energy healing boulder co

Bound & Unbound Energy

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BOUND & UNBOUND ENERGY 

Intelligence and it’s creations

We have all heard that everything is energy.  It is one of those things that we know conceptually, but perhaps haven’t given much contemplation as to what it actually means and how it impacts our lives.  You might be someone who feels that the world of energy is a bit elusive to you as it is framed in healing and spiritual contexts.  For example maybe you feel like you’ve never felt energy before or at least have never experienced it like other people seem to experience it.  Yet if everything is energy then you’ve undeniable experienced it.  Science tells us energy equal mass times the speed of light squared.  This means that matter and energy are interchangeable.  They are different expressions of the same thing, so if you’ve experienced mass, which again you clearly have, then you’ve experienced energy.

You may then wonder why the experience of energy seems to be different for you then it appears to be for others.  This brings us to the conversation of bound and unbound energy.  Bound energy is energy that is organized into a form.  Forms are both gross/dense in nature, meaning they are physical say like our human body, buildings and mountains.  Pretty much everything we consider to be an object in a dense form.  Forms are also subtle in nature, meaning emotions, thoughts, beliefs, ideas, and concepts are all forms as well.  If there was no binding of energy there would be no forms at all.  This means we wouldn’t be able to create anything, including a thought, idea, emotion or any kind of physical form. When there is no form to energy, meaning it is not organized into a specific configuration, then this is what is called unbound energy.  You can also think of unbound energy as  the energy of potential.  It is what is available to create or manifest with and from.  

So what organizes unbound energy into forms?  The answer is Universal Intelligence.  Other terms for this are, pure awareness or being.  That which is, knows, be’s and exists, is full of all of the information that creates this entire universe that we experience, including what we experience as ourselves.  Sometimes people will refer to this universal intelligence as the codes for creation, the blueprint of the universe or God/Goddess.  This is why meditators seek to empty their minds out from all concepts, including thoughts, feelings, and sensations, because as we empty our minds out of all of this content we can notice the pure awareness or pure being that remains.  Even though initially this may seem boring for some, or like “nothing is happening”, “nothing is happening” is the gateway into the infinite source of intelligence that creates this universe, and beyond that what you actually are.    

RETURN TO FREEDOM 

Unwinding back into our original state

To recap, bound energy is that which is organized into both subtle and dense forms.  Unbound energy is the energy of potential, which is available for forms to be created out of, and that which organizes or binds energy is called universal intelligence.  Without the binding of energy we would have no manifest creation.  “Creation,” if you will, would just be pure being, there would be no substance to it like we currently experience.  There would be no objects, other people, ideas, thoughts, feelings, sensations, or anything at all.  It would just be being.  Many people say that creation was created so that this original being could experience itself through different expressions of itself.  This is where oneness or primordial essence begins and ends, in pure being, in itself.  Everything is born out of being and will eventually return back to being.  It is also often said that everything is an illusion, meaning that all of creation and the forms that get created mask or hide that which is their true nature.  This is why if we focus solely on the form, like our human mind mostly does, but we don’t see through the form to the essence of what it is made of, then we are lost in the illusion so to speak.  

Let us revisit bound energy again and make some distinctions.  Bound energy can have varying degrees of boundness inside of its forms.  For example if your spinal cord is very tense and tight it contains more bound energy than a relaxed spinal cord does.  This means that your experience of your physical body will seem more dense and solid if your spinal cord is taut than if it is relaxed.  Within subtler forms such as thoughts or emotions, some thoughts are more binding than other thoughts.  Same is true for emotions.  It is quite obvious that emotions such as joy and giddiness feel lighter than anger or sadness.  Joy and giddiness contain more unbound energy and therefore we feel freer when we feel those emotions than when we feel anger or sadness.  It is also obvious that the thought “the world and everyone in it is out to get me” feels more constricting and defeating then the thought “everything is working out for me.”  Again there is more energy available in the second thought, more possibility and more light.  The degree to which we pay attention to these nuances of how we operate will determine the energy and reality we experience.  We don’t experience reality, but rather we experience our interpretation of reality based on the available amount of energy we have access to.  If you aren’t experiencing the reality or the energy state that you want to it’s not because it’s “reality’s” fault, it’s simple due to how and where you place your focus.  

