empowerment

SAY BYE-BYE TO WORRY

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SAY BYE-BYEđź‘‹ TO WORRY 

Your most intimate friend

Most of us are familiar with worry.  In fact worry might be your most intimate friend.  We tend to spend more time with worry than we do our partner, family members, kids or friends.  Worry is often so intimate that it’s present inside of all of the activities that we do.  It’s there when we shower, while we exercise, as we’re working, and while we are getting groceries or pumping gas.  Subtly, or not so subtly, in the background is the thought, “will things work out” or “will things be ok”?  It’s like we are deathly afraid of how all the details of life will orchestrate themselves and we can’t seem to let it be.  Our best attempt to not feel totally helpless or powerless is to worry.  Somehow we think if we worry about whatever it is we are worried about then we can control how it all happens.  However because we know we can’t really control it, we stay in a perpetual state of worry, which you could also call stress or overwhelm.

In order to let go of worry we also have to let go of whatever outcome we are attempting to control.  Whatever thing we want to happen or not happen, the timing of something, and the flow of the details in between, we have to let it all have its own will.  We must give away our hope, agenda, insistence, and demand for the thing to happen in any particular way, or at all.  This is where it feels tricky to us because we perceive potential loss or lack.  If things don’t happen how we desire in our minds for them to happen, at the bare minimum we perceive inconvenience, and beyond that, that something might be lost.  That loss could be of anything.  A new possibility coming to birth, a relationship, how someone views or sees us, money, time or other resources, objects of our desire, a job, a project, our health, other’s health, and on and on.  We will do whatever we can not to experience loss of what we desire because loss feels like death, failure and can lead us into hopelessness, depression or despair.  So rather than facing the potential of all of that, instead we choose worry, because worry feels easier to feel compared to feeling the death of our dreams and desires.

The thing about worry though is that it hijacks the shit out of us.  We fall out of presence and into thinking about all of the things.  We are not available for what actually matters to us, who it is that we want to be and our chosen state of being.  We lose touch with the magic of life and ourselves.  On a physiologically level our body gets to experience the chemical cascade of worry, which looks like the inability to digest our food, sleep well, or feel energized, and we experience pain and tension in the body.  Then we get fixated on trying to fix all of these bodily expressions without addressing the core essence which creates their arising, which is worry.  While moving towards feeling loss, lack, or death of our dreams feels like a less desirable choice, you must ask yourself if it’s really worth the cost to keep avoiding your sense of feeling lack of control over all of the happenings of your life.   

THE OTHER SIDE OF WORRY 

Mystery revealing itself

We tend not to think too much about what is on the other side of worry.  Mostly we either wait in anxious anticipation, or we take massive action because we can’t sit still, and then we hope for the best.  The “best” being whatever our chosen preference is for the desired outcome.  The funny thing about being human is that we have such a small perspective on things, and despite our tiny viewpoint we think we know what’s best to happen.  It is a form of self-deceit that is mostly unconscious, because the majority of us have good intentions for what we desire.  However those good intentions, and our ideas of what those intentions look like when they are manifested at the physical level, interferes with our seeing.  It distorts and filters our perceptions.  We then create judgments or assumptions about what we are seeing rather than simply seeing it.  Those judgments and assumptions always feel bad because they are coming from our tiny little vantage point that thinks it knows what it’s looking at, all the while it’s missing 99.99% of the picture.  

Big picture here is that we have no idea what, the details or the timing of how things are supposed to occur.  We have ideas of how we would like it to all happen, but our knowledge of the actual reality of it stops there.  If we don’t recognize the limitation of our vantage point, of our filters and the distorted picture we have based on our preferences, then we will fall or push our way into control.  We will feel anxious.  We will experience overwhelm.  We will complain about being stressed.  All as avoidance to feel how much control we don’t have over things.  

Not having control over things does not mean that you are without power.  In fact it means the opposite.  Surrender is the ultimate power.  This is what you discover on the other side of worry.  When you stop avoiding feeling potential loss, a sense of powerlessness, or inconvenience you arrive into a state of presence and openness for life to reveal itself to you.  Presence in the ever present moment of revelation, meaning you come to know what it’s like to be in the unfolding rather than trying to managing the unfolding.  When you are no longer trying to control something it frees things up to respond and move, and what I really mean by that is that it frees you up to respond and move.  You become less rigid and fixated and more able to be a part of the unfolding.  This is also where the power of intention shines.  You can still intend for whatever it is you desire to intend, but rather than forcing the flow of it, you are in the flow with it.  It’s not two opposing forces, but one force moving and responding to itself.  You are not separate from what you desire, you are one with it, but as soon as you place what you desire out there onto a happening, object, event or person, you relate to it as separate from you and you have to figure out how to control or manipulate it in order for your preference to be experienced or expressed.  

The other side of worry is acceptance and peace.  It is a relinquishment of thinking that you know and a becoming present to what actually wants to happen, rather than what you think you want to happen.  You let things breathe, which ironically also means you breathe.  You experience life force returning to its unimpeded flow.  The intelligence that is life organizes itself with you included.  It still doesn’t mean that you will get what you want or that your desired preference will occur in the timing you desire, or even at all.  It does however mean that you breathe, you are at peace and in acceptance, your body receives easeful chemical cascades that allow it to function well and you get to be in the dance of the unfolding of the mystery revealing itself.

