intuition

INTUITION & ALIGNMENT

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INTUITION & ALIGNMENT

Convincing ourselves other

We always know what is and isn’t in alignment for us.  Even if we don’t know certain facts, details, or the specifics of things, we know what feels on and what feels off.  All children know this.  In fact it’s even easier as children because there aren’t as many inner stories or rules to interfere.  We are naturally intuitive.  Where we run into trouble with ourselves is when we stop listening, ignore or take action in the opposite direction of what feels energizing to us.  When we choose the less energizing choice we feel the agony of inner conflict.  A conflict that is often reinforced by a sense of obligation, feeling like you have to do it a certain way or like you don’t know what else to do.  When doubt, fear and obligation rear their heads we can find ourselves sliding into what we know and what is familiar to us rather than what is actually aligned.

Convincing ourselves to take unaligned actions even when we know we will feel less energized by doing so, sometimes feels like the only way.  Why is this?  It’s because we don’t want to feel the uncertainty of not knowing what’s next.  We let our avoidance of uncertainty of outer things override our knowing of inner things.  We start to accommodate to the appearance of outer things rather than stay centered in our inner knowing.  Sometimes it feels just so tempting to do so.  We feel lost because the outer world isn’t giving us facts, details and certainty.  Our inner world, while feeling good in its alignment, gets swayed by the seeming lack of things showing themselves to us.  Alas we get swayed by that part of us that feels like it has to know what will happen and needs some solid evidence of it.

We know we’ve been swayed when we start to feel heavy.  Our energy feels drained and it takes a lot of work to do little things.  It feels hard to make things happen.  Nothing seems to work and we feel unclear.  We become impatient and demanding.  We lose touch with gratitude.  We don’t see the magic in life and typically we complain a bit.  We work harder to make something, anything, happen.  We don’t even know what we specifically feel anymore, only that whatever it is we don’t like it and we want some information, details, facts and certainty to show up already.  We’ve all experienced this a time or two.  You wouldn’t be human if you hadn’t.  This is what it feels like to be disconnected.  Disconnected from yourself and therefore being or choosing differently than what is actually in alignment for you and where you would like to come from.   

CHOOSING THE ENERGIZING WAY 

Building the alignment muscle

Surprisingly choosing what feels more aligned or more energized might freak you out a little bit.  Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it will require that you allow yourself to feel the mystery of not knowing.  However if you can handle the heat you will develop the muscle of following your alignment, and that is a muscle worth developing.  Some people might call this faith or trust, and in addition to that there is a huge heap of courage needed to listen and follow what it is you already know inside.  To break this down a little further, uncertainty can manifest as someone not responding favorably to a choice you make.  It might also look like not having a back up plan.  It can be taking an action towards something that feels exciting without any clue what the results with be.  It can be pausing or waiting when no answers or options are presenting themselves.  There is perceived risk in these things.  Risk to our sense of identity, to our relationships, to our feelings of safety and sense of progress.

Yet if we desire to feel energized, to feel alive and vital, then we must learn to follow our inner knowing.  Call it intuition, inner knowing or alignment, it’s all the same.  When we choose the choice, the way or the path that energizes us, whether that means taking no action or taking massive action, we always feel better.  It always feels better to choose our alignment even if it feels scary, threatening or uncertain, and even if it means we have to let something go.  Letting something go could be letting go of a way of being, thinking or seeing that is very familiar to us.  It might be letting go of a relationship configuration so that it can reconfigure.  It might be shifting physical locations or letting go of objects.  It might be letting go of ideas that aren’t really exciting to us, but that we’ve convinced ourselves we need or want.  When we let go we create space for life to show us what is really in alignment and what the appearance of our true alignment looks like.

We all have the capacity to take actions in alignment.  It is of course our free will to choose whether or not we will.  It is more exciting and unnerving to follow our inner knower all of the time.  Our inner knower is our compass, our guide, and our friend in this lifetime.  It is constantly informing us even when we aren’t listening.  However if you choose to listen and have the courage to take action in response to its messages, you will always feel like you are on purpose even when you don’t know what the heck you’re doing or what heck is going on.  You can simultaneously be in the total mystery and complete alignment at the same time.  Having your mind know something based on the appearance of what is showing up in your life pales in comparison to living an aligned life in complete mystery.  Again courage is required and with more and more aligned action you will come to understand the basic mechanisms of how life works.  Life will show you what your alignment looks like when you come from being aligned.  You can forget about what you think life should look like from your ideas of alignment and instead watch the movie be revealed to you before your very eyes.  It’s exciting, and it’s a mystery. 

