self-care

ENDING URGENCY

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ENDING URGENCY 

There is nowhere better to get

Everyone in the world seems to be in a mad dash to get things done or be somewhere other than where they are.  We drive fast, think fast, move fast, send text messages fast, eat fast… fast, fast, fast.  Always onto the next thing and never being inside of what is now.  We have some kind of belief that somewhere else is better, more fun, more exciting, more relaxing, or more peaceful than where we are now.  If we could just get to those moments or times when everything looks and feels better and lock them in for eternity, then we could stop with all the urgency and just be.  Yet even when those transitory moments of peace or better come, we can’t seem to stop, slow down and enjoy the moment.  We only recognize that this moment will change and be gone soon enough.  

How do we ever live relaxed and in a state of “be”ing with the near constant change, activity and movement of life?  How do we stop trying to get somewhere and rather be where we are in each and every moment?  One of the most fundamental beliefs that we must work with in ourselves is the one that says that something is better than now.  How many times throughout your day do you find yourself engaged in an activity just hoping to get is over and done with?  Perhaps you feel this way during your morning workout, or when you are at work and things don’t seem to going as you want them too.  Maybe you can’t get something to work right on the computer, or you have a class at school you don’t enjoy, or an annoying neighbor, roommate or some other person you have to deal with.  When we find ourselves in these types of situations we mostly just want to be out.  For it to be done and over with because we do not feel pleasant, relaxed or at peace.  We think once this activity, task, conversation or situation is over then we can relax and be.  

The thing is life is loaded with movement, and might I even say what seems to feel like chaos, stickiness or mess.  There is simply a lot of stuff going on that never seems to stop and things are rarely perfectly packaged and placed as we would like them to be.  So what’s the answer here?  How do we bring what we want to experience to every situation that we find ourselves in?  Attempting to manipulate each and every experience, circumstance and/or person in our life (including ourselves) is exhausting, and quite frankly impossible, even though this is what most people try to do.  The answer rather is that we must pause our sense of urgency, of wanting to get out of our experience of “ick” or overwhelm, and drop into it rather than try to get out of it.  By moving into our experience the possibility to transform ourselves inside of it becomes available.  When we transform ourselves we transform our experience of whatever it is we are experiencing.   

LIFE’S PACING 

Surrendering beyond ourselves

Have you ever noticed that life seems to have its own pacing?  It operates at a speed or rhythm that sometimes aligns with our own and at other times not so much.  Sometimes the pace of life feels too fast and at other times too slow.  We may find ourselves feeling urgent in either scenario.  If the pace of life feels like it’s moving too fast then we try to speed ourselves us to meet that pace and the demands of all of the movement of life.  If the pace of life is too slow for us then again we try to speed ourselves up hoping that life will respond to us and speed up as well.  Either way we are gearing ourselves up for the race to somewhere else.  

Life’s pacing is largely out of our control.  There is a bigger orchestration at play to which we are mostly unaware.  Sure there might be things that you can do such as putting more or less activities into your day to day schedule, which you may actually need to do, but the bigger message here is in how you walk with life and it’s pace.  Not getting ahead of it or behind it, but rather being right with it as it unfolds.  What this requires is a surrender to the rhythm that is present rather than the rhythm we would prefer to be present.  While this might seem bold to say here it is: our preferences matter, but not that much.  While we are the kings and queens of our own world inside of our own heads, when it comes to the larger orchestration of life, we are part of the whole.  Often we don’t see from the whole, but only from the part we play.   In this way we are egocentric, not in a negative way, as it’s mostly innocent on our part.  Rather in a way in which we just simply don’t see the bigger picture.  We are not inside the heads of every single being in this universe seeing from the perspective of universal consciousness, therefore our scope and sight is limited to our own.  This creates immense confusion and frustration for us as we often don’t understand the what’s and why’s to the pacing and timing of things.  

Accepting confusion is one of the best ways to come back into rhythm with life’s pacing.  Understanding is not required for us to have acceptance.  In fact this is one of the great lessons of having this human experience.  Not necessarily an easy lesson, yet it does the job of eventually getting us into a state of surrender.  Surrendering to what is rather than what we prefer to be.  Only once we move into acceptance and surrender can we begin to see beyond ourselves and our egocentric human point of view.  We are in the unknown of what the moment is, contains and could be, rather than in our ideas, preferences or insistences about what is occurring.  

There is so much about the happenings that we don’t get to decide, even the happenings of our own bodies.  What we do get to decide is how we be, and whether or not we try to get out or be in rhythm with the moment.  When you feel urgency arise inside of you begin the practice of pausing.  Take a breath and let go of whatever you are energetically holding onto or trying to get done, and allow the state of “be”ing to be present inside of your experience.  Recognize that you can both be and engage in activity.  There is nothing to get over with, as there will always be more things.  Rather see the moment that you desire is now.  What you wish to experience is now.  Bring that to your experience and watch the magic reveal itself to you.  

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

STOP DOING TO GET THINGS DONE

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STOP DOING TO GET THINGS DONE 

Be finished with finishing

So often we do to get things done.  In fact most of our days are spent getting through one activity or task after another.  It seems as though the doing is ceaseless, except perhaps for a few moments at the end of our day or week.  Why do we live in the constant cycle of doing?  It as if we are all trying to get somewhere.  A place where we can rest, relax and be at ease.  We think that we might arrive there if we can just get done all of the stuff we feel like we have to do.  Such is the case that most of us are not enjoying much of our doing, but rather wanting to simply get it over with so we can move onto doing the next thing that we don’t enjoy.  All so that hopefully, at some point, we can get to an activity we like or simply just rest. 

