bodymind alchemy

Embracing limitation

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Embracing limitation 

Stepping into limited experiencing

20595789 - wall around the girl as the fear conceptWe are often striving to grow, expand, deepen and increase our experience of ourselves.  It is phenomenal that most of us have this hunger.  This hunger is often sparked from a feeling of knowing there is more to existence (life) than we have been experiencing.  This feeling that there is more often comes with the awareness that we are currently experiencing limitation in some way and in response to that feeling we’ve lit a fire inside of us to move through into more.  

The reason this fire gets lit is because the experience of limitation is uncomfortable, frustrating, and annoying.  No one enjoys feeling limitation, so in order to not feel limitation we find ways, places, tools, and the like to move us into feeling less limited and more free.  Being free is our most natural, innate state.  So when limitation arises it contradicts that which we know to be more true, that we are free.

So how do we rest in the knowingness that we are free while simultaneously experiencing limitation?  The key here is in embracing what we perceive to be our limitation.  Now almost no one will readily do this.  This is one of the primary reasons why we have a field of “healing” in the first place.  No one wants to embrace those things or experiences that feel crappy, such as limitation.  Often it feels like we are “going in the wrong direction” if we embrace that which we are trying to change or don’t like, almost like we are inviting it in rather than transforming it.  

The truth is when you embrace you do invite it, but you invite in that which is already there.  Our frustration comes when we don’t invite or include in what is already present.  In that way we resist a part of our experience rather than accept our experience.  We all know that what we resist persists, so what you end up getting is more and more of the experience of limitation or whatever it is you don’t like.   

The other side of embracing limitation

Your free self

What happens on the other side of embracing limitation?  When we are able to drop into receiving what is presenting in our experience the pressure to have to be different subsides, which is experienced as a huge relief to our system.  That thing that we all call “stress” seems to relax.  What is really relaxing is us.  Its through this process of accepting what is that our freedom can begin to be felt and experienced.  We are now free from something about us or in our experience having to be different, better, or changed.  What then arises is a state of presence; we become present.  

Underneath the experience of limitation are the thoughts and beliefs that you are not capable, that something is not possible, or that something is fixed or solid.  None of these beliefs are ultimately true, but they are true to a part of you that is experiencing the limitation.  When that part that is experiencing limitation is felt and allowed its calms down, and rather than it controlling your experience, something else arrives on the scene.  That something else that arrives is experienced as a calmer, stiller, clearer and more aware presence.  That is you, the free you.  

The free you that you truly are never goes anywhere.  It just gets covered up by thoughts, beliefs, concepts and ideas, which confuse you and make you feel like you have no idea what is going on.  Most of us are trying to fix or figure things out from this confused, covered up aspect of ourselves which makes us feel like we are moving in circles and never getting closer to the truth. 

Fallen angel with black wingsIt is only through surrendering to these parts of ourselves, ending our battle with them, that we can move through.  This may feel like failure, like giving up, like losing fight, or like the wrong direction because you are so identified with the part that feels the limitation and so determined to overcome it and not give into it.  If you simply just let this part win, allow the experience of limitation without the fight, I promise you something else will arrive on the scene.  That something else that arrives has always been there its just that its been covered up by the battle to make some aspect of itself different.  When you end the battle now you can perceive this truer aspect of self.  The battle that you create inside is what perpetuates the limitation and continues what feels like the never ending cycle to nowhere.  When you are willing to rest your sword against your own experience your freedom awaits you.  

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

The stages of healing, transforming & awakening

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The stages of healing, transforming & awakening

Cliff notes version

Decorative mandala round pattern with sacred geometry element MeMost of you have heard me talk about the “12 stages of healing.”  The 12 stages of healing are what the structure of Somato-respiratory Integration (SRI) is built upon and represent stages of consciousness or awareness that a human experiences on their journey from separation to unity.  This particular structure of the 12 stages of healing was based upon the work of Dr. Donald Epstein, however these stages of consciousness are universal and you can find them named in many different traditions or schools.  

What is unique to them here is that their are paired somatic “exercise” that go along with each of the 12 stages and corresponds to a level of awareness.  The idea behind doing the exercises is to more fully “land” or be in the stage that you are in.  No stage is better or worse than another.  We all experience all of the stages at different times or rhythms of our lives.  Progression through stages is also not linear, meaning you don’t always go from stage 1 to 2 to 3, etc.  There is also no defined amount of time to be in a particular stage.  Some people may be in 3 different stages in a single day, where others may be in one or two particular stages for years.  