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

WAKING UP FROM FEAR PARALYSIS

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WAKING UP FROM FEAR PARALYSIS 

The collective freezer

We are living in a collective freezer and largely unaware of the frigid weather all around us.  These cold conditions have paralyzed many of us into a state of contraction, numbness and disconnection.   Side effects of frozenness are subtlety holding your breath, tensing your body, not feeling safe to be yourself, not fully sharing or expressing yourself in world, believing things might go bad or not work out and feeling like you are not going to be ok.  Frozenness is riddled with worry, doubt, insecurity, inhibition, vigilance and absence of trust in self, other or life.  Its focus is on minimizing disruption, change, and uncertainty at all costs.  It is not concerned with thriving, evolution or advancement, but instead solely with preservation of what is and attempting to keep things the same.

Clearly it is impossible to keep things the same.  The one screamingly obvious truth is that everything is constantly changing.  Yet despite the obviousness of this we attempt to control the change.  This state of inner non-acceptance of what is keeps us looking in the rearview mirror.  Trying to keep a version of ourselves, our body, or our environment that was previously known to us.  Perhaps a version of our life that we liked more or that felt safer because it was more known to us thus giving us the illusion of greater stability.  What we fail to really accept is that everything has a rhythm, a beginning, middle and an end.  This is true for everything within the physical universe.  All will come and go.  

It is through stretching yourself into greater acceptance of this fact of the ever changing nature of the universe that you will begin the unthawing process.  When you stop trying to hold things in place you begin to recognize the movement that is all around you.  The block of ice that you’ve been keeping yourself inside of starts to melt.  The frigid, rigid fear container loses its sharp harshness and with that you begin to notice your breath again.  A warmth arrives that allows the muscles to relax.  That which you withheld or kept separate or silent now begins to move inside of you and take expression.  You stop worrying so much about yourself and instead start living again or maybe living for the first time.  

The important thing to realize here is that you are in charge of the defrosting process.  In fact it is 100% solely up to you.  That doesn’t mean that support isn’t available, because it is, but the choice to end the choice for fear is yours.  You don’t have to keep picking up the same fear story, feelings and sensations.  You are bigger than and beyond any fear thought.   

BEYOND THE CHOICE FOR FEAR

Finding all the places that you hide out

The first step in ending your attachment relationship with fear is by finding all the places where you choose it.  See our choosing of fear is largely unconscious to us.  We simply imbibe it as part of the air we breathe and don’t do much to question it because it’s one of those collectively agreed upon assumptions that has been left un-investigated.  Its takes a certain slowing down of the mind  and recognition of our more subtle beingness so that we can attune and clearly see these unconscious assumption patterns that we have about life.  

As you begin this investigation process into yourself you may find that there are certain things or situations that arise which you feel that fear is the only choice.  Where you get hijacked and your nervous system responds with the fear cascade of attack, protection, disconnection and vigilance.  These are your growth edges.  Wherever it is that you feel like you have no choice but to respond in a certain way is a misinformed and disempowered perspective.  The key that I want to keep pointing to here is choice.  It is one thing to deliberately choose fear and allow that choice to create the programmed nervous system response for that choice, it is another thing entirely to not consciously choose it and be swept into that response.  If a lion is chasing you choosing fear and the subsequent neurophysiological cascade that follows may be appropriate unless you want to get eaten, however rarely are any real lions chasing us.  

So outside those incredibly rare moments in our lives when we truly need our survival mechanism to be activated the choice for pure survival/preservation and the attack, flight or freeze response is just a default mode.  This should feel like really great news to you because it means that you are in charge.  You are not victim to your nervous system, instead it responds to you.  Its only that you have not been aware of your choice, of what you’ve been choosing or even that you can/do choose.  

This is why at some point we have to turn our attention from the outside world and all the seeming external triggers and look within.  Sometimes this seems like a dark and bleak void, and perhaps even boring direction.  This is only because we haven’t spent much time paying actual attention to ourselves and therefore there is this undiscovered terrain of which we have not navigated before.  You may feel like you don’t know how or what you are doing, and when you first open that inner door you may not see much.  But as with any worthwhile endeavor persistence pays off.  Your willingness and dedication to continue to peer inside reveals an previously unknown or unconscious world to you.  You come to see and know yourself.  You see the intricacies of your psyche and illuminate their workings simply with your attention and awareness on them.  It is here that you dismantle your conditioned responses to life and reclaim your active choice.  In truth the choice has always been yours, but until you turn within and unequivocally see that fact, your mind will play tricks of denial on you and you will project your power outwards onto objects, situations and other people.  The choice beyond fear is the choice for freedom and an experience of life where you are present, available and fully alive.  

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

Bliss

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Bliss

Ecstasy of being

Who doesn’t desire more bliss? The pure joy and ecstasy of simply being.  Whether we seek bliss through objects, relationships, service work, recreation, nature, food or other means, we all hunger for it.  Its at the root of what drives all of our meditation, personal growth work and willingness to dismantle our programmed sense of self.  Ironically bliss, which is very thing that we are, which we claim to desire more than anything else, is the very thing that we give away a million times a day.  

Why is it that we give bliss, which again is our essential nature or self, away so often?  Why is it that other things seem more important than bliss and therefore reign as primary in our day to day experience.  To begin many people do not realize that they are in charge of themselves.  What I mean by this is that most people are significantly disempowered and are unaware that they are deciding their life.  They believe that life is random, including their emotional states, and they just hope that they wake up on any given day and feel good.  With this lack of awareness of self there is the appearance that circumstances decide for you and that there really is nothing you can do about it.  When we disown our power in this way we fail to see any responsibility or accountability that we have for our self and our state of being.  We therefore hope for something great, magical, or some object/person that we desire to come along and fix us or make things perfect and right, and we become part of the circumstance rather than the creator of it.

