LEARNING WITHOUT FAULT

LEARNING WITHOUT FAULT

There is no self-deficiency in learning

Learning is the natural rhythm of life.  From my perspective everything is learning.  Many of you have heard me say this time and time again.  All too often we get caught up in what is occurring, meaning the content of what is happening and what we think it means, and we forget that there is a bigger overarching learning at play.  We lose sight of the learning and begin to take the content of what’s happening seriously, as if we are going to lose something valuable if we don’t.  We think we somehow need to grasp onto the content, rather than recognize all as learning and not as something to hold onto or keep in place.  As I see it, the intention of life is learning and sharing.  There isn’t anywhere in particular to arrive or any place to get that is better than where we are now.  There is only learning at and in, each stage of our development.  

When we take the content of life seriously and forget that all is learning we tend to live in scarcity, fear, blame, fault and self-hatred.  Our life becomes a series of subtle control and manipulation attempts to make sure that we feel ok.  We compromise ourselves in order to feel safe, and escape from learning because we see it as too threatening to what we have and who we are.  We attempt to hold onto the stuff of our life, particular our identity, at all costs because we perceive threat rather than learning.  When we are confronted by learning, but choose safety instead, we walk with our guards up and defenses engaged, ready to protect ourselves from learning which we perceive as threat.  

When you remember that all is learning you instantly stop creating fault, because there is no fault in learning.  Learning does not imply deficiency, even though we relate to it as if it does.  We believe that if we don’t know or haven’t learned something then we aren’t meeting the mark, something is wrong with us, or we are behind.  We create all kind of stories that we are never going to get it, that we are bad or that no one will love us because we are undeveloped in such or such way.  We traverse the pathway of self-hatred believing that we are somehow not enough or unworthy because of the learning that is presenting itself and that we don’t already know it.  We really must stop and ask ourselves the questions: how did we become so defensive to learning and why do we have such resistance to growth, change and seeing ourselves in novel ways?  When you realize that all of your defensiveness is really just protection, protection from learning, it starts to all seem quite silly.  When the very thing we say we want is healing and growth, and yet we shut ourselves off or down from learning, we find out just how absurd all of our protection really is.   

LEARNING IN INNOCENCE 

All learning is remembering

There is an innocence, a rarified purity, at the core of each and every one of us.  It’s that which is untouched even by our own self-critical and judgmental mind.  That innocence knows only itself and its self is love.  It is the bliss that passes all understanding.  That essence so fully knows itself already because it remains untouched by all of experience.  Yet the you that you currently know yourself to be has been immersed in experience for many, many years.  Experience is content, and when content fills the screen of our awareness we lose sight of ourselves, of the pure, innocent, fully awake being that is who/what we are.  This is not a problem, but it does create the necessity for learning, for remembering ourselves.

How I see it is that all learning is remembering.  We have simply lost focus of ourselves, and therefore we get to have experiences that point us into the direction of remembrance.  Experience is learning, and all learning is remembering.  If you can grok this you can see that learning can never be based in deficiency, but rather only in forgetting or having lost focus of your essence.  There is no fault in this, there is only the game of finding your way back to yourself.  The moment you take yourself or your experience seriously, as something that needs to be fixed or solved, you’ve stopped forward momentum towards your self on the game board of life.  This is often experienced as feeling lost, stagnate, stuck, depressed, anxious, and tense.  

Innocence and purity is what you are.  Bliss and love are the core flavors or your being.  All else is experience/content that is placed on top of that.  Don’t confuse yourself for the content of your life.  Don’t misidentify yourself as the labels you or others have given you.  You are without labels.  This does not negate self-responsibility.  In fact it does the opposite.  It makes you fully responsible to your own remembering of yourself, which is the prime impulse of this entire creation.  The desire to remember ourselves is what drives this entire universe back towards itself, towards its primordial knowing.  This is what is called awakening.  Your remembering, your awakening, is not outside of your reach.  It is inside of experience.  It is the core of all learning.  If you push away learning, or you push away yourself because of learning that presents itself, than you push away your awakening of remembering more of you.  

