network chiropractic

LIVING FEAR FREE

Dr. Amanda Love 1 Comment

LIVING FEAR FREE 

A life without threat

Consider fear for a moment.  Perhaps you don’t think of yourself as a “fearful” person.  Maybe you feel that you only experience fear occasionally in moments when it’s called for or justified.  Fear is a sneaky little gremlin.  It is disguised as anxiousness, avoidance, tension, being non-confrontational, or trying to fix situations, yourself or other people’s experience of life.  It can manifest as sensations in the body such as digestive upset, headaches, muscular aches and pains, jaw clenching, gripping, inflexibility, tightness, trouble sleeping, difficulty relaxing and more.  Fear is the basic response we have to feeling a sense of powerlessness or like things are out of our control.  When fear is present our lower brain centers are activated and our higher, more conscious brain areas are not being utilized.  Self-survival and preservation is the name of the game.  We can only think about how we will get through the next few moments or minutes, and have little capacity to zoom out and see the big picture.

I would venture to say the fear is somewhere in the background of our experience most of the time even if we aren’t aware of its presence.  It can easily be called up into the forefront when we perceive a threatening situation, thought, emotion or sensation.  Evaluate for a moment the contrasting experience.  What percentage of the time, while you are awake, do you feel completely at peace with nothing to fix, nowhere to go, nothing to get done, no urgency, no tension in your body or mind, and non-reactive without a single disruptive thought?  All without utilizing any substances to be in this state.  

Because a peaceful inner state of being is desirable for most people, and because most people don’t experience that, we often turn to substances, foods or medications to numb out the fearful feelings and sensations, so that for a few moments of our day we can feel relaxed.  Due to our reliance on things that we ingest to shift our state of being, we might not even know what we are feeling.  This is true for many.  We are so disconnected from our fearful feeling state of being because we do our best to numb it down as much as possible.  While this is an ok short-term strategy, this is not a way to live.  Yet this is the way that most are living.  Kind numb, kind of checked out and just going through the motions of life and getting all the things done.  We think life is “ok”, but deep inside we know its really not that great and we aren’t sure how to be any other way.   

WANTING PEACE 

Fantasy or reality

Imagine for a moment what it would feel like to never feel or perceive threat again.  To be invincible in the yourself and in the knowing that nothing can harm or hurt you.  That nothing at all is out to get you.  That absolutely everything is working for you.  That every sensation, feeling and thought is there to support you somehow.  To be absolutely empowered.  This is a far stretch for most.  In fact many people likely think that this is an improbable state of being and living.  Yet what if it is our next evolutionary step?  The next rung on the ladder of our development.  To be completely fear free and live openly and invitingly with all of our experience of life.  It may seem like fantastical thinking, yet to me it feels more like waking up from the nightmare that our mind has created about our experience, and experiencing more of the actual reality that is.

How do we get there?  It’s simpler than you might think.  It requires only a few things.  First is the overarching desire to live in a peaceful state of being no matter what.  This desire must be strong.  I mean really, really strong.  If you don’t have an unshakeable desire for peace than you will be easily disturbed, because let’s face it life and most of our current perspectives about life, give us a lot to be disturbed by.  Your desire is the hope you have in overcoming your environment, the stories you currently have about your environment, and the fuel you need to make the changes in your life for inner peace.  The second thing required is the willingness to feel all the “bad”, uncomfortable or non-peaceful things you attempt to avoid feeling by numbing, controlling, tensing up, people pleasing and the like.  If you aren’t willing to face your underlying feelings than you will forever be running from them and paradoxically then they will run you.  Whatever we avoid rules and chooses for us.  We are not in charge when we are not feeling all of our feelings head on.

You can see it’s really not complicated.  It does however mean that you will need to do some things differently.  You are going to have to change some of your habits, preferences or addictions to certain substances or activities that check you out from feeling.  You may need to slow yourself down so that you can be more subtle in your awareness of yourself and pay attention to what you are feeling.  If you are someone who is always with other people you may need to prioritize some alone time so you can self-reflect.  None of these things are hard, but they require change.  When we don’t really want to change something, then it feels hard to change, but when our desire for something is strong, the change is easy.  That’s why I said that your desire must be strong or else the journey will feel treacherous to you and you will perceive obstacles that seem impossible for you to overcome.

It is possible, and even probable if you so desire, to live fear free.  To be an open channel of peace, love and presence.  To be a rested, still, stable presence in a world of nonstop activity.  This is not an impossible feat.  In fact I believe it is our next collective developmental step in consciousness.  To come back to wholeness and to heal, is to unify with all that is.  If we perceive threat we will keep some parts separate, which keeps us separate.  To drop our guards and be brave enough to feel all the things, will return us into remembrance of the one unified whole of which we are. 