Outside of lack of awareness of self and the disownment of our power what things interfere with us choosing bliss moment to moment?  One of the prime things that interferes is our minds need to know what’s happening or where things are going and our attachment to things or outcomes.  When we desire a thing or outcome more than we desire bliss, then the thing or outcome is what is in charge and no longer is bliss center stage.  Often we fear loss of an object/outcome or even loss of the thought of an object/outcome, because we have confused the object/outcome with our state of bliss.  

If bliss had an enemy, which it doesn’t, but if it did, its enemy would be certainty.  Nothing compresses, flattens, and attempts to put bliss in a box more than the our mind’s perceived need for certainty.  Uncertainty is bliss’s playground while certainty is the mind’s.  Nothing is certain until you decide on it.  Take great care and attention to what it is you decide on as that will be your experience. 

Bliss Beyond Beliefs 

Allowing bliss to reign

There are umpteen million beliefs that interfere with bliss.  They are along the lines of thinking you don’t deserve it, can’t have/be it, impossible to live in at all times, its not real, bliss is only for some people, its not enough, its impractical, its more important to be right, tragedy can’t be blissful, bliss is not sustainable, too many things are wrong in me, too many things are wrong in the world, bliss is circumstantial, it’s only for sometimes, can’t be blissful for no reason, can’t be blissful if other people aren’t… and the list goes on and on.  These are our roadblocks in bliss.  Imagine a road that is made of pure bliss that goes on forever and ever.  Now imagine that every 10 feet there is red light.  All of those red lights are your interfering beliefs that arise and pause your experience of bliss.  The more red lights on your road the less you get to experience the road.  

When we do the work of investigating our beliefs we have fewer and fewer red lights on our road.  This is a worthwhile journey, though arduous and seemingly unending at times.  This begs the question as to if there is a more accelerated way to reclaiming bliss.  Can we in one full swoop be fully rested as bliss here and now in this human experience?  The short answer is absolutely yes.  What’s required is to see bliss inside of every single face, circumstance and experience no matter what is appearing.  In essence replacing everything you perceive with its actual true state, which is bliss.  This brings you into correct seeing, and it is a tall order for most people.  Hence the arduous path of self-inquiry and investigation is often needed.  

Why bliss you might ask?  Well outside the fact that it’s your natural state, it is also what makes things come alive, organizes and reorganizes forms, is self-intelligent, and not to mention feels A-MA-ZING!  There has never been a moment when I regretted being rested and moved by and as bliss.  It is the dismantler of all untruth, the dissolver of all inauthenticity, the lover all expressions, the breaker of chains, the wise one, the mover, the knower.  It’s the portal into your most absolute self.  So really a better question to ask is why not bliss?  

When you give away all of your insistences, biases, and attachments to people, objects, and outcomes, bliss is more and more revealed to you and becomes more and more your direct experience of reality.  The greater your willingness to give away your roadblocks and red lights and give into the bliss that is already here the more you will enjoy your human experience.  The more purposeful you will feel even if you “do” nothing.  The ease with which you will be able to engage on relational levels with other people will increase.  The fears and thoughts that once crippled you will be no more.  Everything you perceive will look more inviting to you.  Truly when you give everything over to bliss is the first time that you can genuinely serve or care.  To be without agenda or attachment to outcome is to allow love to simply be and move as it so intelligently is organized to do.

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

Finding your Power

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Finding your Power 

Moving beyond fear & accepting uncertainty

colorful color splash paintbrush rowWhen people perceive uncertainty fear often strikes.  The key here is perceive.  The truth is uncertainty is the perpetual state that we live in moment to moment.  Nothing is known until the moment that it is experienced and lived.  In this way we are always looking onto a blank canvas and waiting for the next stroke to appear.  What we frequently don’t realize is that we are the artist.  We are the one drawing each stroke and our perception is how we draw.  What we perceive is the picture of life we paint ourselves.  

It is in this way people are not living in the same reality.  There may be the surface appearance that we are all living in the same world, meaning we both see the same objects, and yet how people are experiencing this surface reality of objects is radically different.  It is truly in this way that you are the master-creator of your reality.  It is no joke or just new age spiritual nonsense that you are in charge, you actually are.

So the question becomes why then are we living so disempowered?  Why is it so hard for us to see, know and taste our power?  It is because the veil or covering of fear clouds our awareness and thus only allows us to perceive through its lens.  When fear is our lens we see/perceive threat.  Fear reinforces the idea of separation and promotes self-protection.  Fear is lack of faith and lack of trust.  It’s constantly doubting and questioning because it feels scared and alone.  This is the miserable state of being that most people are living in most of the time.  Know that ultimately fear is just one state of being from which you can choose, yet our tendency is to default to this program of fear whenever we perceive uncertainty.

On a lighter note this state of being of fear is what most of us came here to see through and overcome in order to help bring forth new possibilities of a reality that is lighter, rested, and more joyful for those that are ready for it.  Understand that not everyone is ready for a new reality and that is ok.  Sometimes holding onto patterns of fear are our only known way to create a sense of stability for ourselves.  The desire to hold onto the external sense of stability, as wavering and unstable as it is, outweighs accepting the truth of uncertainty.  However through accepting the truth of uncertainty you allow yourself to rest into it rather than fight it.  The relinquishment of your own inner resistance to uncertainty is what propels you into your power where you find true stability.  Stability in your own beingness that is independent of any circumstance, situation or condition.   

