spinal cord tension

SPIRITUAL ALIGNMENT

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SPIRITUAL ALIGNMENT 

What it is?

Most all of us desire spiritual alignment.  We may not call it that exactly, but the essence of it, is that we want to feel soulfully connected with ourselves, have purpose, be contributing to life in meaningful ways and feel as good as possible while engaged in this thing called being human.  Many people have the misconception that being spiritually aligned means that everything is easy, you get what you want, and you never struggle, have painful sensations or feel bad.  In fact people think that if their life is not the idealized picture they have in their head of what their life should be, then they must not be spiritually aligned.  

I’d like to make two distinctions.  The first is that on an absolute level there is no such thing as misalignment or being out of alignment.  Every single aspect of your experience is perfectly orchestrated for every learning and expression that you are participating in and creating.  Rest knowing that all is well regardless of whatever your thoughts and feelings are about your current experience.  The second distinction is that on a relative level, which is the level of this dualistic human playground, there is the experience of misalignment or being out of alignment.  Part of the learning here in this human game is how to refine ourselves to become a closer and closer reflection and expression of our complete self.  Since nearly all of us are living as a twisted or distorted fragment or version of ourselves, this refinement is a necessary process in coming home or remembering who we are.  

Back to spiritual alignment.  What blocks or seems to interfere with our experience of it?  The biggest obstacle is our definition of what it is and what it’s not.  The second is our lack of passion or intensity of desire for it.  Lastly is our avoidance of un-pleasurable sensations, feelings or experiences.  The combination of these three things makes for the experience of living spiritually unaligned.  It takes redefining, intensifying and moving with un-pleasurable experiences in order for us to have a new experience of alignment.  One that feels soulful, on purpose, and gives to others and life.  As you move up the developmental levels of your being you start at your root where the focus is survival, then moving up to having personal, emotional and social needs met or achieved.  The next level after that is the heart.  Once you reach the level of the heart, living spiritually becomes the central focus of your learning, sharing and expression.  Aligning yourself with the bigger picture of why you exist is fundamental to your growth as the spiritual being you are.   

LIVING SPIRITUALLY ALIGNED

Redefining, intensifying & moving with un-pleasurable experiences

Let’s start with our definitions.  We all have ideas and pictures in our minds of what living spiritually means.  Take a moment to ponder, investigate and explore what your particular ideas and pictures are.  Maybe there is a certain way you imagine it feels to be spiritually aligned.  Perhaps you see yourself having certain financial resources and being at a certain “place” in your life.  You might see that you have some special gift, knowing or intuitive abilities that you’ve harnessed.  Maybe you have specific relationships, partnerships, or connections with people.  Perhaps there are projects or work that you are doing that is more “spiritual” in nature.  Most often we have many of these ideas running in the back of our mind as to what it means to be spiritual.  Yet none of these things, ideas or pictures equals living spiritually aligned.  These are all simply preferences and appearances.  To live spiritually aligned is all about where you come from in your moment to moment experience and has nothing to do with the experiences themselves.  Where you come from is an intention or vibration of beingness.  Orienting to that over and over and over again is spiritual alignment.

Next is intensifying our passion and desire for orienting to our intention for existing.  We are mostly distracted by the experiences of life and what we are getting from them even if we think we are altruistic and spiritual.  We often don’t have much inner driving force beyond basic survival needs and personal and social validation.  Once our needs are met and we feel validated in our existence, meaning we’ve proved to ourselves and everyone else that we are worthy and valuable, we often lack drive and intentionality.  We’re lazy.  We don’t have much self-discipline.  Truly who can blame us.  The experience of a human life is not exactly a walk in park and if we aren’t literally “forced” (i.e. perceive a strong need) to make something happen then we typically won’t bother.  To be moved or driven, not by need, threat, loss, lack or what we think we will get, but rather moved only by our intention for existing is to live devoted.  Devoted and committed to the sole purpose of our existence.  This too provides the direct experience of spiritual alignment.

Lastly is our avoidance of uncomfortable sensations and feelings.  Whether or not you are aware of it your life is likely focused on how to increase pleasurable sensations and feelings, and how to avoid the un-pleasurable ones.  We tend to categorize unpleasant sensations and feelings as less spiritual than the pleasant ones.  When we feel bad we like to blame the circumstances, conditions, people, our body, ourselves, and on and on.  Through our blaming we hope to feel better so that something can be responsible for how we feel, rather than allowing ourselves to feel what is present.  I will simply say that life is full of un-pleasurable sensations and feelings.  If you just accept it rather than avoid it, you can include all of your experiences inside of your spiritual alignment rather than push some of them away.  Unpleasant sensations and feelings are not bad.  They are just part of the experience.  Suffering occurs only when we are in opposition to what is occurring, meaning when we resist it.  Painful sensations and feelings do not equal suffering when we unwind our story about what they mean.  

I invite you to play with these 3 ingredients of living spiritually aligned.  Redefine your definitions, intensify your desire and accept all the sensations and feelings that come with your experience.  Recognize that perhaps living spiritually aligned is different than what you thought it was.  Explore where you need to clean up or elevate your perspectives.  Be surprised and surprise yourself.  You might even find that you already are living your highest alignment.  

