acceptance

GOING WITH LIFE

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GOING WITH LIFE 

Separation to liberation

We spend an awful lot of energy keeping ourselves separate from life, understandably so.  We are given a name, develop characteristics, preferences, likes, dislikes, roles, habits and patterns of thinking and behaving that create an identity of who we come to know ourselves as.  An identity that seems like a separate person who is distinct from other persons.  We have functional control over this physical body, we sense through it, and we assume that we are located inside of it.  We believe the information that our senses give us and what our thoughts tell us as fact.  We don’t recognize that we are what is aware of the sensations or thoughts, and not the sensations or thoughts themselves.  Said another way we become our experience rather than recognizing we are what is aware of our experience.  All of this reinforces our sense of separateness from awareness rather than one with it.  We feel powerless to something that seems other than us and find ourselves kind of at odds with life.  

When we feel at odds it’s like we are always working against something and there is a sense of hardness that comes with it.  It’s the feeling that there is you and then there is this other thing, object, or person, which you have to work with to do something to.  Like this other thing, object, or person is separate and you have to maintain that separateness.  If you decided to make a bold move one day and didn’t maintain that separateness, all of life would flow and you would recognize that you can pay attention to content (i.e. sensations & thoughts) or you can pay attention to the fact that you are aware while all the content comes and goes.  What is important here is that you would get that you aren’t what you experience, but rather you are what is aware of the experience.  You would feel freedom instantly rather than the bound-ness of maintaining separation, but this freedom of rejoining yourself feels chaotic, destabilizing and unknown to your current sense of being a separate person with the identity that you have created as yourself.

To go with life rather than feeling at odds, or like you have to go to work on it by attempting to do something to it, is to stop fighting anything.  It’s to end the thought that anything needs to be different.  It is the cessation of the idea that there is somewhere else to get to where you will feel amazing and where all of your prayers are answered.  There is no location that exists other than where you are.  The freedom you seek is contained inside this moment and every moment.  You will not ever arrive somewhere other because there is no other and there is no out there.  At some point we must stop running from thing to thing to thing hoping to find relief and answers.  There is nothing out there. 

ENDING NEEDS 

Arriving in the present

Part of maintaining separation is the illusion of needs.  When we believe ourselves to be a separate person we feel as though we have a lot of needs and that we somehow we have to work to get them met.  However as we merge back into ourselves, into non-separation, we realize that all needs are met because everything is gotten.  Meaning life has its own back.  It’s completely taken care of.  It’s fulfilled and all set.  When we are in contact with ourselves we know this, and when we are disconnected we don’t know it.  To be free of needing anything is to be truly free.  You lose all agenda that might have subtle underpinnings in your subconscious.  You can just be because there isn’t anything pulling you out of yourself to go and get or figure out.  Everything is also known even though paradoxically your mind knows nothing.

There are a few fundamental points to emphasize here in arriving where you are and the cessation of needs.  One is a foundational acceptance that absolutely nothing needs to change or be different than it is.  Along the same lines it would suffice to say that all is well just as it is.  Creating this as the container for your mind allows your mind to relax its incessant attempts to hook into thoughts in order to do or figure out something that it perceives to be other than itself.  There might still be thoughts, but you simply notice them rather than become them.  The next piece is giving yourself permission to not have to know and be in the space of the unknown, which is another term for the present moment.  When we arrive here to the present moment nothing is known and everything is revealed.  Our minds tend not to easily surrender themselves because the job of our mind is to maintain “known-ness”, identity and separation.  To give away what we think we know renders our mind useless and minds like to be used.  From the perspective of our mind “unknown” equals the experience of confusion.  This is one of our least favorite states of being, however learning to be good with confusion without attempting to get rid of it by making something certain again, is the gateway into now and to going with life.

To go with life is to know your freedom and experience it.  It’s to no longer be at odds with anything.  It’s to no longer perceive separation.  It’s to no longer control the happenings of life.  It’s to no longer insist that anything, including yourself, be any certain way other than what it is.  The experience of this is rested while awake.  The experience of this is peace.  It is not an outside job, it’s an inner one.  It’s not far fetched or out of reach, it’s all already here.  There is no distance to traverse, no progress that needs to be made, and there’s nothing more that you need to get or figure out first.  Available in this moment is liberation.  It requires nothing to be different than it is right now.  You don’t need to be more worthy than you already are.  You don’t need to love yourself more first.  Stop trying to get somewhere so that you can arrive and be where you are already.  You will not recognize wholeness and perfection somewhere out there at a future date if you don’t recognize it now.  Liberation is available, “achievable” and is the natural state.  It requires nothing to be done in order to “get” it.  The only sacrifice, if you want to call it that, is giving away your current state of everything you think you know.  What we think we know is actually confusion and what we perceive to be unknown and therefore confusing is truth and freedom.  