Changing your programming 

Being in the Driver’s seat

Hacker using the Internet hacked abstract computer server, databHow is it then that we change our default response?  How do we reprogram ourselves to a new patterned way of perceiving?  I wish I could give you some elaborately beautiful answer, but Nike said it best with their slogan just do it.  Understand that when we aren’t ready to change, change will seem really complex.  We will feel lost, confused, stuck, frustrated, and like things are impossible or hard to see.  We will think a lot, weigh options, blame, justify, rationalize, validate, but that is all preparation, or said another way, postponement of change.  When we are ready there are no more questions, we just simply see clearly and in that clear seeing we choose differently.  At the end of the day its really that simple.  

It takes however long it takes for us to stop postponing our own change.  It should in some way come as a relief to know this, as it means your ability to shift how you perceive and thus change your programming and the reality you experience is always up to you in each and every moment.  It should feel empowering to know this because it puts you back into the driver’s seat.  The truth is that you have always, always, always been in the driver’s seat, you just haven’t realized that you where.  This is what is called unconsciously creating our reality.  It is based on previous learning and experiences and it tends to just run on automatic in the background.  It doesn’t require much energy and feels somewhat static, which gives the illusion of a consistent or same world in which things can’t change, won’t change or don’t change.  Its not that things don’t change, it’s that you don’t change and when you don’t change the world looks the same day in and day out.  

The key here is that there is no right and no wrong to this.  There is not a right or wrong perception/experience.  There is only your preference.  What is your preference?  How do you want to perceive/experience?  Do you want to look through the lens of fear or the lens of safety?  You are not choice-less in the matter, you are the chooser.  When you get that life is not based on circumstances, but instead is based on you, you will have gotten what it means to live empowered.  

When you live empowered you are consciously, deliberately choosing your perception.  This means that you are free.  Free to decide for yourself.  Free to no longer allow circumstances, conditions or other people and their actions/non-actions decide for you.  No more having to play nice to hope to get what you want or control other peoples actions or responses to you.  Free to see how you desire to see.  Free to live in your preferred reality rather than the one that has been spoon fed to you.  Freedom from backlash or negative impact because you realize that you are in charge and that is true no matter what occurs.  This doesn’t mean that potential “negative” things won’t ever occur, but it does mean that you are the one deciding what you choose to term negative or not.   Again remember not everyone is ready for this level of freedom.  Not everyone wants it yet.  That is ok and perfect.  Do also realize that this freedom is always here, always present and always ready for you once you ready for it.  

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

Levels of Identity

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Levels of Identity 

Our reference points for who we are

3D Segmented Funnel ChartThere are different levels of identity.  Identity is a reference point for who/what we know ourselves to be.  Identity is important because depending on what we are identifying ourselves with or as will determine what we perceive and thus how we interact with everything in our world.  

So what are these different levels of identity?  I am going to describe 4 different “levels of identity” as I’ve come to know them. The 4 different levels are pre-rational, person, soul and God identity.  

Pre-rational identity

Pre-rational identity is that level of identity before we know ourselves as a self, or as an individual person.  This level of identity is pre-thought or pre-thinking ourselves into being.  There isn’t a sense of separateness between self and other selves because you don’t know yourself as a self yet.  In a sense you are your environment.  There isn’t the self awareness of having an experience.  You are experience and it’s simply happening.  This is seen in early stages of human life, especially noted in babies and very young toddlers before they know that a “me” exists.  Since you are experience and its simply happening there isn’t a “you” in the drivers seat, instead the environment is driving.  This is important especially if survival or emotional needs don’t get met by the environment that we are, because inherent in this is a sense of powerlessness to the environment.  When this occurs pathways can go undeveloped in our nervous system, particularly pathways that get fired when our nervous system experiences safety,  satiation, and rest.  Simultaneously other pathways get overdeveloped that relay information that environment is not safe, there is hunger, and to stay vigilant.  

When the pathways that know safety, satiation and rest are underdeveloped then the structure or framework that our system needs to integrate pre-rational identity gets halted and fragmentation or splitting of experience occurs.  We can call this distortion and it activates a cascade of protective mechanisms to try and keep us safe and alive.  Since there is a myriad of experiences that occur, some which fire safety pathways and some that fire pathways that say “not safe” what happens is that some fragmented parts stay at this pre-rational level of identity.  What this can show up as in our adult life is feeling victim or  powerless in certain aspects of our life.  You can also experience a general sense of not being able to relax or only being able to relax in certain environments or if certain conditions are met.  You may also experience that people or things aren’t safe or can’t be trusted, and that there may not be enough food or attention and love so you hoard or over consume.  There can also be a naivety about how things work and things can seem magical and mysterious.  This is also the place where life force (or body) intelligence and emotional intelligence reign.  What this means is that if we have aspects that have fragmented and are halted at this level of identity we can have challenges in physical health/healing and emotional resilience.  If this level of identity isn’t integrated there is also more reactivity and focus on survival, so we can see defensive and protective posturing and physiology that would be associated with fight, flight or freeze responses. 

Person identity

42052191 - women, black, worried.

At the level of person identity we have developed a sense of a separate self that is separate from others and from the environment.  This level of identity requires the faculties of mental intelligence which include the ability to think, discern,  see self as separate from other selves and be aware of feelings, sensations and as having a body without being identified as them.  There is a self that is aware that it has feelings and sensations which means you are not completely fused with them as them.  This begins to wake up choice, options, different possibilities and seeing the bigger picture, along with the awareness that you are in charge of and even the creator of your life.  