The more unbound we become, the more we feel what we think of as “energy”, both in physical and spiritual ways.  There is no such thing as a person that doesn’t feel energy.  We are all experiencing energy all of the time.  It’s simply a matter of how bound or unbound it is.  Doing practices such as meditation give us an opportunity to completely rest in the unbound nature of the original self, which is limitless, infinite and all knowing.  Then doing the inner work of feeling our heavier emotions (rather than avoiding them or pretending they don’t exist) so that we can unbind the energy of them, and shifting our focus from our denser thoughts to thoughts that feel lighter, allows us to experience those more spiritually free states.  What we call more spiritual is simply less bound.  Those states are even more bright with light and energy, and it is where we feel the most free.  In some way everyone is seeking this.  The return to our original state; perfect, whole and free.

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Spinal Analysis Chiropractic, Boulder, Colorado

Embodiment

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EMBODIMENT 

Finding the ground

Embodiment.  Seems like in some way we are all on a quest for greater embodiment.  To be present, in this moment, participating in the full experience of life.  In spiritual circles embodiment is a popular topic and is often referred to as being “in” our body, feeling the sensations, and moving our bodies with the inner rhythms of our being.   It seems that the aim of the embodiment movement is the shift from living in our head/thoughts into a more visceral, connected or integrated experience of existing.  Along with embodiment comes the idea of being grounded, which we often associate with a down or into our physical body direction.  

For many people there is an experience of overwhelming activity in their day to day, which can feel scattering, lead to being hyper-mentally focused, and or an experience of being “up”.  This up or scatter is what people attempt to bring down through embodiment practices.  These practices are incredibly beneficial, particularly if we feel disconnected from our physicalness or from our feeling body, but they are not the full picture of embodiment.  While they can greatly support us feeling more alive and engaged if we are stuck in our heads, the overarching goal of existing is not to be more “in” our physical body.  Rather the goal, so to speak, is to be or express more completely in and through all our bodies, of which the physical body is but one expression of who we are.  

The most pertinent questions here now are how do we be grounded, energized and expressing through all of our bodies?  And how do we become aware of the life and intelligence in all aspects of ourselves?  Our physical, emotional, mental and soul bodies are all vital expressions of our beingness.  True embodiment is being present in all directions and levels of ourselves.  Being grounded up, down, in and out.  If we are too physically focused our spiritual bodies might not be energized.  If we are too spiritually focused our physical, mental or emotional bodies might not be energized.  There can be any combination of these occurring.  You might wonder how you would ground up and out, since this is not the typical direction that people associate with the ground.  As a reframe, think of ground as everywhere and more as a state of being rather than as a dense form.  Throughout the entire universe there is ground.  Ground is not just down into the earth, but it is water, it is sky, it is the infinite cosmic expanse.  Ground is also not just physical, but it is subtle and etheric.  In fact the most coherent and stable ground is pure light itself; ever present, always here and the source of all life. 

GROUND OF BEING 

All bodies

If ground is everywhere, then you can experience ground in your physical body, ground in your emotions, ground in your thoughts and ground in your soul.  You might wonder what it looks like to be grounded in all of your bodies.  Being grounded in your physical body means your sensory-motor skills are intact and things are running smoothly with all of your physical body parts.  You are also not overly tense and breath moves freely through your body.  Being grounded in your emotional body means you know what you are feeling and you can feel your emotions when they are present.  You don’t try to think your emotions and you are not numb to them either.  Rather emotions are present, you feel them and the energy of them moves.  Being grounded in your mental body means that you have clear, coherent and organized thoughts.  You can pay attention to detail, follow things through and also see the larger perspective of how things fit together and impact each other.  Being grounded in your soul body means you know your multifaceted, multidimensional nature.  You feel connected to your heart and the hearts of others through yours.  You know knowledge without needing to learn it in book or from someone else.  You regularly feel ecstatic states of bliss and rapture.