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

DELUDE YOURSELF INTO TRUTH

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DELUDE YOURSELF INTO  TRUTH

Using what you already know

So often we don’t want to believe what is true.  We would rather believe untruths that feel bad, then truths that feel good.  We like to hold onto stories that create distress for us rather than generate stories that create a sense of inner peace.  When I speak of the word truth what I am pointing to is the ultimate source of goodness from which all, include us, arises.  Truth accepts all as it is.  Truth is vey different than rightness.  Rightness has to do with human preferences and judgment.  Truth sees no right or wrong, but rather the pure perfection that is all.

You may ask why it is that we don’t want to see the pure perfection that is all?  Well because we have preferences of how we think or want life to be, mostly our life.  So we forego truth and find ourselves in a world of right & wrong, good & bad, confusion, judgment, lack, separation and polarity.  That is the world of untruth, of which we have deluded ourselves into believing as the truth.  We have done such a fantastic job at deluding ourselves into untruth (mostly unbeknownst to ourselves) that all the conflict, confusion, lack and separation feels very real to us.  It feels like the truth.  Like the reality.  We are very convinced of it.   

It can be challenging to dismantle our thoroughly deluded beliefs in untruth because they seem so real and like all we’ve ever known.  Rather than attempting to change every stinking untrue belief you have, which is a lot by the way, the best way I’ve found through is to continue the strategy of delusion, but use it for truth instead.  This may seem a little crazy at first, but I assure you it’s the surprisingly sane route and will get you more of what you actually want in this life rather than what you think you want.  You may wonder how you might exactly go about deluding yourself into truth.  Well you are already kind of a master of this, it’s simply that you are using your skills in a slightly different way.  First simply recognize that everything you see, think, feel, or sense is based on some belief that you have, some meaning you’ve given to your experience, whether or not you are aware of it or not.  All interpretation and meaning is based in belief.  If you are perceptive you can begin to see that you are creating this entire experience of what you call reality.  Reality isn’t out there somewhere in some physical object over there.  Reality is in your head, well not literally in your head, but inside your psyche, inside your beliefs.  When you realize this, like really get it, then you can see that you and you alone get to delude yourself with truth or untruth.  The power is in your hands, or better said your mind.   

DISCERNING TRUTH

Following what feels good

Now some of you may still be a bit confused about what is truth and what is untruth.  Truth is the perfect acceptance of exactly what is.  Untruth is all the stories, meanings, and interpretations we create about what is.  One of the ways to discern this more and more for yourself is choosing to believe what feels better.  Say for example you are presented with a situation.  Let’s say you unexpectedly got fired from your job or you lost your entire business overnight.  Pick whatever is most applicable for you.  For most people this would be hard to accept.  I know very people, who if presented with this situation, would have no thought about it and would joyfully go about their day, that is unless they were ready to quit their job or let go of their business.  The reason for this is that we have umpteen-million things we think this means for us.  Maybe it’s a loss of financial support so we wonder how we will eat or pay bills, maybe it’s a loss of purpose so we wonder why we even exist, maybe is a sense of betrayal from the universe and we wonder if God even cares about us, maybe it’s loss of connection with others and we feel all alone now, and on and on and on.  None of these thoughts feel good.  In fact they all feel really, really bad.  

Many of you have heard me say this, but one of the beliefs I choose to live by is that if things feel good they are closer to the truth than things that feel bad.  Said another way if things feel bad they are less true than things that feel good.  In the above example believing  that losing our job/business overnight means we won’t eat, pay our bills, have purpose, are alone and that God doesn’t care, are all less true than what would feel good to believe.  What would feel good to believe is that we will be able to eat abundantly, pay our bills, that we are on purpose, that God does care, and that we are more connected than ever before.  This is closer to the actual truth, but this is hard for us to believe because of how we’ve either been conditioned or conditioned ourselves.  So you see this is where delusion comes into the picture.  We must delude ourselves into the truth, and I promise you it will feel like delusion to your mind even though it is more true.  It is quite the seeming paradox.  Your mind most likely will not want to believe what feels better to believe, but with some persistence you can get your mind to do so, because after all you are the one in charge of your mind, nothing and no-one else is.  

This is a really fun game to play with yourself.  It will also radically change your experience of life.  Life will become less and less of a bummer because you will less and less be perceiving things in ways that feel bad.  You will create more and more of what you actually want, which is simply to feel good.  We think we want all the stuff, the house, the kids, the cars, the friends, the relationships, the businesses, the travel, the purposes, but what it all boils down to is that we want to feel good.  When you feel good you radiate.  You are naturally and effortlessly of service.  There is nothing in particular you have to do to fulfill your purpose.  You are your purpose.  This is to live truth.  Truth feels good.  

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

LOVING WHERE YOU ARE

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LOVING WHERE YOU ARE

Ending the chase of what’s next

It is no secret that we live in a near constant state of trying to get somewhere.  We make goals, create plans, and think about what is next.  We measure our progress from start to finish and course correct along the way.  Without some degree of forward momentum, and the feeling that we are creating or accomplishing what we set out to do, we often feel stuck or stagnant.  This itch to be other than where we are creates a gap inside of our experience.  That gap is a self-created illusion where we believe that there is somewhere to get and somewhere we think we’d rather be.  When we place ourselves inside that gap we miss what’s here as we are ambitiously move towards what is next.  