Usually around age 3 this person identity has showed up on the scene and it continues to develop into adolescence and early adulthood.  We can have experiences within this time that create fragmentation and distortion at this level of identity.  Some examples would be in not being seen as a unique person that we are, not having mirrored to us that we have skills and abilities, not being given options and being able to choose but instead being told what to do, and not having opportunity to express our unique nature.  These experiences don’t allow us to fire the pathways in our nervous system that are related to confidence, to feeling both failure and success and making it through, to feeling our power and our ability to choose, and to see how we impact our environment including our own body.  This stunts us in the development of our person identity as a separate self.  This can show up in us as adults by having difficulty with making choices, head being foggy, thoughts are unclear, difficulty knowing what you desire as a person or knowing your preferences, allowing people to walk all over you, or lacking confidence and drive.  In the nervous system this has less to do with protective posturing and fight/flight/freeze (though some of that may be present from on un-integrated pre-rational identity) and more to do with oscillating between disempowerment and feelings solidity and strength in self.  When person identity is not integrated the posturing tends to be more slumped or defeated, and as person identity get more integrated the posture becomes more upright and assertive.   

Soul identity

heart people vectorSoul identity is knowing yourself as in individuated being (like person identity), however there is awareness of your interconnectedness with all beings (and not just beings with physical, human form).  The separation of people and things is not like it is in person identity.  There are less solid barriers, defined edges and distinctions between people and objects.  Your experience is less “contained inside of  your own head” and is more fluid and interwoven with everything else.  Different from pre-rational identity you are not identified as the environment, but instead know your interconnectedness within it.  This allows you to experience a greater range of energy and you notice the presence of things and people more than their physical form or personality characteristics.  When your identity is at the soul level you are able to move your awareness around in your body and outside of your body and even into other bodies and objects, which is different than person identity where your awareness is primarily located in your head.  

This level of identity in connected with soul intelligence.  Soul intelligence is concerned with expanding and deepening in presence energy, love, wisdom, and interconnectedness.  Unity is at its core frequency.  The concerns that drive a person who is identified at soul level identity are how to be more awareness, knowingness of our truest nature and creating things to better serve the whole.  In general stabilizing in soul identity has been less accessible to humans.  We have had less mirrors available for mirroring this level of identity to us at our current planetary level of development, so the pathways are not as developed in our nervous systems, however this is changing.  The nervous system of someone who is identified at soul level identity expands to include what I call the “galactic” nervous system.  This is what allows you as an individuated being to be interconnected with everything else including what people may refer to as your “higher” self as well as other parallel versions of yourself and others.  Your thoughts are not just your thoughts, feelings are shared between people and things, information is more readily available to you but not through your normal pathways of mental intelligence or knowing, but instead through this soul intelligence or galactic highway.  The posturing is of the chest/heart being expanded and open, the head/neck come backwards instead of forward of the body and the physiology of the body is in greater communication and interconnectedness.  

God identity

32007403 - glittery lights silver abstract christmas background.

God identity goes beyond knowing yourself as anything individuated.  When you penetrate beyond the subtlest aspects of soul identity the only place left to identify with is One.  There is absolutely zero separation from anything in God identity.  You know  yourself as pure awareness, beyond all forms, beyond all energy, only aware of awareness in its most pure state.  There is no activity here, but instead primordial awakeness before anything is made manifest; simply being.  This is what most call our truest identity, yet some say there is still something even beyond this, something without beingness and without experience which is actually our truest identity.  

Since God identity is beyond form there is no posturing or physiology to note, but when someone is identified at this level while in form its like touching space.  There is a vast, open, pure and empty quality that expresses through their form.  There is no need for a nervous system to communicate with itself on an individuated level or a galactic level with others because you simply are everything.  All is instantaneous and happens at once.  Interconnectedness becomes one.  This is universal intelligence.  

Summary

Each level of identity is important, one is not better than the next.  From my current level of understanding these levels of identity are a developmental progression, each creating a foundation for the next.  You can be identified mostly in one level, say person identity, and you can simultaneously have tastes of these other identities.  But to truly stabilize at another level of identity you need multiple tastes of the next level and also full integration of the previous levels.  For example it would be very hard to stabilize in soul level identity if you have a lot of unresolved or unintegrated experiences at pre-rational or person level identity, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have tastes of it.  Typically when we have “peak” experiences, like say when we go to some type of transformational program, we get a taste of another level of identity that is possible.  If we’ve done enough integration work at previous levels than sometimes that’s all it takes to stabilize into a new identity.  However if we don’t stabilize at the next level of identity which we tasted than those parts of ourselves that still need to get integrated will rise up  into our awareness.  This is why sometime we actually go into chaos after a peak experience or a really high energy state.  The chaos is not bad or something to be fixed or gotten rid of but instead it is all of the stuff that we need to look at, address and be with so that we can really stabilize into the next level of our identity.  

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

Physiology follows perception

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Physiology follows perception

The filters to perception

filterWe are all familiar with the mind-body connection.  We conceptually know that beliefs, thoughts and emotions effect our body.  Something we think can produce tension in our muscles or pain in our stomach.  With this knowing many of us still do not investigate our beliefs when tension, pain or dysfunction arises in the body.  Instead we go to some physical thing that we are doing or not doing, such as our diet, exercise, or sleep that must be the culprit.  