So what are the benefits of knowing the 12 stages?  Its helpful for many of us to have a roadmap or structure so that we can “know where we are”.  Knowing where you are helps you create more coherence within your experience because you can better align your perceptions to where were are at.  For example say that in your life you are behaving in ways that feel congruent to you, like maybe you are exercising or being helpful to others, meditating or eating healthy, but your perceptions (thoughts, emotions, sensations) you don’t really match it.  There is an incongruence between the actions you are taking and your perceptions of life.  This is where SRI can be helpful in bringing to light more of the perceptual consciousness shifts required to make your experience more congruent.  Ultimately meaning that the actions you take feel 100% aligned with your feeling and thoughts.   

The seasons of well-being

12 stages grouped

The 12 stages are further grouped into what we call the seasons of well-being in Network Care.  To begin the 3 basic seasons are called Discover, Transform and Awaken.  It looks something like this:

Season of Discover: SRI stages 1, 2 & 3

Season of Transform: SRI stages 4, 5, 6 & 7

Season of Awaken: SRI stages 8, 9, 10, 11 & 12

So what are these seasons and why are they important?  The season of Discover is the self- discovery process of becoming aware of how you have kept parts of yourself separate from the whole of you.  Said another way you discover how you have protected yourself from experiencing painful feelings, thoughts and sensations.  Within this season the first 3 stages of SRI are included. Stage 1 (suffering) is the experience of discovering that you have been disconnected or at least a part of you has been disconnected.  When you discover this you realize that you have been living in some level of separation and the experience of that separation or disconnection is suffering.  In SRI stage 2 (polarities) you are aware that a part of yourself has been separated or disconnected, so you are not in full separation, but you resist this part of yourself.  It’s the experience of “disowning” or rejecting those parts of yourself that you don’t like or can’t be with.  Lastly SRI stage 3 (stuck in a perspective) is where you realize how you continually resist this part of yourself over and over and over and over again.

Next is the season of Transform.  Transformation is ultimately the refusal to keep any parts of self separate anymore.  It includes SRI stage 4, which is where you declare to include an aspect of self that’s not been included. It’s saying enough of separation of this part of you. No more are you going to not include this part. Enough of not including it.  SRI stage 5 is merging past the illusion that this part is really separate.  SRI stage 6 is a preparation into full self, absolutely nothing will ever keep this part separate again and stage 7 is the resolution of separation and a surrender of this part into all of you. It’s the full embodiment of self and realization that all parts of self must be included.  We essentially go through these various stages of 1-7 discovering and reclaiming all the various aspects of self until everything is included.  This is the healing/growth journey.

Lastly is the season of Awaken.  Awaken is the knowing that nothing ever left the whole, nothing was/is ever separate.  SRI stage 8-12 correspond to this knowing.  As you become more familiar with all of these stages of consciousness you can begin to integrate various stages with other stages to help support and resource you throughout this journey of separation to unity.

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

Taking responsibility for others

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Taking responsibility for  others

Why we do this…

Responsibility a cloud word on skyLast week I talked about the importance of taking responsibility for ourselves and how it is pivotal if we are to grow up and evolve individually and collectively.  Today I would like to talk about a similar yet different topic of taking responsibility for others.  There is a subset of the population that has learned to take responsibility for others even when it not their responsibility to do so.  

I find that taking on this role of responsibility for others has many faces.  We can most clearly see this in the parent-child relationship.  When a child is young, we do have responsibility for their well-being, however as they become adults that responsibility is no longer ours.  I often see however parents continuing that role past the time when it needs to be played, which effectively doesn’t allow the child to grow as an adult and take responsibility for themselves.  

Another way this can be seen is in the opposite dynamic from above.  What happens is that the parent is not taking responsibility for themselves (or the child) and so the child learns how to tend to the parent’s needs to ensure that they (the child) are taken care of.  When this is learned early on in our life we have the tendency to continue this pattern as adults.  There is an underlying feeling that if everyone else is happy then we will be safe and have our needs met.  This often leaves us feeling much internal “pressure” as we are constantly attuning other people’s states of being to make sure they are ok, and often times we are not even aware of the pressure we feel as it has become so much a part of who we are.  

If we have this pattern of taking responsibility for others then seeing others display intense emotions or upset is very uncomfortable for us.  Our tendency is to shy away or try to make peace.  In that “making of peace” we often take responsibility for how the other person feels, even when it has nothing to do with us, just so that we alleviate the discomfort and uncertainty that we are feeling.     

Finding inner freedom

How to stop taking responsibility for others

The first step in learning how to stop taking responsibility for others is of course awareness of yourself.  You must become aware that you are engaging in this pattern.  Some ways to notice this are if you tend to shy away from direct confrontation, or if you find that you don’t speak up and share your thoughts and opinions easily (mostly because you don’t want to ruffle feathers), or if you are the one always “taking care of things” at a party or in a group rather than letting others tend to you.  