Rarely do we rest into and love exactly where we are.  There are many reasons for this.  Many people believe that what is here is not enough so they constantly strive for more.  The moment they arrive anywhere is the same moment they jump back into the gap between here and what’s next.  That sense of not enoughness can be personal and express as always attempting to make themselves better (self-improvement can fall into this category), or it can be projected onto external circumstances by always finding a new thing or cause that needs to be improved.  This is not to say that things, causes or personality traits can’t be shifted to express in more coherent ways, they absolutely can, but when it comes from a place of scarcity in where you are rather than abundance in where you are, its rooted rejection rather than acceptance.  This leads to a constant chase in attempting to get, rather than devoted service to what you love.

Other reasons people don’t rest and love exactly where they are is because they don’t trust that what’s here is good and right.  They have a belief that something is wrong or bad with what is present and that they must somehow change it in order for it to be good and right.  They bypass the goodness and rightness that’s here for their belief that it lives somewhere else.  In my opinion this is the true spiritual bypass.  People also tend to believe that the conditions of their life are dependent on them being able to fully express and be themselves, but this is backwards.  You fully expressing and being yourself creates the conditions of your life.  Since people believe the other way around they will go about trying to make the conditions of their life match their mind’s idea of what it thinks it needs in order to be rested and in love here.  This chasing of conditions is tempting because it seems to go somewhere and things appear to be happening in a forward direction, however it leads only to continuing your postponement of loving where you are.  Some people postpone in such a way for their entire life. 

MAKING CHANGE IN LOVE 

How you source

We tend to believe that we can’t make change in love.  Historically we have needed to be fed up, dissatisfied and frustrated with what is in order to have the fuel to create change in ourselves or the world.  Can you even fathom what it would be like to love where you are and also create movement or change?  I believe this is how it is done in most portions of the universe, but here on planet Earth we haven’t quite learned this yet.  We still hold strong to states of pain, suffering and dissatisfaction being our primary fuel for change.  Be clear that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, in fact it is currently required, I’m simply inviting that there is another way.  

In this moment entertain, feel, channel or drop into a state of full love and acceptance.  Do so right now in this very moment.  As you do notice how much energy becomes available to you.  Notice how you naturally overflow and emanate lightness and joy.  Feel the levity and also the fullness that’s here.  This is always here, its simply that you haven’t practiced paying attention in this way.  Instead you’ve practiced paying attention to what doesn’t work or feel good and for lack of a better term, lower states of energy.  You’ve focused on what has to be done, what needs fixed or improved, and how something is better somewhere other than here now.  You’ve created distance, but understand that this distance isn’t real.  Its a concept, a thought in your mind, nothing else.  It has no separate existence outside of your thought of it.  Just as easily as you create that thought of something will be better in the distance, you can create a thought of amazingness of what’s here right now.  

Just through the simplicity of shifting your focus you dramatically shift your energy state.  The more energy you feel the more easily movement and change naturally flow through you.  You don’t need to dislike or feel frustrated about what is in order to find a source of energy to create change.  You can both love what is now and then love what is next when it becomes now.  You don’t have to choose to love one moment over the next moment, you get to love both, and the changes that need to occur will.  The only real requirements are to watch where your focus goes and be in charge of it.  Deliberately choose the focus of your desire and know that it will determine the energy level that is available to you and how change will move through you.

To love what is, is to dissolve your agenda for what must be.  In giving your life over to your mission, to your purpose, to why you are, over and over and over again, you will always find yourself perfectly positioned and therefore life will also appear perfectly positioned to you.  You can’t find anything out there because there is no out there.  Distance is made up by you.  Your sense of location is unreal.  You can never actually move, you can only be.  Choose your being wisely through how you focus.  Know that change will always happen, but how it happens is up to you.  How you source your change makes all the difference.  Change sourced through love breeds more love.  Its silly to think other and yet many do.  Where you start you will end.  Where you create from will determine the creation. 

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

OPPORTUNITIES FOR HEALING

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OPPORTUNITIES FOR HEALING 

Remembering what we’ve forgotten

There is a tremendous amount of energy and time spent searching, looking and seeking healing.  We typically embark on this search because something inside of us hurts physically or emotionally and/or we know that there is more to life than what we are currently experiencing.  The healing journey is thus the search to somehow feel better and make our experience of life fuller, easier or more enjoyable.  

The thing about the healing journey is that often we seek outside of ourselves to find it.  It is one of those human tendencies to look for things out there rather than inside of us.  As such we expect to find healing in an answer, an insight, another person, a tool, a technique, a being from another planet, something we ingest, something we wear or breathe, a trip or adventure, a relationship, and the list goes on and on.  On the surface we measure success by seeing an external change, meaning our body changes its sensation patterns or a situation in our life shifts.  This is the example of someone who has a particular body symptom or condition whose pattern changes and they exclaim “I’m healed”, or a person that was desiring a certain situation in their life to change and it changed and now they feel whole.  However a sensation/symptom pattern shifting in your body or a situation in your life changing, in and of itself is not an indication of healing.  Not to say these things don’t occur along with healing, but as a stand alone they have nothing at all to do with it.

