personal development

SAY BYE-BYE TO WORRY

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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

SELF-CENSORSHIP

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SELF-CENSORSHIP 

Being dishonest

There is often controversy around censorship, particularly about information getting hidden or concealed in or by the media.  It is a popular topic of conversation as many people feel like they aren’t getting the full story or all of the information that is going on behind the scenes, or behind the appearance of things.  There are narratives that people want to be seen or heard more than other narratives.  Each person or group does their best to be the loudest or have the most attention placed on what they want to be seen or heard.  This often lends to debates around violations of free speech or free expression.  For some people this is a very heated debate.  Ultimately this censorship leads to feelings of mistrust and that no one is being honest about what is really going because the full story isn’t being shared.  

As we see this all being played out before us, sort of like watching a movie on a big screen, we are getting a peak into the inner workings of our own collective and personal psyche.  The way I see it is is that everything is projection.  That which we have the most inner charge around we will work out in our outer environment, and it will become our experience or what we call fact or reality.  The outer experience of censorship and the unfairness or violation around it, is a mere reflection of the massive amounts of self-censorship we do on a day to day basis.  Many are frustrated by how un-fully expressed they feel and simultaneously they are constantly censoring themselves.  Why do we self-censor?  There are a multitude of reasons.  We don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, we don’t feel like who we are is valid or good enough to express, we don’t want to appear to come off as rude or insensitive, we think other people won’t accept us, like us or maybe will even leave us if we don’t censor ourselves.  

Another way to say self-censor would be to say that we aren’t being authentic or honest.  When we censor ourselves we become un-trustable.  People don’t know if we are being honest or not and this makes them not trust us.  How much do you trust someone who you know isn’t telling you the truth?  Probably not much, and rightfully so.  If we want to live authentically, and authentically relate with others, then we must be ourselves.  Now on the flip side of this, sometimes we might not really want to know the truth that someone is expressing to us, because it isn’t what we want to hear, see or know.  As a “recipient” of authenticity we must be willing to receive the information as it is.  When we don’t receive the information well, it breads more of an environment where censorship is the socially accepted way of engagement in our collective and personal relationships.   

BEING AUTHENTIC 

Facing your fears

Making the shift from inauthenticity to authenticity may feel tough.  It may bring up some of your biggest fears such as rejection, worthlessness, or being a bad person.  These fears run pretty deep through most all of us as human beings.  What it boils down to though is the type of experience you both want to have and create, which are the same thing.  Even though authenticity can feel super scary and threatening, being inauthentic feels miserable in other ways.  We usually feel disgruntled, frustrated, stuck, trapped, unaligned, disempowered, heavy, tired, irritated, annoyed and not at peace when we are choosing inauthenticity.  On a bigger level it can also feel like we aren’t living our purpose or engaging with life in the ways we desire too.  We each must personally evaluate the cost and decide if authenticity or inauthenticity makes more sense to us.  We may perceive that we get certain things like survival needs, love, attention, approval, validation, or respect if we engage inauthentically, or in ways we think other people want us too.  On the other hand being ourselves, having self-acceptance, feeling at peace and being aligned with our purpose may hold more weight.   

Now being authentic isn’t a permission slip to be mean or righteous, rather it’s only to be truthful.  If the receiver of your authentic expression can’t receive you, first know that it isn’t about you.  It’s about them not being able to accept what is being presented to them in the reflection of you.  Secondly you can consciously choose not to express an aspect of yourself in any situation or relationship that you find it relevant not to do so.  The key here is that you are deliberately choosing to withhold because you feel greater relevance in not expressing yourself.  When you are in the position of chooser there are no feelings of violation of self-expression, no frustration in not expressing yourself and you feel nothing is lost.  It can sometimes be a bit tricky to discern if you are avoiding authenticity or truly feeling it relevant not to express yourself.  The determining factor is often how much inner peace you have at the end of it all. 

There are overt ways that we self-censor that are often very obvious.  Examples would be not saying something we are feeling to someone, flat out lying to others, saying we will do things that we don’t want to do, shutting down completely and not speaking.  These things are obvious to just about anyone that is aware.  There are also subtle way that we self-censor that may not be as apparent.  Examples would be ways that we posture our body, being stiff or rigid, holding our breath, not making eye contact, smiling or nodding a lot, being agreeable, shyness, and not feeling.  In order to uncover these for yourself simply notice when you feel most yourself and contrast that with when you feel the most not yourself, and then pay attention to some of these subtleties.  