In a culture where we value productivity more than enjoyment, connection or presence, and perceive non-activity as laziness, we are set up to live as doing machines.  The foundation for our dominant train of thought is how much or how many.  When we go to our jobs we don’t get praised or promoted for our non-productivity or for our presence, but rather for how much we get done.  We don’t get paid for how much we enjoy what we are doing, but rather only for the job done.  While the culture creates this container for us, it is still us that values productivity more than enjoyment of what we are doing, and we continue to insist that perhaps we will arrive somewhere better at some future time.  

As a result of this we are fairly disconnected from own impulses, urges to move and natural rhythms.  You might call this intuition, but really it’s just listening and following your inner rhythms rather than your conditioned response to things. We constantly feel like we need “know something out there” because we can’t hear our own inner knowing.  We seek for safety and certainty inside of situations or circumstances rather than within our own selves.   So like any good and reliable machine we produce.  We meet all of the outer expectations from bosses, friends and family members.  We live up to all the marks the best we can and do whatever we perceive we need to do in order to be ok.  With this we often ignore, repress, or deny our own rhythms of activity and non-activity.  We feel stressed, not necessarily because of the situation, but because of our own disregard for listening to what feels good to us.  We fear we won’t be taken care of, supported, or have all of our physical, emotional or social needs met if we don’t answer to the doing machine.  We reserve relaxation for the few moments in our life where we don’t perceive threat.  Then we call this being human.  I’m not sure about you, but I think being human can be better than this.   

DOING FROM ENJOYMENT 

Courageously choose joy

What would it take for you to do all you do through enjoyment, and never simply to get something done again?  How would you have to think or structure your life differently?  What if the purpose of activity is not to finish it, but rather to actively participate with the doing of it?  What if you did not allow yourself to do something unless you were in a state of enjoyment about the doing?  This is what it would be like to enjoy life rather than do life.  It’s pretty much guaranteed that the activity of life will never come to a halting stop, but what can is how we engage with activity and what we value in terms of productivity and presence.  There are no hard and fast rules here.  It’s all about creating your experience of life how you want to be rather than the way it currently seems to be set up.

Many live as if there isn’t enough time.  Like we can’t, or won’t be able to do all the things we need or want to in the time allotted.  What if you create a new story for yourself that there is enough time for everything.  Beyond that, what if rather than focusing on time altogether and what will or won’t be done inside of that time, you focus on enjoying whatever is occurring now.  What if you stop should-ing and hav-ing yourself, and dismantle all of your resistance to enjoyment.  Yes believe it or not most people resist enjoyment, but gladly accept suffering through things to get them done.  It’s not logical, but it is normalized.  

You might realize that you have some pretty hardcore beliefs in there that you are supposed to do stuff at whatever cost it is to your own enjoyment.  That to enjoy life is a luxury rather than a must.  But what if you made it must?  What if you realized that enjoyment is not luxury, but rather it’s the value or standard you firmly ground your feet in and make it more important than productivity and getting things done.  What if you don’t force yourself to do things that you don’t feel like doing, and what if you made it ok to rest and be, without guilt or fear, rather than always be engaged in activity?  See it’s really your choice even if you think it’s not.  

You might be wondering, won’t there be “consequences” for your actions, or more particularly for your non-actions?  There will most definitely be effects, however they may not be as negative as you conjure them up to be in your mind.  You might discover and fully embrace resting and enjoying, without judging it as lazy or making it mean something about your worth as a human being, which is something that not many people are successful at achieving (pun intended).  Also as you let go of the pressure you place on yourself to do many of things you do or think you should do, you may find that you want to do some of those things, and in that way they become desirable and enjoyable rather than tasks to get done.  This  is all to come to the knowing that your ok-ness, worth, validation, approval, permission to feel good about yourself, security and safety is not dependent on your actions or non-actions.  This frees you to do only from and through enjoyment.  To longer be manipulated by your own or other’s stories about what you must do.  Believe it or not, doing only from enjoyment takes tremendous courage, even though it’s the most natural way of living, which points to the fact that we live quite unnaturally.  Be courageous and do only from enjoyment.  

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

KNOW WHY YOU ARE

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KNOW WHY YOU ARE 

You do not exist to do

There really is nothing more pivotal, more important and more fundamental to your existence then knowing why you are.  Why you are is who you are.  Why you are is your existence.  It is the only function, the only purpose, the only intention that your existence serves.  So many people feel lost.  So many feel that they don’t know the very foundation of their being or why they exist at all.  It seems as though nothing makes sense and life feels hard as they attempt to try to make things happen from a state of disconnection from themselves.  When we don’t know why we are we feel helpless, like a circumstance to life, like a product of our environment of which we are powerless too.  It seems life can give and take things from us.  It seems like we have no control over it all.  

When we know why we are and we align our entire self with that knowing, we live without any agenda and nothing can interfere with what we know ourselves to be.  What we be, we are, and we give.  Our need to manipulate or control life to our desired appearance or picture ends.  All we care about is who we are, why we are and being that.  The outcome of anything ceases to matter at all.  This is freedom.  This is the full exercise and expression of our free will.  This is living power and the recognition that nothing can take that from you.  No person, no decision, no structure outside of yourself, and no inner thought, story, sensation or feeling can take away why you are.  