So what is healing if it’s not a change in external conditions (your body is also a condition) or circumstances, and how is it measured?  A true measure of healing is your state of being or identity.  The most healed state of being/identity is “I am” or just the pure recognition that you exist, nothing else added.  Your state of being informs the perspectives you are looking through.  Do you perceive life happens to you or do you perceive you are happening to life?  Do you feel powerless, like you have to wait for life to change or do you see that you are in charge?  Do you perceive things as right or wrong, good or bad or do you see the absolute perfection in everything?  These are very different perspectives informed by your state of being/identity and a much more accurate measure of “healed-ness”.  

If I was to sum up what healing is with one word I would choose the word remembering.  All healing is remembering.  Remembering who you are, remembering what you are, remembering the perfection of all.  It is quite literally that simplistic.  Yet what that remembering takes and our willingness to accept what we remember is the entire reason healing seems to be a process rather than just occurring in one full swoop.  In and through remembering everything returns to its original state, its original knowing, and all distortion corrects itself.  Said another way, all that was forgotten is remembered so distortion simply cannot be created because distortion is only created by not seeing or remembering the truth.   

INFINITE MIRRORS 

The how of healing

This brings me to how we heal.  For a moment imagine an entire dimension of infinite mirrors.  Everywhere you look all there is are mirrors and you can only see the image of yourself reflected back.  Who or what is seeing the reflection and what does that seer or perceiver project onto the image that it sees?  What gets projected or what you see depends on your perspectives, thoughts and beliefs.  Those are what filter or color the picture or image of you that you keep seeing everywhere in this infinite mirror dimension.  If you pause for a moment you can see that you are in a ocean of your own projections.  Inside this ocean it is very tricky to see anything other than what it is you keep projecting.  However an opportunity arises when one of your mirrors disagrees with what you are projecting onto it.  This becomes the how of healing.  

A healer is not one that does anything in particular to you (because truly that would impossible), but instead a healer is one that provides an opportunity for you to remember yourself as the truth of perfection so that you can align your perspectives accordingly.  The role of the healer is really singular; it is to help you remember.  The healer does this in a few ways.  One way is to disagree or create waves inside your incomplete or distorted projections of yourself.  This creation of waves or insertion of a new image inside of your ocean of projections is your carrot or golden healing nugget.  A moment of clarity.  A lightening of load.  An effortless breath.  Your only task is to accept this new reflection.  It is outstanding how relieving this new reflection feels and simultaneously incredibly ridiculous at how adamantly we refuse to accept it for much longer than a second or two.  However when we can unwaveringly accept this new image (some people call this embody) healing has occurred as we’ve shifted state of being (identity) and perspective.  

Other ways that healers help you remember is simply by resting in the truth of infinite complete perfection and emitting that through all their modes of expression.  Movement, words, sounds, touch, etc.  The importance is not on the expression or the form that it takes but instead on the awareness or knowing from which it comes.  For those that can see, or are open through their hunger to see, will receive that awareness broadcast just like an antenna receives waves.  Its like a meeting or a matching.  Awareness meeting itself through the projection of you and the projection of healer.  It is a transcendence of form and a knowing of the knower of form. Life then effortless moves itself, does itself, and there is no doer of it and no one done onto.

It should be evident by now that healing is an inside job.  No one can heal you.  Healers simply provide opportunities for it.  Healing occurs through you remembering and accepting the truth of you.  A different image then appears on your screen, meaning you see the world and yourself differently.  The projection is simply what the senses can perceive, but it is not real.  You are real, the projection is not, however you can use the projection to mirror yourself back to you.  You can use it as a measure of progress, but remember it is you that shifts not experience.  Experience, imagery, projection, and appearances all respond to you, they take their cue from you.  You heal, you remember yourself and then your body changes, and your circumstances change.  It is also important not to get caught up in trying to make circumstances change through your healing.  When you are truly healed you realize the simultaneity of it all and also that whatever circumstances are arising they are perfect as they are.  You are less concerned about trying to create or make the perfect life or world and instead you are waking up and realizing the already perfect world.  It is through your realizing of it that it instantly becomes lived reality.

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

LOVE

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LOVE 

Perceived & perceiver

Love.  We are all trying to find love, get love, give love, be love.  As the New Year arises and people set their intentions it is clearly evident that every intention is simply a call, cry, or plea for love.  For love to be felt and lived.  For love to be seen, experienced, rested into and breathed moment to moment.  For the heart to be flung open, consuming all that is inside of it.  The hunger for lived love is palpable, more palpable than ever before on this planet.  

How do we fall so fully into love?  How do we let love consume us completely?  How do we vow and unshakably commit to remain in love no matter what?  Love is the natural state.  It is the truth.  It is pure, it is free and it is contentless.  Everything that appears is what we put on top of love.  Labels, definitions, stories, worldly desires, rules, ideas, constructs, people, relationships, etc are all made out of love, yet these things can cloud our vision if we lose sight of the substance from which they are made.  When we get caught in the appearance and forget the essence we feel disconnected from love.  When we feel disconnected it’s not that love has gone anywhere, its simply that we’ve shifted our focus from love to an assumed object or thing instead.  

