive lack, meaning you perceive that you don’t have something you need or want, you will attempt in whatever ways you can to get it. This is a survival strategy based in the perspective that something is missing right now and that somehow what is is not complete. This is the most pervasive perspective on planet Earth right now, however it’s pervasiveness does not make it accurate.

It is important to get that you are the creator of your experience.  What you think or believe to be true will generate the image that you see reality to be.  What you put your energy and awareness into will dominate your life.  This is not just a fancy new age concept.  This is how creation works.  Perception is creation.  What you perceive, meaning how you see, will dictate what you see.  Giving your life (ie. your energy and attention) over to things, images, ideas and stories about life generates a very physical experience of life where you believe that you are the physicality.  You suffer when the image doesn’t reflect what you desire because you think you are the image and don’t recognize that you are the creator of the image.  You feel powerless to the image that you have created because you don’t realize you created it.  In this way we are victims to our own selves, yet don’t see ourselves and therefore don’t realize how we victimize ourselves to ourselves.  If that confusing its because it is confusing.  We have confused ourselves to be things (which we are not) and therefore experience limitation, frustration, powerless and lack.   

THE ILLUSION OF SACRIFICE 

A soul-driven life

So if we don’t give our life over to our ideas, then what do we give it over too? If we stop focusing on getting the money, relationships, family, house, car, health, our next business idea, our next save the world idea, social status, validation, approval, and the like then what else is there? See all that is the stuff of life and none of it is why you exist. Sure you will use certain of those expressions to carry out the why of why you exist, but none of the things of life are why you exist. This is incredibly important to understand. Without this awareness you will live disconnected from why you are, from why your soul took on a body in the first place. I can guarantee you that it did not do so just to smell the flowers and get absorbed in the stuff of living on planet earth. There is a mission, a calling, a purpose for your being here in a body, and from what I have discovered it is the only worthwhile focal point for this incarnative experience. All else is just distractions.

To the you that you think you are, living in such a singularly focused way where your sole purpose is the only determiner for all of the stuff that you do through this body, will feel like a sacrifice. The one you think you are (i.e. your name, personality, profession and all the ways you identify yourself) will feel let down, discouraged, at times aimless, confused and destabilized by this shift in focus. Again no matter how agenda-less you think you are, you probably aren’t. Are you willing to let everything, and I mean everything go, and shift to your sole purpose or calling being the only determiner for you? I can promise you that if you are willing you will never feel purposeless again. You will never wonder if you are doing what you came here to do, you will stop experiencing self-doubt, and you won’t regret your life when you are on your death bed. However I can also promise you that your life may not look like or feel like you want it too. Your life will no longer be “your” own, meaning your body-mind-personality ideas of what your life is. The paradox however is that it will also be the first time your life is in alignment because you will be in full connection with yourself.

From the perspective of the person this will be a colossal and complete sacrifice in complete uncertainty.  From the perspective of the soul it will be a coming home.  The one constant is free will.  You get to decide how you participate with all of this.  If you decide to make the transition from a person-centered life to soul-centered life a tremendous amount of faith will be required of you.  Your person will not know.  It will perpetually feel like it doesn’t know.  This is just part of the territory.  This is an act of faith that you will take several times a day.  You can’t get the soul to fit inside of the personality and therefore the personality will not understand.  It has to surrender itself.  There is no other way.  

Giving your life over to why you exist instead of the stuff of life liberates and aligns you with you. It frees you to actually be of service to life in every single moment. To give to life rather than get from life. There is not a single moment where your purpose, your calling, cannot be executed. Until you arrive here and become agenda-less you cannot be of true service because there will always be some underlying sneaky agenda running the show. You being you, knowing you, sharing you is the service. You generate this world of your purpose by aligning yourself with it over and over and over again. You come to see the illusion of sacrifice is just that, an illusion, because there is nothing else worth living for. You detach from being the stuff and rest into your calling, into your soul, and experience inner stability despite the ever changing appearances of life.

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