Each of our bodies do have different directionality, frequency and relative size or distance.  Physical body density is slower.  You can see the size of this body with your physical eyes and the directionality is down/in.  The emotional body is less dense, but still has substance or thickness to it even in its non-physicalness.  Emotions can feel heavy or light and the direction can be up or down.  The mental body is less physical as we don’t directly see thoughts with our eyes like we do our physical body.  The frequency of thoughts is higher than emotions or the physical body, and the direction tends to be up.  The soul body is the most subtle of our bodies.  It has the fastest frequency, and is the largest and most expansive of all of our bodies.  Its direction is up and out, and eventually all pervasive as you reach full fusion or unity.  I share all of this because as you learn to ground in each of your bodies, knowing how they move and where to find them is useful.  If you are constantly drawing your energy and awareness down and in, then it may be more challenging to find coherent thought or expansive states of unified bliss and rapture.  Opposite of that if you are always up and out, your physical body or emotional body may be a bit more elusive to you.  

Embodiment includes of all you, in all directions and all rhythms.  Sometimes you may need to find up, at other times down, sometimes in and at other times out, until eventually you are rested in the allness of everythingness that has no direction and no distinction of bodies because it is just one unified whole.  This is the ground of all being.  The source from which all life sprouts forth from and returns to.  The source of existence and existing.  We are all already this.  The journey of embodiment is the expression of this source into infinite forms (ie. what we call creation or the universe), until the eventual return of the essence of these forms dissolves back into the source from which it emerged.  Returning to itself.  Expanding out and contracting back in.  Embodiment is the creation, it is the expansion out.  The return to source is the dissolution of all bodies and forms, aka disembodiment, but that is a topic for another time.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Spinal Analysis Chiropractic, Boulder, Colorado

Committing to Love

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COMMITTING TO LOVE 

Not as easy peasy

People who see themselves as being on a spiritual path, often have as one of their top values, to come from love in all things.  The desire to feel blissful, juicy, aliveness in every single moment, as the baseline for existing.  We strive to be connected, in flow, with our hearts open and unshakably rested as a presence of loving goodness.  Even though most of us feel a strong desire for this, and to share this love with the world, many of us are not really committed to it.  It sounds good in theory.  We might even start imagining the creation of our next program or offering to help the world somehow be more loving.  We get excited about the possibilities of how beautiful and peaceful life would be if everyone came from love.  If the whole wide world was one big heart centered yum fest where everyone was supporting, looking out and caring about everyone else.  Like a magical island where ecstatic rapture and divine bliss are the norm.  Oh yes we all want to live there, or I should say we all want to live there in theory.

The reality is that most of us don’t really want it.  Why do I say that you ask?  I say it because we are not choosing it.  For 99% of the people on this planet this is not a lived reality.  It’s just a concept.  A fantastical idea that feels good to think about.  Perhaps we choose that all embracing, allowing and present love for moments, like when we are at a retreat, program, festival or on some exotic vacation.  But when we come back to “reality” or whatever we mean by our more ordinary lives, we find ourselves stuck inside of our typical triggered responses to the movements of life.  Something upsets us and we get pissed.  Things don’t turn out how we had hoped and we see failure and doom.  Everything feels like hard work or an uphill battle.  We judge ourselves and others when things don’t live up to our expectations. We can’t stop thinking about stuff, tense up, plot for retaliation or desperately try to find way out of it all.  