To stay acutely focused on the nature of a perceived thing or object rather than to focus on the object itself is the gateway into seeing, knowing, remembering and resting into Love.  At times some of the appearances that arise inside of our human experience do not feel or seem to be made out of love.  They seem to be made out of some other substance because we wonder how something that hurts, looks ugly, smells bad or is clearly unkind could be made out Love.  There is however no other substance in the universe for anything to be made up out of so how could anything be other than this primordial essence that we call love.  

Rather than the thing/appearance itself not being love it is instead the observer, judger or subject that deems it so, meaning it is you that deems it so.  You as the decider of what you see decide what you see.  It is a worthwhile self-investigation to thoroughly assess what you include and what you un-include as love.  That which you view as made up of something other than love is where the jewels of healing wait for you.  It is in the seeing of what you keep outside, different or other than love that gives you the answer to the question of how to remain in love no matter what.  Acceptance of all, even that which we do not understand brings us deeper and deeper into love’s all encompassing embrace.   

EVER PRESENT LOVE 

Seeing what already is

When you’ve lost connection to the heart re-connecting can be instantaneous or it can be a long drawn out process.  It simply depends on how long you want to insist that a particular flavor or experience is something other than love.  Sometimes that flavor which we resist to include in love is our own self.  Perhaps its something about our body or the way we look, what value we feel we contribute or not, or a personality trait we have or don’t have.  Whatever it is, we view its presence or lack therefore, as an indicator of something that is not love.  

As you move deeper into acceptance, and in particular self-acceptance, you can’t not begin to see the perfected everything of allness.  All of your own and others idiosynchronicities, behaviors, thoughts and perspectives seem to matter less and less and the illuminated background of them comes more into view.  This is a purification process where the distilled compound that remains is the natural essence that was always there, but simply covered from view by you.  

See situations can stay the same, sensations can be as they are, thoughts can keep their limited view and yet you can come to see beyond them.  Rather than the incessant impulse to change them you can’t but help to fall in love with them just as they are.  The inner battle quiets down as the clarity of the power of love to recognize itself becomes evident.  When love wakes up to love, meaning when you realize your nature as love, when you see the truth, then nothing is left out and nothing needs or could be different than it is.  

Love is always here, always accessible, even in the darkest of places in our minds.  Its not a matter of creating love, generating love, or becoming more love because all of those things are actually impossible.  You couldn’t be more love than you are right now.  There couldn’t be more love in the world than there is now.  Creation is love itself.  We can’t put love into creation, we can only see that it is already there and end the delusion in our minds that it is not.  

Anytime we hope for something we push it away because we fail to see that it’s already here.  This goes for love.  Anytime we hope that we will feel more love or that the world will be a more loving place we push away that reality.  The only real “change” naturally takes place through the seeing of what already is here, not by attempting to make it different.  Difference occurs, change happens, through recognition of the essence of all being love, not through force or power over.  We must wake up to see love now in every situation, thought, feeling, sensation, image, idea, concept, word, person, dynamic and the entirety of creation.  It is through this recognition, this seeing of Self, that the natural harmonious interplay of all the dancing pieces and parts can be seen.  When one sees itself, remembers itself, then everything moves in the seamless, perfected, orchestrated magic and nothing operates separate from anything else.  

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

Becoming

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Becoming 

Making the shift into who you desire to be

VanityYou have all probably heard the phrase: think it, feel it, become it.  Its often used to reference a process of transformation in becoming something that what we desire to become.  We use our thoughts to think it, then our feeling bodies to feel the qualities we want to become, and through feeling it we become it.  When we want to become something anew there is often also a process of simultaneously undoing who we have previously thought ourselves to be as frequently who we desire to be now is in conflict with what we currently think we are.  

Most of us aren’t even really aware of who it is that we currently are and even beyond that. that who we are is a choice.  We don’t realize that we carry many underlying assumptions and hidden beliefs about ourselves that are based on our life experiences.  If fact most all of who we think we are has been based on our life experiences.  How frequently does it seem that our life experiences have just happened to us, particularly early on in our lives when a large portion of our identity is formed, but even continuing through into the present?  Therefore how much do we just assume that this is “just who I am” and not question it or think that we could ever be different?  This is one of the conundrum’s of having lived disempowered and not realizing that we have always been in the driver’s seat.  If we begin to see/accept that we have chosen every single one of our life experiences (this occurs through acceptance of what was/is) then we can begin to see how our identity has been chosen by us.  This is a breath of fresh air because that means we can also choose anew at any moment.

The assumptions we have about who we are also come with a lens of perception.  That lens of perception becomes the filter with which we then view ourselves through.  Meaning say that we have an assumption that we are weak, strong, cold, warm, unloving, loving, kind, unkind, likable or unlikeable, etc. then we experience ourselves as those qualities and we also view our world from that perception of ourselves.  This is quite literally how we “create our reality”.  Our reality is created by who it is that we think we are and that lens of perception than filters everything we see.  This is why if we want to change our reality (i.e. experience of life) we must actually just change ourselves, as reality follows our perception which comes from our sense of identity.  