Learn to welcome learning.  Stay in open invitation to the mirrors that show themselves to you.  They are your allies, your guides, your messengers from you to you.  They will guide you home, to yourself.  It’s impossible that any aspect of life, in its infinite expressions, could ever not be included in the all that is.  That means that all forgetting, all learning, all remembering, all of what we are now, is part of the perfect orchestration of creation.  There is no fault in your forgetting.  There is no fault in your learning.  It is as it should be.  Recognize and play the game.  Have fun.  Embrace yourself as you are now.  Nothing is lost.  All is fully complete and abundant.  Radiate and be who, what and where you are now and for eternity.  

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

Defenselessness

Defenselessness 

Beyond Self-protection

Imagine for a moment what it would be like to live defenselessly.  To not react, protect, prove, rationalize or justify yourself to anyone including your own self.  To become so completely transparent that everything moves through you and nothing sticks, lodges or festers away inside of you.  To be so open that no longer is any ounce of separation perceivable by you.  To no longer be afraid.  

We all have a different relationship to defenses.  Some of us think we need to have defenses so that we don’t get hurt physically or emotionally.  It is after all the job of our defenses to protect us from feeling pain and surviving.  Defenses get activated when we feel threat.  That threat could be to our physical or emotional survival or to our sense of self in regards to how we both see ourselves and others see us. However this all begs the question as to if there is something more than reacting to survive or to keeping our sense of self fixed, and the exploration of allowing the impact of pain rather than attempting to keep it at bay.  

You may wonder why in the world would you allow yourself to feel pain willingly whether it be physically or emotionally.  You might ask, what’s the sense in that?  Feeling pain when it’s present is the number one catalyst to healing, transformation and self-empowerment.  It is also what allows you to come back to into presence and an innerly resourceful, clear state when you feel lost and can’t find home or clarity inside of you.  Feeling pain provides the fuel that moves you into the directions where you’ve been too scared to go.  Pain, or the perception of pain, lives underneath fear.  When we don’t allow the pain that is underneath the fear, then fear runs the show of our lives.  Fear reacts.  Fear can see only a very limited perspective which includes only itself.   

It doesn’t take much of feeling pain to get us either in a state of full acceptance of what is or moving us in a new direction that we must take.  Sometimes people have an idea that they have to keep feeling pain over and over and over and just stay in a painful state indefinitely in order to heal.  This is not advisable or beneficial.  Pain is simply the catalyst or activator into healing and transformation and not what is supposed to become your lived day to day experience.  If you find yourself in a perpetual state of experiencing pain then you are mostly likely stuck in your story about pain rather than actually feeling it or you are postponing an action that you must take and not listening to the message of the pain.   

Defended vs. Closed 

Choosing openness or closedness

Defenses keep things away from us and make us unreceptive, un-influenceable, and un-feeling.  This is because a state of defense is a closed, self-contained state of being rather than open and unified.  There are times when a closed state is preferable and your capacity to discern when this is appropriate is a key factor in your personal and spiritual development.  There is also a difference between a defended state and a purely closed state.  The prime difference is choice.  In a defended state you are reactionary and not in full choice or conscious of your chosen state of being.  Meaning no matter what you try to do you can’t shift from closed back into open and you are often triggered or thrown by what is occurring.  Your reactor or survivor is running the show rather than your chooser and you are locked into the pattern.  However when you consciously choose a closed state because that is what best serves or is preferably by you in a particular situation there is no difficulty in shifting from open to closed to open again instantly and at will.  You are also not triggered or knocked out of your center.  This is because you are aware of yourself and not merged with the situation that is occurring.  This is true self-empowerment and an important stage of development.  