Often those with this pattern have an easy time organizing things, making sure things are in order, multitasking and taking on more than it seems should be possible.  They are often successful in relationships or business because of these skills so it can often be deceptive to unearth this pattern because it just seems like “we are doing a good job at life”.  The down side to this is those with this pattern feel so much internal pressure that they are ready to explode and they don’t even really know it.  There is often terror of others reactions to them and so they don’t share or express themselves authentically, but instead if ways that seem more acceptable or “kind”.  They may use rationalization or logic to calm people down or explain themselves rather than sharing or feeling their feelings.  Underneath it all they feel unseen and unheard because they are not allowing themselves to be seen or heard for fear it will upset others.  Being safe and things being in order and control are more important than their self expression.  

To not take responsibility for others, for how they feel or what they think, and even for how they feel about you, takes tremendous courage for these individuals.  It can feel like a threat to their survival, like their needs won’t be met by the “universe” and like they won’t be accepted by others.  If you have this pattern you must get to the point where the pain  and pressure of trying to hold it all together gets to be too much and where you refuse to tolerate it any longer.  You must realize that it is NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO MANAGE OR CONTROL WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE FEELING.  

Try it today.  Notice where you are holding your breath or holding back for fear of how someone else may respond to you.  Take the risk to not try to make someone else “ok” when they are feeling something intense.  Instead just be with them in the fire, in the intensity and don’t try to make it better.  This is where your inner freedom starts and where you can simply focus on taking responsibility for your self, your feelings and your life.  

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

Experiencing interconnectedness

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Experiencing interconnectedness 

Human and galactic nervous systems converge

16988199 - illustration of the human nervous systemMost people are somewhat familiar with their nervous system.  Your nervous system is made up of your brain, spinal cord and all of the nerves that come out of the spinal cord and connect with all the parts of your body.  Because you have a nervous system you are able to perceive the world around you, including receiving information from your body, and also you are able to take actions on your environment and use your body.  

Your nervous system is your communication system.  Without a nervous system, or without an aspect of your nervous system, some communication is lost.  We can see this most clearly when people have a stroke.  A part of their brain “dies” due to either a leakage or absence of blood flow in a particular area of their brain and therefore they lose connection to being able to perceive or take action in a particular part of their body.  

So what does this teach us?  It teaches us the absolute importance of nervous system in its role and function in communication and connection.  Just because someone say doesn’t perceive or can’t move their left arm or leg, which often happens in the case of a stroke, it doesn’t mean that their left arm of leg isn’t there.  It simply means that the connection and communication within the nervous system to that part of their body has been lost.  

Many scientists say that we only use a fraction of our brain, some say as low as 10%.  If this is true it means that there is a lot of dormant “possibility” laying untapped in our brain.  Like the example of a stroke, some function is “lost” when we lose part of our neural connection or circuitry, this to could be true of that untapped potential as well.  Meaning when more of our brain “wakes up” or comes alive with energy then more information can be perceived, information which was previously unaware to us because we didn’t have a way to attune to it, and new ways of movement and action become available.  

What does our individual nervous system have to do with the galaxy or universe?  Science has now proven that the space between people and objects is not empty.  It is actually packed full of untapped energy and information.  Many people talk about this as the “field”.  There are areas of study that are looking at how this field is organized and some are finding that similar to the human nervous system, the field is also an interconnected communication system, connecting different star systems, galaxies and various locations in space together.  

80799039 - earth. view from space. elements of this image furnished by nasaIf for a moment we think about ourselves as a miniature field (instead of a physical  body) and we are able to perceive and take action within the field of ourselves, that makes sense to most people.  Now lets say that our individual field can expand and as it expands it starts to interact with a larger field.  When it interacts with a larger field now we begin to perceive, take action and move differently because we are accessing more energy and information than previously when we were just experiencing our own individual field.  Its like our own individual nervous system begins to make connection with a larger nervous system, so now we have a different experience of ourselves and thus reality.

How big or expansive our individual field is or becomes, is correlated with our level of awareness or consciousness.  Consciousness is simply a state of being that corresponds with a particular perspective or view and that view has certain amount of energy and information available to it.  For example if our general default perspective of life is that life is happening to us and that we are the whim of circumstances and conditions, or that resources are lacking or could become scarce, the amount of energy and information available to us is capped at a particular amount or frequency range.  If say we have a general default perspective that we can impact and influence life in positive ways and make a difference, the amount of energy and information available to us is capped at a higher amount or frequency range.  And so on and so on.  