Final Becoming 

Relinquishing our role identities 

Surreal portraitOne of the ways to bring more awareness to the self-discovery process of who it is you believe yourself to be is to take a look at your roles, and the responsibilities and activities that come along with them.  These are often indicators as to who it is we think that we are.  Perhaps you are a business man/woman, a scientist, doctor, community leader, a father/mother, daughter/son, wife/husband, an organizer or planner, an athlete, outdoorsy, indoorsy, a reader, an adventurist, etc.  Looking at your roles provides insight into who it is you identify yourself as being.

Again who it is you identify yourself as being is how you will experience yourself and the world.  Let’s say for example that you have the role of being a “wife” or an “athlete”.  Often when we take on a role, we identify as being that role.  You think that you are a wife or an athlete and therefore that role becomes part of your identity.  Every role always comes with some level of expectation of how we must show up within that role.  That expectation could be created by us or have been created by others.  Either way if we’ve agreed with ourselves that a particular expectation lives within a certain role, and if we don’t fulfill those expectations, then we take it as a personal deficit.  

The truth is that we are not our roles, nor the responsibilities or activities that come along with them, but because we are merged as the role then when we don’t meet those role’s responsibilities or perform the activities associated with the role we feel bad about ourselves.  The self that we feel bad about is not our true self.  The self we feel bad about is only the one with which we’ve come to identify ourselves as through becoming the role.  To relinquish being merged with our role’s identities doesn’t mean that we can’t/don’t still participate in the responsibilities and activities that come along these roles.  It simply means that we don’t identify ourselves as the role.  The falling away of being merged with any and all roles is what allows you to taste and know your true self, which is beyond any and all roles.  This is the final becoming.  

Simply put the process is this.  Fully accept yourself as you think you are right now.  Investigate your roles and decipher who it is that you’ve created yourself to be.  See how that has filtered your entire perception of life.  Recognize the power of think it, feel it, become it.  Who is it that you desire to be now?  Through full acceptance of who you’ve been there is no longer resistance or incongruence with who you are wanting to become.  Think and feel your current desire of who you want to be often.  Realize that the final becoming is the embrace of all the things you have thought that you are not.  This allows you to realize that you are all and ultimately that you are the chooser/becomer of whatever becomes and not the becoming itself.

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

Living Surrendered

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Living Surrendered 

Distinction of acceptance & surrender

34683163 - beautiful young woman jumping on a giant flowerMany people talk about their “need to surrender” as if its another thing on their to do list to get done that they keep procrastinating.  There’s an idea that surrender is this thing that you do once, or maybe a few times, in regards to a particular situation you find yourself within.  Most think that if they could just surrender or let go then their torment will end.  Within this mode of their thinking there is an inherent sense of powerlessness.  “If I could just let go” implies feeling choice-less and thus disempowered.  What many people are pointing to when they say that they need to surrender is really that they want to feel empowered and realize their choice in their situation rather than feeling like a victim of it or like its just happening to them. 

This above described situation is really a call for acceptance rather than surrender.  These terms mean different things though many people use them interchangeably.  Acceptance is accepting what is present.  This means accepting rather than fighting or resisting a situation that is currently present.  Acceptance is accepting what is known, what occurred, or what is here.  If we find ourselves in situations that we don’t fully like, that seem like something we don’t want, or that feel overwhelming or jarring to us, we typically don’t want to accept the situation as it is.  The reason for this not wanting to accept what is, is because underneath all the competent facades and masks that people wear, they feel largely disempowered and incapable of being able to work with what is present.  Due to this underlying feeling of disempowerment there develops an unwillingness to want to accept what is and instead we go into trying to manage or control the situation, or we feel collapsed and helpless about it.  This is how the traditional fight, flight or freeze protective/fear responses show up in our lives and keep us defensive rather than empowered.  

Learning acceptance of what is, is fundamental to feeling empowered and recognizing your choice in whatever situations you find yourself within.  Acceptance, will in a way, force you into experiencing your power.  It opens the door into your capacity to see your choices.  With this we often find ourselves stepping into situations needing to show up differently rather than expecting the situation to change.  This can be uncomfortable, which again is another reason we don’t want to accept what is, but ultimately it is what helps us realize our power and shift our underlying baseline feelings of disempowerment and victimhood.  

True surrendered-ness 

Working as intelligent energy

glittery lightSurrender has become such a popular term yet so few are actually experiencing what it is to live surrendered.  Surrender is not just this thing you do when you are at your whits end, feeling helpless and you don’t know what else to do.  In fact in my experience you must feel pretty empowered and know your worth in order to begin to truly taste surrender.  Surrender is an entire way of being and living.  As acceptance is an end of resistance to the known, surrender is an end of resistance to the unknown.  As acceptance is often a doorway into self-empowerment, surrender is a doorway into self-realization.  Self-empowerment is owning your personal value and worth, where self-realization is knowing yourself beyond the person.  Both self-empowerment and self-realization are important in terms of knowing your ultimate self and being able to live that here in this physical-relational world.  