Being defended is the the opposite of growth.  What this means is that in order to grow and evolve, both personally and spiritually, you must find your way through your defenses.  You cannot learn when you are defended, you can only protect yourself.  One of the reasons that we often feel disconnected or that we can’t feel or see what is going on beyond our limited perspective is because we are defended in a closed off state and frequently we don’t even know that we are.  This is why learning how to tune into yourself through your body is such a vital resource in discovering your patterns of protection and defense.  Rather than speaking through words or thoughts like the mind does, the body speaks through sensation, breath, movement and energy.  It is through learning to tune into those aspects of our being that we can begin to discover where we protect, how we avoid and where we are not open or receiving energy or information.  Through this discovery of protection we can begin to make contact with fear, and the pain that is underneath that fear.  Developing the capacity to be present with the intensity of these sensations and emotions is our gateway into healing, openness and unlimited energy.

Defenselessness is our natural state.  Open, vast, receptive, and connected.  It is only because we have taken on forms that we have become identified with that we have developed defenses.  With this we’ve learned to perceive ourselves as separate from and therefore having something to protect ourselves from.  In absolute truth there is no other and on a relative level there is the appearance of other.  Don’t be swayed by the multiplicity of forms and the illusion of separateness that they create.  Look past appearances and see with the heart.  The heart sees but one, feels but one, knows but one.  Stop confusing yourself with the form of this body and come to know yourself deep to and beyond the form.  Here you will experience the freedom of defenselessness.

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

Destruction

Destruction

Tides of transformation

Hot fires flames in round shapeMost of us fear destruction.  Yet destruction is an inevitable aspect of growth. Things can not stay the same and simultaneously look or be different.  When we allow our fear of deconstruction (i.e. what we think we will lose) to reign we feel stuck, frustrated and powerless. These feelings are simply the postponement of change that must occur.  The only thing that shifts frustration is forward movement. The tendency for most is instead to move backwards into the same habituated thinking patterns because they are known rather than to push forward into the unknown.  Growth does not occur in the known.

What it boils down to is that people want to feel different or have their life be different yet expect that they can remain the same.  They project that they want the situation or circumstance to change, but deny their participation in that change. They fail to see that in every moment life (including their body) responds to them, not to some mysterious, outside, unknown force.  They avoid and deny their power rather than own their power.  The building up of frustration and stuckness rather than the alleviation of it, is what provides the energy for forward momentum.  Due to the fact that we avoid feeling uncomfortable we don’t allow the build up of tension that is required to make change.  Instead we find the most accessible ways in which we can to alleviate it.  Frequently that involves dropping into a lower state of awareness or consciousness where we feel like things are continuing to happen to us, that we are powerless, and that someone or something must fix us rather than us recognizing ourselves in the equation.

If rather than running from our uncomfortable sensations and situations we learn to move towards them, not in a way to fix or get rid of them as if they are some separate object from us, but instead to make contact with ourselves through them, we will be able to harness the energy of stuckness to move forward.  This will begin to expand our perspective of our current situation or circumstance.  The moment that we move towards rather than away from, is the moment that we stretch ourselves beyond our known.  This stretching expands our view of what we can see and allows us to revisit that which previously felt separate to us with new eyes. It allows us to see our patterns and how we are creating the circumstances and situations we’re experiencing, including what’s happening within our body, so that we can make necessary changes that are required. It is at this point that the inevitable destruction that was always eminent is now so clearly in the forefront of our awareness.  It is now no longer a choice that we can grapple with, but instead a must that we must do. 

Destroyer 

Recognizing yourself in the equation

Female with Indian feather hat and colorful makeup.Ultimately destruction is about the dissolution or breakdown of aspects of our self that no longer serve our highest good and don’t allow for optimal function of our bodies and lives.  These parts of us, or more accurately these patterns which we have identified as who we are, are often mysterious to us in the early part of transformation. We can’t yet see that we are the ones creating the circumstances and situations because we are so fused as being the pattern or part.  However when transformation moves to mid phase we begin to gain insight into what is occurring and more importantly our participation with it.  At transformation’s end phase we clearly see how we have been in charge all along and that it’s never been about the situation or circumstance, ever. 