To live uncensored is simply to be yourself and to receive what life offers you.  It is to be trustable in self and of life.  It is to live aligned and feel inner peace.  Being authentic with others is being authentic with self.  

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

STOP DOING TO GET THINGS DONE

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STOP DOING TO GET THINGS DONE 

Be finished with finishing

So often we do to get things done.  In fact most of our days are spent getting through one activity or task after another.  It seems as though the doing is ceaseless, except perhaps for a few moments at the end of our day or week.  Why do we live in the constant cycle of doing?  It as if we are all trying to get somewhere.  A place where we can rest, relax and be at ease.  We think that we might arrive there if we can just get done all of the stuff we feel like we have to do.  Such is the case that most of us are not enjoying much of our doing, but rather wanting to simply get it over with so we can move onto doing the next thing that we don’t enjoy.  All so that hopefully, at some point, we can get to an activity we like or simply just rest. 

In a culture where we value productivity more than enjoyment, connection or presence, and perceive non-activity as laziness, we are set up to live as doing machines.  The foundation for our dominant train of thought is how much or how many.  When we go to our jobs we don’t get praised or promoted for our non-productivity or for our presence, but rather for how much we get done.  We don’t get paid for how much we enjoy what we are doing, but rather only for the job done.  While the culture creates this container for us, it is still us that values productivity more than enjoyment of what we are doing, and we continue to insist that perhaps we will arrive somewhere better at some future time.  

As a result of this we are fairly disconnected from own impulses, urges to move and natural rhythms.  You might call this intuition, but really it’s just listening and following your inner rhythms rather than your conditioned response to things. We constantly feel like we need “know something out there” because we can’t hear our own inner knowing.  We seek for safety and certainty inside of situations or circumstances rather than within our own selves.   So like any good and reliable machine we produce.  We meet all of the outer expectations from bosses, friends and family members.  We live up to all the marks the best we can and do whatever we perceive we need to do in order to be ok.  With this we often ignore, repress, or deny our own rhythms of activity and non-activity.  We feel stressed, not necessarily because of the situation, but because of our own disregard for listening to what feels good to us.  We fear we won’t be taken care of, supported, or have all of our physical, emotional or social needs met if we don’t answer to the doing machine.  We reserve relaxation for the few moments in our life where we don’t perceive threat.  Then we call this being human.  I’m not sure about you, but I think being human can be better than this.   

DOING FROM ENJOYMENT 

Courageously choose joy

What would it take for you to do all you do through enjoyment, and never simply to get something done again?  How would you have to think or structure your life differently?  What if the purpose of activity is not to finish it, but rather to actively participate with the doing of it?  What if you did not allow yourself to do something unless you were in a state of enjoyment about the doing?  This is what it would be like to enjoy life rather than do life.  It’s pretty much guaranteed that the activity of life will never come to a halting stop, but what can is how we engage with activity and what we value in terms of productivity and presence.  There are no hard and fast rules here.  It’s all about creating your experience of life how you want to be rather than the way it currently seems to be set up.

Many live as if there isn’t enough time.  Like we can’t, or won’t be able to do all the things we need or want to in the time allotted.  What if you create a new story for yourself that there is enough time for everything.  Beyond that, what if rather than focusing on time altogether and what will or won’t be done inside of that time, you focus on enjoying whatever is occurring now.  What if you stop should-ing and hav-ing yourself, and dismantle all of your resistance to enjoyment.  Yes believe it or not most people resist enjoyment, but gladly accept suffering through things to get them done.  It’s not logical, but it is normalized.  

You might realize that you have some pretty hardcore beliefs in there that you are supposed to do stuff at whatever cost it is to your own enjoyment.  That to enjoy life is a luxury rather than a must.  But what if you made it must?  What if you realized that enjoyment is not luxury, but rather it’s the value or standard you firmly ground your feet in and make it more important than productivity and getting things done.  What if you don’t force yourself to do things that you don’t feel like doing, and what if you made it ok to rest and be, without guilt or fear, rather than always be engaged in activity?  See it’s really your choice even if you think it’s not.  