I am not suggesting that it’s easy peasy to choose love.  The truth is, when life is not feeling like we are merrily floating down the stream of it, it is hard to choose love.  Love seems like the furthest option from our reach.  We are hooked into our story about what life is supposed to be rather than choosing to love it for what it is.  When things feel unjust, unfair, not right or unwelcome, or when we feel unappreciated, not seen or undervalued, choosing love is hard.  In choosing love our egos take a hit.  It seems we have to swallow something that tastes really, really bad.  How do we let go of that thing we keep saying we want to let go of, but which we keep holding onto for dear life?  We let go by letting go.  We feel the little micro ego death that comes with it.  The death of not getting what we want or what we feel like we deserve.  Then we experience the openness that remains when we relinquish.  That openness, which is the fertile field of bliss and rapture.   

NORMALIZING RAPTURE 

The doorway in

If more people were choosing love, then more of us would be experiencing ecstatic rapture as the norm rather than an unpleasant, drab, harsh world.  Magical rapture would be our ordinary reality.  It is however quite remarkable how much we don’t allow ourselves to feel good.  It’s like we all have this internal goodness meter, and we can only let it go so high before we start to find ways to make ourselves feel not quite as good.  A little bit of joy and happiness is acceptable throughout our day, but not too much.  A tad of pleasure and ecstasy is ok from time to time, but not too often and as long as no one else sees you experiencing it.  This is the inner reality most of us live.  Can you even remember when the last time was that you allowed yourself to feel uncontrollably ecstatic in front of others, outside of an alcohol or drug induced state?  Before you started to be self-conscious and began to value fitting in and caring about what others think of you.

What if we didn’t need to find ways to feel less good?  What if we didn’t get hooked anymore into our stories about what is or isn’t, in order to bring our state of being down?  What if we were more committed to being love than to receiving what we want or getting justice?  When we commit to love we bring ourselves into the reality of rapture, of direct commune with the divine, not as a concept or idea, but as our very being.  There is nothing outside of us required for this to become our experience.  It is an inner commitment, an inner choice, by you and for which only you can make.  Containers can be set to deepen the inner permission, but you are the permission giver.  

The permission to feel good, while simultaneously letting things go that we don’t really want to hang onto anyways, is the doorway to rapture.  Rapture simply because you want to choose it rather than what your mind tells you that you should choose.  Some people might think that this naive or stupid, and your mind will likely fight you some on this, insisting that you are letting things go that you shouldn’t.  Your habituated thoughts will attempt to find ways to get you to hold on, to fight, to seek righteousness, because your thoughts think they know how to get you what you want, but they always come up short.  What you want lies beyond them, in the world of the heart.  

While committing to love and living from the heart may feel like defeat to the mind, the result is that you get to experience that state of rapturous delight the moment you choose love.  You don’t have to wait until your thoughts agree, or until your physical reality says so.  You get to experience it the moment you decide to let go of your current commitment to discontent, frustration and misery.   While those states are familiar and addicting because we have normalized them as our reality, we can begin to normalize rapture now.  Rapture is our nature.  It’s what we are made of. Unification with our essence is rapturous union with the divine.  Committing to love in face of everything is the doorway in.

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Spinal Chiropractor & Spiritual Guide, Boulder, Colorado

Magic of the Spine

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MAGIC OF THE SPINE 

Conduit between spirit and form

You might not have heard or known, but your spine is a conduit for magic.  Real, live, magic.  Yes, that’s right.  Perhaps you’ve only thought of your spine as just a bunch of bones that make up your back, but there is much more going on back there then what meets the ordinary eye.  First of all your spine is not just a bunch of bones.  Yes there are bones, lots of beautiful bones, but the bones aren’t even the most exciting structure back there.  The bones house or encase the spinal cord.  Thank goddess for those bones.  We need them in order to protect that spinal cord.  The spinal cord is that ever so precious structure that allows communication between spirit and body to take place.  Yep you read that correctly, spirit communicates to your body right through your glorious spinal cord.  