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

THE EDGE OF EMOTION

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THE EDGE OF EMOTION 

Risking feeling

Feeling feels risky.  So much so that we often stay on the edge of it.  Feeling emotion means something is going to change, which is destabilizing to our sense of the known.  It is a mini death and rebirth, and most of us don’t like the death part very much.  Death of an idea, dream, or way of being.  Oftentimes we think we are feeling emotion, but we are just on the surface of what is really going on.  To authentically feel, rather than regurgitating triggered surface emotions, is the difference between acceptance of what is and resistance to it.  Acceptance is hard for most, so rather than feeling we stay in the spin of frustration, irritation or mental activity, which keeps us from having to actually feel even though we think that we are.  

Why is it that we avoid feeling like it’s the plague?  It boils down to the fact that in general most of us don’t like to feel heartbreak, and heartbreak is what authentic feeling feels like.  It’s tender, raw, and vulnerable.  The heartbreak we feel is in association with something occurring that we wished was different.  Perhaps it was a way we were treated that we didn’t like, a need or desire that wasn’t met, or some situation that went down in a way we wished it wouldn’t have.  The tendency for most people is to start to think about the situation or event rather than feel what they feel about it.  They rationalize, they judge or condemn, they feel irritated or maybe aloof and disconnected, they can’t seem to let it go no matter what amount spiritual self-talk they do around it.  There is a tendency to feel at a loss or confused about “what to do” and many attempts to figure it out.  The intense mental thought of needing to figure out what to do or say is a high indication that there is resistance to what is, and deeper more real feelings to be felt.

There is a phrase I heard in chiropractic college that went “you have to feel it to heal it”.  What it boils down to is that healing is accepting what is.  When we accept what is, change then effortlessly flows from acceptance.  There is no more needing to figure anything out or mental looping about it.  We simply know what to do if anything needs to be done.  Sometimes there is nothing to do and that can be super challenging for our minds, particularly when we really want something to be different, hence our prolonged resistance to actual feeling.  However as soon as we do feel the heartbreak of the dream, the idea, the hope, or the thing, acceptance ensues and it becomes easy to let be what is.  This leaves us with inner peace and spaciousness of mind.  We become receptive rather than insistent.  In our receptivity the path of what’s next is revealed to us.   

FREEDOM THROUGH EMOTION 

Action from love

Sometimes the difference between thinking our emotions versus feeling our emotions can be tricky for us to discern.  A good indicator to use for yourself is that if you don’t feel freer than you aren’t actually feeling, but rather you are caught in a story about feeling.  Another way to discern this is the amount of time you are “feeling”.  Emotions, when felt, have a very short time span.  Typically a few seconds to a few minutes at most.  If you are going on hours, days or weeks of “feeling” something then you are often in the story of it rather than the feeling of it.  Now after you feel something deeply there can be residual feelings, but your general disposition is lighter and more free even if some residual effects are still present.  Also after feeling there you are softer and in a slower pace of being.  

Emotions are simply energy.  When we feel the energy of emotion we liberate fuel.  Fuel for acceptance and change.  That acceptance or change can be of ourselves, or it can be in relation to the outer appearance of our lives.  Change occurring through acceptance, or said another way, change occurring through love, is different than the way we typically try to make things happen.  While there is still intention, vision or goals, there is also more of a listening to the unfolding and participating with it rather than an attempt to push or force to make happen.  While this might seem more apparent for our outer world, it goes for our inner world as well.  Say for example you have a tendency to think you are not valuable or have nothing of value to give.  You could try a million self-help methods to change these thoughts about yourself, go to every class and workshop, and on and on, really throwing everything at it.  Yet when you start with acceptance, coming from love in your attempt to change these thoughts, you don’t insist that they need to be different.  It’s a bit of a paradox, but as soon as we stop insisting something be a certain way or be different than it is, it relaxes and often reorganizes itself.

All the things we desperately think need to be different about ourselves or the world find resolution through acceptance.  The mind can’t grok this and yet it is so.  Acceptance doesn’t mean inaction, rather it means action from love.  To be clear action from love doesn’t mean that our perspective, idea or way of approaching something wins over because we think it’s more altruistic, evolved or better than the alternative perspectives.  This is called righteousness of which our world is rampant with.  Action from love is listening to the inner impulse to move in a particular way or direction, taking action in that direction, and then listening.  Seeing what you feel now and now and now, and following.  When you allow your emotions you see that they guide you moment by moment.  This doesn’t mean that all of your ideals will be met or creations created, but it does mean that you will always be coming from your alignment, from who you are, from what you desire to be, now and now and now.  This is to fulfill your destiny.  It is to be your mission.  It equates to success at all levels of your being.  