When we have greater awareness levels we have access to more energy and information and our field is actually larger.  When our field is larger we are now perceiving and taking action differently then if are field was smaller or more contained to itself.  This is how we begin to experience more and more interconnectedness.  As our awareness expands and up-levels we quite literally become larger and merge with more aspects of what I call the “galactic” nervous system.  

This is how Network works.  The small areas I touch are called spinal gateways.  They are a little access points into your individual nervous system.  With repeated touches these gateways begin to stretch, expand and grow and as they do your individual field stretches into a larger field.  In that larger field you have more awareness of yourself, beginning with awareness of your physical body, moving into awareness of your emotional and mental bodies and also your soul body.  When you begin to touch into and communicate with your soul body this is where you experience (perceive and take action) via interconnectedness.  

Interconnectedness is not some made up concept.  It is as real as anything you currently can perceive such as your physical body, or emotions or thoughts.  Its simply that until we have the neural circuitry to perceive it, and our field expands into a larger field, we tend not to believe it.  So just like the example of when a person has had a stroke and they deny they have a left arm or leg, the same is true for having a soul.  When I say soul it simply means an expansion of your individual field into a layer or level of the field that knows and experiences interconnectedness..  Again this is dependent of your level of awareness, which then corresponds to the energy and information available to you and the degree to which your individual field can expand and merge with greater and greater ranges of the universal field.  This constantly changes, grows, and is an evolving process.  This is why so many people do so much inner growth work, to resolve those things that don’t serve, that drain our energy, and keep us smaller than we actually are.  Clearing those things in our system frees us up by expanding our awareness, increasing our energy range and literally becoming larger as our human nervous system merges with the galactic nervous system and we experience and become more and more one unified, universal field.  

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

Quickest way to abundant health

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Quickest way to abundant health 

Why making healthy choices is hard 

joggingMany of us know the right things to do for our health yet largely don’t do them.  We know vegetables and exercise are good for our body, that reading and meditation are good for our mind and that giving to others and following our bliss are good for our soul, yet we don’t consistently do these things. Perhaps we get inspired and create a change for a little while, but typically we find ourselves back to our old habits 3 weeks, 3 months or 3 years down the road.

So why is so hard to create consistent healthy choices?  Truth be told we are pretty undisciplined when it comes to creating and sustaining change.  Unless something hurts really bad or threatens our life in some way its pretty difficult for us to take action to do something differently.  Even once a new pattern develops it requires quite a bit of reinforcement.  So how do we find and sustain the energy to create healthy habits for ourselves in body, mind and spirit?  The quickest way to abundant health is to take responsibility for your awareness.

Take responsibility for your awareness

Commitment and discipline

44785944 - attractive woman with back pain at home in the bedroom

Anytime a person embarks on a path of self-improvement in any way, whether they want to improve physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually, they must first discover how they are currently operating.  I would say that 80-90% of people don’t actually know how they are operating, meaning they are not aware of their patterns and how they are creating them.  People are mostly operating in automatic pilot mode, unconscious, oblivious and feeling victimized in some way to their current state.  If you are thinking to yourself “I don’t feel victimized” then let me reframe it in this way for you.  If you feel like you have no ability to change your state (whether that state is physical, emotional, mental or spiritual) you are essentially operating as being victimized.  Your sense of power is outside of you and therefore you are disempowered and at the whim of circumstance.  This is the consciousness of stage 1 and 2 of SRI.

50353353 - young woman with mental disease with alter ego

At some point people become aware, either through reflection from another person or through their own self-reflection, of a pattern and how they are creating that pattern.  At this point awareness moves from “my back hurts here”, speaking  as if your back is something separate from you that is misbehaving in some way, to the awareness of “I see how I am creating this pain in my back”.  This is an incredibly profound level of awareness and it’s instantly refreshing because finally you begin to feel as if YOU can do something about your state and that is empowering.  However the buck doesn’t stop there.  Say you discovered that ever time you eat sugar, argue with your spouse or have the thought that you’re worthless, your back hurts in this one spot, yet you keep eating sugar, yelling at your spouse and having crappy thoughts about yourself.  You are not taking responsibility for your newfound awareness and therefore you continue to feel the pain in your back and ignore the change you need to create. If you don’t heed the awareness once you are aware, the path will get more challenging for you.  Your body will speak louder and get more “diseased” until you make the required change.  This is the consciousness of stage 3 of SRI where you see your patterns but feel stuck and can’t seem to move forward to take the action required.  Often times at this point people will go back down to stage 2 consciousness and look for someone or something outside of themselves to fix their pain or get rid of their problem, giving away their power again, because they don’t want to make the change required.

kid superhero

If instead a person is ready to move forward and make the change required they go into the consciousness of SRI stage 4, which is reclaiming their power.  They declare “enough of this” pattern, thought, way of being, etc and they begin to move into transformation.  This is where you take full responsibility for your pattern and for creating the necessary change.  This is not an “easy” stage of consciousness and its not something you do just one time and your done.  You reclaim over and over and over again in order to continue to create the necesary change, until you do it and its done.  And down the road when the old pattern surfaces or gets triggered you again see your pattern, how your creating it and commit again to engage in life in this new way that is required.