Why is it that this is our first reaction?  The truth is most people are not adept at paying attention to their feelings and thoughts or investigating their beliefs.  Instead the relationship to feelings and thoughts is typically only to try and stop the thoughts during meditation or figure out how to get relief from feelings that don’t feel good.  Most of us don’t automatically go towards feeling the uncomfortable feeling, noticing our thoughts or investigating what is creating the feeling or thought in the first place, which is the belief.  If we did we wouldn’t need to stop our thoughts or resist our feelings anymore, instead we would get to the core or their creator, our perception.  

Perception is the lens with which we look at life.  The filters for our perception are our beliefs.  If you imagine clear perception (before any beliefs) you would simply have pure light, or pure awareness.  Think of this as your primordial state before you learned anything.  You were totally clear, pure, innocent, light.  You can see this light in newborn babies or baby animals.  That’s why we love them so much!  You will also notice in babies that they are not resisting their uncomfortable feelings, but instead simply expressing their discomfort.  Likewise they are not thinking yet as their mental faculties are not yet developed, so they have no thoughts to resist or contend with either.  In fact they are a total blank state, or pure in their perception.

As life progresses we learn things from others and in that learning we develop filters (aka beliefs) that begin to color our perception.  Instead of our perception being clear it now bends or distorts creating ripples in the fabric of our clear awareness.  This is how we begin to create our reality so to speak.  Our filters determine and decide what we see, how we see and that quite literally create the reality that we perceive.  That reality that we perceive then obeys the laws of our filters (beliefs).  It literally can not.   

Perception is chemistry 

Identified as a body

10618311 - test tubes in the laboratory on a gray backgroundOk now that we understand perception lets tie this back into our physiology, our chemistry and the experience of having a body.   Depending on your particular filters that color your perception you create not only your reality at large, but also your body and how your body functions (its physiology and chemistry).  From this perspective you can ultimately see how you are the creator.  Now most of us don’t really know that we are the creator, instead we think we are a body, but really we are the perception that creates the body.   Take a moment and let that really register and sink in.  

Now when you are identified as a body (instead of the perception that creates the body) you feel powerless or victim to how the body expresses.  You have to wait or try and figure out what the perfect conditions are that will hopefully support your health and vitality.  This comes back to why our focus first goes to the things in our environment that we can somehow physically manipulate or change.  Our hope is that by manipulating or changing these things that our physical body and physiology will change too.  Now sometimes this works, or works for a little a while, and sometimes it doesn’t.  When it seems to not work and we have tried it enough times to realize it isn’t working, we may get curious about what else is creating this situation in our body/physiology.  Here is when people may start to explore their emotions, become aware of repressed emotions, things they have buried and haven’t allowed themselves to feel, and they begin to feel them.  This is a step closer to empowerment because you are getting more subtle than just working with physical manipulation of objects and things in your environment.  You are including more of you in the process and that comes with a sense of increasing empowerment rather than simply having to wait for some physical thing to change.  

Often once you have been able to access some of the more deeply stored emotions you begin to have more inner space and with that the ability to become more aware of your thoughts.  You may start to notice the direct connection between a thought that you have, how that makes you feel and the effects it has on your body/physiology.  Once this is realized the next step is to investigate the thought and see what belief (or filter) created that thought.  Say for example you recognize that you have the thought “I’ve done something wrong” and it comes with the feeling of overwhelm and the sensation of gripping in your gut.  If you have this much awareness you can now investigate the belief that created the thought “I’ve done something wrong”.  In investigation you realize that you have a filter/belief that shines the color of there being “rightness and wrongness.”  When you can see at this level you can even begin to then transcend the belief itself and return into the primordial, pure awareness state, before anything was learned or created into manifestation.  It is from this place in awareness that you can dissolve filters and begin to re-create a new reality and a new body/physiology for yourself.  This is the ultimate empowerment because you are now in your true state rather than identified with your body.  When you are identified with your body it is very hard to make changes in your chemistry/physiology without the use of physical agents.  Once you become increasingly subtle in your awareness, starting with emotions, than thoughts, beliefs and finally pure awareness itself, shifting the physical manifestation becomes easier and easier.  Your need to rely on external agents become less and less.  

It is my theory that one of the biggest reasons why conditions, pains and disease manifest in the physical body/physiology is to help us realize more of what we are and more of our power.  They do this though showing us where we are still misidentified as something other than the pure awareness (which is so clearly seen in a baby) and where we are giving away our power.  When we can learn to use things that arise in our physical body as teachers in this way we can greatly accelerate our journey into remembering, reconnecting and embodying our truest Self or identity while here in this body on this planet.  

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

You don’t have to fix your less resourced parts

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You don’t have to fix your less resourced parts 

Phew

fixingTransformation sometimes comes with this idea that we have to fix these parts of ourselves that are not as resourced.  That somehow we have to change these actual parts of ourselves that are behaving or thinking in ways that are not what we ultimately desire.  This often leaves us feeling overwhelmed and like we have to go to battle with these parts and somehow win them over because they are preventing our growth.  

Less resourced parts are simply patterns that we have learned with which we engage with ourselves or the world.  We call them less resourced simply because they are limited in their perspective.  To be less resourced is simply to see from a smaller lens or view, or said another way to not fully see or know what one is.  

These parts don’t need to be fixed or changed, they simply need perspective.  In fact to try and change these parts will most likely just piss them off and get them to react and activate even more, or it will create another less resourced part to come to its aid and protect it.  

So if you can’t fix or change the part then what can you do?  The first thing that any part needs is acceptance.  Acceptance of what it is exactly as it is, even in its lack of resourcefulness.  This often means accepting the things we don’t like about ourselves, the things we are typically running away from or are constantly trying to change because we don’t like them.  Initially this often feels bad to us which is why most people don’t automatically drop into acceptance, however if acceptance does not occur first then no true transformation will ever follow because you will be trying to still somehow fix or change the part rather than truly transform.   

True transformation

Gaining perspective

So then what is true transformation if it isn’t changing or fixing the part?  True transformation is gaining perspective and through that finding a part or aspect of self that has more resourcefulness.  You can think of it in this way, we all have a range of resourcefulness (also known as awareness).  I think of it as a spectrum, and we all land somewhere along that spectrum.  Sometimes we go up and sometimes we go down, but we tend to have a base point where we hang out most of the time.  This base point where we hang out can stabilize higher or lower along the spectrum depending on what we perceive to be occurring in our life and also based on our choices.  

So what do I mean by “based on our choices”?  Its this.  When you gain perspective and find a part that can see more clearly or has more resourcefulness you now have choice.  Previous to this you only had the limited perspective of the less resourced parts view, so in essence there was no other choice.  The only choice was what that less resourced part knew.  This is often where you are at when you feel the experience of being stuck but not knowing what else you can do.  You are merged with this less resourced part and therefore there are no other choice options available yet.

However with acceptance of the part as it is a new perspective inherently arises and now you see that there is another way or something that is more true than what that limited, less resourced part was experiencing.  You are now less merged with the less resourced part and have access to more perspective, more options and more of you.  

17420701 - two doors to heaven and hell choice conceptThis is the first real place where choice arises.  Now that you have this new awareness or perspective you get to choose to see through the lens of the less resourced part or through the lens of this new more resourced part.  The choice  becomes more and more yours.  You will forget the new perspective many times and revert back to the less resourced view, but the more and more you see that you are in that less resourced perspective, the more and more you can align with the new perspective.  This does take dedication, persistence, and repetition.  You must be vigilant to yourself, noticing as soon as you can when you have dropped into a less resourceful state and perspective.  In this way you are not fixing a part, but rather gaining greater perspective which includes that previous part, but where that less resourced part is not running the perspective show.  Instead this new option for being arises more and more and you deliberately choose it more and more.  This is how you up-level yourself and how you shift your base point higher and higher along the resourcefulness spectrum.  This is the path of include and transcend.  

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

Empowered value making

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Values 

Discovering what you really care about

valuesYour values are the most important aspects of your life.  What you value is what you have, do, feel and what you are moving towards.  How many times do you say you value something but then act in opposition to that value?  For example say you value having a healthy body but you eat sweet and savory foods every day.  You really aren’t valuing health but instead valuing the sensory experience of the stuff you put in your mouth.  Or say for example you say you value personal growth and development yet you don’t take actions towards grow and development, and instead sleep, rest and non-act.  You are really valuing non-growth or sameness.

We often place a lot of judgment on ourselves when what we have in our life doesn’t align with what we think we want.  In the above examples it would be judging ourselves for eating sugar or greasy foods or for not exercising regularly or sticking to our diet.  Or in the second example it would be judging ourselves as lazy and undisciplined.  And if we don’t judge or blame ourselves than we might default to judging or blaming others or our circumstances as the reason why we don’t have or feel the way we want.    Neither of these strategies are useful in helping us get clear on our values or making choices aligned with them.  

Now all of this can be hard to see and to swallow because it makes you 100% responsible for you and it also forces you to get clear on what it is you are really valuing.  It also means that what you have in your life right now is exactly what you value even if part of you thinks it wants something different.  So what do you do with that when what you have isn’t what you really want?   Let’s talk about empowered value making…

Accepting what you truly value

Empowered value making

Once you begin to look at what you have in your life and how you feel and realize that it is this that you are valuing you begin to see how much impact and power you really have as the creator or map maker of your life.  Looking at what you have and thus what you value forces you to step into the drivers seat.  Up until the point where you really look you can still take a back seat to your life, meaning you can continue to let circumstances, situations, other people and your own judgments determine how you feel, what you have, etc.  Essentially you can continue to be disempowered in your creation, but once you see you cannot go back.  You realize its you that creates and you can’t unsee it. 

Its this seeing or looking that ultimately is the first step and moves you into acceptance of what is; even if you don’t like what is at least you are looking at and seeing it.  This is absolutely necessary for any transformation of self to occur and this step requires that you suspend all self judgement and other judgment.  If you are still judging you have not yet accepted but remain at least partially in resistance to what is (which is always some aspect of yourself that you don’t particularly like).  When you suspend judgment of yourself as lazy, or undisciplined, unloving, or mean, and simply feel and allow that part of you that may be all of those things, only then can you actually make a different value choice.  

The steps to empowered value making are as follows: 1) You get clear on what it is you are actually valuing by looking at what you have, feel and do in your life.  2) You fully accept that what you currently have or are actively moving towards is what you value, even if you don’t like that it is what you are currently valuing.  You do this by suspending judgment of yourself and what is.  3) You evaluate.  When you evaluate it boils down to one of these two paths.  First you must ask yourself “Have I been trying to force myself into valuing something different because I think I’m supposed to be different in some way?”  For example do you really value being lazy (or relaxing) rather than constantly trying to create and grow?  Maybe you actually value the rest but have been in such judgment that “rest is not acceptable.”  Or perhaps you actually value savory and sweet foods but you think you are supposed to be in tip top shape, but have had such judgment towards yourself as being “overweight” or “unhealthy”.  If you ask yourself that question and you realize that you have been valuing those things but not really allowing them, try allowing them for a bit and see how you feel.  Eat some things you always restrict, take some time off of working out strenuously, rest. 