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

EFFORTLESS STREAM OF GIVING

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

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

LIFE BEYOND CONSUMPTION

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

LIFE BEYOND CONSUMPTION 

Our love of consuming

Being a consumer of life is the natural way of living for most people.  We love shopping and get excited when we have a package waiting for us at our front door.  We look forward to going to our favorite restaurants in order to eat and drink all of things that we enjoy.  We can’t wait to watch or read that new movie or book we’ve been waiting for to come out.  Scrolling our preferred social media apps to see what’s going on with our friends or in the world around us in one of our most preferred activities.  We are nearly constantly taking something in.  Whether that something is food, information, or tangible objects, we tend to like the feeling of things coming in.  In fact for many people this is how they relax.  In contrast, when it seems like life wants or demands something from us, even if we are the one creating that want or demand, we feel tense, vigilant or like we need to perform or show up in some extra alert way.  Sometimes just thinking about what we will have to give makes us tired.  

In a lot of ways consuming is easier.  We just sit back and let life in.  It doesn’t require any real effort on our part, except for perhaps deciding if we want to buy the shoes we like in brown or black, or choosing if we want to go with the fish or steak dinner at our favorite restaurant.  It’s low demand, not that complicated and in the end we feel some kind of satiation.  Our new outfit arrives, we get loaded up on information from our new book, or we get the latest news about our “friends” on social media, and we feel full.  Why does getting full feel so good?  It feels good because most people operate from a belief in scarcity and therefore any attempt to give feels like fuller depletion.  At least when they get they can momentarily not feel lack.  

Yes there is the obvious fact that we need to food to survive, albeit much less than most of us would like to think we need.  We also need clothes, but probably not near as many as we buy.  Information is helpful to make informed decisions about things we don’t know about it, but many of us are addicted to consuming information without taking any real action on the things we learn.  Social media can provide us with some sense of connection with others, but most people are just mindlessly scrolling to see if they are missing out on anything.  While most people probably wouldn’t fully admit it, they just want life to happen to them without them having to do much work.  This means that rather than creating we would prefer it be given to or have things done for us.  An example of this would be if someone gave you the option to either work your way to $1 million dollars or be given $1 million dollars, nearly everyone would opt for the later.   Case in point, most of us would prefer to receive support and care rather than give it. 

WORKING, CREATING & GIVING 

Stopping the consumption cycle

Giving is work.  It does require something from us, namely our time, energy, and focus, which are, our most precious of resources.  Because they are our most precious resources, we tend to want to conserve them, not use them up or give them away too readily less we run out of them.  But what are we really saving them for?  Do we think that if we don’t use them then we can store them up?  Are we afraid if we give our attention to one thing then we won’t have the energy, time or focus to give to another thing?  Perhaps you are ambivalent about what we want to give too.  Maybe you have difficulty making a decision about what is important to you.  Perhaps you just feel like you don’t have enough time, energy or focus and are living in scarcity about your state of inner resourcefulness.  We are always plotting in our mind what we think we have the inner resources for and therefore how willing we are to show up to life.  I am not denying that rest is important, it is, however most of us are way underestimating and underutilizing our capacities.  Why?  Because we think our inner resources are going to run out.  

I could tell you that there is no such thing as time, that it is simply a made up construct, but it’s likely that you will keep operating as if there is time.  I could tell you that you are the source of energy itself, but you will probably continue to feel like you don’t have enough of it.  I could tell you that you’ve got nothing but focus, yet you will claim that you get easily distracted.  These ways of thinking and believing are just habit.  In some ways you know that timelessness, infinite energy and inexhaustible focus are true, yet they aren’t true for your experience of life, at least not yet.  If you really embodied that there is a surplus of energy, no time and that you could focus on whatever you wanted to for however long you wanted too, what wouldn’t you do?  I imagine that your relationship to work, giving and creating would be mighty different.  I would think you would stop living by the clock in your head, your stories of limited energy and your distractible focus. 

Consuming is not the only way to live.  It’s not negative to consume.  We all need to consume some.  We need food, rest, nourishment, information, education, and social connection.  However when we are coming from scarcity of our inner resources of time, energy, and focus, with the fear that they might run out, then our consumption levels increase.  Sometimes to the point where we never feel satiated no matter how much we take in.  To remedy this we need to clearly know when we are full and stop consuming.  At that point rather than taking in more we need to switch to giving through work or creation.  That is the natural cycle of giving and receiving.  

Some people might say that they don’t know when they are full because they have overridden their fullness levels for so long.  If that is you I recommend this, when it stops feeling good and begins to feel bad, or like an addiction or obsession, or you find yourself becoming less present or more checked out, you know you’ve reached the fullness point.  So rather than watching another movie, reading another book, eating another piece of chocolate, having another drink or scrolling another social media app, stop in that moment and find a way to give, work or create instead.  This is when you move beyond a life of consumption.  The secret is that this is where energy, focus and timelessness live.  Never again will you fear them running out because you are living inside of them.