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

Group Consciousness

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Group Consciousness 

Group field effect

The atomic nucleus. Abstract representation. Image molecules and atomsWe are all impacted and influenced by one another.  Never is that more apparent then when collective instability arrives.  For example someone is scared or upset and we begin to notice how it rattles something inside of our being.  We can find ourselves listening to someone speak or reading a piece of news and find ourselves caught in a fear loop, when just 5 minutes earlier we were going along happily without a fear in the world.  The opposite of this is true as well, meaning we can hear someone speak something inspiring or motivational and shift into joy and bliss in a single moment.  This impact on us, dreadful or joyful, can spread if we let it and if it spreads enough, meaning impacts a certain number of people, it creates a group field or group consciousness.  The more energy that is given to a particular thing or idea the larger it grows and the more opportunity it has to impact and engage more consciousnesses into it.  Group fields make information more accessible to more people and with that more people being influenced by the information that is contained within that field.  

Due to the fact that we are all humans, experiencing this reality together, we each feel the effects of group fields to varying degrees.  Our beliefs and perceptions filter how we will experience the information that is contained within a group field.  If we have a belief or perception that is incompatible with the information in the field than that information will not really land anywhere in our system.  However if we have a belief that is compatible or in resonance with the information contained in that group field than we will be influenced by it.  This is neither bad nor good.  Its is inherently neutral.  It really is simply a resonance game.  We are energy beings, being impacted by larger energy fields (group consciousness) and energy either finds resonance and amplifies or finds dissonance and cancels itself out.  For those scientifically inclined we see this in physics with wave interference patterns that are either constructive (increase the amplitude of the wave) or destructive (cancel out the wave).  

When we are talking about group fields it really is about what do we want to amplify (bring more energy too) and what do we want to cancel out (i.e. not add energy too).  Each point within a collective field (being you or I) has an impact on the overall field and how much energy that field will contain.  We often don’t realize that we matter and make a difference to the collective overall experience, but indeed we do.  In fact it would be impossible for you not to have an effect, unless you had absolutely no energy to you at all, which would mean that you were not embodied.  But the hard cold fact is that you are indeed embodied, therefore you have energetic influence that is filtered and directed by your thoughts and beliefs.   

Collective purging 

Embracing instability

Office chaosThe energy with which we give things has an effect.  Not only a collective group field effect, but also a physiological effect on our own nervous system and thus the functioning of our body.  We are all familiar with this through the stress response.  When we perceive a threat, we go into “on-guard mode” also known as self-protection or stress, and our bodies produce chemicals aimed at immediate survival.  This is a healthy response when its warranted.  Its our body’s way to keep homeostasis, self-regulate and purge what is no longer needed or working for the system.  We typically don’t feel well when this response is activated.  Our perspective is also narrowed and focused only on immediate survival.  No energy is available for anything else.  This response is what most people call sickness, though its really just the body purging to keep itself well.  

Purging occurs at the collective level as well.  Times of collective instability such as wars, pandemics, economic crashes and like are the ways in which the larger societal or group system that are no longer working optimally deconstruct in order to reorganize into a more energy efficient configuration.  Nothing is more unstable than collective fear and chaos.  Almost no one would argue that our world is in need of some massive upgrades, that many of our systems need a complete reboot, yet when the waves of instability come crashing in we may not always have the insight to see how what is currently happening is part of what will enable necessary change to occur because we are fully in the “sick” phase where the energy for such insights is not available to us and our perspective is narrowed.  Also although most wouldn’t argue that world change is heavily needed, simultaneously people like their sameness, consistency, and external stability.   Most also dislike putting energy into rebuilding, so when the waves of instability come, we activate our stress response in attempt to keep everything the same and hopefully prevent “bad” change, and then add that energy of frozenness to the collective field.  A frozen collective field will need more waves of instability (meaning more chaotic events) to eventually allow reorganization and change to happen, as change will always happen.  

So what can we do?  Learn to ride the waves of instability rather than being submerged underneath them.  Embrace the constant ever present change that will never stop coming.  Relinquish your attachments to things having been a certain way and invite the novelty of what will arise on the other side.  Discern your fear from your intuition.  Follow your intuition in taking action in whatever ways you need to and that you feel will best support the collective field of humanity.  Meditate and activate love through your entire field adding that to the collective mix; it is more far reaching than you may know.  Realize that your energy will effect the outcome, as well as the learning and change that becomes available to humanity through this global destabilizing force we are collectively experiencing.  Allow any emotions that arise to be felt permissioning your heart to open even more deeply and transmuting fear into love.  Lastly Be well no matter what.  True well-being is independent of any and all circumstances.  It arises as a knowing in you that no matter what you and all are ok.  This knowing and the emanation to it through your field allows you to be a guiding light in the midst of darkness for many.  