Most people don’t commit.  They may for a little while but then it starts to feel too hard so they distract themselves with things that temporarily feel better or offer “relief” and thus they fall into old patterns.  This is when you hear people say “xyz didn’t work for me”.  Its not that ‘xyz’ didn’t work, its that they didn’t commit to it working.  If you are not seeing change in the direction you want to see change then you are either unaware of your pattern or not following through with your awareness.  There is no way around this.  You must go through this if you want to sustain change.  There are no magic pills or quick fixes.  This is the work required to become a fully empowered and awake/aware being.

61338186 - the rugged mountain road.So the dichotomy is that this is the “quickest” way to true health, but this is not a quick path.  Even though “quick fixes” are so much more appealing to us because they don’t require us to change, they prolong the path and therefore prolong us from experiencing abundant health.  They keep us searching outside of ourselves, when the true solution comes from inside of us and is directly related to our level of commitment to take responsibility for our own selves.

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

Trust the Wisdom of Your Body

Dr. Amanda Love 1 Comment

What does it mean to trust the wisdom of your body? Think about a time when your body stopped functioning normally. Perhaps a body pain arose, or your digestive system had a sudden change, maybe you developed a skin condition or you got sick and never really healed fully from it. When these things occur we often feel concern about what this means for us. Sometimes we think of potential loss or limitation, and experience a general sense of powerlessness to how our body is expressing.

It is typical for us to go into “managing” mode. We try to find a reason why our body is acting this way. We look for a diagnosis, search for specialists to fix the problem, make appointments to get answers to our questions and hopefully solutions to our problem. We may try some procedures or techniques to remedy this problem and sometimes they seem to help and other times not. This can become an exhausting cycle, especially when it turns into a cascade of fixing one problem only to have it arise again after a short time. There is temporary relief, but then we find ourselves in the same or similar conditions down the road.

So how do we change the pattern? How do we discover what our body is trying to teach us so that we can learn the lesson and move on already? The first step is slowing down, getting quiet and starting to listen to your body. Your body has an intelligence of its own called life force. This intelligence is responsible for running all of the basic functions of your body. It is always at work even when symptoms occur. In fact symptoms are messages that contain information from your body’s intelligence. This is how our body talks to us. We have learned that symptoms mean that something is “wrong”. We get scared, go into fear about what is “wrong” with us and don’t trust how our body is expressing and therefore can’t learn from it. Let’s reframe that thinking to what symptoms really mean: 1. Stop, 2. Pay attention (listen), 3. Feel, think or do something differently. Symptoms are wakeup calls to say “Hey, pay attention right here, right now, this is important, don’t ignore me or try to get rid of me but instead listen to me, I am trying to help you”.

I have found that there are themes to symptom expression. In my own personal life symptoms have manifested in connection with something that I needed to change in my life. Wrist and back pain arose for me when I needed to make a change in my work life that I was scared to make. Skin problems developed at times when I felt insecure about my self-image and beauty and I needed to change the way I felt about myself. Severe dental problems occurred at times when there was a large amount of instability in my life and where I needed to create more stability for myself. We have the ability to look at these symptoms as “problems” or look at them as sources of information/energy, that when utilized, help us create the self and life that we want.

Network Spinal Analysis combined with Somato Respiratory Integration (together called Network Care) provide tools and techniques to help you discover your patterns and how your body is uniquely talking to you. The first step is to help you move from “fear mode” also known as fight or flight, into “relaxation mode” in your body. It is nearly impossible to slow down and listen if you are really scared about something being wrong with you. On a neurological level Network care helps your nervous system move from “sympathetic dominance” to “parasympathetic dominance”. From here you can start to listen instead of being hijacked with impending doom that something bad is or might happen to you. This is the starting point for gaining information from symptoms so you can use the energy contained in them to create changes that liberate you into a life of joy, inner freedom, extraordinary health and happiness.

Dr. Amanda Hessel, DC, L.Ac

Why does my Baby need Chiropractic?