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

ENDING URGENCY

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

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

THE HEALING JOURNEY

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

THE HEALING JOURNEY 

Impatience

We are a quick fix society.  We want everything to happen instantly, if not yesterday.  Patience is not a virtue that many of us have anymore.  If our Amazon package comes a day or two later than what was originally projected we are irritated.  If we want to lose weight, but haven’t achieved our ideal size in 3 weeks time, we give up.  If the business we are creating isn’t up and thriving in 6 months time we see it as failure or not destined to be.  We think that everything is supposed to happen overnight, and don’t have much bandwidth for the journey.  The same is true for our healing.  If we have a sensation or feeling that we don’t like we think it’s supposed to be gone yesterday.  If we have thought patterns that we’ve been entertaining for most of our life we assume we should be able to completely be free of them in an instant.  When our sensation persists, the feelings we don’t want are still there and we continue to entertain thoughts that don’t serve us we see failure, either our own, or we project that sense of failure outwards onto others and see them as failing us.    

Even though we conceptually know that life is not about the destination but rather the journey, we are all trying to get to the destination.  We are all trying to get somewhere other than where we are.  We are trying to get out of this uncomfortable human experience rather than be present in it.  The attempt to get it over with (it being the sensation, feeling, thought, or experience that we don’t like or want) is our true suffering.  The result of resisting where we are is this gnawing, unsettling, anxious, depressive, distressful and disconnected state.  We go into wanting answers and certainty.  We jump from thing to thing thinking that our answers lie inside one of those things.  We think if we can just get some certainty about something then we will feel better.  If we could just know when this experience we don’t like will end, then we could rest.  Our impatience with not knowing and trying to get somewhere else, hijacks our capacity to be present and to heal.  We will not be able to touch healing or presence until we get this. 

Metamorphosis naturally emerges from presence.  Resistance keeps what’s in place in place.  Melting into what is frees us from it.  All of these things seem contradictory to the mind that thinks it needs to do something in order to fix it.  I’m not suggesting that there isn’t a time for action, quite the contrary.  Perfectly orchestrated action occurs when we come into agreement with what is.  The journey of healing is the return to wholeness, yet wholeness is now.  Unless we see the wholeness now, we not see it when we arrive at our preferred weight, when our business takes off, or when the sensations and feelings we think interfere with our experience of wholeness go away.   

SHOWING UP FOR YOURSELF

Learning the lessons of life

It takes a great deal of showing up for yourself in order to stop the pattern of impatience, which is really just avoiding the moment.  What do I mean by showing up for yourself?  I mean staying the course, being committed, having persistence, doing whatever it takes and being all in.  Don’t be flaky.  Dig your heels in.  Remember why you are and what’s important to you.  Don’t give up so easily.  Stop seeking instant gratification.  Surrender to your experience.  Celebrate the little and big victories every day, not just when what you think you want arrives.  The journey is a sequence of a billion tiny steps.  See the gift in each one.  Don’t want anything to go away.  Be more grateful for what is then you are desirous to achieve your goal.  Watch how that changes everything.

The reason that this changes everything is because you change.  The reason why being impatient and waiting for circumstances to change doesn’t make you any happier or bring you greater peace is because you don’t change in the process.  Something will arise inside of your experience in the next day, or week or month and you will find yourself cycling back into the same feelings of being impatient and wanting to get somewhere else.   You will never feel settled in yourself.  It’s not the circumstance changing that does anything except perhaps provide temporary relief.  The same gnawing, unsettling, anxious, depressive, distressful and disconnected state will follow you no matter what happens or doesn’t happen if you don’t realize that you are the source of it all.

Healing has absolutely nothing to do with anything going away.  Every sensation, feeling and thought that you have, that you don’t like, is a catalyst for you in some way.  What that means is that it contains learning for you.  There is something you are to discover, learn, accept and/or transform inside of you through this experience.  That’s it.  Despite all of our conditioning, which leads us to believe that healing is about certain feelings and sensations going away, this is not the case.  You can be perfectly healed, perfectly whole, and still experience feelings and sensations.  In fact it’s nearly guaranteed that you will.  When you approach feeling and sensation as information for learning and growth, rather than as a problem to be gotten rid of, you are effectively utilizing the catalyst that your higher self is offering you to learn whatever it is you need to learn.  

I’ve discovered over the years that nothing shifts until we learn what we are to learn from it.  Even if one sensation “goes away”, if we haven’t learned the lessons from it, it will manifest in another way or form.  You just can’t get rid of your learning, despite how hard you might try at times.  Just to be clear this is not a form of punishment from our higher self to us, but rather it’s a gift.  I know it can be hard to believe that, especially when we really dislike our sensations, feelings or experiences, yet everything in this universe is working for us, it’s not out to get us.  Imagine if you can start to see and experience everything from this lens.  How differently would you experience your sensations and feelings?  How much more readily would the lessons be apparent to you rather than you aimlessly seeking for answers and solutions?  