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

Embracing Magic

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Embracing Magic 

The seeming void

Beautiful, young elf, walking with a unicorn. She is wearing an incredible light, white dress. The girl lies on the horse. Sleeping Beauty. Artistic PhotographyWe all want magic.  This is evident from the time that we are little kids loving superheroes, “fiction”, and fantasy.  As adults we continue this love affair with magic seeking it through healing, spirituality, books, movies, relationships and various other pursuits.  Whatever form magic takes it entices us into it.  The yearning is that the mysteries may be revealed to us, that we may feel powerful, knowing, and connected, that we may have abilities to do and be beyond the physical sensibilities and that there is an ease, effortlessness and playfulness to life.  We are truly hungry for this underneath all of the things we think life is about and all of the things we think we have to do.  Yet magic seems to be missing for most.  Even those that are “tapped in” beyond their everyday ordinary mind are not always experiencing magic.  Where does the magic go?  Why is it not always 100% our experience?  

As a little girl pretty much the only thing that truly excited me was sensing beyond what was here and expanding my abilities to perceive beyond the ordinary senses.  I remember being as young as 8 or 9 years old diving into the paranormal section at the local library reading books on ESP and clairvoyance every chance I could get.  All of the TV shows I watched had something to do with the main character being seemingly “normal” while having some special power that she kept secret from everyone.  All of these things simply found me and I kept this intense curiosity and passion to myself as I did not perceive that other people in my life would either get it or share the interest.  

As I got older in my teens and early 20s a deep interest in energy work arrived and with it this feeling of being extremely limited or cut off from something.  It was as if I was navigating in the dark, walking around with a blindfold over my eyes and thick mittens on my hands not being able to see or feel what was there.  The awareness of limitation of the senses became screamingly evident.  By this point in my life any direct connection to the spirit realm that I had was long forgotten and otherwise non-reinforced by my experiences.  The seeming void of disconnection felt real along with the illusion that this physical world was the only reality.

You all have your own versions of this story.  It is the story that most all of us learn in one way or another.  A world void of magic and spirit.  We think that only what makes sense to our minds is true and only what we can experience with our physical senses is real, and we believe that story even when we don’t want to and even when something inside of us knows that there’s more.   

Magic comes alive 

From denial to embrace

48105490 - blue sparkling background with stars. vector illustration.This denial of spirit that we learn and adopt as our own belief allows us to fit into this world experience that we are currently having.  Friends, family members and society accept our rational choices and ordinary lives.  Anything beyond that makes them feel uncomfortable.  Many people live their entire lives not knowing anything beyond the physical world that in and of itself is void of magic.  Even if people do have some experiences of magic they can’t always perceive it because it doesn’t fit within their structures and stories of what is.  I’ve seen this occur many times over the course of my life where spirit directly moves through a person so profoundly and palpably and yet the person denies having had any experience of it.  This continues to baffle me to this day and yet I’ve come to realize that denial can be very strong and when something doesn’t fit into our mind’s boxes we simply don’t know how to process or place it, and therefore can’t perceive it even when we experience it.  

Even with all of the denial and disconnection from the world of magic and spirit some people have a deep knowing of something beyond the physicality of this world.  Its a knowing beyond just mind knowing.  Call it intuition or heart knowing or even faith.  Its like an inner compass that guides despite what our rational mind and beliefs tell us.  This was the case for me.  I always had a deep knowing of something beyond and a nearly complete devotion to expanding my perceptual abilities in order to be able to experience it.  This is the case for many who have penetrated the veil of the illusion of pure physicality into the world of magic and spirit.  

What makes magic come alive?  Ultimately love.  Love is magic, magic is love.  But let’s back it up a little bit so we can track how we get to love.  First is the letting go of the need to fit into this world.  Not from a place of resistance, hatred or unhappiness, but from a place of realizing that you can’t serve this world and perceive the magic beyond it if you are attempting to fit into it.  So its really a love for this world that inspires you to move beyond the need to fit into it.  Second, is the questioning of everything you’ve been told about this world.  You must dismantle your own beliefs about solidity and physicality being the only reality.  Next you must dismantle your beliefs about what you think you are and through that develop an intense hunger to know yourself beyond, to know spirit, as that is what you are beyond this physical body-personality.  This opens you into the heart and into the world of magic.  Your heart is the gateway into perceiving beyond the senses, to accessing infinite energy, to capabilities beyond your current capabilities, to greater ease, effortlessness and playfulness in the world of magic.   It becomes harder and harder to deny what you are, to deny spirit, to deny the aliveness that makes up the world.  You embrace and accept more and more this aspect of creation, and as you do it reveals itself and you directly experience it more and more as your everyday reality.  The key is love.  Nothing more than that.  Everything which you need is already here.  May the revealing of spirit and magic become the ever present reality within with you experience all of life.  