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Being born is stressful work! Imagine being curled up in a tight (yet quiet) space for several months and then being pushed, squeezed and pulled through a small opening to meet bright lights, sounds and a whole world of novelty and stimulation. We all went through some version of this experience. Even though the end result is a beautiful (and hopefully healthy) new baby, the journey can be filled with physical, emotional and chemical stress for baby and mom (and dad too).

Approximately 30 of every 1000 births result in physical birth trauma, including things such as broken bones, oxygen deprivation, and nerve injury to the face or neck and arm. 5% of vaginal births use assisted methods (vacuum or forceps) to help with delivery, which has been associated with skull fractures and bleeding in the brain. 63% of women receive epidurals/spinal blocks to reduce labor pain (epidural usage increases the need for assisted methods, creates a longer labor and increases fetal distress). 32% of births are now by cesarean section, which exposes baby to more chemical stress from surgical procedures and decreases their innate immunity that they receive from a vaginal delivery.

You can see that babies, even before they are fully born are being exposed to a myriad of different stressors. There are 3 types of main stressors: physical, emotional/mental and chemical.

Physical stressors can come from the delivery process, learning to crawl and walk and birth injuries.

Emotional/mental stressors that babies are exposed to can be from not being touched in the right ways, getting too much or not enough stimulation and not having their needs met.

Chemical stressors are from surgical birth procedures, vaccines, environmental toxins, formula additives and more.

Stress effects the nervous system (brain, spinal cord and nerves). The nervous system is your body’s communication network and its development and function is critical to having a healthy body and baby. Everyone has a certain amount of adaptability within their nervous system, some more than others. This is why some people get sick more easily than others or why some have sensitivities to sounds, lights, touch, and foods that others might not have.

The good news is that you can increase your adaptability. This is the pivotal role that chiropractic plays in your baby’s health. Chiropractic works by helping your nervous system work better so that everything inside of your body can function better. It increases the communication between life and your organs, glands and cells in your body, which creates vitality. It helps you work with all of those different stressors that you are experiencing so that instead of creating bound up tension patterns (which later create dysfunction and disease in your body), your body can stay open, communicating, and internally healthy.

Not just sick babies (or people for that matter) can benefit from chiropractic. Anyone who has a spine and has been exposed to daily life stressors benefits from greater levels of ease and communication in the nervous system.

Dr. Amanda Hessel, DC, MS, L.Ac

If you live in the Boulder/Denver area and want more information on how to support your baby’s health naturally please visit: http://bodymindalchemyboulder.com/events-calendar/in-office-talks/

Dr. Hessel will be speaking on this very topic and is teaming with birth doula, Emily Blank who will discuss the therapeutic benefits of essential oils for a calm, happy baby. You must register to attend & class is free. Tuesday September 8th, 2015 at 7p

Posture & Joint Health: Don’t’ let Gravity Get the Best of You!

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Have you ever been told you have poor posture?

Do you experience pain in your back, hips, knees or shoulders?

Have you noticed that your head is forward of your body?

Posture is more than standing or sitting up straight. Posture has to do with how well your body can work with stress, recover from injury or illness, heal, and function optimally. Imbalanced posture leads to numerous health concerns, including problems with your joints and even your internal organs.

Gravity can wreak havoc on your joints if your posture is not in the best alignment. This creates pain and poor biomechanics that can lead to early degeneration. A common sign of this is when people’s head come forward of their shoulders and body. This condition is called “Forward Head Carriage” and is epidemic in our society. Forward head carriage puts abnormal stress on different areas of the mid-back and low back creating pain, discomfort, muscle tension and sometimes even numbness and tingling down the arms or legs.

“Forward head posture leads to long-term muscle strain, disc herniations, arthritis and pinched nerves.” ~Mayo Clinic

Forward head posture also puts significant stress on your spinal cord. The spinal cord is the bundle of nerves that connects your brain to your body. When there is stress on the spinal cord it tightens and begins to physically fray. That means that messages that travel down that cord from your brain to body (and back up) get distorted and sometimes even lost. Imagine the significance of this if one of those messages that gets lost tells your heart to beat rhythmically or your lungs to breath.

 

Dr. Alf Breig, neurosurgeon & Noble Prize recipient, did extensive research in the area of spinal cord tension and found that, “Loss of the cervical (neck) curve stretches the spinal cord 5-7 cm and causes disease.” Loss of the neck curve occurs when the head comes forward of the body. Below is a list of causes of imbalanced posture and potential effects on your body.