If that is not the case and you really do value something else, then through clear seeing and feeling that you’ve been out of alignment with yourself you can now consciously and deliberately make that change in values.  Now that you are no longer in resistance to the part of yourself that you were previously judging changing your value becomes effortless.  It will still take some work, attention, commitment and focus to change habits and behaviors but it will be much easier now that you are in alignment with yourself.  

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

Use symptoms to empower your body!

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Use symptoms to empower your body! 

Elevate your body’s consciousness

Every now and then life gives us an opportunity (or struggle if you choose to see it that way) to show us areas where we still feel, think or behave disempowered.  Our bodies are often the source of such opportunities.  We have historically called those opportunities “symptoms” and have viewed them as nuisances or threats.

no way outIn general disempowerment occurs when you have an experience where you want to feel, think, see or do something and you feel like you can’t.  It is an unresourceful inner state that says “I’m powerless, helpless here” and there is no possibility that the situation or you could ever change.

Your body is always responding to your inner state or perspective (your consciousness).  How you feel determines how you feel.  Sounds logical and obvious however most people don’t really get this.  They have not been told that they are the choosers of their state and hence don’t realize that they hold the power to choose and feel differently.

Your body is a perfect “physical” mirror to help you see your unconscious patterns that are creating your current reality including how your body is functioning.   To elevate your body’s consciousness you must elevate and empower your own.

Using symptoms 

The opportunity of symptoms

The next questions to tackle then is, how to use symptoms to elevate your consciousness and empower your body?  When symptoms are “physical” we have the tendency to believe that they are real, fixed or static and require aggressive physical measures to change.  Hence the creation of our current mechanical medical model; it perfectly suited our belief systems at one point in our evolution.  We are in a new era now where we have scientifically proven research, that our nonphysical self (emotions, thoughts, soul) inform our physical self (body).  Not everyone has upgraded their belief system yet to include this new information, which is ok, we are a work in progress.

25045469 - young woman with pain in her stomach isolated over white backgroundIn order to use symptoms you must first shift your relationship to them.  We have been very focused on getting rid of symptoms as our relationship to them has been that they threaten us in some way.  Perhaps we think  they are a threat to our health or an activity we want to participate in.  The symptom however, despite what you currently believe, is not the problem.  It is only an effect of an out of alignment belief system and its only purpose is to show you that you are out of alignment.  They tell you “hey- something in your emotions, thoughts, beliefs or behaviors is ready for an upgrade”.  When you shift your perspective in this way you open the door to new possibilities.  You are elevating your consciousness right there.  When you elevate you can hear your body talk in a different way.  Instead of just hearing “this hurts”, you hear new information that may say “hey, you need to stop trying to control everything in your life, you’re making us (muscles, belly, etc.) tense up and hurt”.  Now you have more useful information that you can do something with and you are empowered because you can do something about it if you choose.  When you are empowered and make changes, your body is empowered, and it naturally begins to heal.

At Chiropractic Alchemy we specialize in helping empower people through how their body is expressing, so that you can get the insight, wisdom and create conscious change in your life.

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

Using anger productively

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Using anger productively  

Harnessing the power to transform

43775966 - angry bearded man screaming into the phonePeople use anger in a myriad of unproductive ways.  Those that express their anger unproductively use it to blame others for their problems, prove their rightness and feel in control.  People also repress their anger unproductively.  Doing this allows them to be insignificant, not take a stand for themselves or what they value and not be the authority in their lives.  Neither of these ways are healthy, nor do they harness the transformative power of anger.

One of the reasons why people don’t know how to work with their anger effectively is because it hasn’t been modeled in our culture.  We are taught that anger is bad or scary (so we repress it) or have learned that its what we need to do to manipulate a person/situation and be seen, heard and get our needs met (express unproductive).

The real purpose and power of anger is to use it to create standards for yourself and your life.  Lets say you are changing a story that you have about yourself that “you are not worthy”.  You declare a new story for yourself that now says “you are pure worth and love”.  In order to do this effectively you must first be fed up and pissed off enough that you’ve been dropping your standards on who you are up to this point.  It must become intolerable for you to entertain the story that you are not lovable.  If it is does not reach the level of intolerability you will sink back into old patterns.  Anger gives you the fuel to say, “no more, this is not good enough for me, I’m never going back.”

Permissioning & directing anger

Find your fuel

Anger does not need to be explosive to be impactful.  It does need to be direct, clear, unwavering and come from a place love for self and others.  Productive anger has the quality of being firm in what is being conveyed or upheld, and simultaneous soft in it coming from a deeply caring place of creating greater value for all involved.

People who have learned to repress their anger they can find it challenging to permission themselves to feel it.  Repressed anger can be masked in neutrality, boredom, niceness and uncertainty.  For these people, in finding their anger, they will often laugh when their anger arises to disperse their uncomfortableness with it.  People who have learned to express their anger unproductively find it difficult to soften and care about themselves and others in the midst of their outburst.  In directing their anger they will go into blame of self or others.

confident womanRegardless of how you have learned to deal with anger in the past the goal of productive anger is to help you be your own authority by moving through victimhood into empowerment.  From an empowered place you are the decision maker of what is right and wrong for you and you alone.  There is only your standards for your life and you are accountable to keep them.  It is moving through layers of conditioning about what you’ve been taught about how things work and who you are, to becoming the determiner, creator and master of your life.  Productive anger is key in this process of providing the fuel to transform the places you keep yourself small so that you can shine in your magnificence.  Using anger productively is fiercely loving yourself enough to care about your life.

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