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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

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

Self-Purification

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SELF-PURIFICATION  

Saving Ourselves

We are often looking for someone or something to save us.  Maybe it’s the government that will fix all of the things that are wrong with the world.  Perhaps it is our parents or the next generation of children that will bail us all out of trouble.  Maybe it’s the doctors that know, or the wise teachers and spiritual gurus that have the answers.  Perhaps God will just fix everything.  All of these scenarios are tempting to lean into.  They lure us in with the hope that they contain the solutions to the problems we perceive ail us.  It’s so enticing to deny, reject or ignore our own knowing and power and give it over to something or someone that seems to know better.  It appears easier and takes less energy because it allows us to not feel the growing pains of taking responsibility and self-purifying.  Resting our wishful hope that something or someone other than us will fix all of the stuff that isn’t working in ourselves or in this life, provides a great opportunity to leave us feeling powerless, helpless and needing saving.   

None of this implies that we don’t need other people or other things.  We very much do.  There are also some scenarios where we do need to be saved.  These include situations or dynamics where there is a power imbalance and harm is being inflicted.  That power imbalance could be physical, meaning someone is harming another using their physicalness or by physical means.  It could also be a mental-emotional power imbalance where someone uses emotions, or knows information/details not known by the other, and uses that as a strategy for manipulation and to gain power.   We also sometimes need to be saved from our own limiting or negative thoughts that may result in self-injurious behavior, which is often a means to feel some power or control.  Outside of these types of scenarios we don’t need to be saved, but rather need to step into our lives.  

Ultimately what we want to be saved from are the feelings we have about the things in life that we don’t like.  This could be sensations in our body, our inner self-dialogue, how someone talks to or interacts with us, the dynamics of something happening at work or in our business, the structure of our schools or healthcare systems, and on and on.  When we have a feeling that we don’t like about something we are experiencing and we perceive a sense of powerlessness, lethargy, apathy or complacency with it, this is a recipe for deflected power.  This is a hopelessly hoping that our feelings about whatever the thing is will change without feeling like we have any ability to change it.   

YOU ARE THE SOLUTION 

Life happens with you

We all get the spiritual concept that all of life is interconnected, yet we often don’t really understand that life is happening with us.  Rather we tend to interact with life as if it is just happening, either on its own accord, randomly, or to us.  For example we hear some piece of news, develop a sensation in our body, or have an unpleasant interaction with someone, and it seems to just be happening.  We aren’t even really sure how we arrived in this moment, inside of whatever experience is showing up.  It just seems to be here now.  Sometimes our logical mind can induce and reason as to why things are the way they are.  For example maybe you ate some bad fish and now the sensations in your belly are telling you about it, or perhaps you made a snarky comment to your partner hence the unpleasant interaction.  But making the connections as to how life is happening with us isn’t always as clear.  

Just because we don’t always make the connection doesn’t mean there isn’t one to be made.  It’s simply that we are not aware of it.  This is where self-purification comes into play.  In order to increase our awareness, make connections and see how life is happening with us, we need to be a clear channel.  If we are full of stuff (ie. the content of our lives) then we don’t have the bandwidth available to pay attention.  It is sort of like you are watching a show on channel 4 that is full of drama, action, relationships, and a story line that really has you hooked.  You keep watching episode after episode of this program because you just can’t seem to turn it off.  It has your full attention.  You’ve heard through the grapevine that there is a really good program on channel 1, but it’s more chill over there so it has felt a little less exciting to you.  You’ve changed the channel a few times to go and check it out, but there is just a lot of peace and quiet on the channel.  You get kind of bored and switch back to channel 4, where you can be on the edge of whatever twist or turn comes next, maybe a gas station will explode, a bank robbery will take place or a relationship saga will unfold.  That’s better, much more exciting, but gosh you still can’t figure out why your knee hurts, or why your boss was mean to you today, or why our school system sucks so badly.  We tend to think “I guess somebody will figure it out or it will figure itself out.”  This is our often disempowered, disconnected stance.  

From this place we have a tendency to think that the answers we seek will come through more and more outer stuff, but it’s the opposite.  We distract ourselves from the quiet of our inner knowing because it just seems like nothing is there.  However the more inwardly still we become and the clearer we are of stuff, the more aware we are of everything.  With more awareness it is easier to see and make connections.  When we make connections we feel more empowered, look less for someone or something else to fix this life, and see more what we can contribute to it all.  We also see that how we are experiencing life is directly correlated with how we are.  How we feel and what we do determines how this life is created.  It is not a passive, random process that is just happening, despite how it may currently seem to you.  You are not a character in the show you are watching, you are the creator of it.  Nothing is happening to you, but rather you are the source of it.  It only requires some stillness from constant content in your mind to see what’s actually going on.  