I invite you to see from the perspective that stuckness and frustration is a gift. It is a gift from you, to you, that is showing you that some aspect of your consciousness must be made more aware.  It is the way in which you are teaching yourself to wake up.  Rather than keeping the perspective that tension is a problem or that the circumstance is a problem, see it as an opportunity for growth. Accept that destruction and change is a part of growth.  As you move into the frustration and wake up to seeing your contribution to what is occurring, you will be required to change.  Recognize your own resistance to this.  Recognize your desire to maintain sameness or perceived safety and stability rather than instability and change.  Recognize that things will come and go as required whether you like it or not.  Know that some of those things you will want to hold onto for dear life and yet they remain incompatible with who it is you are waking up to be.  To continue to hold onto those things and attempt to control external circumstances will keep you in a state of suffering and stuckness and suffering and stuckness and suffering and stuckness until the point where you have finally had enough. 

Some of us will tolerate suffering and stuckness for such a long time because we are so afraid of change, growth and what we think we will lose along the way, but change and growth is the nature of this universe. To remain the same or in resistance/fear to change when change is eminent, is nothing short of a miserable life experience as the soul cannot express through you in the ways that it desires due to your persistent attempts to try to control it.  

Nothing remains the same.  Nothing.  You can hold onto absolutely nothing. The deeper that you can accept this the more easily you will allow the process of destruction and transformation to run its course in whatever ways are needed. This will accelerate your journey as a soul who’s sole function is to expand and express.  Ultimately you are the destroyer/changer.  Destruction and change do not happen to you, you are not a victim of them, instead you initiate them because you realize that you must.  This is the realization and actualization of your power. 

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

Frustration & Stuckness

Frustration & stuckness 

The lure of temporary fixes 

stuckWe have all had the experience of frustration, which essentially is wanting our experience to be something different than it is without first fully accepting where we are at.  This often creates feelings of stuckness as we try to change, yet continue to fall back into old patterns with the inability to sustain the change we want.

Most of the time when we feel stuck and frustrated we look for the quickest path to shift the feeling because its unpleasant, and honestly who wants to feel unpleasant sensations or feelings.  If what we are feeling is a painful sensation in our body than we may go and get a massage or take a bath.  If we are feeling an uncomfortable emotion we may eat sugar, have a glass of wine or vent to a friend about what we are feeling.  All of these actions make us feel better because they are make us feel less.  They are quick fixes to getting rid of unpleasantries.

20330957 - sticking plaster on cracked egg broken healthcare concept imageNow taking baths, getting massages and having a glass of wine are not bad things.  It all depends on what the motivation behind such actions is.  If it is to alleviate something that you don’t want to feel than you are using it as a temporary fix.  Temporary fixes are just that, temporary, and they never create sustainable change.  This is why we often find ourselves back in our same old pattern the next day or week and the frustration begins to build up, until we again find something to take the edge off.  This is a pattern that most people are doing all of the time, consciously or not.   Using temporary fixes is not a bad or wrong strategy, its simply that it does not create the kind of change you are really wanting.

Fuel for transformation

Acceptance of what is provides the power to change

20296349 - girl falls from a chair in vintage roomThe seeming paradox of transformation is acceptance.  We have the tendency to think that we can’t accept what is and also want it to change at the same time.  The thing about transformation and change is that it really can’t happen until we get real with where we are at and that happens through acceptance of what is.

When we really allow ourselves to feel (accept) how something we are doing, thinking, feeling or believing is not working we have an incredible amount of fuel to make a change.  This is the opposite of using temporary fixes to feel less.  Instead you are feeling more and allowing yourself to feel it instead of resisting it.

Stage 3 of SRI is all about learning how to be with the feelings of stuckness and frustration.  This stage of care is not about feeling better necessarily, but instead about really dropping into what is not working in your life and feeling it.  When you get real with yourself in this way an amazing thing occurs, you begin to realize that you are the one that is perpetuating these habitual patterns that are not working for you.

For some this can be scary because it means that you are the one that is in charge of your life and you can no longer claim a right to victimhood, even to your body and its sensations.  For others they find this empowering  because finally they see what’s going on and realize that they deserve more for themselves and their life and there is no other choice but to change.  This begins SRI stage 4, which is about reclaiming your power and responsibility for your own life which includes your thoughts, feelings, emotions and sensations.