A few definitions first.  What is spirit?  Spirit is intelligence.  It is awareness.  It is the source of all knowing and life.  It is all information that is available for everything in creation.  It is breath.  It enlivens or gives life to all forms.  What is body?  Body is form.  It is where awareness (ie. spirit) has localized and configured into a specific structure that we call body.  It is also typically what we identify as ourselves.  Sometimes we like to differentiate our brain from our body, but the brain is body as well.  It’s form equally enlivened or organized by the intelligence of spirit.  Just like your liver has the functions of detoxification and bile production, your brain has the functions of memory, thinking, personality and so many other functions, many of which are not even activated or awake.

The tone of the structures of the body determine how spirit moves through it.  What does that mean?  It means that the positioning, holding and posturing of the tissues of the body, directly influence how intelligent awareness can enliven, move through, and organize them.  The spinal cord is the central tissue structure in the body, which connects to and has immediate impact on every single structure inside of the body.  The tone of the spinal cord determines how information gets communicated to the liver, kidneys, muscles, brain and everything else in the body.  This is why the spine is a conduit for magic.  It provides the path for how spirit moves through, energizes and wakes up all the functions that these bodies have.   

KUNDALINI ENERGY

Movement of the spine

It is no accident that our chakras (i.e. our body’s energy centers) are aligned along the vertical axis of the spine, and why yogis and meditators pay special attention to their posture and unwinding tissue tension in order to achieve desired states of consciousness through their practices.  If you are familiar with yogic Indian teachings you’ve likely heard about kundalini energy.  It is described as an energy that is coiled in the shape of serpent at the base of the spine.  It lies dormant there until the right conditions for when it can begin to rise up the spine.  As it rises up the spine it activates, clears and awakens the chakras that are aligned along the vertical axis.  As each chakra is enlivened, functions of the body and its various components can change.  New sensory faculties can awaken, different perspectives can be seen, personalities can alter, until Nirvana or enlightenment is experienced.  For some this experience is the natural progression of inner work and spiritual discipline.  For others it can occur spontaneously during energy work, ingestion of medicinal substances, sexual experiences, or in the presence of someone who has activated their own kundalini.  

In Network Spinal Analysis we use the term “Somatopsychic Wave” rather than kundalini energy, but regardless of the term used, it is pointing to the same thing.  Network Spinal supports the unwinding of the tonal tissue patterns in the spinal cord.  When those tissue patterns begin to unwind, the energy that sits at the base of the spine begins to awaken.  With that awakening there is a rising of energy up the spine.   For some this is a gradual, subtle sensation of movement from deep inside of the body.  For others it is an intense expression of movement that seems to be beyond the physical body and can be clearly seen by the visual eye.  

Kundalini is a force of instability.  Its purpose is to clear stuff out and shake stuff up.  It destabilizes tension patterns so that spirit can move through and more fully infuse, invigorate and activate these bodies of ours.  It clears the way for intelligence to freely circulate throughout.  It helps support personal transformation and spiritual growth.  It assists in the embodiment of our soul and states of ecstatic rapture.  Physically it allows life force intelligence to flow to our organs and glands.  Emotionally it helps us open into and feel our emotions.   Mentally it clears the way for more confidence, brightest and clarity.  Soulfully it helps us find the center of ourselves, our inner knowing, our truth and our heart.  

It’s evident, our spines are downright magical.  When the tone of the tissues of the spinal cord change, so does our entire experience of life, for better or worse.  The body and all of its components come alive because of spirit, and spirit organizes the body.  When was the last time you thought of your body as spirit’s home rather than as your personal identity?  Heaven is already on earth by the simple fact that spirit enlivens a body.  We are everything we’ve been waiting for and everything we’ve been waiting for has been here all along.  