You might be wondering, won’t there be “consequences” for your actions, or more particularly for your non-actions?  There will most definitely be effects, however they may not be as negative as you conjure them up to be in your mind.  You might discover and fully embrace resting and enjoying, without judging it as lazy or making it mean something about your worth as a human being, which is something that not many people are successful at achieving (pun intended).  Also as you let go of the pressure you place on yourself to do many of things you do or think you should do, you may find that you want to do some of those things, and in that way they become desirable and enjoyable rather than tasks to get done.  This  is all to come to the knowing that your ok-ness, worth, validation, approval, permission to feel good about yourself, security and safety is not dependent on your actions or non-actions.  This frees you to do only from and through enjoyment.  To longer be manipulated by your own or other’s stories about what you must do.  Believe it or not, doing only from enjoyment takes tremendous courage, even though it’s the most natural way of living, which points to the fact that we live quite unnaturally.  Be courageous and do only from enjoyment.  

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

HEALING TO SERVING

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HEALING TO SERVING 

Rhythms of development

There are many rhythms in this cosmic-human dance.  Stages of development, themes, and learnings that we all experience.  The stages themselves are quite predictable, but the content of them and how we learn what we learn, is unique for each being.  Each stage or rhythm is whole onto itself and yet is part of larger wholeness.  The goal of each stage or rhythm is to be in it.  To be where you are even if you don’t like where you are or wish you were at some other place on the path.  Integration or learning occurs when you accept where you are, and then naturally the next rhythm or stage reveals itself to you.  It’s synonymous with a child who rolls over, sits up, crawls, stands and then walks.  Each next developmental step reveals itself as the child masters where it’s at.  The child does not go from rolling over straight to walking even it really wants to.  There is a natural sequence and staging to the learning.  

We are all like children, learning and developing as we go.  While our development is less focused on achieving sensory-motor milestones and more on the development of our consciousness, perspectives and inner workings, it is nonetheless still development.  Sometimes there are shortcuts or quick accelerations, but they are rare.   We must master each stage before moving to the next one.  For example, it’s quite challenging to sustainably go from believing you are a separate person, into knowing there are no others in a quick flash.  While you might have a momentary experience of this in a peak state, there are many stages in between that must first be learned in order for you to go beyond conceptual knowing into living your knowing.

One such stage of our development could be called “healing”.  There are many rhythms inside of healing, but for simplicity sake we could say that healing is the stage of our development where we believe that we are not whole.  Our perspective is such that something is/was wrong or lacking in our self, experience or environment, and we seek to find completion or wholeness.  The end of healing is the knowing that there is no (and never was) disharmony, imperfection or lack.  It’s knowing that the natural state of all is complete.  That there is nothing lacking inside or outside in all of creation.  In the perceived space from healing to wholeness there is a whole slew of learning that is primarily concerned with you reclaiming and remembering your power, what you are, and that you are the creator of all you experience.  So much so until your only response to any event, sensation, emotion, thought, or experience is love.  Once achieved, you know wholeness as all that is, and move forward into the next stage of development called service.   

LIFE BEYOND HEALING 

Dare to heal

Some people might think it’s arrogant to think that you could ever stop needing to heal.  They see healing as something you must do forever, that it has no end, and that you are either arrogant or spiritually bypassing something if you even entertain that you could live whole.  I personally don’t agree with that perspective, but as always choose whichever perspective resonates and feels more accurate for you.  I see healing as a stage of development, not the be all end all.  Healing is a stage where the focus is on ourselves and our inner workings.  It is about unearthing or unpacking our disempowering, discordant and incoherent patterns and ways of being.  It is revealing the ways we have deceived ourselves, how we’ve believed things that feel bad and ultimately are not true, and where we see ourselves as a product or circumstance of life rather than as the creator of our life.  It is a correction of the perspective of seeing lack into seeing only wholeness.  Healing is an absolutely important, vital, and necessary stage of development, one that can’t be overstepped or passed by, and there is both learning and life beyond healing.  

Life beyond healing is serving.  In service the focus is no longer on you.  It’s not about what you think is right or better.  It’s not about what you want to happen or any outcome at all.  It’s not about validating, empowering yourself or making yourself feel good.  It’s not about sensations in your body coming or going away.  It’s not about becoming worthy.  All of those things must be known, must be intact, must be taken care of, for the next rhythm of your development to be revealed to you, which is that of serving.  Service is oriented towards giving and is rested in the heart.  If you don’t clear up all of those other things in your life and know all as whole, than your service will always have some personal agenda in it, which is not really service, but is still part of your own healing process.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, in fact I’d say almost all of us do this as we are healing and developing, but at some point there is a demarcation.  A kind of line in the sand in which where you come from is serving rather than healing.  