32868082 - young woman kicking in mid airThis is not an easy process, but it does lead to personal empowerment in relation to your body-mind-emotions, and ultimately freedom.  Instead of being at the whim of circumstances you become the chooser and decider of your life.

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

Lack is imaginary

Lack is imaginary 

Just because you don’t have something doesn’t mean it does not exist 

14396897 - happy young blonde girl opening a gift boxSay a stranger walked up to you and gave you tickets to watch your favorite musical artist at RedRocks this summer.  Prior to receiving these tickets you weren’t even aware that your favorite group was coming to town.  What a gift!  Later on that day when you get home you look in your bag for the tickets to put them in a safe place and you realize that they are not there.  After searching for hours, retracing steps and going over every possible place they could be you give up and deem that the tickets are lost forever.

The next day you go to your favorite coffee shop and it dawns on you that you took the tickets out of bag when you paid for your coffee yesterday.  When you ask the barista if they found your tickets, the barista says no, but you can feel that there is more to the story.  You can’t prove it, but you have sense that someone in that coffee shop found and took your tickets for themselves.  You feel bummed, a little angry and like you are missing out big time.

In this story it seems that you are now lacking tickets, however if you follow the story you see that the tickets have simply moved from one person, to you, and now to another person.  Before the stranger gave you the tickets you did not feel you where lacking them, in fact, you didn’t even know that your musical group was coming to town.  As you can see lack is simply a story (aka an imagination that you made up) that you don’t have something, not an actual deficiency of it existing.

Expanding your imagination

Moving from lack to always present: “I” to “We”

When something is not in our immediate experience we have the tendency to think that it is lacking, especially if we had a taste of it before and now its not here.  We do this with money, relationships, health, business and happiness.  Perhaps you see other people with the things you want or behaving in the ways you want to be in the world and you feel jealous.  Jealously is simply a desire paired with your belief that you can’t have, get or deserve what it is you want (which by the way is another made up story of lack).

To move from lack to always present (also known as abundance) requires a shift in “I” consciousness to “we” consciousness.  When you believe that you are a separate person, living in your bubble of reality, and feeling that life revolves around your story of it, then you will perceive lack.  Most people are living their lives in this way.  It drives us to protect ourselves, secure our future, and remain in survival mode perpetuating the belief that I must take care of myself to preserve my life and attain the things that I want.  It is why we do things that we don’t really want to be doing and why we suffer so greatly.

Shifting into “we” consciousness means that just because I don’t have something present in my immediate experience doesn’t mean that some other aspect of me doesn’t.  In “we” consciousness there is less distinction between me and you.  There are still two different expressions (you and me), but of one being.  It requires that you put aside your thoughts of what you need to survive or what your family needs to survive, and think bigger, include bigger.  Ask better questions.  What does humanity need to thrive?  How is humanity already thriving?  How can I appreciate that even more?  What can I give to another aspect of me?  In this way you give instead of lose something and perceive lack.  You feel appreciation of what others now have, instead of jealous of what you don’t have.  In “We” you feel intimately connected with everything else.  Your personal self becomes less relevant than your collective self.  You begin to experience love, happiness, purpose and contribution on bigger scales.

Don’t just believe me, experience this for yourself.  Start by seeing something your previously perceived as lost or lacking as a gift to someone else.  Then include yourself in someone else and begin to taste “We-ness”.

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

Feel good about being rejected

Feel good about being rejected 

Disarming your defenses

17405936 - sad little girl sitting excluded by the other kidsAt some point we have all felt the pain of being rejected.  Perhaps it was in a relationship where your partner no longer wanted to be with you, or no one seemed to want your skills or services, or perhaps your professional community or group of friend no longer included you.

Rejection can hurt like a bitch and it usually comes with a story that you are not needed, wanted, lovable or desired.  That’s where the real pain sets in.  Being rejected in and of itself is neutral.  Its in our story and our attachment to a specific outcome where we create pain for ourselves.