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

Effortless Stream of Giving

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EFFORTLESS STREAM OF GIVING 

Giving to life

Giving often feels like effort.  In fact most of us feel like we are giving all day long and find ourselves completely drained by the days end.  Giving can come with activity, busyness and action, and there is no doubt that activity without periods of rest can deplete our systems.  Yet there is a giving to life that happens even before action or activity occurs.  A state of being of giving that is prior to anything that we physically or mentally do.  In fact I’d suffice to say that much of our tiredness and depletion comes not from the activities themselves, but rather from not being in a state of giving while we go about doing our activities.  Again it’s not to deny that we need both periods of activity and rest, however the place from which we come from makes all the difference.

So how do we find this effortless stream of giving?  The good news is that we don’t have to go anywhere to find it because it lives right inside of us.  We only need to tap into it so to speak.  You’ve probably tapped into it before, but you likely didn’t know exactly what you were touching.  You might have related the experience of tapping into the effortless stream of giving as feeling defeat.  In fact the feeling of defeat is an entry point into the effortless stream of giving.  Yet most people get lost in their story about what is happening and keep trying to make their experience match their desire rather than feel defeat.  They keep banging away at attempting to make the appearance different rather than admitting defeat to the appearance.  Hence why they get so damn tired.  Hence why we are all so damn tired.  

When you stop trying to make the operations and happenings of life be different, there is no other choice but to let them be.  When you let them be as they are and participate with them as such, you stop forcing anything.  When forcing stops, so does resistance, tiredness and efforting.  If you’re constantly fighting the stream you are going to be expending a lot more energy and it’s going to feel like a lot more work than if you just went with it.  However going with the stream will at times feel like defeat and you must be willing to feel this defeat.  The beautiful thing about this, if you really get this, is that when you accept defeat you naturally open into giving.  You can’t not give to your experience when you are no longer fighting it.  When you allow what is to be how and what it is, you become the stream of giving organically.  There is nothing extra that you need to do.  It’s simply how it is when you are with life rather than at odds with it.  You may still not like your experience, but you won’t be as tired and the need to check yourself out of life so that you can rest and recover will be less.  You will start to find and feel rest inside of your experience, and here is where you are actually present, maybe for the first time ever. 

STOP WISHING INTENSITY AWAY 

Opportunities for being present

Sometimes life has to kind of beat us up a little bit before we are willing to accept defeat, so that we ultimately learn to live presently in full participation with the unfolding of life.  When we are experiencing this “beating up” of sorts we often label it under the disguise of the word “intensity.”  You’ve probably heard someone or maybe even yourself say, “wow things are really intense right now.”  It’s a very popular spiritual thing to say.  I hear that phrase many times a week.  When people say this often they are wanting that experience of intensity to go away,.  They are internally waiting, though they might not know they are waiting, until appearances and circumstances change so that they can feel lighter, better or less intensity.  The energy of this inner dynamic feels like wanting whatever is happening to just be over with already, because once it’s over you think you feel better.  Once the intensity is gone then you think you will be able to relax.

This is a trap.  It’s a trap because life is full of intensity and if you are waiting or trying to force the situations of intensity to go away, you will find yourself doing this until the day your body dies, and maybe even beyond, who knows.  Besides for it being a trap, when you wish your intensities to go away you rob yourself of incredibly potent opportunities for learning, which I call catalyst.  This catalyst, or these moments of extra intensity, bring the gift of breaking us down.  Why do we need to be broken down you ask?  Bluntly stated because most of us are living in arrogant, self-centered ways and seeing through limited perspectives that have nothing to do with what is actually occurring.  Most of these perspectives harm us or others rather than being helpful, yet they can be very convincing that they are trying to help.  These sneaky arrogant, self-centered ways along with their limited perspectives need to be dismantled so that we can stop acting in opposition to the unfolding of life and rather move with it.

The little bit tricky thing about all of this is that we typically greatly identify with these parts and perspectives that need to be dismantled, so we tend to not let them go out without a fight.  Hence the way of effort, force, resistance, which eventually results in tiredness and depletion that we may then lead to sickness, illness or adrenal fatigue.  This then brings us to the dire need for intensity in our lives, because often intensity is our only hope in dismantling these ways of being and limited perspectives once and for all.  Stopping wishing your intensities away.  See them rather as an opportunity to open into the effortless stream of giving.  

Breaking isn’t bad.  What’s breaking is energetic architecture that isn’t serving us living fully present.  Those structures need to break.  If they don’t we stay trapped and wonder why our experience of life doesn’t change for the better.  Even though many of us try to not feel the break of anything, breaking is natural.  The journey of growth is deconstruction and reconstruction.  If you aren’t regularly destructing then you probably aren’t growing much either.  Don’t try to always make things “good”, let things be “bad” or intense at times.  Even celebrate intensity if you can because within it is immense opportunity for something great to be born. 