What causes Imbalanced Posture? Imbalanced Posture contributes to:
·         Physical trauma & repetitive motions

·         Emotional & mental stress

·         Chemical toxins in foods & the environment

·         Spinal cord irritation & pull

·         Inflammation in your body

 

 ·         Wear and tear on your joints leading to degenerative arthritis

·         Muscular imbalances creating tightness in some muscles and weakness in others

·         Increased pain & chronic pain

·         Nerve irritation

·         Decreased blood flow to the brain and other vital organs

·         Poor adaptability

August is “Posture Awareness Month” at BodyMind Alchemy. I invite you to check out our free classes that we are providing to raise awareness of the importance of posture and its implications on your health. Please visit: http://bodymindalchemyboulder.com/events-calendar/in-office-talks/ to find out how to register. Anyone who comes to our talks this month will receive a free postural screening and computerized assessment!

Dr. Amanda Hessel, DC, MS, L.Ac

 

 

Inner work is Hard work: Why do I need to change or transform? Aren’t I already perfect?

Dr. Amanda Love 2 Comments

Why do I need change or transform when I am already perfect? Can’t I just accept myself and be done with it? The answer is Yes! Of course you can. No one is forcing you to change or be different than you already are. By the nature of your essence you are divine, perfect, enlightened and free. No one is stopping you from accepting this perfection of you… except for maybe yourself… hence the need for your inner work.

Inner Work can feel like hard work.  I sometimes hear people complain about how hard the process of change and transformation is; and it can feel like that for sure. We often create quite a bit of resistance between who we operate as on a daily basis and who we know our “bigger” self to be, and resistance is energy draining. The more we resist the amazing, beautiful, graceful, loving, kind, generous, perfect, divine being that we inherently are, the harder and more effortful our inner work will feel.

Some of our resistance comes from beliefs we have about ourselves that are “hard-wired” in our nervous system. These hard-wired pathways are so pervasive that even if we try and think differently we end up resorting to the same old resistances and patterns. This is called neural programming. It is easier and takes less energy to do the same thing over and over. This is why our nervous system habituates and creates dominant pathways, so that we don’t have to think about everything all of the time. This can be beneficial and also requires our attention to continual monitor what works for us and what doesn’t work for us at any given moment. This is where most of us drop the ball. We get lazy, we fall “asleep” or go unconscious and live on automatic pilot.

One of the best ways to come out of automatic pilot mode is through paying attention to your body. Your body is the storehouse of your unconscious. It is a gauge for what is happening in your mind and will tell you when something needs to change because it no longer fits for who you are. This can look like tension patterns, pain, and disease. These are simply indicators that something is out of alignment with the bigger parts of yourself. And what do most of us do when these things arise in our body? We try and get rid of these expressions instead of using the energy available in them to make change. So we feel tired and like inner work is a lot of work, because we are trying to create movement (change) without any fuel in the gas tank.

The most pervasive and outdated pattern I have found in my own life and in my work with others, which brings the most resistance with it, is that we are not worthy of the grandness of who we “hope” that we are. We feel shame for getting what we want because we think it means someone else won’t get something or that we are taking from someone else. We feel grandiose or arrogant if we feel amazing about ourselves, and for some reason label that as bad. We fear we might not be accepted, fit in with others or be desired, so we will be alone and no one will love us if we love us. These are just a few expressions of how unworthiness can manifest in your life.

All inner work as I see it, is to bridge the gap between who you really are (love, infinite worth, amazing, precious, rare) and who you believe yourself to be most of the time (undeserving, ordinary, no real gifts to contribute, un-valuable, can’t make a difference, small). So if you already live as infinite worth, and know your preciousness and value in every single moment, then yes you are done with your inner work. However, if there is still a gap for you, then there is even more that you can realize and embody about your true nature. This does not mean you are less than or imperfect now, because you are perfect, it simply means that you have yet to realize the fullness of your perfection and live as it.

One of the missing links I find with people is that they have done lots of inner work through their mind but haven’t addressed their body. You must work through both. When tension patterns shift in your body that energy becomes available to you.

How do tension patterns shift? Through your nervous system receiving new input that you can hold yourself differently in your body and through diving into your resistances. This is where the energy comes from to make change and where transformation becomes less effortful and more sustainable. Many approaches bypass or avoid the resistance, labelling it is as “negative” and uncomfortable, and come from the angle of “just think differently.” While this may work for some people, others will need more energy, momentum, and fuel to create the change they desire, especially when it has been a lifelong pattern.

The approach I use to support people is called Network care. It works with you through your body to reprogram the dominant neural patterns to ones that serve you better now and makes available the energy to create change so you can live as the perfection you are.