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

See As Your Higher Self Sees

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SEE AS YOUR HIGHER SELF SEES 

Working with discontent

Many of us relate to our presence and purpose for being here on this earth as bridging the gap between spiritual knowing and human experience.  But what does that really mean, and beyond meaning, what does it require of us?  We may be aware of our higher self, or of a self that sees and knows that all is well and perfect.  While the perspectives and knowings of this self are easy to tap into when we like what we see and feel inside of our human experience, our higher self’s perspectives and knowings just as easily go out the window the moment we experience discontent, powerlessness, irritation, sadness or anything else that we don’t like feeling.  The heaviness of heart that arises in the face of experiencing what we don’t want or prefer to, disconnects us from the view that our higher self sees.

Likely most are familiar with heaviness of heart.  For many it may actually be all they know.  Some people live in a perpetual state of discontent and it is so familiar that they don’t even realize they are living it.  Discontent has simply become their mode of operation.  This state of heaviness comes with the point of view that if only things, people and experiences could somehow be different, then everything would be better.  While this point of view may be valid, things might be better if they were different than they are, it doesn’t change the fact that things are as they are now.  Our hoping that things will be different keeps us from accepting things as they are.  The paradox of this all is that things often don’t shift or change until they are accepted in their current configuration.

If we want to bridge the gap between our spiritual knowings and human experiencing we must bring our spiritual knowings into this human experiencing.  That doesn’t mean teaching others about what the most enlightened perspective is from our point of view.  Rather it means seeing spirit inside of this human experience exactly as it is currently configured.  While you may have incarnated to do or create particular things, your intention for doing those things should simply be because it brings you joy to do them, not because you think they are going to fix this world or the people in it.  The people and the world don’t need fixing, they only need love.  If you really tune into your true desire for existing it is likely only to be and share love through your creations and not to fix anything.  Fixing brings a weight, pressure or burden with it, where creating just to express and share love, feels joyous and light.    

BEYOND UNDERSTANDING

Avoiding death and failure

One of the prime things that keeps us out of accepting what is now, is that we don’t understand why things are the way they are.  Especially if we have vision and can see all of the grand possibilities for what the human experience could be for ourselves or others, we get stuck in our own confusion about the way it is and needing to make sense of it all.  This needing to make sense of it or coming to terms with the state of whatever it is you are currently experiencing in your reality, postpones your acceptance of it.  Sometimes acceptance feels like death.  That death is the death of the dream or the vision that you are wishing was, rather than what is.  Sometimes acceptance feels like failure.   The failure of making happen what you think you were supposed to make happen, or things being what you hoped they would have been or are. 

We avoid feeling failure and death at all costs, hence the postponement of acceptance.  The thing is that all we are really avoiding are our ideas about what is or is supposed to be.  If we let go of our ideas about perfectionism, idealism, better than and the like, then we can actually experience those things inside of our current experience.  It is our ideas about what is or what is supposed to be, that keep us from bridging the gap of spiritual knowing and human experiencing.  These ideas or ideals keep us from seeing as our higher self sees.  

I am not suggesting that you lower your standards.  Quite the opposite.  You must continue to discern what feels aligned for you to participate with or not.  Beyond that I invite you to raise the standards for how much love you can be and see inside of what is.  Your reality responds to how you see it.  If there are aspects of your reality that persist in the ignorance of themselves and deny the love you see them as, then you may find it appropriate to not directly engage with those elements.  Not from a place of resistance, frustration or irritation, but rather from a moving towards or along the path where the love you see everything as is available to be received.  You don’t need to exhaust yourself in attempting to have love be received.  Rather allow it to simply be an invitation or offering that can be received or not, and move along your path appropriately.  There is no failure when you come from love, even if things don’t match up to how your ideas think they should be.  

Understand that you don’t need to understand why it all is the way it is.  Why things have occurred or do occur as they do.  Understanding is not required in order to love.  Love is how your higher self sees.  It sees and knows all as love.  Even if there are elements or aspects of creation that are ignorant to knowing themselves as love, still your higher self sees and knows it all to be love.  Next time you experience or see ignorance inside of this human experience, simply remind yourself that ignorance too is love, love that has forgotten itself.  Turn your heart towards love and move in the direction that is most aligned for you.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Chiropractic & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado