Sanctuary for Heart Magic :Unwinding Spines & Unleashing Hearts utilizing Network Spinal Chiropractic in Boulder, Colorado: neurological defense

NEUROLOGICAL DEFENSE

Moving away from pain

Much of how we operate, move, behave, perceive, think, feel and sense is learned and habitual. We develop strategies, patterns and ways of being through our experiences. We learn to perceive and move about our world based on internal and external cues. If we do the same thing over and over, or see something the same way over and over, we learn to create wiring or neurological patterning in our nervous system based on our perceptions or behaviors. If we repeat the same thing enough times then the way we perceive something or how we move about becomes automatic or habitual. This means that there is very little “registering” or conscious awareness that happens as we engage with life. Life is simply a series of habits and reactions, that is unless we create novelty inside of our perceptions.

If something hurts we instinctually move away from it and if it feels good we move towards it. Hurt can be physical such as if we place our hand on a hot stove, or it can be emotional or mental such as feeling rejection or like we aren’t good enough. Regardless of where the hurt hits us we learn early on how to protect ourselves from the pain of feeling it. We might flee or run in order to move away from it. We might fight back in order to push something away from us. We also might freeze in place or go numb in attempt to avoid the hurt or pain. On a neurological level there is a response to this avoidance of pain, which is commonly known as the stress response. Most people are quite familiar with the terminology “stress response” yet most people don’t really get what it means for how they experience their life on a day to day basis.

When we are in protection (i.e. avoidance) mode our nervous system wires and fires pathways that create various messages throughout the body. These messages gear us up for fighting until we eventually burnout and the effect of this is what we call adrenal fatigue. These messages also put us on alert, or in a hyper-vigilant state. They get us to focus on what’s wrong or what might be out to harm us. They create tension in the body so that we don’t feel the impact of harm or pain. They effect our sleep cycles making it hard to feel rested or get good sleep. They make it harder to digest our food, and they move energy out of self-healing and into self-protection. This state of being is called neurological defense. At any point in our life we can have experiences that don’t feel good to us and we activate these patterns of defense rather than feel the impact of pain or harm or potential pain/harm. There is intelligence in these defensive patterns, however they greatly limit our experience of life. We cannot move into healing and neurological openness unless we are willing to move towards that which we avoid feeling.

NEUROLOGICAL OPENNESS

Moving towards life

While there is intelligence to our defensive reactions and patterns in the body they also create great limitation in our experience of life. They allow us to experience only a limited range of feelings, sensations, and thoughts. They limit our behaviors, perceptions, and our relationships with self and others. They cap the amount of energy we have access to receiving, giving and sharing. They keep our bodies running in suboptimal energy conditions effecting our health and overall well-being. They keep us from fully experiencing the range of our hearts and the hearts of others. There is great cost to our avoidance of feeling pain.

When we stop avoiding pain and allow ourselves to feel and be with it, some pretty amazing things happen. First is that you can no longer be angry. Feeling the pain we’ve experienced softens us. Some people don’t even know just how angry they are because they’ve adopted other strategies of self-protection such as always being positive, people pleasing, or the more quiet version of anger which is self-hatred. This can manifest very subtly as negative self-talk or simply not feeling yourself to be great. If you don’t unequivocally know that you are fucking amazing then you probably have some work to do here. Second is that your neurological, and thus physiological state, shifts. All those messages that your nervous system sends out change in nature when you move towards life experiences. Rather than messages gearing you up to fight, flight or freeze, it sends messages of relaxation and ease. Food can then be digested, sleep happens naturally, and the self-healing mechanism occurs unimpeded. Muscles relax, the posture becomes more upright and open, and your focus shifts onto what is here, what’s working, and on how life is supporting you. Nothing is out to get you anymore. You look for invitations and openings. More opportunities seem to be available to you. You feel more confident in yourself. This is what I call neurological openness.

In neurological openness we participate more fully with life. We perceive things that we didn’t perceive before, and we sense, feel and think differently because we are more open to life rather than in protection from it. We become more awake or aware of our impact on life, others and ourselves. We recognize more and more that we have choice. This recognition of choice is the beginning place of novelty. We start trying on new feelings, thoughts, behaviors and perceptions, which create and lay down new patterns in our neurology. We become different and therefore experience life differently.

The more we lay down the patterns of openness in our nervous system the more we move into the field of our heart. The yummy bliss of yes. Beyond participation with life we move into oneness with it. We see that nothing in not us therefore there has never been anything to protect from. This is the awakened stage of the healing journey. From separation and self-protection into unification and love. It is all available to you as you are ready for it.

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

UNWINDING NEUROLOGICAL DEFENSE

Dismantling our protection from pain

We’ve all experienced tension. That tight, constricted, unrelaxed feeling. Sometimes it feels hard to breathe. It can come with feeling overwhelmed and like there isn’t enough time or resources available to us. It can be challenging to discover and feel what we are feeling. Often it comes with uncomfortable sensations in the body. Tension is means of protection. We create tension, and our body feels that tension, in order to protect us from pain, when we perceive that pain might be present or imminent. The pain, which tension is protecting us from, isn’t always clearly evident to us. Yet if we investigate we can always find the thing we are attempting to avoid feeling or experiencing.

Pain can come in many forms. It can be purely at the body/sensation level. You might experience this in a car accident or a fall where you finding yourself bracing (i.e. creating tension) in order to protect the body from damage and lessen the impact. You may also have a chronically painful part of your body. Often we create tension around that area in order to attempt to not feel the pain as much. It’s not the tension that is painful even if that is what we think is the source of the pain. The true source of the pain is often below the tension. The tension is the means to dull what is underneath it. Pain can also be felt at the emotional level. The root of most emotional pain is the fear/experience of being unloved or unlovable. At the next level up pain felt at the mental levels is often rooted in not being enough, sharing enough or having anything worthy to give/be. Lastly pain is also experienced at the spiritual level, which is rooted in believing we are separate from spirit/God.

Due to the fact that most people don’t want to experience pain we learn to create protection or defense from it. We gear up and create armoring. This armoring is like a neurological suit that we wear that we don’t even know that we are wearing. Everything we experience or interact with gets to come into contact with this suit. The suit is a filter. It’s not who we are, but it is often who we think we are and also who others perceive us to be. Loosely you could call this our personality, and it also comes with a particular way we posture our body, talk, walk, think, perceive, dress, eat, behave and the sensations we have or don’t have. It colors our entire world. The suit comes with wiring. That wiring is called neurological defense. There are patterns and architecture to neurological defense. These patterns are specifically what Network Chiropractic addresses. Network assesses for the patterns that are present and helps wake up awareness and liberate energy inside these patterns of protection, so that your true self may be known to you.

OPENING INTO THE HEART

Rewriting the nervous system

The true self is the heart. It is that space or experience of relaxation and easefulness that is joyfully and blissfully present. It is light and spacious. It is all inclusive and allows everything inside of it to be as it is. It is energized and alive. It is awake. It sees nothing as wrong. There is no resistance and we feel just as our self. Nothing to hide, protect, avoid, or run away from experiencing. It is that which we are all hungry for and finding our way into in our own ways. The heart is not just for some people or for some times. It is for all times and all people.

The heart seems absent, foreign or mysterious to us when we are in a state of neurological defense. When we are in protection mode we view ourselves as a subject/object that is independent from other subject/objects. This is how most beings in the world view themselves and also why there is such a disconnection from the heart amongst our collective at large. When separation is the predominant perspective than there is always something/someone to protect ourselves from. Yet when that predominant perceptive changes to non-separation or unity, than protection becomes nonsensical and arbitrary.

The heart isn’t something hard to find. Its all pervasive, ever present and never comes or goes. What does come or go is our focus or attention on it. When our focus and attention is wrapped up in all the ways we need to protect ourselves to physically survive, get all of our emotional needs met and to satisfy the demands of the stories we’ve learned to tell ourselves about what our life is supposed to be and who we are supposed to be, then the heart is not in our view. Shifting priorities, changing stories and reconditioning the neurological patterns present in your energetic and physical configuration is required in order to experience life as heart.

Opening into the heart is closer than you think. It’s not too hard to find/feel glimpses of it. These glimpses are important as they start to light up pathways that don’t get lit up that frequently inside most people’s nervous systems. This is what Network entrainments provide the container for as well. During entrainments an energetic field is created that is organized in such a way to amplify the experience of heart for you. While the gentle contacts along the spine help dismantle neurological defense, this field or container of the heart is readily present and available. With continued tastes, touches and glimpses of this field of the heart, a person can receive and exchange more and more energy and awareness with this field. The energy, awareness and perspective of heart then becomes the dominant program in your system. The heart starts speaking louder than the pathways that are fighting for survival and viewing life from a scarce and separate perspective. This is the progression, the objective and the intention. It’s simple. It’s available. It’s time is ripe.

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