Surrender requires that we use something beyond thought to navigate life. Rather than think-doing, which is how most people operate, surrendered living requires that we open into emptiness of thought, or empty the known.  Not being in resistance to the known is quite helpful for this and is why acceptance is often a preliminary skill set to living surrendered.  When we empty the known, yet simultaneously have unwavering confidence in the unknown (some people call this faith), then rather than thought moving you, soul moves you.  You could also substitute the words love, light, or god for soul.  It is an essence that is beyond what you as the identified thinker/person know.  In a way that thinker/person gets dis-abled, or unable to be used in its traditional mechanism, and something beyond what you’ve identified as you takes the reigns.  It moves your body-mind, it knows.  It knows exactly what to do without it going through your thoughts to figure it out first.  Your mind is still present its just not running the show in any way whatsoever.  

Living surrendered is to be overtaken by soul, by that intelligent energy-awareness that knows, which is really just you from a wider perspective.  Not everyone truly wants this now, nor is it relevant for everyone at this time.  Yet it is part of the developmental progression of beingness and at some point along the path its relevance will find everyone.  It is ultimately inescapable.  When its relevance does find you and you begin to taste surrender its like living magic.  The need for your mind to figure it all out decreases dramatically.  You realize the limitations of the mind and that you are not it.  You feel less and less separate.  There are no more boxes.  Being with another is like being with yourself.  Your body-mind is just moved.  The more and more your soul consumes you the more you realize that you are it and that you’ve never been this mind-personality-body ever.  You re-identify as soul, light, love, god.  

Things still happen, movement occurs, it is incredibly active and simultaneously still.  The perfect orchestration is revealed moment by moment as there is nothing that has to be other that what is.  There is full relinquishment of any personal agendas or will as you see yourself and know yourself, as soul, as Creator, as the One.  You are submerged in the mystery; willingly, gracefully and lovingly, dancing and moving to its rhythms.  

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

Healing through being

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Healing through being 

What healing is & how it occurs

Old vintage oval mirror standing on wooden tableThe cultural belief is that one person must do something to another person often via some tool, technique or device, in order for the person to heal from what is seemingly ailing them.  Everything from our modern medical establishment to the plethora of healers with their healing modalities reinforces this belief.  There are ever so few people out there including healers, no matter how alternative they are in their thinking or methods, that really understand what healing is and how it occurs.  

Healing is 100% an inside job.  It is all about your perception and relationship to what is.  Tools, techniques, devices, healers, etc are all simply permission slips for the already whole state to be mirrored to you and accepted by you.  The reason why some methods or healers seem to be better or more effective than others is because the mode of presentation of the method or the person is more acceptable to you.  Meaning you feel some resonance with either the person/healer or the tool and therefore it is a better permission slip for you; you more easily accept that it will work for you and therefore it does.  This is why some things or healers appear to work for some people and not for others.  It is really never about the thing/healer, as the thing or person is inherently neutral.  Instead it is all about what lands for you and gives you a sense of an inner “yes”.  You must follow that inner yes as it will guide you to those things which will work best for you and which your being is most receptive too.  Until you are fully rested in the knowingness of your wholeness having mirrors and permission slips is vitally important.  

It is my experience and understanding that the true role of the healer is not to “do” anything.  Instead the role is simply that of a mirror that reflects the true, whole essence.  Call that reflection love if you will.  A healer simply reflects love so that when you are in the presence of such healer you see your true self, which is love.  Love is perfection, completion, and wholeness so therefore when you see yourself as this everything in your seeming external environment (including your body) becomes that.  Everything follows your perception.  When your perception sees love, knows love, then everything becomes love.   Seeing through the lens of love or wholeness is what healing is and how it occurs.   

Healing through being 

True health is a state of well-being

Attractive young woman in white meditating at lake.Due to the fact that we are largely focused on doing, rather than being, our focus is almost perpetually on what is being done rather than the state of presence or being itself.  If enough has been done, changed or accomplished than we feel successful.  We almost never gauge our success on how well we “be-ed” today.  This is also true when we look at our own healing.  We tend to focus on what has physically changed as a measure of success, meaning did the symptoms go away.  Symptoms going away actually has relatively little to do with healing.  A person can be symptom free and not be healthy.  A person can have multiple symptoms but be in a state of pure presence, love and grace (state of being rather than doing).   To be healthy is to be in a state of well-being.  The mere presence or absence of symptoms is a crappy indicator of a state of health despite what we have been brainwashed to believe.

When I am working with someone no matter what tool, form or technique that I am using, my focus is not on what is being done, but instead on the nature of existence or awareness.  It is a focus on beingness and the perfected acceptance of all that is, including you.  When that reflection of perfection is received by you the effects of that are frequently that something seems to have changed or been done.  This can be noticed by changes in your physical form, such as how a place in your body is opening or shifting, or some movement of energy, but a change in the physical is not a requirement for healing to occur.  You can still have symptoms, but be in a state of pure, perfected, bliss and oneness, where the presence or absence of symptoms doesn’t even touch you because you are so rested in perfected love.

It is when we develop resistance to what is that our state of being (aka health) declines.  Resistance is the state of being that equals ill health.  Just how many people are fighting or trying to change the appearance of what is, thinking that the harder they fight and the more seemingly unflawed the appearance (aka body), the more healed they will become?  I’d say just about pretty much everyone thinks this way.  We resist because our mind tells us that we don’t like what is, or that what is is bad or wrong, or that it means something negative, but what if through acceptance of what is (rather than the fight to fix or conquer it) we found all the healing that we are seeking for so badly.  What if it has never been about what is done to you, but instead your relationship to what is, which by the way is 100% in your control.  What if your healing has been within your power all along.  I’m here to tell you confidently that is has, its just that the path has seemed a bit cloudy.  I’m here to help clear the clouds so that that which already is can be seen and accepted by you.  

Acceptance doesn’t mean that things don’t still occur or aren’t seemingly still done.  Things occur.  Movement happens. Appearances, including your body and symptoms, change.  Your life can be undergoing major transitions and transformations.  Its simply that your well-being isn’t dependent on what is occurring anymore.  You’ve transcended the need to control circumstances, again including your body, and you now allow and move with whatever arises within your experience, all the while learning and growing and being rested in knowing that all is perfectly well.

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

True healing

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True healing 

Learning how to un-control your experience

healing and transformationOften when we experience some type of dysfunction in our body our first response is panic or fear as we feel the threat of how things have been functioning being compromised.  We may feel the fear of loss of a certain way of living or being in this world, which is currently not acceptable to us.  Our ideas about ourselves and who we are get shaken up as this force of instability that we call disease, pain and dysfunction arises in our experiencing.  

In response to this potential loss of ourselves as we’ve known ourselves to be we often go into management mode in order to make sure that we can keep the sense of self that we’ve learned ourselves to be.  In this phase we look for the modalities, treatments and people that will fix us so that we can return to the life and who we knew ourselves to be before this situation arose.  Sadly many people stay in this phase of trying to control and manage their experience of themselves for the duration of their lives and never truly find acceptance for themselves as they are now.  Instead they stay stuck in an outdated version of themselves that has come and gone.  

Due to the fact that many people stay here trying to live as this past version of self, controlling and managing every aspect of their life, they don’t transform and come to know the new self that has emerged.  Their focus is in the rearview mirror so to speak and they keep looking backwards rather than seeing where they are at right now.  With this they will often feel sad, like they aren’t making progress, and like it takes so much effort to maintain everything.  They may frequently feel low energy, be resentful of all the compromises and the degree of vigilance that they have to have in order to maintain their previous sense of self which they are still holding onto as who they are.  They simultaneously continue to fear the unknown, fear who they would be if they accepted what and who is here now.  This is often too destabilizing for our sense of self and so we will fight tooth and nail to keep who and what we’ve known ourselves to be.   

Beyond controlling

Mastering healing & transformation

chain disconnectedWhat does is take to get beyond controlling your experience?  The first step is full acceptance of what is here now.  Zero transformation can occur if you don’t do this first fundamental step.  You will always feel like you are fighting something and “transformation or healing” will feel effortful because you are literally in a state of resistance to what is.  Acceptance is often the hardest because it will feel like defeat to your mind.  Like you are losing and something else is winning.  Again this is only because you have been holding onto a previous version of yourself that is no longer really here or relevant for you anymore.  You may still have attachment and desire for that previous version of yourself, not ready to let it go, even though its already gone.  It only stays “alive” through your mental clinging to it.

Once you accept what is, healing and transformation can now effortlessly occur.  This does not mean that there is lack of activity or doing, its simply that it becomes very clear to you exactly what you need to do, what methods will support you as you embrace this new version of yourself that is here now, and what changes you need to make in your life.  It becomes crystal clear because you are no longer in resistance/control mode.  There is no longer this aimless searching where you keep hoping that the next thing you try will fix you and you will feel like your previous self again.  The resentment and effort is gone and you are simply doing what you must do.  

What I’ve discovered through all my years of healing and transformative type of work is that when disease, pain and dysfunction arises it is always a source of destabilization to help us wake up to more of ourselves.  We live in these limited bubbles of knowing ourselves and when we come to edge of a bubble that we’ve been living in that bubble needs to somehow burst.  If we are really comfortable in our bubble it is harder for us to want to deliberately pop it and so life gives us situations (disease, pain, accidents, etc.) to make us a little less comfortable so that we will pop that limited bubble that we were previously living in.  In this way we go beyond, stretch into more of ourselves, and into a range of ourselves that we previously weren’t experiencing.  

This process is typically never comfortable.  I believe that is done purposely.  One of the gifts of having this human incarnation is that there is often a massive amount of discomfort that comes along with it.  This discomfort gives us the opportunity to accelerate our soul’s journey at exponential rates, but this requires that we walk towards the discomfort rather than palliate or try to get rid of it.  The more willing we are to let go of what is gone and accept the new, the more versions and flavors of ourselves we will get to experience and play with in this single lifetime.  Healing and transformation will be a game that we master.  We will become adepts of listening, moving with life, learning what we came here to learn and embodying the range of who and what we are.  

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