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

Ending Urgency

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ENDING URGENCY 

There is nowhere better to get

Everyone in the world seems to be in a mad dash to get things done or be somewhere other than where they are.  We drive fast, think fast, move fast, send text messages fast, eat fast… fast, fast, fast.  Always onto the next thing and never being inside of what is now.  We have some kind of belief that somewhere else is better, more fun, more exciting, more relaxing, or more peaceful than where we are now.  If we could just get to those moments or times when everything looks and feels better and lock them in for eternity, then we could stop with all the urgency and just be.  Yet even when those transitory moments of peace or better come, we can’t seem to stop, slow down and enjoy the moment.  We only recognize that this moment will change and be gone soon enough.  

How do we ever live relaxed and in a state of “be”ing with the near constant change, activity and movement of life?  How do we stop trying to get somewhere and rather be where we are in each and every moment?  One of the most fundamental beliefs that we must work with in ourselves is the one that says that something is better than now.  How many times throughout your day do you find yourself engaged in an activity just hoping to get is over and done with?  Perhaps you feel this way during your morning workout, or when you are at work and things don’t seem to going as you want them too.  Maybe you can’t get something to work right on the computer, or you have a class at school you don’t enjoy, or an annoying neighbor, roommate or some other person you have to deal with.  When we find ourselves in these types of situations we mostly just want to be out.  For it to be done and over with because we do not feel pleasant, relaxed or at peace.  We think once this activity, task, conversation or situation is over then we can relax and be.  

The thing is life is loaded with movement, and might I even say what seems to feel like chaos, stickiness or mess.  There is simply a lot of stuff going on that never seems to stop and things are rarely perfectly packaged and placed as we would like them to be.  So what’s the answer here?  How do we bring what we want to experience to every situation that we find ourselves in?  Attempting to manipulate each and every experience, circumstance and/or person in our life (including ourselves) is exhausting, and quite frankly impossible, even though this is what most people try to do.  The answer rather is that we must pause our sense of urgency, of wanting to get out of our experience of “ick” or overwhelm, and drop into it rather than try to get out of it.  By moving into our experience the possibility to transform ourselves inside of it becomes available.  When we transform ourselves we transform our experience of whatever it is we are experiencing.   

LIFE’S PACING 

Surrendering beyond ourselves

Have you ever noticed that life seems to have its own pacing?  It operates at a speed or rhythm that sometimes aligns with our own and at other times not so much.  Sometimes the pace of life feels too fast and at other times too slow.  We may find ourselves feeling urgent in either scenario.  If the pace of life feels like it’s moving too fast then we try to speed ourselves us to meet that pace and the demands of all of the movement of life.  If the pace of life is too slow for us then again we try to speed ourselves up hoping that life will respond to us and speed up as well.  Either way we are gearing ourselves up for the race to somewhere else.  

Life’s pacing is largely out of our control.  There is a bigger orchestration at play to which we are mostly unaware.  Sure there might be things that you can do such as putting more or less activities into your day to day schedule, which you may actually need to do, but the bigger message here is in how you walk with life and it’s pace.  Not getting ahead of it or behind it, but rather being right with it as it unfolds.  What this requires is a surrender to the rhythm that is present rather than the rhythm we would prefer to be present.  While this might seem bold to say here it is: our preferences matter, but not that much.  While we are the kings and queens of our own world inside of our own heads, when it comes to the larger orchestration of life, we are part of the whole.  Often we don’t see from the whole, but only from the part we play.   In this way we are egocentric, not in a negative way, as it’s mostly innocent on our part.  Rather in a way in which we just simply don’t see the bigger picture.  We are not inside the heads of every single being in this universe seeing from the perspective of universal consciousness, therefore our scope and sight is limited to our own.  This creates immense confusion and frustration for us as we often don’t understand the what’s and why’s to the pacing and timing of things.  

Accepting confusion is one of the best ways to come back into rhythm with life’s pacing.  Understanding is not required for us to have acceptance.  In fact this is one of the great lessons of having this human experience.  Not necessarily an easy lesson, yet it does the job of eventually getting us into a state of surrender.  Surrendering to what is rather than what we prefer to be.  Only once we move into acceptance and surrender can we begin to see beyond ourselves and our egocentric human point of view.  We are in the unknown of what the moment is, contains and could be, rather than in our ideas, preferences or insistences about what is occurring.  

There is so much about the happenings that we don’t get to decide, even the happenings of our own bodies.  What we do get to decide is how we be, and whether or not we try to get out or be in rhythm with the moment.  When you feel urgency arise inside of you begin the practice of pausing.  Take a breath and let go of whatever you are energetically holding onto or trying to get done, and allow the state of “be”ing to be present inside of your experience.  Recognize that you can both be and engage in activity.  There is nothing to get over with, as there will always be more things.  Rather see the moment that you desire is now.  What you wish to experience is now.  Bring that to your experience and watch the magic reveal itself to you.  

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