3 simple steps to find your heart

50990725 - the 3d heart lost his wayFinding your heart  

Where did it go in the first place?

Wouldn’t it be nice to find and live from your heart all of the time?  But what happens when life is hard, people are unfriendly, and things aren’t working out like you want them too?  How do you find your heart despite the storm?

Sometimes life seems to spiral out of your control.  Situations arise that you don’t like or agree with and somewhere in the mess you fall out of your heart.  Even though you are aware that you’re in a downward spiral you can’t seem to muster the energy you need to get back into your heart.

Falling out of your heart is not a “bad” thing.  In fact I have found that it is necessary at times during this life’s journey in order to learn lessons that have then allowed me to see a new perspective, disprove a limitation and have greater appreciation for life.  However, having a way to reconnect to your heart and its intelligence at will is key to feeling empowered even when you feel disconnected from your heart.

Truths about love

The energy of the heart is love and there are some fundamentals to reveal about love. The first is to know is that love is always there.  Sometimes your focus is somewhere else, but love never left.  It is always present.  The second truth is that love has no judgments or conditions.  Even if you don’t agree or approve of yourself, or another person or their actions it is still possible to love yourself and others.  Lastly, love is abundant.  If you give a little away to someone you don’t run out of it.  There is no shortage in supply, only a shortage in the act of giving & receiving it.

3 simple steps to find your heart

In those times when love has seemed to disappear from your life or being there is an easy method to refocus and find your heart again.

found-heart

  1. Slow down.  The hearts pace is slower pace then the active (overactive) mind.  In order to step into the rhythm of the heart we need to stop filling every moment with an action or thought.
  2. Acknowledge something that feels good.  This may be a memory that makes you smile or gratitude for someone/something in your life.  Bring this into the forefront of your awareness.
  3. Allow yourself to feel good.  As you tap into and acknowledge something that feels good let your being feel it too!  Spread it through your body.  Receive it.

With these 3 simple steps you can refocus and reconnect to your heart, which makes everything flow with more effortless ease and grace.

Dr. Amanda Hessel, DC

Tension is not your enemy

15832931 - woman having headache isolated on blackTension is not your enemy… 

Its your protector

Have you ever been aware of tension in your body?  The type of tension I’m talking about here is an  underlying tension that is consistently present.  You might feel it predominantly in your legs, neck, back, head, belly, jaw, or maybe even your entire being.   Perhaps you became more aware of this tension after an injury, or a life change or challenge, or whenever you feel “stressed”.

Have you ever wondered why this tension is present and what purpose it serves you?  Typically we are so busy trying to “unwind” and “destress” our tension away that we never stop to wonder why its really there at all.

Tension is energy that is bound or held “in place” in the body.  It serves the purpose to hold reality “in place” for you so that you can function in your day to day life without feeling too much.  Essentially so that you can keep going despite what is happening inside or outside or you.  It’s your shield, your protection from things that might potentially hurt you.  Oddly enough holding tension makes you feel safe and secure and like you are in control of your life.

39405932 - outer space. meditation. woman silhouette. vector illustrationTension

The barrier between you & YOU

The intention of tension is to serve you by helping you feel less discomfort, but there are also drawbacks to its presence.  Tension puts your body in “on guard” mode and triggers something called your sympathetic nervous system.  This is also known as the fight or flight response. In this state your body can’t physically heal, its hard to think clearly and emotionally you feel either overwhelmed or completely numb.  Connection to yourself or others, which is one of our most basic human needs, is impossible when you feel tense.

Tension is also the biggest barrier between your little personality “you” and your bigger all knowing “YOU”.  You can think of this as your higher self, soul, spirit, purpose or passion.  This is experienced as dullness, flatness, mundane routines, and fatigue.

Pulling up tension gives the “illusionary” feeling of control and blocks you from feeling some discomfort, but it also disconnects you from the things that make your heart light up and make your life worth living.  Again tension is not the enemy, so trying to get rid of it by rubbing or stretching it out is only a temporary bandaid.  What is required is an ability to remain open (not tense) and drop into uncomfortable feelings and sensations when they arise.  Instead of guarding/protecting yourself, you move forward through whatever is happening without getting stuck inside of it.

One of the things that I help people achieve is an open nervous system so that the body can stay open  and feel life as it occurs.  Through having an open nervous system your body can heal quicker, function better and experience higher states of well-being.

Dr. Amanda Hessel, DC

Stop avoiding uncomfortable sensations

28919296 - concept of fear with businessman like an ostrichStop avoiding uncomfortable sensations  

… and liberate yourself

Uncomfortable sensations make us panic, whether we are are aware of it or not.  It is a biological reaction that our nervous system has in response to discomfort.  We do everything we can to avoid uncomfortableness.  If something hurts (physically or emotionally) we tend to jump over it, around it or look the other way.  We see this in our over-medicated medical culture.  Every time an unpleasant sensation arises we try to find something to stop it and get it to go away.  This is incredibly unfortunate.  This pattern of avoiding and getting rid (though may produce temporary relief), overtime creates numbness, flatness and disconnection as we search for more methods, tools, or procedures to stop us from feeling  uncomfortable things.

This will probably not be a surprise to you, but as you numb away the uncomfortable sensations, you also numb away the range of pleasant and blissful sensations that you can feel.  You narrow your range of feeling.  Because the mind and body are connected I see this mirrored in the body as people experiencing a limited range of motion in their body.  This can manifest as decreased flexibility in the spine or decreased motion in a specific joint such as the knee, shoulder, hip, wrist or hand.

Learning to be with uncomfortable sensations is a skill

You can do it in 1, 2, 3

Because we spend so much energy and time trying to avoid what is present (especially when its uncomfortable) we often feel exhausted.  Then when we finally hit a crisis point we look for the easiest method to restore us back to at least a functional level again because we don’t have much energy left for anything else.  This is the primary reason most people never fully heal.  They get themselves back to functioning and forget to address the underlying causes that got them into crisis in the first place.  Then 6 months down the road they find themselves in a new or similar crisis.  Its a vicious cycle.

The good news is that you can learn to be with uncomfortable sensations.  You can even start today!  Here are 3 easy steps to get started.

  1. Next time you have an uncomfortable sensation, either in your body or mind (feelings/thoughts), stop doing whatever your doing.
  2. Put your hand on the sensation if its in your body, or place your focus on it if it a feeling/thought
  3. Instead of trying to wish it away, slowly sink into the sensation/feeling as much as you can allow yourself too

As you make this a daily practice you will being to notice that you can go a little bit deeper into uncomfortableness each time.  If you do this you will begin to notice changes in your sensations and feelings without having to “fix them”.  You will also notice that your biological tendency to run from or need to try and change them lessens.  With this you will being to realize how powerful you are.

Dr. Amanda Hessel, DC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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