For example, say you go for a job interview and you really don’t care if you get the job or not.  You “get rejected” for the position and you experience neutrality rather than pain.  Now say instead you go on a job interview for your dream job.  You have more invested in achieving a certain outcome and tend to “take it personally” if the outcome is not what you desire.

When we take things personally we get defensive. We either pretend we don’t care, say we are just going to quit trying, or hopelessly try to fit in or change to get what we want at all costs.  This is because we don’t want to feel the pain inside of loss, failure or disappointment.  So the question becomes how do you relinquish attachment to an outcome and still care?

How to relinquish attachment and still care

Transform pain to pleasure

One of the most valuable (and challenging) things that I learned to do was to choose to feel good even when things seemed to not be going the way that I wanted them too.  Conceptually this may sound easy.  In practice it can feel more challenging.  Say your partner of the last 7 years comes home and unexpectedly tells you that they no longer want to be with you.  This seems devastating to you in the moment.  Your whole life crashing around you.  Everything you have worked to create seemingly going down the drain.  How could you possibly feel good?

I will share a few things with you that I’ve learned when I’ve experienced life circumstances that felt like my life was going down an out of control path.

  1. The moment you get the news something isn’t working out how you want it too, feel the pain of it.  Instead of letting your defenses mount, just feel the hurt.
  2. Next, even though you can’t see how what has just occurred is good for you, create the story in your mind that this is the best thing that could happen for all parties involved, and most importantly, believe it.
  3. Give some type of heart felt loving expression to or feel gratitude for the other party.  See how it perfectly is working in their favor (and yours though you may not see it yet) and be appreciative.

butterfly handsIf you do these “simple” steps you will feel less self-hatred (and other hatred), less displaced anger, less undesirability and more self- acceptance (instead of rejection). You will be acting out of deep care and love and it will free you up for what life wants to give you next.  Sometimes we spend so much time resisting what is that is takes years for us to accept what life wants to give us next.  Free yourself now so that you don’t spend years in unnecessary suffering.

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

Love infused physiology

Love infused physiology 

Upgrading the cells of your body

humancellsWould you like the cells of your body to function at a higher level?  Curious how?  There is much scientifically proven evidence which now indicates that lifestyle choices and emotional states influence how your cells function.  What this means is that the food you put in your body, the exercises you engage in and the emotions that you have will influence how your body functions.  And there’s more.

Science has been relatively mechanistic when it comes to how it thinks about the body.  Meaning it sees you as parts, and when one of the parts quits working, you fix it like parts on a car.  What science is now showing us, which fields like chiropractic, acupuncture and energy medicine have always known, is that there is a substance (energy) that informs the body.  This field of energy is non-physical but informs how the physical body functions.  The field has both electric and magnetic properties and is therefore called electromagnetic.

Your brain and nervous system are extremely pivotal in how your body functions, however studies now show that your heart has even greater influence.  The electrical signals that come from your heart are 60 times stronger than that of the brain and the magnetic signals are 5,000 times stronger (HeartMath Institute).  This means that activating your heart is even more important than keeping your brain active in order to produce health and longevity!

How does your heart speak?

Activating your heart

Clearly your heart is important.  The question now is ‘how do you activate it?’ Your heart speaks through feeling.  It can both sense (called intuition) and produce feeling. Your heart is like your own little portable electromagnetic sensor and generator, and powerful one at that!

You are the determiner of the feeling states your heart produces. There are 3 general feeling states:

  1. Negative: When you activate feeling in your heart that would be termed “negative” you produce disorganized signals and information, hence you feel crappy and have poor energy.  Disorganized signals sends distorted information to your brain, confuse your cells and create ill health.
  2. Neutral: When you feel neutral (meaning you are not actively producing negative or positive emotions) then your body gets neutral information and you have limited energy.  This means you have energy for the basic necessities of life and to fuel your body, but that is it.
  3. Positive: When you activate “positive” feelings with your heart, you produce highly organized information, which equates to feeling amazing and energetic rich.  Highly organized information excites your brain and improves energetic efficiency.