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

Waking up your intuition

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Waking up your intuition 

Looking at the obvious

woman meditate closeup of handMany people have a desire to be more intuitive.  Yet some people feel like they aren’t intuitive, while others think that intuition is only for “psychic” people, and still others think that it’s all made up and only the facts matter.  I find that there are elements to these particular thoughts and belief systems in most all of us no matter how “intuitive” we are due to the culture and conditioning that we are constantly exposed too.  

Let’s first get clear on what intuition is.  Intuition is a deep listening and knowing of self.  It isn’t about being psychic and “knowing the future”, but it is the capacity to be extremely present to yourself so that you have clarity on what is most alive and relevant in a particular moment.  At the core of intuition is the capacity to hear yourself and a willingness to trust yourself no matter what.  Intuition doesn’t rely on facts or concepts to know, but it doesn’t necessarily not include them either.  I have found that often our capacity to really integrate and use our intuition is a blend of trusting ourselves along with confidence that is learned through experience and skill development from within our “factual or physical” world.  

Our intuition is often so close to us, meaning so obviously in front of our face, that we frequently don’t see it.  It seems paradoxical that this would be the case, yet when things are really close to us it is often hardest for us see to them clearly.  We also have this misconception that intuition is mysterious and elusive, but really it is as common as the physical objects you see with your human eyes.  The elusiveness or mysteriousness comes from distorted perspectives on the nature of intuition itself.  Intuition is as intimate to you as your breath.  You literally can’t be or live without it because it is by its very nature you.  It is the knowing aspect of yourself that knows beyond what your intellectual brain has learned about who and what you are.   

Learning to trust yourself 

Opening your heart

Follow your heartSo why does it sometimes feel hard to hear or know intuitively?  Why do we often feel like we are guessing or having to “think” it out or rationalize things, rather than simply know?  I have found that the primary reason we don’t feel like we know is because we 1) don’t trust ourselves and 2) we don’t actually really want to know yet because knowing would mean that we have to create a change in our life, or be or do something, which we are not fully ready for yet.   So what do we do instead?  We create this bubble of confusion inside of our heads by attempting to use our minds to figure it all out.  However bad we want our minds to be able to figure it out, or to know, they never do.  The mind is not equipped to know, its simply not organized or wired for that function, it is only a tool of producing thoughts.  So when we put all of our focus here inside of our thoughts it puts us into this mental fog, torment and what we call stress and confusion.  

So then if our minds are not equipped to know what aspect of ourselves is?  That which knows is our heart/soul.  You may have heard people say to “feel it with your heart” yet your mind tried to figure out what that meant rather than you being able to actually drop into your heart and feel.  This is because we are so mind dominated in our conditioning and ways of being on this planet.  We simply keep defaulting to the mind for everything and haven’t necessarily reinforced patterning and thus access to other aspects of ourselves.  We all have a heart/soul.  Feeling with our heart opens us into the intelligence of our soul.  This is the intelligence that knows.  This is where our intuition lives. 

In order to readily access and reference our intuition more frequently we must find ways to open our heart and learn how to feel again.  Due to life experiences many people have shut down access to their heart.  Again this is why we tend to live in this state of perpetual confusion.  We have or are living disconnected from a ginormous aspect of our being and so the highest aspect of ourselves that we tend to know is our mind and then we think this is where it all caps out, with what our minds can think and rationalize.  Your mind is just one aspect of your beingness.  There is more.  

As people progress in Network care they begin to taste and fire up the circuitry that helps them reconnect to their heart/soul.  They begin to experience themselves beyond their minds.  The mind may still try to come in and make sense of it all, but the more you taste and know your soul the less the mind comes in to figure it out and the more you rest into trust of this larger aspect of yourself even though your mind can’t make sense of it.  You experience live moving through you, energy moving through you, rather than you having to figure it out or do it with your mind.  Ease and grace move you and with time you learn to simply allow your mind to be confused, while you live an epic soul-informed life.  

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