Why you are is not what you do.  What you do is informed by why you are when you know why you are, but what you do is not why you are.  You did not come here to be a doer.  You do not exist to do.  Doing is rather an extension or means of sharing why you are, but it is only a means to share and not the reason you exist.  So often we confuse why we are with what we do.  When we are more identified with our body, our personality and the things of our life, then we are with why we are, we feel at threat, unstable and we attempt to control all the parts and pieces of life.  When we are rested in why we are, the endless stream of thoughts about past and future pause.  You stop focusing on what you are doing and rather focus on why you are doing.  The ‘what’ seems almost trivial as you recognize that it is not the purpose or intention, but only a way to express the intention.  At first this can be a bit much to really look at as we gain so much of our identity, value and worth through what we do.  We may not want to let go of the doer/doing as our identity.  Yet as you reorient to why you are you will find freedom through letting go of the what, even if you worked really hard at creating it.   

THE WHOLE PICTURE 

Why you are is who you are

The picture of why you are is different than the picture of what you think you want.  The picture of why you are comes with what you want others to experience and know through your presence.  This is way, way, way more simple than most people think.  See because we don’t exist to do and make shit happen, because that is not who we are, we must look a little bit past the surface appearance of ourselves to see why we fundamentally exist in the first place.  You may be wondering how to discover this for yourself.  Start by locating a profound moment in your life.  Perhaps a moment or some moments where you felt fulfilled or in a peak state of being.  Notice what you felt.  What was the essence that made up those experiences?  What did you know or feel in those moments?  See if you can find repeating patterns between moments.  Is there a core theme?  If that seems elusive to you then another way to discover ‘why you are’ is ask yourself: what do you want to leave the people of the world knowing?  If you were to transition out of your body tomorrow what would you want people to know, feel or experience?  Whatever words you can find to describe that feeling state of being or knowing is the reason why you are.  It’s not more complex than that.

But boy do we love complexity.  The more complex, complicated, and involved we can make it the better.  The mind just loves to be lost in its own creation of conceptual confusion, meanwhile creating postponement for us in thinking about our purpose rather than living it or being it.  The mind always thinks it needs more of something first before you can live or know your purpose.  It needs more information, more learning, more money, more connections, more resources, more clarity, more self-worth, more love, more, more, more.  It really is endless.  Meanwhile while you’re busy feeling lost and confused, attempting to get more more more in order to be better, so you can know why you are and be of service, you could have just been being your calling.  

Again your calling, purpose, intention, or why you are is not something you need to figure out.  It is who you are.  It is natural.  It is present when you feel great and when you feel crappy.  It is there when you are clear and when you feel confused.  It’s available when you’re energized and when you’re tired.  It exists no matter what actions, projects, activities or creations are being done or not.  Why you are is not contingent on anything.  When you deliberately use your awareness/focus and place it on why you exist, rather than on what you are doing, you turn the light up on your calling.  You feel it more.  You feel yourself become it more.  You feel more aligned.  Things flow differently for you because your focus is on why you are rather than what you’re doing or creating.  Life responds to that.  People respond to that.  The truth is life and people are always responding to how you are being you, and when you deliberately align your focus with why you are, you have the experience of mountains moving without you having to physically move the mountain.  What you want people to get they get.  You are fulfilling your own mission for existing.  You could even say your mission is complete and you are just dancing in the experience of it playing itself out.  So for whatever reason you exist, whatever the intention for your being is, whatever you want to give the world or want the world to get by your presence, it’s here now.  Always in the background and patiently waiting for you to use your focus and bring it to the foreground.  To do so is live fulfilled.  

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

CONDUIT OF LOVE

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CONDUIT OF LOVE 

Being a channel for love

We are all receiving & broadcasting something.  These bodies are conduits, in which information and energy flows into and out.  You can think of that flow of energy or information coming down through the top of your head, continuing by flowing down your spine and then transmitting out through your body via the words you speak, sounds you make, actions you take, and your presence.  While most people tend to think of themselves as an individually contained body-mind unit that is separate from everything else, generating its own thoughts, you are more like a receptacle that exchanges information and energy from subtler realms into a seemingly more dense or physical ones.  In this way we are all channels.

Some people might believe that “channeling” is only for psychic people and that it is metaphysically oriented.  However the way I see it is that everyone is channeling thoughts and emotions all of the time, which by the way are subtler forms of energy even if you tend to think of them as more dense because they are more familiar to your experience.  There are different frequencies that can be tuned into and channeled as your system opens and unwinds.  As we become less fixated and rigid we can tune into increasingly subtler and subtler energy and information.  When I use the word subtle all I mean is lighter in frequency, not necessarily harder to hear or find.  To someone who’s system is more open, subtle energy is as obvious as the physical hand would be anyone who has a physical body.  I say that to reiterate that subtle does not mean harder to find, only lighter in frequency and requiring a more refined awareness of self.

In order to tune into lighter frequencies our focus on denser frequencies must lessen so that these channels become quieter in our awareness.  Due to the fact that most people are focused on and merged with thoughts, emotions and sensations for most their waking day, those frequencies tend to dominate our bandwidth.  There are however other frequencies to tune into and channel.  I will break this down into 2 basic domains.  One is to channel what may be thought as the more traditional sense of channeling.  This would be tuning into frequencies of beings not incarnated in human bodies or having human constitutions.  Commonly know examples of this type of channeling would be people like Paul Selig, Bashar, Abraham Hicks or Edgar Cayce.  This is not everyone’s path, journey or gift to share, but it is a possible expression for some.  The second domain is to channel more of “yourself”.  What I mean by this is that rather than channeling the familiar thoughts & emotions, you channel your soul frequency.  Your soul is the next subtler body beyond thought energy.  It has a different expression than thoughts and emotions, but there are similarities in experience across beings.   

CHANNELING YOUR SOUL 

From thoughts to souls

To begin to channel your soul, is like a toddler beginning to have thoughts. There is a development, refinement and sophistication over time.  The most essential, common and basic, if you will, experience of channeling your soul is a feeling sense of love.  Love that is not attached to any object or person, but simply a state of being.  It has a vibratory feeling of excitement and it feels joyful, even ecstatic.  The amount of energy that that comes from channeling your soul is quite different than thought or emotion.  There is a higher frequency to it and greater intensity.  Some people may describe this as more coherent energy or a richer energy experience.  There is a tendency to feel more present and at ease while simultaneous alert and aware.  You know how to move, act and behave without deferring to thought.  An intelligent energy seems to move your body-mind rather than you (or your thinking) moving your body-mind.  There is also a feeling sense of less inhibition and more freedom to simply express as you are not thinking about what you are doing, what it looks like or how others might judge you.  

The soul frequency has its own unique expression.  Here is where presence really arrives.  This is where you can feel someone and what they are transmitting without them doing anything.  They may just be sitting in a room or give you a look, but you can feel it resonate or move your entire being even if you don’t entirely know what you are feeling.  When someone is channeling soul frequencies it will also begin to activate that channel in you to whatever degree you are ready to open to it and your development is primed for it.  This often happens in the group entrainment room and is one of the primary reasons that I work in a group setting or field.  It is to give your system a greater and more concentrated experience of soul frequencies.  You may begin to feel some subtle shifts even if you aren’t sure what is happening exactly.  It’s kind of like the equivalent of a baby hearing spoken words.  Even though they don’t understand it fully when they are babies, with more and more exposure, readiness, and development, they begin to learn and understand it.  

The primary expression of thought is words.  Though words can carry different frequencies other than thoughts, humans tend to channel thought frequency through the words they speak.  The primary expression of soul is different.  Soul expression is presence.  While this might seem intangible to you in this moment, it is an entire world of interconnected, aliveness that is ever present and always here.  It’s simply that it is not always being tuned into or channeled by us.  Soul can also be expressed though utilizing sounds, movements and words.  Some of those sounds, movements or words may seem very strange or unique to your thinking mind, however to your soul they are as ordinary or normal as thoughts are to your mind.  Emotions, thoughts and souls all transmit different frequencies.  All serve purposes.  All you must ask is what purpose would you like to serve and what is needed in a moment?  Channeling soul frequencies is the next developmental step for humans.  It really is simply a matter of developmental progression.  It’s not a question of if, but rather when.  Just like a toddler develops its mind by learning sounds, letters, words and then sentences, learning to develop your soul is similar.  This is how you become an effortless conduit of love and a channel for those frequencies to be present here.  

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

BE THE SOURCE OF WELLNESS

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BE THE SOURCE OF WELLNESS

Get to give

Most are in a constant strive to get.  Get possessions, get relationships, get money, get fame, get love, get safety, get healthy, get enlightened, get well.  Getting seems to be the only way we experience what we want, or at least we think it is.  Many of our social and cultural structures are built around getting something or getting somewhere.  School, competitive sports, the right job, the creative business, even vacations, meditation, and leisure activities can become sources of getting for us when the intention is to get something out of them even if it’s relaxation.  

Now there is nothing inherently wrong with getting.  It’s simply that getting is an outsourcing of our own power.  It is also a never-ending, scarce way to approach life because it seems as though there will always be more that you need to get.  The perspective that drives this approach is rooted in a sense of lack of a self.  When there is not recognition of a self, of a you, that has impact and is a creator, than the source of creatorship or power appears to come from the things we perceive to be around us.  This is classical projection or disowning one’s power or self.  

While many people in spiritual circles and communities are busy attempting to dismantle their sense of a self, or ego identity as a separate individual, you must first discover that there is a self to dismantle.  If you don’t you will continue to come from disempowered views even if you occasionally experience high states of energy or have spiritual insights and experiences.  From a developmental perspective there is first non-awareness of self (or a pre-self) in which it seems life is randomly happening and there is a getting to survive.  Secondly there is development of a self, of a person, that has impact, that can do stuff and where there is a you that is happening to life.  Here we get in order to validate that we are a self and that we are important.  Thirdly there is non-self or transcending the sense of a separate individual person self into a unified sense of one self.  To develop from the second to third we must transition from getting perspectives to giving perspectives.  Here to give is to get as all is one being, yet that is only realized through first making the shift from get to give.   

GETTING IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO RECEIVE

The frequency you choose

As much as we might believe that getting is the only way to receive what we think we want or need, it’s only because that is the prime way we’ve been operating.  We think we need to get something in order to experience what we desire.  For example if we don’t feel relaxed we think we need to do something or find someone to “give” us relaxation. Hence we need to get relaxation from somewhere. This can go for anything we are attempting to get like wealth, relationships, love, safety, health, enlightenment, wellness, and on.  Most people think they need to get these things or how else on earth will they ever experience them.  

Like everything else getting is simply a frequency.  When we vibrate with the frequency of “get” then we are vibrating with a sense of what we want isn’t here and that we must somehow, someway get it.  Essentially we are vibrating with the frequency of “not” or “lack.”  Nearly everyone is doing this, but they are unconscious to it, and even beyond that they don’t realize that they are in charge of their frequency to begin with.  The way I see it, the only true responsibility any of us has is to our frequency.   Though we might think we are responsible for all the comings and goings of life, of people’s reactions and feelings, and on and on, the only one real responsibility we have is how we choose to vibrate.  Yet we must recognize our choosing and that it is our choice first.  This is where that second stage of development comes in, the recognition of a self, a self that does onto life, prior to merging into the one self. 

In the recognition that we choose what we vibrate as you see that how you vibrate is what you give.  You give your vibration.  It’s natural and effortless regards of whatever vibration you choose to be, whether it’s lack or abundance, or getting or giving.  What you give is also what you then experience.  This is how you experience all things you want to experience without trying to go out and get them.  You must ask yourself what is at the core of everything it is that you want to get.  When you find the core of it, whether its love, safety, supported, nurtured, cared for, vital, free or well, decide to choose that vibration to be.  This is the only way you actually experience it.  Even if you continue to believe in the getting path, many of you know that you will get things that you think will give you what you want, but sooner rather than later, you feel not how you wanted to feel or how you hoped the thing would make you feel.  It’s because you never owned, you never became it.  You never became the vibration of what you wanted, you only temporarily projected it onto something, but then realized that all something’s change, and with the change so did your feeling state of what you desired.  

In order to not be shifted by all the changing of things you must be in ownership of what you vibrate.  Not in a sort of, sometimes way, where you are still trying to get what you want, while pretending to be spiritual.  Rather this is to be the source of wellness, after all you are it.  It is the end of using permission slips and projections.  To own that you are the source, is to be fully responsible for how you experience everything inside of your experience.  You are not responsible for the experience, rather only what you give to it, what you be, what you vibrate.  It is the end of the chase and of the never-ending experience of scarcity, but only if you so choose.  The projection, the appearance, the experience, won’t change until you do, or better said the projection, appearance or experience will mirror whatever it is you vibrate.  

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

SYMPHONY OF THE SPINE

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SYMPHONY OF THE SPINE 

Vibrating waves of light, frequency & tone

Everything in this universe is made of energy, which is expressed in its most basic building blocks as light, frequency or tone.  These vibrating waves of light, frequency or tone contain information which informs what forms and structures they will organize themselves into.  Forms and structures, which we call physical or solid, are simply patterns of energy that have configured themselves in certain ways to give rise to what we see or sense.  Everything in this universe is vibrational in nature and is singing a grand symphony, because at its core it is simply frequency.  Some tones are audible to the human ear.  Others are outside of the normal auditory sensory range, yet nonetheless are still present and can be heard with your “non-physical” ears.  What are those you might ask?  Let’s just call them extra-sensory organs which expand beyond the five normal ordinary sensory organs we currently use and know.  

Our spines are receivers of the grand symphony of the universe.  The position or tension pattern of the spine will determine which frequencies we can tune into.  This is kind of like the equivalent of turning the dial on the radio station and hearing a different station play.  However rather than turning a dial you are shifting the position and tension/tonal pattern of the tissues of your spinal cord.  What does this mean exactly?  Well in very simplistic terms its means that when your spinal cord is taut (tight) it tunes into a particular station.  That station might be playing some songs that are quite familiar to you.  The words, thoughts, and feelings that come with those songs might be something like “the world is not safe, other people are not safe, I can’t trust others, I can’t trust myself, I am not good enough, no one cares about me, I’ll never have enough resources, I’m not supported, nothing works, I have to do everything myself, life is against me, I’ll never heal, things will never be ok, I’m scared, I feel sad, things are looking down, this pain will last forever, I’ll never be able to relax and breathe…”.  Elements of this station are pretty familiar to most of us.  We’ve all listened to some of these songs over and over and over again.  For some these are the only tracks that have ever played.  

When the tension/tonal pattern of the spinal cord changes position (ie. relaxes) then our nervous system, which is simply an antenna, tunes into a different frequency or radio station.  That station might be playing songs like “I feel good, things are working out, I’m abundant, I decide, I choose, I can trust myself, I am free, other people are allies, I am safe, all is well, support is everywhere, I am getting better each day, life is happening in perfect rhythm and timing…”. We’ve all heard some of these songs before too, however sometimes they get played less frequently than the other songs.  To recap, when tension is high in our spinal cord we tune into frequencies that create a less enjoyable experience of life for ourselves.  When tension is lower we are able to tune into stations that play more enjoyable sounds and songs, which come with different feeling states and a more pleasant life experience.   

SHIFTING THE TONE OF THE SPINE

Conduit between consciousness & form

You might be wondering now how to change the tone, position or tension pattern in your spinal cord.  Well your entrainment sessions do just that very thing.  This is often why you might feel lighter after a session, or you might have different thoughts, or see something in a different way.  Sometimes people don’t always make those correlations, yet as the tension shifts in your spinal cord you are simply able to tune into stations that you were not able to before.  The more tension we unwind in our spine (ie. the more relaxed the spinal cord becomes) the more far reaching stations we are able to find.  Some of those stations we may have never heard before and they may seem totally foreign to us.  Yet even though they are foreign they are oddly familiar, and even though we don’t know the songs yet, they feel good to us.  In fact we might experience downright bliss, ecstasy and sense of overwhelming love and warmth as we “listen”, and yet we don’t have any logical reason  as to why.  

Listening at this level involves more of what you might call using your intuitive faculties.  We hear beyond the ears, see beyond the eyes, feel beyond the skin, etc.  To our ordinary sensory experience of life this seems abnormal or “special”, yet once your system is relaxed enough to find this station, it really is as normal as any other experience, only it comes with more energy, more aliveness and an experience of interconnectedness.  This is often what I refer to as experiencing or coming to know more of yourself.  You are more than your physical body, emotions, and thoughts, and yet we don’t often tune into stations beyond these.  

You might wonder why the amount of tension on your spine directly relates to or effects your experience of life.  The spine is the interface between consciousness and form in this human body.  Due to this relationship the information that it tunes into determines how/what you will perceive and experience.  Just like we can easily move the dial on the radio, we can also change the tone/tension of the spine.  We might go back and forth between stations all day long, sometimes playing the songs of not enough, feeling unsupported, and like life is not working, to changing to the tone and listening to songs of safety, freedom, choice and bliss.  Whatever songs are more relevant and resonate with us we will gravitate towards and listen to more often, because they have a similar frequency with us, with where we are at and with whatever it is that we are currently learning.  

In this way your spine is playing a symphony whether or not you hear it.  The information (ie. beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and sensations) all carry tones that make a song.  The sounds of that song transmit or express through you.  No belief, thought, feeling or sensation is good, bad, or better or worse than any others.  All are neutral at their core.  Yet there are often sounds and songs that we prefer more than others.  Preference is ok, insistence however generates the experience of suffering.  Learning to dance to any song that is playing is what it means to be resilient, and to become a master of this waltz.  This is what it is to create harmony where there is disharmony and to enjoy whatever music is playing on your station even if its heavy metal.  This is how you choose your station rather than shift between stations a hundred times a day.  Reminders are good until we remember that we can choose.  

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

GETTING TO PERFECT

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GETTING TO PERFECT  

Attempting to create perfection

There is a constant stride in the direction of perfection.  We are always looking towards betterment, progress and more pleasant or pleasurable feelings and sensations so we can experience that flow of perfection.  Perfection being that state of being we experience when nothing seems to be out of alignment and all is going better than we planned.  When we perceive that we aren’t making progress, or we don’t feel as we’d like too, or life doesn’t appear to be working as we want, we try to find our way back into perfection by changing our environment or ourselves.  We attempt to get to perfect or somehow create it, rather than seeing perfect in what is appearing.  

The difference between attempting to create perfection rather than seeing the perfection in what is already here, is the difference between striving to get somewhere and being present now.  While this difference might seem slight to you, or it may only seem like semantics, I assure you that the two are quite different experiences of life.  While striving to get to perfection can feel rewarding, and even provide a sense of purpose, meaning and worth for you, it ends only in the continual chase to the next and next and next thing that we attempt to make perfect or right.  When we view through the lens of perceiving perfection to be lacking from any moment, we do not see what is already here.  Rather we view lack and project that onto our “reality” or life experience.  

So what does lack projected onto life experience look like?  Well it probably looks and feels a lot like your life.  It’s the feeling of wanting something, even if it’s small, to be different than it is.  This includes wanting yourself to be different in some way., including where you are on your “spiritual” journey.  It’s feeling slightly or overtly restless, and like you just can’t fully relax.  It’s hoping something will change and fear that it won’t.  It’s the feeling that circumstances decide how you feel about life, rather than you deciding how you feel about it.  It’s worrying about the state of anything including your own internal state of feeling, sensing or being.  It’s feeling doubtful.  Probably 1,000 times a day we have subtle flavors of these aspects creep into our mind.  Rarely do we freely accept every single thing that is in our experience.  Rather we let things grab us.  We don’t like what is so we resist it.  We then feel like life is not working, when really it’s simply our perspective and relationship to life which isn’t working for us, or at least it isn’t producing the experience we desire, which is typically freedom, presence and peace. 

RESTING INTO VS.  RESISTING LIFE

Gnawing fear of things undone

The heart of most people’s desire is to rest into life.  What we have however is more frequently an experience of sometimes resting and sometimes resisting.  There can be confusion about what resting into life means or is.  Often there is some fear that it means inaction, or even deeper to the root, that it means purposelessnesss, lack of personal value or that we won’t get what we want.  Being rested into life does not mean action or inaction, rather it is a way we be while engaged with activity or when non-engaged.  When we are rested into life we are simply being ourselves while doing and seeing that whatever is appearing is exactly perfect just as it is in this moment.  Rather than trying to achieve something, or get somewhere with our doing, we are more focused on our state of being while we do the doing or while activity is occurring.

This is a radical shift for most people.  We swim in the field of achievement, making progress, and getting somewhere other than where we are.  We also tend to live with the background gnawing fear that things will be left undone.  Most people like for things to feel resolved rather than in process.  We like the stuff of life to feel organized, in its place and complete.  When we don’t feel those things we attempt to create those feelings through the doing of stuff.  We try to get it all done so that we can rest, rather than come from rest and then get things done.  See when we come from rest we are present to the moment.  We may be doing some activity, but we are not attached to the activity going anywhere because we are simply present to it.  This allows us to experience freedom.  Freedom that is always there, but which is covered up underneath our sense that we need to get something done or finished.  

From this perspective you can see that it really isn’t about the activity or what happens or doesn’t happen.  You can also see that things will happen and get done regardless of how you be inside of them.  You must only ask yourself the question of how do you want to be in life?  How we be determines our experience of life.  Two people can experience the exact same circumstances, yet have completely different experiences of them.  The only difference is how they be.  Do you rest into life or do you resist it.  You get to decide for you.  Life, activity, movement and creation will keep happening endlessly and persistently regardless of how you feel about it.  The beautiful thing is that you get to choose how you feel about it.  That is freedom.  That is your free will.  In fact this sense of freedom is often where you are trying to get to with all of your doing.  You are attempting to get to that feeling of freedom, of liberated joy, of fully embracing what is, so why not just start there.  Then go about with all of your doing.  It’s logical.  It makes sense, way more sense than the way we tend to operate.  

Perfection is here now.  There is no where to get.  Movement, activity and life will continue.  Appearances, sensations, feelings, structures, bodies, and all things will change forms.  Despite, and with, all the changing forms you can choose to rest into what is.  It will open you into now and into the experience of aliveness and yum even when you don’t like or prefer what is appearing.  

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

TINY LITTLE PEACE DISRUPTERS

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TINY LITTLE PEACE DISRUPTERS 

Good days and bad days

Most all of us desire a state of inner peace.  That sustainably stable center of being, that remains undisturbed regardless of situation or circumstance.  I really don’t know anyone who isn’t in someway looking or desiring this for themselves.  Often times we taste peace.  For example we might wake up in the morning after a great night’s sleep feeling rested and fantastic.  Then we start our day and tiny little peace disrupters attempt to find their way inside of our experiences.  Maybe our partner is grouchy and that affects our state of joy a little bit.  Perhaps we don’t have the food in our refrigerator that we want to eat for breakfast because our kids ate it last night.  Possibly you receive a phone call from your doctor telling you they didn’t like the look of some your routine blood work that you did last week for your annual check up.  Then you get in your car, start it up and it’s making some strange noise.  You arrive at your scheduled lunch meeting only to find out the person you are meeting is running 40 minutes late.  You get the idea.  The list could go on and on and on endlessly forever.  

It’s really no wonder that we feel stressed out most of time and not really as present and centered as we’d like to be.  It seems to be that there are a thousand tiny, little (and sometimes big) peace disrupters that happen in a give day.  You can find them in nearly every moment it seems.  Little ways that life does not appear to run smoothly, where things are less desirable than we want them to be, and where life just doesn’t feel like we want it to feel.  We worry about the outcome of all the things and if everything will turn out alright.  We dread the hassle of taking care of things that we aren’t sometimes even sure how to take care of.  We live in this state of a sort of powerlessness to life and its occurrences, and we hold our breath while we are in the uncertainty of it all.  I’d say that this is a pretty regular experience of life for most.  

Days that we call “good days” are typically days where we either perceive that less peace disrupters are present or where they are present but don’t seem to effect us.  In these situations it is often that something that we perceive as really good happened in a day so we are less easily affected by the other going ons of life.  It can also be that we have more distance from the occurrences of life on a given day (i.e. less attachment to the outcome of things and more acceptance of what is) so the little things seem to grab us less.  Some things are easier for us to accept, others not as much.  The more we resistance we create, the less resourced and energized we are and the more those tiny little peace disrupters run the show. 

STABLE INNER CENTER 

Playing the game of challenge

All of those tiny little peace disrupters are really just little challengers in the game of life.  They are opportunities for you to learn greater and greater inner stability.  One of the things I hear most frequently from people whom I work with is that they want to have stability in feeling good, energized, joyful and in their center or truth.  They want to less taken by the circumstance of life and be in more choice about what and how they are feeling on a day to day basis.  So often people don’t feel in choice about how they are feeling and that is actually what feels bad, that is not being in choice and not necessarily the bad feeling itself.

One of the fundamental perspectives to take on this whole matter is that everything that happens is happening for you not to you.  If you make that shift in perspective than you can easily see that all of those tiny little peace disrupters (and even the big ones) are simply coming into your experience to help you learn how to have a stable inner center.  See we ask to have a stable inner center and yet when we are given a thousand opportunities a day to practice it we fail to see that we are being given exactly that which we need to learn exactly that which we desire to learn.  It’s tricky because when we see through the perspective that life is happening to us we feel powerless to circumstance and feel that we have no choice in the matter of how we feel about what is happening to us.  However if we pick up and put on a different pair of glasses for the day, glasses that see that every single occurrence inside of our experience is happening for us then we are much more readily available to learn from life rather than feel victim to it.  We can also more clearly see things as opportunities to learn and not as permanent, never ending states of being of which we will never escape.

Most people don’t realize how powerful they are.  In fact most don’t realize that they have any power at all.  Some level of denial, confusion and lack of awareness seems to be present for most people when it comes to knowing themselves as the all powerful creators that they are.  Yet the evidence is everywhere.  How you perceive everything that you perceive is evidence of your power.  How you perceive is how you will experience life.  What is more powerful than that?  How you perceive is how you create and thus how you will experience life.  At any moment your free will to perceive is intact.  Free will the first expression of creation.  It is what you are.  Free will itself.  You are free to perceive however it is you would like to, and you will thus create an experience of life based on your perception.  Perception is creation.  If you see things as bad or wrong, you will experience bad, wrong or the threat of bad/wrong.  If you see things as good, you will experience good and that life is working for you.  

It is really that simple folks.  You might like to insist that you don’t have any power, and that you can’t change how you perceive, but you’re the only one that can.  No one can give you a stable inner center.  Tools, techniques and programs can guide you towards it, but ultimately you must learn it through the opportunity of tiny little (and sometimes big) peace disrupters.  The gift of them is the re-remembering your power and your never ending free will to perceive/create as you’d like.

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

COMING FROM ABUNDANCE

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COMING FROM ABUNDANCE 

Lessons in trust & faith

Abundance is the natural of being or is-ness.  Abundance is what is.  In truth lack does not exist because it would be impossible for existence to be lacking.  What is can’t not be.  What gives the appearance of lack is not the appearance itself, but our perception of what appears.  This may seem a bit tricky to understand, but if you sit with it for a few moments the truth of it will begin to reveal itself to you.  

We are conditioned in a perspective that says when I don’t have ‘xyz’, it means something is, or might be, lacking/missing from my experience.  This perspective of lacking/missing is what causes suffering or our sense of disconnection.  It also perpetuates the illusion of our separateness, or independence from the larger existence.  Viewing through the lens of lack means something is not enough, we might not have enough, and often we feel like we are alone in our quest to be enough or get enough of what we need or want, whether that be resources or experiences.  There is no trust in the orchestration of life, but instead fear of how we will make it work or get what we desire or need.  

Why do we so often blindly and unconsciously choose this lens of lack or scarcity?  What purpose does it serve us?  I think largely we choose it because it is the most accessible to us, to our psyche, and to the lessons we were born to learn.  One cannot learn faith and trust, which are the primary lessons of the human incarnation, if one sees the natural state of abundance.  For inside of abundance one knows entirely that they are supported so there is nothing to help us learn faith.  The conditions on this planet and the perspective of lack are prime for helping us learn trust and faith.  

For centuries we have been playing out the game of lack.  Fighting or attempting to manipulate life, ourselves or others, so that we have enough or more of what we want or need.  Manipulation that is often disguised in a multitude of ways, many of those being service or caring, but really its just about us doing and getting what we think we need or want.  Our lives for the most part are entirely self-centric and about gain even if they appear altruistic.  This isn’t bad or wrong.  It’s simply important to know where we are coming from and why we are coming from there.  With this understanding we can more consciously choose what serves now rather than sleep walk our way through our life.   

LIVING IN AGREEMENT  WITH LIFE

To know abundance

Part of viewing from the lens of scarcity means that we tend to not live in agreement with life, or with what is.  Rather we wish, dream, or envision it to be more luxurious, glorious, radiant or just better somehow.  We “miss” what’s here by wishing or hoping for something else to be here.  We fail to see abundance of what is because we are focused on something else being in our experience.  This is the recipe for living continually unsatisfied, unfulfilled, and chasing fulfillment inside of the promise of whatever is next.  I am not suggesting that you don’t dream or envision beauty, glory or your desires, but rather that you see it here now in your current moment experience rather than at some future date or time when things look different and there are different people, objects or experiences in your life.  To view this way would be to see the truth, which is abundance, rather than your perspective of not good enough somehow now.  This would be the equivalent of dreaming awake or seeing what is now.

While we wait for life to look different so that we can say it’s better is to negate the abundance of this very moment.  That future moment where you perceive perfection or better-ness will simply be another moment of perfect abundance that will be followed by someone else who wants to make it better and on and on.  On and on that is until we stop projecting into the future what is already here now.  No matter how shitty it seems or appears to us, if we don’t see that it is currently abundant we suffer, and through our perception of suffering we continue to create it.  Through how we see, we create the very thing we are attempting to make better.  

We have responsibility of how we see.  I think this is our one and only true responsibility.  Though this might seem trivial or not really that impactful or important, I’d argue that nothing else is more important than this.  See no one can really see how we see.  There are no outward signs to cue others to the lens we look through.  Only we know how we see; what lens we choose.  There are no accolades or external praises for choosing the perspectives we choose.  They are silent, quiet and only those that are also silent and quiet can see where you come from.  To them there is simply an internal recognition and gratitude for where you come from.  Yet even though our lens are unseen by most, they create the entire world.  Everything that is, is born from this lens from which you choose to come from.

Coming from abundance won’t necessarily make you materially rich.  It won’t necessarily give you all the things you want or think you need.  It won’t always provide the picture of life that you hoped for, however there is a silver lining.  That lining is that you will now live in agreement with life.  You will experience the peace that passes all understanding.  Your being serves despite whatever it is you do or don’t do, or create/don’t create.  It also allows you to be a conduit for life to move through you rather than you being the chief decider of all things that the mind then tries to figure out, manipulate and grasp.  You are free to be and to allow all the experiences of life to be as they are.  It is the end of resistance and the end of suffering.  This is to live/know abundance.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Chiropractor Boulder Colorado

Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration

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