Dr. Amanda Hessel, DC, MS, L.Ac

Beyond Pain into Ease, Growth & Bliss: The 3 Stages of Network Care

Dr. Amanda Love 2 Comments

Network Spinal Analysis care is unique in its application and progression. It charts a very specific path that goes through stages as your body begins to change. It is not a “fix it up” technique, meaning, you are not necessarily “done” when you are no longer experiencing the original pain or discomfort which prompted you to seek out care in the first place. In fact “feeling better” or having “less pain” is often just the beginning of the process. It is pretty easy to help someone feel better in their body; many techniques and tools can do this. It is an entirely different process to help someone not only “feel better” but also expand their inner resourcefulness, create more efficient patterns in their body/life and help people reach higher stages of wholeness, growth and evolution.

Many people think that they just want to get out of pain, but the truth is pain is just a symptom of a bigger issue going on in life. What people really want is more freedom, joy, happiness, vitality, flexibility, presence, love, connection, authenticity and bliss in their lives. We often have the idea that if ‘this or that’ changes then we will experience those things, but that is not the case. While relief of pain, though temporarily feels amazing, if nothing in a person changes at a fundamental level then they will recreate those “painful feelings” in another way. This is actually a smart thing that our bodymindsoul does for us. It is our internal guidance mechanism of sorts that tells us to stop, pay attention and make a change. Life is try to get our attention and it will do it in a variety ways until we listen to it.

The 3 stages of Network Care walk people through this process in an embodied and sustainable way. I call the first stage Ease, the second Growth and the third Bliss.

Ease: Most of us are tense most of the time, whether we are aware of it or not. This can be bodily tension, emotional tension, mental tension and even spiritual tension. When we are tense we are not receptive to life. Instead we are inwardly resisting. The first step in the Network Care process is to create a state and eventually a stage of Ease in the body. I differentiate between a state change (which is temporary) and a stage change which is a sustainable state change. In the Ease stage your body moves from “Fight/Flight/Freeze” mode into “Rest/Relaxation/Openness” mode. This is vital if you are to move forward in life. Many people stop at this stage because they feel so much better when they have more ease. This is great, and there is more. For many they want more than just feeling better, they want greatness, limitlessness, to know their power and resourcefulness beyond what they have ever experienced before. That is when they are ready for the next stage which I call Growth.

Growth: The growth stage requires commitment, dedication, and passion for yourself and your life. You must value yourself to be in this stage. When you are ready to grow it requires that you change habits, patterns or behaviors. In order to create the change that you desire you must make that choice over and over and over again until it becomes your new pattern. This requires that you be more aware of yourself, catch yourself when you fall into old habits and patterns, and make a conscious choice of what you now desire to create for yourself in this moment. This is the stage of empowerment and consciously becoming the creator of your life. You take responsibility for and value how you feel, what you think and the actions you take. Feelings, thoughts and actions are no longer random occurrences but instead deliberate choices that you make in each moment. Network Care develops neural patterning that coincides with this level of conscious commitment to your life. Growth stage neural patterning allows for an empowered stage of consciousness to become your baseline foundation so that even when you find yourself in lower thought and feeling states you can more quickly and with greater ease reset to what state you want be in at that moment

Bliss: Ahh, yes, bliss, it is indeed a stage of Network Care. Who doesn’t want to experience more bliss? Bliss is complete agreement and alignment with all parts of yourself with all other parts of creation. It is a coming togetherness, community, connection, integration, or how I like to think of it – a soulgasm. It is a stage beyond the mind, but the mind can be informed from Bliss; meaning you can live an integration of this stage in embodied form. It is the stage most often striven for, especially in spiritual communities, but you don’t have to be “spiritual” to want to live in more bliss and joy in your life. Most people have only felt temporary bliss state changes. These are common when you hear something inspirational or you have an encounter with a spiritual teacher. People often associate those experiences as being created by an “outside” force, person or presence and therefore they can’t create the stage change in their life. This occurs because people jump from Ease right into Bliss without going through the Growth stage. It is entirely possibly and quite easy to do this, however it does not create a sustainable shift in your life. This is because you don’t yet realize your power and who you are, which you develop in the Growth stage. You subsequently disown or project your power to create bliss on an outside figure/force. When instead you go through each stage you can sustainably be in any stage of your choosing. The Bliss stage requires advanced communication in your nervous system. Network Care upgrades the neurological software that connects the heart to the brain in the Bliss stage. This means your heart informs your brain more and more and you make choices in your life with your heart leading and head following

It is my joy to facilitate this process with/in others. To create Ease in the body, support people as they wake up to their power and simultaneously upgrading the neurological “software” and communication in the body so that higher level consciousness states can more easily be sustained in a person’s life. I have the honor to watch people move from pain, suffering, and disconnection into their empowered self who is living the life that they want to be living in joy, love, grace and gratitude. Please ask me how I might be able to support and serve you in this process

Dr. Amanda Hessel, DC, MS, L.Ac