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

PLAYING ALL IN

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

PLAYING ALL IN 

Avoid failure & lack

Most of us only play part of the game of life.  We gravitate towards, and give our energy to, things that feel like a safe bet or a sure thing.  We back away from those things that feel uncertain or which require us to rest in faith rather than fact or certainty.  The result of this is that we feel like we are only partially in the game, partially invested, and therefore only partially create, experience or be what we desire.  Why don’t we play all in?  Why don’t we give life our all?  The answer is simple.  We don’t play full out because we are afraid to lose and/or we are afraid of what we might have to give up.  You can call losing failure (personal or circumstantial), not getting what we want, feeling pain, hurt, upset, disappointment or lack.  We run so much from feeling the experience of failure and lack that it keeps us from playing the game of life.  

It’s a bit of a paradox.  By not fully playing the game we lose before we lose.  We choose failure before failure chooses us.  It’s a tricky little strategy.  Most people aren’t even aware that they are doing this.  They are so used to giving a quarter, half, or three quarters of themselves, that they don’t even realize that there is more that the can give to playing the game.    They cap out or give themselves an arbitrary ceiling when they have so much more capacity beyond what they think.  They might be moving along with their life and then hit a place where they feel uncertain.  They aren’t sure how to proceed or what feels right.  Maybe they feel a lack of confidence, resources, skills or knowledge.  Often when we don’t know “how” we hit an inner stop sign and just stop.  We don’t move forward or then we begin to feel stagnate or like we aren’t progressing.  

I find that not knowing “how” is frequently a way we keep ourselves underneath an arbitrary ceiling.  As long as we don’t know how then we aren’t accountable or responsible to keep going, because after all we don’t know.  There are times when we need to learn a skill, take a class, get a mentor or gain some type of knowledge, but when you are committed and playing the game full out you never let that stop you.  You find a way because you are committed.  You don’t allow it to become a reason to stop playing the game.  You don’t stop.  Rather you show up and keep finding your way through the maze of this human experience, learning and growing along the path.  Remember the juice is not in getting to the destination, but rather who you become on the journey towards the destination.   

YOU DESERVE GREATNESS 

Utilizing your free will

In addition to fearing failure and lack, there is another reason why we don’t play full out.  It’s because we don’t feel like we deserve a great life.  We are so used to our current way of living, that stretching ourselves too far out from where we are feels like too much for us to allow in.  We are so used to living in a perpetual state of not ok-ness, or waiting for the not ok-ness to happen, that we accommodate to feeling not ok as our normal state of existence.  We don’t actually feel or believe that we could be ok or that it’s ok to be ok.  If our life is going good we hold our breath waiting for it to not be good.  We live in this near constant inner state of yoyo’ing back and forth between not feeling ok and then feeling ok but being worried about when it’s going to end.  

So there is a very simple fact that is important to just accept, I mean really accept, which is that everything is going to change.  Even if something has seemingly been the same for 5 minutes or 50 years, it is guaranteed to change at some point.  This is the nature of life.  Life is movement and movement is change.  Most people don’t like or invite change because it feels uncertain.  They don’t know what to expect, and beyond that they are afraid of what they might feel like on the other side of the change.  When you really accept the inevitability of change you are much more willing to play the game of life all in.  You get that nothing will remain, neither the things you like nor the things you don’t like.  Great things will come and go.  Crappy things will come and go.  There is a constant cycle of this happening all of the time.  You can’t hold anything in place that wants to change.  If you try to you will fail.  

What is beautiful about all of this is that when you accept this you will also learn that there is an inner resourcefulness inside of you.  You will discover that your free will is in how you choose to see whatever it is that you are experiencing.  This is your power, and it is mighty indeed.  In a single instant you can transform your experience of whatever it is you are experiencing, even if you’ve been experienced it for decades or lifetimes.  This means that even though you might feel loss, failure, disappointment, pain, or lack of something that you desire, you can always be good, or dare I even say, great.  This is not to bypass whatever it is you are feeling, rather it is rise above it and say there is more than this, I deserve more than this.  More than feeling the way I do, more than experiencing what I am experiencing, more.  This is where you come on line.  This is where you get back into the game and begin playing, really playing.  You’ve already felt the pain, the loss, the failure, the not ok, and you are done tolerating it.  The ball is in your court.  

Many people don’t let themselves get to this point.  They don’t put their foot down and say enough.  Rather they tolerate less than what they deserve simply because they don’t think they deserve more.  But you do.  You deserve whatever your big heart desires and you are equipped with the inner resourcefulness, ie. free will, that is required.  It’s your birthright.  It’s who you are.  If there are things along the way that you need to learn then you will learn them, and more than that, you will learn through them.  Choose to play the game full out. Life is ready and waiting for you to say yes to it.  

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

ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE

Dr. Amanda Love 1 Comment

ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE 

When life does & doesn’t go our way

We’ve all heard and we all know it, gratitude is the key to happiness.  When we are grateful for what is then there is no fear, no anger, and no despair.  Rather we feel relaxed, energized and at peace.  We invite whatever is present to be present.  We stop trying to get out of life and rest into it.  Yet even though we conceptually know that having an attitude of gratitude is the most important to our overall well-being and experience of life, there is a gap in our embodied, moment to moment willingness to live in gratitude.  Why the gap you ask?  Because 90% of time we would rather choose our perspective of what should be rather than the perspective of gratitude as to what is.  We are so fixated on wanting what we want, that as soon as we feel our desires, needs or wants be threatened, even a little bit, we shift out of gratitude and into tactic, strategy and manipulation in order attempt to get or keep what we want.  There is nothing more depleting to our energy state and our overall health and vitality then this.  There is equally nothing more energizing and resourcing to our overall health and vitality than gratitude.

Gratitude is super easy to feel when life is going the way we want.  In fact this is the state of well-being that we are always seeking.  The state we are always trying to get too or maintain.  Life is going great, just as we hoped and desired it would, and we feel amazing.  Things are up and we are in agreement with life as it is presenting itself to us.  Then alas something goes awry.  Something isn’t working out how we want it to, we don’t have the thing we want, people aren’t cooperating how we hoped they would, an unexpected surprise turns the course of our plans in a direction we don’t prefer, or something is not happening fast enough, in the pacing we want or at all.  Here is the birthplace of our biggest energy drain.  We start to feel tired and we don’t know why.  We are irritated and feel blah.  We get anxious or depressed.  We feel this low energy state when we enter disagreement with life.  When we are trying to get somewhere else, be other than where we are, or we want something else to be showing up rather than what is and we are simultaneously actively resisting what is.  This is our recipe for misery.  

Just to be clear, there is nothing wrong with wanting to grow, change things up in your life, or having desires.  This is natural.  Rather it is when we fall out of gratitude for what is or where we are, and into resistance, which lowers our energy state.  We get depleted and it becomes much harder to create changes or see things through novel perspectives of possibility, when you are coming from resistance rather than gratitude.  You can be grateful for what is and simultaneously be creating massive change in your life experience.   

CHANGE THROUGH GRATITUDE 

Following natural impulses

While it’s true that when you are in a state of gratitude there might be less you perceive as needing to change, we are still creatures of growth and evolution.  We like to explore, have different experiences, create new things, learn skills and develop.  Think about when you were a baby and you were learning to walk.  There were natural impulses that moved you from rolling over, to sitting up, then crawling, standing and eventually walking.  Growth, movement and change happened organically.  You didn’t have to get pissed off at sitting in order to start crawling.  Equally you didn’t have to resist standing in order to beginning walking.  No, no, no you didn’t.  You simply followed an impulse to change, evolve, expand your world and grow.  You didn’t’ resist anything about where you were and yet you still made changes to grow.  Ahh, so yes you see it is possible, and even the natural way.  

So what’s up with our self-centered way of seeing the world?  Why do we insist that life should be different and freak out when it’s not going as we think it should be or how we planned? Why don’t we trust the natural impulses inside of us and that they are taking us where we need to be/go in the perfect timing and rhythm for our development?  Why do we focus on what we don’t have or what isn’t happening rather than working with and adapting to what we do have?  At some point early on we experienced not getting what we want.  This creates frustration, anger, sadness and a sense of powerlessness for many of us.  Later on we learn the concept of scarcity or not enough of something (or of ourselves).  We begin to compare and contrast ourselves with others.  We focus on getting what we perceive we don’t have.  On top of this we create a disgruntled attitude with where we are at.  It’s never quite right.  It’s not quite enough.  We are irritated by what we don’t have and feel heartbroken that our dreams are not here now.  We feel it unfair that others have the things we want.  We fall out of trust with ourselves and the natural timing of our progression, and out of faith with the flow of life.  From here gratitude seems like a joke.  Gratitude for what?  A life that isn’t what you want and feels like it never fully will be.  It’s hard to muster the energy to shift our focus because our state is so low.  If only something or someone could magically fix it.  

The thing is that nothing can fix it except your shift in attitude.  You can’t expect your experience of life to change without first changing where you are coming from.  People often don’t realize themselves in the equation.  They discount the power and creation capacities of their own thoughts, feelings and emotions and assume their state of being is dependent on circumstance.  The thing people truly want is a state of being change, they just don’t know that’s what they want.  They think that if the experience changes then they will be happy and feel how they want to feel.  This is temporary fulfillment.  It is constantly chasing experiences in order to arrive at where you want to be.  The only way to have sustainable fulfillment and be in a high energy state that is full of health and vitality, is to come from gratitude, and to stop trying to get to it.  

Life is an abundant stream of never ending giving, but when you are focused on what isn’t you never experience what is.  The key to happiness is being grateful for everything that is.  Are you willing?  The degree to which you are is the degree to which you will experience happiness. 

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

MORE THAN ENOUGH

Dr. Amanda Love 1 Comment

MORE THAN ENOUGH

Coping strategies to avoid

Feeling like we are not enough is the most pervasive of human wounds.  It is a cloak nearly all of us wear.  A deep sense of inadequacy, unworthiness, and unlovability.  Our biggest fear is that we are not lovable and that who we are is not valuable, and because of this we seek outside of ourselves for significance and love, thinking that it must be elsewhere.  That it must be something that we need to earn, achieve or somehow otherwise get.  This patterning, and our belief in our unlovability interferes more with the expression of ourselves than anything else does.  It is our biggest roadblock to fulfillment, health and well-being.  It stops us in our tracks, keeps us in our comfort zone, allows us to think small, live small and keep a certain distance from ourselves and others.

We have all learned strategies to cope or manage with the sense of fundamentally being not enough.  So much so that you might not even recognize the not enough story playing in the background of your psyche.  Some people learn to achieve, do and accomplish in order to not hear that voice of not enough.  Others learn to give as much as possible to others hoping that their not enoughness won’t be seen in the flurry of doing for others.  Other strategies include distracting ourselves with whatever we can find to distract ourselves with, leaving our body and living up in our heads or far away in the stars, creating or maintaining unaligned relationships, and/or distancing ourselves from life and others.  We all have utilized or are utilizing some or all of these strategies.  Without doing so life would be unimaginably hard.  Yet there is a cost to these strategies, which is that we never get to really just be or relax as ourselves.  

This keeps us exhausted and the fulfillment of the moment and the sweetness of life never seem to arrive.  It often feels like they are somewhere other than where we are.  If we can just keep up our strategies then we will get there.  We can see it on the horizon, even taste it, but it always seems like it’s just right out of our reach.  Never being able to surrender to and feel the not enoughness we keep at our strategies, convinced we will arrive in bliss, yet bliss can’t get in.  It can’t reach us or touch us because it is a completely different frequency than what we are currently constituting ourselves as (ie. not enough).  We can’t see how we are keeping all of it at bay.  We just believe that we are almost there while continuing to convince ourselves that there is somewhere else we can get too.  The thing is that there isn’t.  So that idea that we have in our mind stays just as that, an idea of fulfillment, bliss, and well-being that we continually chase and almost just touch, but never live. 

FINDING THE GIFT  

Being all that you are

Inside of every wound there is a gift.  In fact the entire spiritual journey is moving from wound into the gift of whatever the wound gives us.  It’s seeing how we couldn’t be who we are and share what we do without that wound.  However we can’t always just jump right into the gift from the wounded place.  There is learning involved (ie. transformation) before we can resolve, come to peace and give the gift that the wound gave us.  Even though most of us know conceptually that we are enough, many have not embodied it.  If they had we would be living in an incredibly self-empowered world, which we are not.  Rather we live constricted by our inner fears of expressing ourselves, of being not accepted by others, of not being able to make it, of not deserving, of being judged, cast out, separated, and of being left alone.  We feel these fears as limitations and often rather than noticing our deep story of inadequacy and unlovability we go into feeling like we don’t know how.  We think if we just knew the how or the what of our next step or steps then everything would be clear and we would feel better.

Not knowing how or what is our biggest “excuse”, if you will, to not move into our expression, power and worth.  It’s how we avoid, deny or escape the feelings of not enoughness.  The first step in any transformational process is courage.  That means courage to feel not enough rather than stuff it down or pretend that it’s not there (ie. spiritual bypassing).  Without acknowledging and feeling not enough we don’t have the energy, fuel or momentum to take new actions.  This is why we frequently feel like we don’t know how/what.  While it’s true that you may not know all of the details, when you face not enoughness head on you generate an inner power that knows how to figure it all out, even the stuff you currently don’t know.  

Often I hear people say that they don’t want to feel certain things, such as not enoughness, because they feel like they will never get out of them.  Like they will fall into a pit of despair from which there is no escape.  I find that the real pit of despair is avoidance of what we are feeling and/or staying in the story of what we are feeling, while not actually feeling what we feel.  The result of avoiding what we feel is that we experience stagnation, we feel stuck, we don’t grow, we continue to feel bound in limitation and never generate the energy we need to change.  While feeling things, like our sense of unworthiness or not enoughness, is not a picnic in the park, it will with time generate movement in your system.  You will start to see a pathway through.  You will begin to feel a hunger surge up inside of you.  You will take new action, think different thoughts, and see things in novel ways.  A power will rise up in you that says, “Enough of this!  I am enough! I do deserve! I do matter!”.  You become less and less afraid to express or be yourself.  You will discover the paradox of the simultaneity of relaxation and action.  

The gift in having the courage to face, feel and transform is that you give what you learn.  The world needs the gift of you.  No one else can be the specific frequency or flavor that you are.  Your flare is perfectly as it should be.  None is better or worse.  Moving that knowing from concept into embodiment is the missing link.  To surrender to who you are, just as you are, perceived inadequacies and all, everything included, is when you truly become a channel for all that you are here to be.  

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

SAY BYE-BYE TO WORRY

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

SAY BYE-BYE👋 TO WORRY 

Your most intimate friend

Most of us are familiar with worry.  In fact worry might be your most intimate friend.  We tend to spend more time with worry than we do our partner, family members, kids or friends.  Worry is often so intimate that it’s present inside of all of the activities that we do.  It’s there when we shower, while we exercise, as we’re working, and while we are getting groceries or pumping gas.  Subtly, or not so subtly, in the background is the thought, “will things work out” or “will things be ok”?  It’s like we are deathly afraid of how all the details of life will orchestrate themselves and we can’t seem to let it be.  Our best attempt to not feel totally helpless or powerless is to worry.  Somehow we think if we worry about whatever it is we are worried about then we can control how it all happens.  However because we know we can’t really control it, we stay in a perpetual state of worry, which you could also call stress or overwhelm.

In order to let go of worry we also have to let go of whatever outcome we are attempting to control.  Whatever thing we want to happen or not happen, the timing of something, and the flow of the details in between, we have to let it all have its own will.  We must give away our hope, agenda, insistence, and demand for the thing to happen in any particular way, or at all.  This is where it feels tricky to us because we perceive potential loss or lack.  If things don’t happen how we desire in our minds for them to happen, at the bare minimum we perceive inconvenience, and beyond that, that something might be lost.  That loss could be of anything.  A new possibility coming to birth, a relationship, how someone views or sees us, money, time or other resources, objects of our desire, a job, a project, our health, other’s health, and on and on.  We will do whatever we can not to experience loss of what we desire because loss feels like death, failure and can lead us into hopelessness, depression or despair.  So rather than facing the potential of all of that, instead we choose worry, because worry feels easier to feel compared to feeling the death of our dreams and desires.

The thing about worry though is that it hijacks the shit out of us.  We fall out of presence and into thinking about all of the things.  We are not available for what actually matters to us, who it is that we want to be and our chosen state of being.  We lose touch with the magic of life and ourselves.  On a physiologically level our body gets to experience the chemical cascade of worry, which looks like the inability to digest our food, sleep well, or feel energized, and we experience pain and tension in the body.  Then we get fixated on trying to fix all of these bodily expressions without addressing the core essence which creates their arising, which is worry.  While moving towards feeling loss, lack, or death of our dreams feels like a less desirable choice, you must ask yourself if it’s really worth the cost to keep avoiding your sense of feeling lack of control over all of the happenings of your life.   

THE OTHER SIDE OF WORRY 

Mystery revealing itself

We tend not to think too much about what is on the other side of worry.  Mostly we either wait in anxious anticipation, or we take massive action because we can’t sit still, and then we hope for the best.  The “best” being whatever our chosen preference is for the desired outcome.  The funny thing about being human is that we have such a small perspective on things, and despite our tiny viewpoint we think we know what’s best to happen.  It is a form of self-deceit that is mostly unconscious, because the majority of us have good intentions for what we desire.  However those good intentions, and our ideas of what those intentions look like when they are manifested at the physical level, interferes with our seeing.  It distorts and filters our perceptions.  We then create judgments or assumptions about what we are seeing rather than simply seeing it.  Those judgments and assumptions always feel bad because they are coming from our tiny little vantage point that thinks it knows what it’s looking at, all the while it’s missing 99.99% of the picture.  

Big picture here is that we have no idea what, the details or the timing of how things are supposed to occur.  We have ideas of how we would like it to all happen, but our knowledge of the actual reality of it stops there.  If we don’t recognize the limitation of our vantage point, of our filters and the distorted picture we have based on our preferences, then we will fall or push our way into control.  We will feel anxious.  We will experience overwhelm.  We will complain about being stressed.  All as avoidance to feel how much control we don’t have over things.  

Not having control over things does not mean that you are without power.  In fact it means the opposite.  Surrender is the ultimate power.  This is what you discover on the other side of worry.  When you stop avoiding feeling potential loss, a sense of powerlessness, or inconvenience you arrive into a state of presence and openness for life to reveal itself to you.  Presence in the ever present moment of revelation, meaning you come to know what it’s like to be in the unfolding rather than trying to managing the unfolding.  When you are no longer trying to control something it frees things up to respond and move, and what I really mean by that is that it frees you up to respond and move.  You become less rigid and fixated and more able to be a part of the unfolding.  This is also where the power of intention shines.  You can still intend for whatever it is you desire to intend, but rather than forcing the flow of it, you are in the flow with it.  It’s not two opposing forces, but one force moving and responding to itself.  You are not separate from what you desire, you are one with it, but as soon as you place what you desire out there onto a happening, object, event or person, you relate to it as separate from you and you have to figure out how to control or manipulate it in order for your preference to be experienced or expressed.  

The other side of worry is acceptance and peace.  It is a relinquishment of thinking that you know and a becoming present to what actually wants to happen, rather than what you think you want to happen.  You let things breathe, which ironically also means you breathe.  You experience life force returning to its unimpeded flow.  The intelligence that is life organizes itself with you included.  It still doesn’t mean that you will get what you want or that your desired preference will occur in the timing you desire, or even at all.  It does however mean that you breathe, you are at peace and in acceptance, your body receives easeful chemical cascades that allow it to function well and you get to be in the dance of the unfolding of the mystery revealing itself.

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

LANGUAGE OF THE HEART

Dr. Amanda Love 1 Comment

LANGUAGE OF THE HEART

Opening the heart

Each of our hearts speaks a language.  The essence of that language is love, which gets shared and expressed in different ways.  Some hearts speak through vibration using words, tones or other sounds either written or spoken.  Some hearts express through art, movement and touch, and still others through just still being.  The heart does not need words, but it might use words to express itself.  It does not need to draw, mold, move or touch, but it might do so in order to share itself with others.  While the language of the heart can be interpreted by placing words, labels, definitions and meanings upon it, it is beyond all ideas and concepts.  The language of the heart tends to evoke feeling in us.  A felt sense that touches us in some way or brings with it a sense of connection, depth and beyondness.  

In order to both express and receive the language of the heart your heart must be open.   You might wonder what it means exactly to have an open heart.  Simply put having an open heart means that you are without personal agenda, not attempting to protect your personal identity from others, but rather that you have a desire to share, express or serve others in some way through being yourself.  It means not being guarded from potential threats or loses to your personal sense of self (i.e. ego mind).  It means being available to and for life rather than closed off from it.  An open heart listens rather than insists.  It shares without force or manipulation.  It feels whatever is present without judgment or story of any kind.  It’s inclusive and discerning.  It cares about the essence of you and others.  It can be strong and even passionately ferrous at times, while rooted in being of service to love.  It doesn’t tolerate b.s. and yet loves all nonetheless.  It recognizes or knows that while life includes you it’s not about you.  

The language of the heart also has a different vibrational quality than what our thoughts, emotions or physical body have.  If you think of it in terms of wavelength, our physical bodies have the longest wavelength.  This is why they appear more solid, gross or dense.  Our emotions have a slightly shorter wavelength than our physical bodies, but a longer wavelength than our thoughts.  This is why you often have to slow yourself down in order to recognize what you are feeling and also why when you do feel something you move at a slower pace than if you are thinking.  Thoughts have a shorter wavelength than our emotions or our physical body.  This is why if you spend a lot of time thinking you might feel ungrounded or find yourself in a fast pace.  The frequency of the heart or soul body is an even shorter wavelength.  It is the subtlest of the bodies described here. Just like you can change the channel of the radio and tune into a different frequency, you can change the tone/tension in your nervous system and tune into these different frequencies of you.  No frequency/body is better than the other.  The key is to have them all energized and accessible to you.  Network entrainments help you shift the tonal patterns of your nervous system so that you can do this very thing.   

HEART VIBRATIONS 

Clearing the channels

The language and frequencies of the heart open us into a more multidimensional nature of reality.  While the mind tends to keep us in a linear, logical and 3D view of life, the heart breaks and bends all of those supposed rules.  This is why attempting to interpret or put meanings onto the expressions of the heart never really works.  We can do it, but really we just end up with a whole bunch of projections and the essence of the thing is covered up underneath all of our ideas and meanings about it.  Yet this is what the human mind likes to do.  It flattens the heart frequency out to its frequency so that the world seems safe, ordinary and consistent.  It’s boring, yet it’s what we tend to do so that we can make “sense” of it all, so that our minds feel like they understand something and can accept it.  While this isn’t bad it does postpone or dampen our access to our heart.  Even though the language of the heart’s expressions are varied and infinite their core message is the same.  Unification and oneness is the beat of their drum.  Knowing this can ease the mind’s endless search for meaning.  All meanings will eventually cease to be relevant in this realization.  

When we are ready and available the language of our heart simply expresses through us.  It’s not something we have to figure out how to do.  Your mind will really dislike that, yet it’s the way it is.  You can’t figure out your heart.  I mean you can try, but good luck.  Now there may be skill sets you need to learn or worldly knowledge that you need to acquire in order to give form to your heart’s frequency, but the form is not the essence of your heart.  Rather only the means to share it.  Don’t get too lost in perfecting forms and rather focus on the heart frequency that you are.  If more people did this we would have a lot less boring or mind numbing jobs that people are just trying to get through.  It’s not about the thing you do, but who you be inside of what you do.

While you can’t figure out your heart, you can prepare for its arrival and clear out the vessel of you for its expression.  Preparation for its arrival is doing the clean up work of all of your personal agendas.  This means doing the inner and outer work of dismantling the need to protect your personal separate self, as if there really even is one.  Remember this is what it takes to open the heart.  When the heart is open, expression is natural.  Just like when the bladder is open you naturally pee.  There’s nothing to figure out, it’s mechanics.   However if there is a bunch of stones in your bladder it makes it harder for the pee to come out.  That’s the clean up work you need to do.  Clear out the stones that interfere with you heart’s natural flow.  

There is nothing too non-ordinary for the heart.  In fact you can kind of think of the language of heart as non-ordinary.  If you are still self-conscious about looking weird, not being accepted by others, being judged or failing, then you know where to begin your clean up work.  When you are in your heart’s frequency you honestly don’t really care about that stuff anymore.  It’s just a non issue.  Your only intention is to be of service in the ways that your heart desires to express.  Your mind frequently won’t know what any of it means or what will come of it, but again you care less and less about needing to know.  You will find freedom in being you.

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