As crazy as this sounds, what is required is for you to feel good about feeling bad, and to actively produce positive feelings instead of being in a neutral state.  When you do this you increase the organization of your heart’s electromagnetic field, which infuses your physiology with love.

Network Chiropractic helps infuse your physiology with highly organized energy by helping you find, feel & use your heart and clears your nervous system from any interference to your heart’s abundant energetic resource.  If you would like more information on this topic Dr. Hessel will be giving a talk in the office on Wednesday March 29th at 7p on Heart Based Living & Love Infused Physiology.  Hope to see you there!

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

Value yourself enough to take care of yourself

32552197 - preventive medicine financial condition self assessment concept.Value yourself enough to take care of yourself  

How to create change and make better choices

As shocking as this may sound, many people don’t care or value themselves.  When you don’t value yourself you make poor choices for your health and your life because you have an underlying belief that it (meaning you) doesn’t really matter anyways.

The fastest way to create change and improve the health of our nation is by getting people to care about themselves enough to take care of themselves. Making sure people know they have something of value to contribute by being alive, and that they are worthy & lovable. When people know their inherent worth and value, just watch how their health improves, how they make better choices that support their vitality and ability to contribute their gifts.

We currently live in a system that thinks medicating and numbing all of our uncomfortable sensations, feelings and thoughts will heal us, when indeed it is the exact opposite.  When we numb feeling all the “bad” things we think about ourselves and don’t get the opportunity to feel and disprove them as true.  They lurk in the background without any momentum available to create change.  You must feel it to heal it!  When you start allowing yourself to feel again you begin to realize things (meaning you) aren’t as bad as you originally thought they were.

handsmakingheartBenefits of self-love

Vibrant health

The benefits of self-love, value, and worth are no small thing.  If you want extraordinary health and an amazing life you must get this.  This is not new age fluff.  It is the real deal.  Love is the only thing that will heal you ever.  Period.

Think of a time when you first fell in love with someone.  Remember how amazing you felt.  Everything worked easier and better.  What happened in this state is that you allowed yourself to feel love as reflected to you from another.  The secret is you don’t need another person to permission yourself to feel this way, you can be your “other” when you see your value and inherent worth.

There is a basic fear in many of us that we are empty inside, that there is nothing special about us and that we have no gifts or talents.  We are constantly trying to improve ourselves, learn more things, get more degrees, so that we can prove to ourselves that there is something of value inside of us.  Society praises us for this, so our behaviors get reinforced.  The problem with this is that after attaining all of this knowledge/skill we still feel empty inside because we haven’t learned the most basic thing of all, which is that just through your mere presence alone you are everything.  You don’t need special training or skills for this one.  It is simply who you are.  You are the energy that animates your body and the universe.  That energy is love.  It is what/who you are.  When you know this you will feel silly ever having believed you were anything else.  Your body will heal, your emotions will lighten and your mind will become clear.

The core essence of my mission on this earth is help people remember who and what they are.  Nothing is more exciting to me then seeing another gain clarity, find their heart again and heal like crazy.

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

What does your spinal diagnosis say about you?

44785944 - attractive woman with back pain at home in the bedroomWhat does your spinal diagnosis say about you?  

There are hundreds of official diagnoses when it comes to spinal conditions.  People are most familiar with low back pain, disc herniations, cervical or lumbar radiculopathies, scoliosis, degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis and arthritis of the spine.  Each one of these has a different mechanism for how it shows up in the body.  The aim of modern medicine is to determine which condition is present based on signs and symptoms so that proper procedure can be performed.

People with spinal conditions often turn to a chiropractor when they 1) don’t want to have a surgery that their physician has recommended or 2) their medical doctor has told them that there is nothing else they can do for them except for pain medications.

One of the reasons that chiropractors are successful at helping people in these situations is because we look at the entire spinal system, not just where it hurts or has a “problem”.  We also evaluate the biomechanics of the spine, posturing, behaviors, thoughts and emotions that contribute to what is showing up in your spine.

There are no quick fixes.  Even if you choose to have a spinal surgery, if you don’t simultaneously make some changes in your life, your situation will likely not improve.  I believe this is one reason why so many back surgeries are unsuccessful.  Secondly, when you fuse or alter one part of the spine it will produce changes in how other parts of the spine function, which is why people often develop pain in previously asymptomatic areas of the spine after a spinal surgery.

How can something so gentle and non-invasive help?

Debunking the force myth 

We tend to think that if something physical is expressing in our body than we need something really physical to fix it.  There is also the idea that the more aggressive we are in our approach the more likely we will be at getting rid of it.  In this way of thinking the more force, aggression, doing or invasiveness = better results.

A-P-103Have you ever had the experience when you were trying to accomplish something, but you just couldn’t figure out how to do it?  You tried all your old ways of accomplishing, but nothing was working.  After exhausting yourself doing things and stressing out about it you talked with a friend to share your frustration and perhaps get some advice.  Your friend did not offer any advice but instead held an “invisible” space for you to talk while they listened.  At the end of the conversation you did not have an answer but you felt more spacious, clearer, and relaxed.  Your frustrations were heard.  The next day you went back to your project and saw a new perspective that you had not seen before, and alas you made some forward progress.

Your body works in much the same way.  When someone is present with your body, without trying to fix it, your body changes how it functions, postures and holds itself.  Chiropractic may be less aggressive and forceful than surgery or chemical alteration through pharmaceuticals, however when applied with presence its effects are much more profound.  The amount of presence you have in any endeavor is inversely proportionally to the amount of force you need.  The spine and nervous system respond to presence and the body will self-organize, self-regulate and self-heal when in the presence of presence.

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

Pain-free ≠ healthy body

Pain-free ≠ healthy body 

What does it really mean to have a healthy body?

I often hear people say to me, “I don’t need a chiropractor because I don’t have back pain.” While being pain free is nice, it doesn’t mean that your body is healthy and functioning at its highest level.  Pain is usually the last indication that something significant is occurring in your body.  If you wait  until you feel pain in your body to tell you that something is going on, you’re not paying attention to critical cues along the way.

body-painNow pain is not necessarily a bad thing either.  What it is, is a warning sign, a message that says, stop what you are currently doing and do it different.  When you don’t heed the message and continue your life in the same manner you end up going down a spiral cascade to less and less aliveness and participation with life.

To have a healthy body simply means that you are responsive to its cues  Your body is incredibly resilient and adaptable.  When you are responsive, by listening and taking action to make needed changes your body naturally heals itself.  You will know you’ve made the correct change because you will experience more energy, vitality, openness and participation with life.

Why a healthy spine is critical for a healthy body

Your ability to listen and take action

Most people don’t understand the importance of your spine in regards to the health of your entire body.  Your spine is not just the bones in your back.  It is also the muscles and ligaments that support your spine, and more importantly it is your spinal cord, which is the structure that the bones protect.

48864734 - human spine x-ray view, 3d renderYour spinal cord is your life line.  It is the communication link between your brain and your body.  Without it you do not exist.  It is also what allows you to pay attention, be aware of yourself, the sensations and cues your body gives you and to to take needed actions to change behaviors and habits that don’t optimally serve your body or you.  It is also the communication link between your brain and every muscle, organ and cell in your body.  If your spine is not healthy your ability to listen and respond is impaired and thus your health and function impaired.

So how do you know if your spine is not healthy if it doesn’t hurt?  Tune into how tense you feel, how easy is it for you to relax, to sleep, to digest and eliminate your food, to turn off your thoughts, to think clear, to take action and make changes in your life.  If any of these things are challenging for you, your spine is not expressing full health.

One of the things that I do in my office is assess the health of the spine and its ability to help you be responsive and take action in your life.  Get the health of you spine checked by a chiropractic professional to ensure its functioning to support you optimally.

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