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

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

DARE TO RELAX

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DARE TO RELAX 

Move beyond threat

It’s quire ironic that what we tend to want the most we literally have to dare ourselves to try.  Something that is as natural and ordinary as relaxation is often perceived as a threat by our own psyche.  If we let our guard down, rest and simply be then we often feel exposed, vulnerable and like nothing will get done or accomplished.  So rather than choose what we desire, which is a state of rested, relaxed openness, we choose tension and vigilance.  For most people this is their near constant state of being.  Even if they are “non-doing”, meditating or engaged in relaxing pursuits, most are not really relaxed inside of those activities.  In essence most people are super skill deficient at truly relaxing even if they give the appearance that they are.

If you relaxed, or said another way, were just being yourself, people would view you differently.  This is one of the top reasons why we don’t relax.  People, like our partners, kids, bosses, co-workers, friends, and family members develop expectations of us based on what they are used to experiencing with us.  When we change our ways, even if they are more natural ways to us, others may respond curiously or even negatively to you.  They might feel more distant from you or like they aren’t getting their needs met that they are used to getting met by you.  This tends to rock the boat, and because most people want to please or accommodate to other’s perceptions of them for their own safety and security needs, we don’t like to rock our boats.  We’d rather feel a low level of underlying internal tension and discomfort than threaten our relationships with others by being ourselves.  

If this all sounds a bit crazy, it’s because it is.  There isn’t a ton of rationality when it comes to human behavior despite the fact we like to think of ourselves as very rational beings.  We really aren’t.  We are highly emotional regardless of the overlay of functional, competent human.  We also tend to fear that if we relax we won’t get, create, or accomplish all of the things that we desire too.  If we relax then certain things might not happen; things we want to happen real, real badly.  We tend to believe that it’s all up to us and therefore we have to keep going, going, going on and we can’t relax for a moment less everything we want falls apart or doesn’t come into fruition.  We tend to think that how things turn out is up to us, when really the only thing that is up to us is how we show up to whatever it is we are excited to create.  If we really got that than we would never show up tense again.   

SURVIVAL TO SAFETY SENSATIONS 

You’re in the driver’s seat

Tension is a survival sensation while relaxation is a safety sensation.  Due to the fact that is doesn’t feel safe for us to relax because people might view us different, react differently to us, or we because we might not get, create or accomplish everything that we think we need or want to, we tend to have the experience of feeling a lot of survival sensations.  Survival sensations are tightness, constriction, heaviness, pressure, irritability, anxiousness, held or shallow breathing and general bodily uncomfortableness.  Often it’s hard to sleep, there is difficulty with digestion, and we feel tiredness or fatigue.  In contrast safety sensations occur when we are relaxed, or again said another way, just being ourselves.  Safety sensations are lightness, levity, flow, clear, awake, alert (but not vigilant), bright, ease, allowing, and rested.  We tend to sleep well, digest well and feel restfully energized throughout the day.  

We all know that we prefer to feel safety sensations over survival sensations, yet the pre-dominance for most remains in feeling survival sensations.  What does it take for us to make the shift?  First is the realization or recognition that survival and safety aren’t something that is outside of us.  What I mean is that it’s the inner information that determines what sensations we will experience, not the outer information.  This does take some level of reorganizing the inner information, but the good news is that you are the source of that information.  Through self-awareness and some inner investigation you can fairly easily uncover what information you are creating and informing yourself with, which is thus creating the sensations that you experience.  Through developing mastery in this way, of being fully responsible or in charge of your state of being, you take the reigns back on how you experience life.  Rather than life experience informing you, you inform life experience.

In order to make the survival to safety shift we also need to be fed up with being the victim of anything.  We can no longer believe that life happens to us, but rather must see that life happens through us, for us and for all.  This is a big leap yet it is the leap required in order to generate safety sensations and a sustainable state of rested, relaxed, present beingness of self.  If we choose to keep the perspective that something is wrong, that we were wronged, or that something might go wrong, then we will continue to generate survival sensations.  Not everyone is ready for this type of radical “re-perspectiving”, yet it will create inner, and I believe, eventual outer peace.  

It’s important here to remember to not make the victim perspective in you wrong or bad, but simply see it as it is, accept it, love it and develop/choose beyond it.  It is in the development beyond it that the rested-ness and safety sensations you desire live.  This is not out of reach for anyone.  It is the developmental progression.   In a way it is destined as the natural and organic advancement, and yet the choice is yours.  Your free will in the perspective you choose is yours, at least for now.  At some point all will merge into a larger collective consciousness until your state of being reaches full unification.  For now choose how you want to see and notice the power you have to effect your experience and the world.  

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

UNWINDING NEUROLOGICAL DEFENSE

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UNWINDING NEUROLOGICAL DEFENSE 

Dismantling our protection from pain

We’ve all experienced tension.  That tight, constricted, unrelaxed feeling.  Sometimes it feels hard to breathe.  It can come with feeling overwhelmed and like there isn’t enough time or resources available to us.  It can be challenging to discover and feel what we are feeling.  Often it comes with uncomfortable sensations in the body.  Tension is means of protection.  We create tension, and our body feels that tension, in order to protect us from pain, when we perceive that pain might be present or imminent.  The pain, which tension is protecting us from, isn’t always clearly evident to us.  Yet if we investigate we can always find the thing we are attempting to avoid feeling or experiencing.  

Pain can come in many forms.  It can be purely at the body/sensation level.  You might experience this in a car accident or a fall where you finding yourself bracing (i.e. creating tension) in order to protect the body from damage and lessen the impact.  You may also have a chronically painful part of your body.   Often we create tension around that area in order to attempt to not feel the pain as much.  It’s not the tension that is painful even if that is what we think is the source of the pain.  The true source of the pain is often below the tension.  The tension is the means to dull what is underneath it.  Pain can also be felt at the emotional level.  The root of most emotional pain is the fear/experience of being unloved or unlovable.  At the next level up pain felt at the mental levels is often rooted in not being enough, sharing enough or having anything worthy to give/be.  Lastly pain is also experienced at the spiritual level, which is rooted in believing we are separate from spirit/God.  

Due to the fact that most people don’t want to experience pain we learn to create protection or defense from it.  We gear up and create armoring.  This armoring is like a neurological suit that we wear that we don’t even know that we are wearing.  Everything we experience or interact with gets to come into contact with this suit.  The suit is a filter.  It’s not who we are, but it is often who we think we are and also who others perceive us to be.  Loosely you could call this our personality, and it also comes with a particular way we posture our body, talk, walk, think, perceive, dress, eat, behave and the sensations we have or don’t have.  It colors our entire world.  The suit comes with wiring.  That wiring is called neurological defense.  There are patterns and architecture to neurological defense.  These patterns are specifically what Network Chiropractic addresses.  Network assesses for the patterns that are present and helps wake up awareness and liberate energy inside these patterns of protection, so that your true self may be known to you.   

OPENING INTO THE HEART 

Rewriting the nervous system

The true self is the heart.  It is that space or experience of relaxation and easefulness that is joyfully and blissfully present.  It is light and spacious.  It is all inclusive and allows everything inside of it to be as it is.  It is energized and alive.  It is awake.  It sees nothing as wrong.  There is no resistance and we feel just as our self.  Nothing to hide, protect, avoid, or run away from experiencing.  It is that which we are all hungry for and finding our way into in our own ways.  The heart is not just for some people or for some times.  It is for all times and all people.  

The heart seems absent, foreign or mysterious to us when we are in a state of neurological defense.  When we are in protection mode we view ourselves as a subject/object that is independent from other subject/objects.  This is how most beings in the world view themselves and also why there is such a disconnection from the heart amongst our collective at large.  When separation is the predominant perspective than there is always something/someone to protect ourselves from.  Yet when that predominant perceptive changes to non-separation or unity, than protection becomes nonsensical and arbitrary.  

The heart isn’t something hard to find.  Its all pervasive, ever present and never comes or goes.  What does come or go is our focus or attention on it.  When our focus and attention is wrapped up in all the ways we need to protect ourselves to physically survive, get all of our emotional needs met and to satisfy the demands of the stories we’ve learned to tell ourselves about what our life is supposed to be and who we are supposed to be, then the heart is not in our view.  Shifting priorities, changing stories and reconditioning the neurological patterns present in your energetic and physical configuration is required in order to experience life as heart.  

Opening into the heart is closer than you think.  It’s not too hard to find/feel glimpses of it.  These glimpses are important as they start to light up pathways that don’t get lit up that frequently inside most people’s nervous systems.  This is what Network entrainments provide the container for as well.  During entrainments an energetic field is created that is organized in such a way to amplify the experience of heart for you.  While the gentle contacts along the spine help dismantle neurological defense, this field or container of the heart is readily present and available.  With continued tastes, touches and glimpses of this field of the heart, a person can receive and exchange more and more energy and awareness with this field.  The energy, awareness and perspective of heart then becomes the dominant program in your system.  The heart starts speaking louder than the pathways that are fighting for survival and viewing life from a scarce and separate perspective.  This is the progression, the objective and the intention.  It’s simple.  It’s available.  It’s time is ripe.  

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

UNWINDING TENSION

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UNWINDING TENSION 

Physical, emotional & mental pain

We’ve all experienced tension.  Tension can live in our muscles, bones, ligaments, organs, glands, cells, or any tissue or part of our physical body.  Tension can also live in our subtler (visually unseen) bodies such as our emotional, mental or soul bodies. We can be either conscious or unconscious of our tension.  For example we might be aware of tension in our neck muscles, but unaware of tension say in our kidneys or bladder.  Or we might be aware of tension in our belly, but unaware of tension in our spine.  There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to where tension shows up and whether or not we are aware of it.

Why is tension created?  Tension is a mechanism created, ultimately by us, to protect us from feeling pain or other uncomfortable sensations, feelings or thoughts.  For example say you are in a car accident.  You will most likely create some physical muscle guarding (tension) in order to protect underlying organ structures and also to not feel such intensity of physical pain.  This is the most obvious of expressions and easiest to be conscious of.  The more awareness you develop of yourself the more you can tune into subtler and subtler levels of tension that exist in your less dense bodies such as your emotional and mental bodies. Say for example you are in a relationship and your partner does something that triggers you in some way.  If you slow yourself down you will be able to track the tension in your emotional body that may or may not have a physical manifestation or expression.  If you do this you will be able to notice what emotional pain you are attempting to avoid or lessen through creating tension.  Same is true if you have a particular thought or thought pattern that is out of alignment with the truth.  That thought will create tension in your mental body that again may or may not have an emotional or physical expression, but if you slow yourself down enough you will be able to track what mental pain you are attempting to decrease through creating tension.

When we create tension we essentially block or dampen part of our experience.  This can be helpful in extreme physical or emotional situations where we don’t have the resources or awareness to integrate and process the experience that is happening as it is happening.  What will often happen then is that we will develop a certain tension/holding pattern in our system that stays in place until we feel safe and/or ready to allow the experience to be felt.  Sometimes unwinding happens naturally and organically once we are out of the intense situation.  However other times it doesn’t happen naturally as we aren’t quite ready to feel or have the resources to process what occurred.  So we stay in a more bound or closed state, also known as a tension/holding pattern, which again we may or may not be aware of.   

TRANSCENDING LIMITATION

Walking towards pain

Let’s face it, having a human experience is intense.  Whether or not you’ve had some particularly intense experiences or you’ve lived more of a “normal” life, it is pretty much guaranteed that you have some degree of tension/holding patterns in your system just by the nature of having this human incarnation.  Tension is not bad or wrong, it’s simply an effect of not desiring to feel something that doesn’t feel good.  You could also term this resistance.  Resistance is often not intentional, nor is the avoidance of pain necessarily evident to most.  Many people are unaware of how much they avoid discomfort of any kind, in fact most create their lives specifically to avoid pain.  Again none of this is fundamentally bad or wrong, instead it simply points to why we have the experiences, life and awareness that we have, which are frequently sprinkled or riddled with a sense of disconnection, limitation or blockage.    

Tension creates an arbitrary sense of separation and inherent sense of limitation.  Whether that separation or limitation is experienced physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually depends on the individual and what lessons they gave themselves to learn.  You are of course unlimited, eternal beingness that has no edges, limits, or incapabilities, but telling that to someone who is having a human experience is kind of like telling a kid that play isn’t real.  It just simply doesn’t compute. So while we are here in these bodies we must learn the lessons of separation/limitation in order to transcend our current perspectives of it. One of the ways to learn the lessons of limitation is through increasing your awareness of your tension patterns in both your physical & subtle bodies and walking towards pain rather away from it.  What we avoid we can’t experience and therefore can’t unwind.  If we can’t unwind the tension that was created than we stay stuck in a particular holding pattern in our physical and/or subtler bodies.  This then gives us the perpetual experience of limitation or lack of full self-expression because how we hold ourselves relates to how we see the world and therefore the experiences that we have.  

Say for example you really desire to experience blissful, ecstatic oneness with the the divine, yet simultaneously you have mental tension patterns (thoughts & beliefs) that tell you how unworthy you are.  You can’t know yourself as infinite worth if you are constantly avoiding the thought/belief of unworthiness or if you don’t even know its there.  The thought/belief unworthiness will create a tension pattern in your mental body that will feel like it blocks you from knowing yourself as infinite worth.  That must be moved towards and unwound through feeling that which is untrue (i.e. unworthiness and the pain associated with that thought).  For another example say you really want to be full self-expressed, but feel emotionally triggered for a good part of your days.  Being emotionally triggered is another way of saying that you are avoiding feeling emotional pain, and you can’t be fully self-expressed if you are simultaneously avoiding a part of yourself and your experience.  That would be a contradiction. 

The key to sustainably unwinding the tension patterns in your system is through walking towards what’s been avoided, which is often uncomfortable and the last place we want to go.  However freedom is through and not around those experiences.  The other option is to know unequivocally that you are love and remove all self-doubt of this truth instantly.  This is entirely possible, however not as probable as doing the work to increase awareness of yourself, your tensions, your avoidances and resistances, and then navigate right into them.  Not to stay there for eternity, but to walk right on through them, fully experiencing what they have to offer, and coming out as free, open love on the other side. 

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

FEEL GOOD NO MATTER WHAT

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FEEL GOOD NO MATTER WHAT 

Moving past the indirect approach

The “thing” that most all of us want is to feel good.  We might think that we want this thing or that thing, but that is only because we think that this or that thing will give us the state of feeling good.  This is an indirect approach.  The obvious truth is that its not the thing that brings us the good feelings, it is instead our choice to allow the thing to shift our feeling state.  Now even though the fact that we are in charge of our feeling state is relatively obvious I’m certain to get lots of objections about this as we often don’t like to take full responsibility for how we are feeling.  If we did people would move through their emotional rollercoaster ride with more ease and grace and less blame, shame, attack, repression and hatred of self or other.  With that feelings would be no big deal rather than the seeming crisis they seem to be for many.

I’m a believer that our natural state is that of feeling good.  Anything that does not feel good is added to our natural state of being.  What I mean by that is that if we do not feel good it is because we have somehow agreed to believe something that isn’t fully true.  We’ve added something on top of our natural good feeling self.  We all know truth.  This knowing is innate.  Truth always feels best, even if it sometimes stings or we don’t like it.  We would much rather have people be forthright than lie to us, to be in the know rather than left out of it.  The same is true for inner truths.  When we lie to ourselves by believing something to be true that isn’t the result is that we feel bad.  When we create a story whose tagline is about how horrible we are or how awful something is, we will always feel bad, because it simply isn’t true.  

So here come the objections.  What about murder, rape, sickness, pain, death, abuse, violation, and loss of anything in general, how is one supposed to feel good about that?  I am not suggesting that you must feel good about any of those things, however I will say that when people feel good about themselves and about life many of things either do not occur or if they do occur (like the inevitability of death) our experience of them is radically different.  For example we don’t go out and murder, rape or abuse someone when we feel good about ourselves.  Harming self or others is simply not on our radar when we feel good.  I would also venture to say (obviously hypothetically) that when we feel authentically rested in a state of feeling good, we would probably stop manifesting sickness and disease in our individual and collective body.  I would also say that when we feel good, loss seems much less traumatic.  Maybe a relationship ends or we loss our job or even lose a loved one, there is a normal grieving time, but there isn’t inner suffering about the loss.  Grief is simply the process of releasing of what was and does not have to come with suffering.  Suffering always comes when we feel that whatever happened was wrong or bad.   

WELCOME INNER CONTRADICTION 

Working through objections

Even though feeling good may feel contradictory at times I can absolutely guarantee you that you will move through whatever is occurring in your life with greater ease and grace if you do.  So I say welcome the contradiction in yourself and test out the theory.  How can you feel good about something that you have been perceiving as feeling bad?  Maybe your partner just gave you some news you didn’t like, or a sales call or job offer fell through, or you’ve had persistent painful sensation in your back for weeks, how can you take one of those things and shift your feeling state towards it?  This is your homework.  Test it out and see how it works.  

Now because we have so many objections to choosing to feel good (crazy I know, but true) here are some more things that arise.  Some of you might say well if I feel good about a “bad” situation then I allow or invite the situation and it keeps manifesting.  First off I would say the situation already is, so your choosing to feel good about it or to not feel good about it is not going to change that fact.  Secondly I would also say that when you feel good you naturally manifest things into your life that are in alignment therefore you do not have to worry about generating more of what you don’t want.  You only manifest what you don’t want when you feel bad.  

Others of you might say isn’t this spiritual bypassing?  It depends.  It’s spiritual bypassing if you don’t authentically choose feeling good.  What I mean is if you pretend to feel good, but you don’t actually feel good then you are a fraud and doing a half ass job.  You must do it completely otherwise you are bypassing because after all bypassing is simply being inauthentic, pretending to be or feel something you aren’t/don’t and staying conceptual rather than embodied in your knowing.  What I am suggesting is that you fully embody feeling good, don’t just think about it, let every cell in your body feel and know it.  I am also not suggesting that you repress emotions that are alive for you.  Believe it or not you can be in the midst of extreme discomfort, whether physically or psychologically, and still access feeling good.  It does not have to be an either/or, but rather a yes/and.  

Still some of you others might say if I don’t stay mad or angry how will people learn when they do something I don’t like.  Yes feelings of anger and frustration can be used to set boundaries, however we must simultaneously state to the other person what works for us and what doesn’t work for us.  I find that the anger and frustration we feel is typically not at the person, but instead at a behavior we don’t like or prefer (this is true for ourselves as well).  We tend to misdirect our anger onto the person rather than using the anger to say to ourselves “hey something isn’t working for me and I need to change it.”  I need to state my needs, wants or preferences and set guidelines for certain behaviors that are and aren’t acceptable for me.”  This is taking responsibility for what you feel which is a healthy use of emotions and their intended purpose.  Emotions are not meant to be felt over and over indefinitely.  They are meant to be felt and propel us into action that is in alignment with us.  

Holding onto feeling bad does not generate feeling good.  To feel good we have to change our feeling state.  The addiction to feeling bad is strong.  It’s a hell of a program, but we can decondition ourselves and rewrite a new one.  It really boils down to asking yourself what you really want and what serves.  Do you want to feel good or feel bad?  Is there benefit in remaining to feel bad?  Perhaps there is because there is something you need to change.  Make the required change as quickly as possible and then come back into alignment with your natural state of feeling good.  The bottom line is don’t let the situation decide for you either way.  You decide.  You choose.  It is 100% in your power to do so.  

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

Postponing & Prolonging Pain

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POSTPONING & PROLONGING PAIN

Trying to get rid of experiences that you don’t like

There is no better way to postpone and prolong pain then attempting to get rid of experiences that you don’t like.  What do I mean? Simply that we will do just about anything we can to not feel pain or discomfort of any kind even when its blatantly inside of our experience.  Whether the pain be physical, emotional, mental or spiritual in nature there is often an inherent aversion to all forms it.  Our aversion to, along with our attempts to get rid of, deny and prevent pain, are exhausting, depleting and prolong the pain that we ultimately feel.  

Why do we dislike feeling pain so much?  Well the most obvious answer is that it does not feel good, but it runs much deeper than that.  We have a tendency to create stories about what pain means and this is the real pain.  Most all of the stories we create are along the lines of what it is we feel we will lose if we feel the pain and acknowledge its presence rather than move away by trying to get rid of it or change it.  Common examples are that we are afraid that the pain means something is really wrong with us, that we won’t be able to do the things we want to do, that it will get worse, that we will always feel it and it will never go away, that it will interfere with our life, that we won’t be supported, that we are bad or wrong, that we are not important or valuable, that we felt hurt, that we might die, etc.  These stories keep us pushing away the uncomfortable sensations and feelings at all costs and propel us to try to get rid of or prevent pain whenever it comes into our experience.  

To state the obvious you can’t actually get rid of your experience.  You can attempt.  You can physically manipulate or alter the stuff of your body, and the stuff you put into your body, which may provide some relief of sorts, but more often than not the experience returns or remains, that is until you shift yourself.  Your experience of what is occurs in direct response to you.  Experience cannot occur without the experiencer, and you are the experiencer not the experience itself.  This is quite tricky to dissect out as we tend to identify ourselves as the experience itself, which is why we feel powerless or helpless when faced with challenging or painful situations.  Until you really get this you will seek relief (separation of parts of your experience) more than healing (inclusion of all of your experience).  You will attempt to get rid of, move away from or try to prevent certain experiences (which is simply another type of avoidance) because your only way to feel in some level of control is to try to manipulate your experiences.  As long as you don’t recognize yourself as the experiencer you will be victim to experience and your only hope in feeling better is if your experience changes.   

LENSES OF VIEWING PAIN

Widening perspectives 

There are many perspectives with which we can view pain.  The most typical, collective perspective that is chosen is that of “problem”, meaning the perspective that pain means that there is something wrong and thus we search to get rid of that which is wrong.  Even though this is the most culturally approved perspective it is not the only one.  More and more people are courageously challenging this perspective and choosing novel lenses with which to view pain when it arises in their experience.  One point of clarification that I’d like to make is that at times it is necessary to seek direct support for your physical vehicle and what I am about to share is simply in addition too (a yes and and approach) rather than a replacement for.  You can have novel perspectives on pain that don’t view it as a problem and still seek support at the physical level.  The distinction being that the seeking of direct physical support is in alignment with your new perspective and not as a way to get rid of your experience.  

One novel view is that of seeing pain as a message from Self to self to assist in remembering or realignment with our true nature.  Part of being human is the forgetting of what/who we are.  Due to this forgetting we make agreements with ourselves prior to incarnation to help us remember.  Pain is one way we do this as it speaks loudly and gets our attention typically more than anything else will.  So if we perhaps are either in a deep state of forgetting ourselves or life wants to help us remember ourselves at an even larger level, we might experience pain as a messenger to realign our lives, mainly our perspectives, with what feels good.  If we can pause our story of wrongness long enough then we can begin to see where we might have a belief that is out of alignment with our true nature or some way we are engaging with life that is outdated and in need of an upgrade.  

Another perspective on pain takes into account the emotional-physical body connection indicating that pain means something needs to be felt.  When there are feelings that we are not willing to feel or experiences which evoke deep emotions that we bury rather than feel, often our body will feel the build up of tension that this creates.  What isn’t felt binds energy and therefore we feel pain in the physical body.  It isn’t always obvious what we are avoiding feeling and often times subconsciously we don’t want to feel because feeling invokes movement and change that we may not be ready to make in our lives.  However as soon as we give ourselves the space to dive into ourselves we can access the emotions thus allowing them to run their course and keep moving through us.  This can propel us into taking much needed action in our lives and we begin to see the pain as the catalyst for necessary change rather than a problem.  In this way pain is a tremendous gift.  

Thirdly pain can be seen as an indication of reorganization.  When we are actively creating change and becoming anew in ourselves old structures need to destabilize and that can at times be experienced right down through the physical form.  The destabilization process can bring with it sensations or pain or discomfort as we become anew.

In summary I invite the seeing of pain as simply another part of experience.  The more you can dismantle your charge around pain the easier it will be for your physicality to repair itself.  That dismantling comes from changing and widening your perspective.  We must learn to work with ourselves in this way rather than against ourselves in fighting what is as that simply postpones and prolongs the experience of pain.  It is sometimes the hardest to get ourselves to surrender and allow the experience of pain, yet the reward is great when we do and the freedom that we feel despite whatever is occurring is revealed on the other side of it.  

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

Body Intelligence

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Body Intelligence

Stress & Acceptance Physiology

There is a natural intelligence to our bodies.  It is clearly evident that our bodies know how to coordinate a zillion biochemical process each day without us even being aware of it.  Modern medicine has barely scratched the surface in understanding the complexity of the way that our body operates and functions.  While it has made advances in looking at the physical components and parts it almost never steps back to see what is the operating force for this physical body in the first place.  

It is obvious that when we cut or injure ourselves that our body initiates a sequence of events to heal the tissue.  Different tissues tend to repair at different rates.  Many of what we label disease processes are the body’s intelligence attempting to recalibrate or heal itself in the best way it can given the situation it finds itself within.  Even when things seem maladaptive to us, meaning producing some kind of symptoms, this is often an intelligent process that is initiated to help adapt and heal the body.  This is also why simply eliminating symptoms can be dangerous as the body created them for a purpose, which is to support homeostasis and healing.  The adaptability and capacity of this body intelligence is really quite astounding and one that we often don’t give much attention to unless it seems to not be working correctly.  

This begs the question as to why it seems that this intelligence fails us at times.  Why does the body not repair after injury or find that perfect balance in its internal processes that we maybe once experienced?  Why does the body’s intelligence sometimes need external or outside assistance?  Lets start with the most significant cases first and work our way backwards.  In the most significant of cases an injury or insult to the body structure is so great that the body’s intelligence can’t reconnect and revitalize that part of the body despite its best attempts to do so.  You might see this with a car accident where there is loss of a limb or a stroke when a portion of the brain dies.  Connection has been severed and the body’s intelligence simply can’t reach or reconnect to that part.  When a part of this body is disconnected from its intelligence source its energetic resource is limited and it eventually ceases to function.  This is what we would call a death process of that part.  When intelligence completely ceases to inform this body structure that is what we call a full or complete death of this physical form.  Again this is the most significant of cases. 

Now at the body level we experience death processes every minute and this does not mean that a portion of the body or the entire body dies.  Believe it or not millions of cells die each second and millions of new ones are born each second.  Unbelievable I know but look it up for yourself.  The death process is actually a very important part of the regulation and health of this body, so much so that I would say that our resistance to a death process occurring is one of the major factors that interferes with our ability to heal.  Wait, what did I just say?  Yep you read correctly.  Due to our often impatience, fear, loss of stability in our body of what once was and wanting to go back to how we felt in our body before a pain or symptom arose we tend not want to let go of what once was.  We thus create a state of resistance aka stress physiology in our body and we are attempting to live in the past which always creates suffering because its impossible to do so.  In this way we interfere with the emergence of the new (which is on the other side of every death) by holding onto the old with the grips of our current idea of life.  When we are unwilling to accept what is, including the potential or actual death of the way that things were, we get stuck.  When we are stuck we desperately seek for some answer or some clarity that will bring us back to the knowing we once knew rather than this new state of uncertainty and instability that we find ourselves in.   

Now back to the body’s intelligence.  The body’s intelligence is always programmed towards health, vitality and wholeness in its actions.  When communication between our body tissues and the intelligence that informs them are intact and not interfered with this information is effortlessly communicated behind the scenes of our conscious awareness and our body functions optimally.  However if this information cannot reach the tissues of the body for some reason then the communication cannot get relayed.  In my opinion and experience the number one thing that interferes with this communication process is us.  Meaning we create the interference in the system through the inner state of being that we are choosing.  Now are there other things that interfere with this communication besides our inner state of being?  The answer is most definitely yes.  Not creating a good physical environment for the body by consuming crappy foods, crappy thoughts and not taking care of the physical body in the ways it needs all interfere.  These things are vitally important to our physical health and vitality, but they are not the entire story.  

The good news is that in many cases reconnection can be re-established.  The sometimes hard to swallow news is that we first have to accept the current-present-now state of our body before that connection comes back to life and our tissues can be re-vitalized.  On a body level this means that we have drop resistance, drop fight/flight mode, drop stress physiology so that the body intelligence can reconnect.  The physiology of stress (aka resistance) blocks physical healing and blocks the communication of the intelligence of the body with the body tissues.  Stress and healing physiologically work in opposition.  On a mental-emotional level this often means we have to stop thinking and start feeling the loss of what was, feeling the pain of not being able to go back, and feeling all of the other difficult emotions that are connected to not feeling or experiencing how you want to be feeling and experiencing being in your body.  

Acceptance physiology is radically different than stress physiology.  It’s the physiology of flowing, communicating, non-interfered with body intelligence.  When we quit holding onto what was, which is embracing the death of what we once knew, only then will we see the new that can emerge.  The clarity that we were so hungry for when we were feeling stuck begins to illuminate our experience.  We can see what needs to be done and take actions accordingly.  We become increasingly ready for whatever we need to do and be.  Our physical body may still be experiencing some symptoms but our relationship to their expression has dramatically changed such that we don’t even really mind that their present if they are.  This is the power of acceptance.  You have this power.  We all have this power.  

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

The spinal gateway

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The spinal gateway 

What the heck is a spinal gateway?

Touching something unknownEarlier this week one of you lovely people asked me “what are those spots you keep touching on my back’?  What a fantastic question!  I bet more of you have that question so I thought I would take the opportunity to write this week’s article in answer to that very question.  

If you remember my article from a few weeks ago that was entitled “Consciousness & the Spine” I wrote about the five different tension patterns that occur within the spine.  Those tension patterns get created due to some experience(s) that we’ve had that we haven’t been able to fully integrate, and if you remember there are different states of being (consciousness) that correlate with each pattern.  So why is that important here?  Well in order for you to become aware of those tension pattern within your spine you need an access/entry point or a “gateway” into that pattern.  You need to somehow, someway become aware of that pattern in your spine so that the tension pattern can begin to unwind itself.  The spinal gateway is just that.  It is an access point, an opening, into a particular tension pattern in your spinal cord where you can begin to become aware of that pattern.  So when I am making those touches on various spots on your back I am working with your spinal gateways, helping them open and develop so that you can become more aware of yourself, including how you hold tension and where you have resistance.

One of the things I say frequently to many of you is that awareness does so much, in fact I believe it does pretty much everything.  It brings that which was unnoticed or unseen into realization, and then through realization, you as an individuated expression of the One have the capacity or power to work with what is.  The only thing left after the moment of realization is for you to come into alignment with that which was realized.  All of that to say that the spinal gateway is a portal for the light of awareness to realize itself manifesting through a particular pattern of tension in your spinal cord.  This is important and what I feel differentiates Network from a lot of other work out there.  It really is a  self-awareness method.  Its not about me doing something to you, but instead about helping you find your own self, become aware of your own self, so that you can self-regulate, self-align, and self-adjust.  Everything that I “do” is to support your awareness waking itself up to your self and the development of the spinal gateway is one of the prime ways I do just that very thing.  

Development of the spinal gateway 

How the spinal gateways change and grow

Touching something unknown

Spinal gateways live between each of the bones in your neck and also along the sacrum bone in the pelvis.  They have both a very precise structural aspect as well as an energetic portion to them.  This means that they have a particular physical location (which is dependent on the tension pattern that is present in your spinal cord on any given day), but that they also have a nonphysical aspect which can grow.  You can think of the shape of a spinal gateway as a little vortex, spiraling with energy, but anchored into the spine between the bones in the neck and sacrum.  Also remember that just because the gateways are at these precise locations doesn’t mean that they are impacting only those precise locations that I’m touching.  The gateway is just the access point into a particular pattern and the pattern can be either localized to that area or have resonance at various other locations in the spine or body that I am not directly touching.  The beauty of the spinal gateway is that when it is accessed it can find all the other areas in the body that have the same tonal frequency or resonance with that pattern without requiring that it is directly touched.  This is why often you might become aware of some sensation, energy, or tension in a different part of your spine or body when I am touching say a spot on your neck or sacrum.  

The spinal gateways grow with continued care, contact and reinforcement.  This is one of the reason why the frequency of care is so important, especially in the first year or two of care, which is when a lot of the development of these gateways occurs.  It takes a certain amount of repetition to create these gateways and then for awareness to unwind the tension patterns associated with them.  When people first start care the gateways are often small and very close to the physical body.  They are felt as areas of rapport.  This is where your bioenergetic life force lives and as the gateway develops here there is greater awareness of the physical body and a sense of safety that arises.  As care continues and I have you lift your neck or sacrum you are beginning to stretch the spinal gateways both physically and energetically.  This activates your emotional body and emotional energy becomes the fuel that gets the gateway to stretch and grow more.   The energetic portion of the spinal gateway begins to live a few inches away from the physical body in what’s called your emotional field.  With this people often begin to have more awareness of their emotions.  

Then as care continues two spinal gateways start “talking” to each other.  One stretches and then the other stretches and a rhythm starts to develop between the two of them.  This activates the lower mental body where clarity, personal sense of self and discernment lives.  The energetic portion of the spinal gateways grows to about 2-3 feet away from the physical body at this point into your lower mental body/field.  This then continues until a “figure 8” motion begins to develop between two spinal gateways.  The rhythmic motion becomes more organized and fluid.  This activates the upper mental body where you can begin to see beyond boxes and stories and have more a visionary sense of self as creator of your life.  Here the energetic portion of the spinal gateways have now grown to 6-8 feet in distance away from the physical body into your upper mental field and with that your sense of “body” and self begins to become much more expansive.  

Heart Chakra concept. Inner love, light and peace. Silhouette inAll of this spinal gateway development occurs in the first two levels of  Network care.  Then in the third level of care the focus is on the development of the heart gateway, which is similar to the spinal gateways, but there is only one heart gateway rather than multiple like the spinal gateways, and the location is around the physical heart.  The heart gateway develops throughout the 3rd level of care and a coordination is learned between the development of this heart gateway with the spinal gateways that where developed in the first 2 levels of care.  In this 3rd level of care both the heart gateway stretches and grows in distances of several feet away from the physical body and the spinal gateways grow to about 8-12 feet and beyond.  This is where your soul body/field lives.  The coordination that develops between the heart gateway and the spinal gateways is one where your heart/soul is informing your thoughts, emotions and physical body.  

When people are fully in the 3rd level of care as their baseline the patterns of tension that were originally in the spinal cord aren’t really there in a traditional sense of a constricted tension pattern anymore, but instead just mere resonance or tracing.  In that way you can fully glean the awakened or oneness perspective of any pattern that previously had you held in a separative frame of mind.  That becomes the lens with which you see all of life.  The dance between soul/spirit and human becomes evident here and ultimately culminates in where the personal self stops leading the show and the soul prevails as the one that guides this human vessel.  

I hope this helps you understand the importance and function of the spinal gateways and why I am always touching those particular points on your spine.  I like to think of them as portals into more of you and as they grow you get to access more and more of yourself.  It is quite literally upgrading the neurological circuitry and with that you can communicate with more of yourself through having developed these access points into you.  At the most fundamental level they provide you with a way to become aware and resolve tension patterns in your spine and life so that you you can participate more ease-fully with life.  At the more developed levels they allow for integration of various aspects of yourself to come into awareness, helping you transcend perceived limitations of an individuated personal self, into the one heart, one love, one being that we all are.  

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