Serving is not better than healing.  It’s simply the next developmental stage on the path.  Just like for the toddler, walking is not better than standing up.  Walking simply proceeds as the next learning once we master standing.  Mastering healing is knowing your worth, knowing all is well & has always been well, and that nothing is outside of perfection even if you don’t like it or agree with it.  As you move towards mastering healing you realize that your life is not yours; it never has been.  You’ve never been a separate person with a separate life.  To the person that is in an early to middle stage of healing, this would be ludicrous to entertain.  In fact it is imperative that they realize that they are a person and that they can impact their emotions, their body and their environment.  That learning must be integrated first, which is why you must always accept where you are.  Learn the lessons of the place and stage that you are in.  Nothing is better somewhere else, it’s just different.  Enjoy wherever you are.  Find levity in everything.  Make it as fun as you can.  Ultimately it’s all smoke and mirrors.  Energetic patterns configuring and reconfiguring into infinity.  Just play and enjoy it all.  

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

FROM CONSUMPTION TO CREATION

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FROM CONSUMPTION TO  CREATION

Life is not ours to get

As much at it might seem that we are here to consume life, we are actually here to create it.  Due to the fact that most people are disconnected from the awareness of themselves as a creator, there is a tendency to experience life as an effect, a destination or something to consume.  Our minds like to generate trajectories of getting.  Getting to the next location, the next exciting opportunity, the next moment when we can relax, the next meal, or getting any one of our million perceived needs and wants met or fulfilled.  Consumption, or getting, is so natural to us that we don’t even notice that is how we are operating.  We might think that we are completely without agenda, yet if we investigate ourselves a bit deeper we will find where and how we attempt to manipulate life in order to get or consume for ourselves.

Consuming life comes from an attempt to create safety and pleasure, through and in, your outer experience.  Most look to find ease, stability and comfort through sensation, feeling and getting what we want or need.  This comes in a multitude of forms from what you put in your mouth, what you purchase, the thoughts you think, the motivation behind your actions and the structure of your life.  We attempt to feel satisfaction and fulfillment by what we consume, as if somehow consumption will make us feel permanently good, even if we know it is only temporary.  We must keep getting our fix so that we can maintain feeling good, relaxed and safe.  This becomes a chase.  A chase to keep consuming life.

Recognizing yourself as a creator has nothing to do with creating stability in the picture of life and safely consuming it so that the illusion of all of your needs and wants is met.  Rather it is about moving with life and what you are inspired and excited to bring forth.  Not for your own individual pleasures and safety, but simply because it’s fun for you to create.  Creating for nothing more than the action of creating itself.  A response to an impulse or a call that moves you.  Not creating to consume it, but rather to give your creation to life as your offering, your sharing, and your contribution of the impulse of excitement and desire that runs through you. 

Many create in order to consume.  We build businesses, buy things, create a family, plan trips, develop community, etc. in order to consume it, rather than giving it as a gift to life.  When was the last time you looked at your life and all you’ve created so far and saw it through the lens of what you are giving to life.  Your home, your car, your belongings, your business, your children, your family, your partner, your community, and on and on, are not yours.  They are not things or stuff you have, but rather they are what you can offer to life.  How do you use what you’ve created to give it to life rather than relate to it as something that is yours? 

GIFTS OF CREATING 

Magic of giving

There is an energetic reward of sorts for creating or giving to life.  The more we give to life, rather than attempt to get from life, the more energy we feel.  You might even say that our vibration, or state of being, elevates.  This comes with a sense of levity, spontaneity, aliveness, and excitement.  Things seem to flow and move together even if we don’t know or see how it’s all related and connected.  Giving to life, or giving to the things in our life, brings us into greater energetic coherence.  Asking how or what can I give to this will instantly align you with how you can serve in any moment.  Rather than feeling lost, confused, frustrated or hopeless, you will feel the inspiration of the impulse of giving and sharing yourself.  

For some people this might all sound exhausting.  All this giving.  A part of you might say, what about me?  How am I going to be ok?  Another part might insist that it doesn’t have any extra time or energy to give or create more.  You might feel or find yourself wanting to conserve what little energy you have, so you limit or cap your creation and fall into consumption.  Believe it or not, it actually drains our energy and lowers our state of vibration to simply consume life.  A life of consumption is kind of like a bottomless pit that can never be filled.  It feels heavy, tired and doesn’t have much motivation or desire.  It keeps getting and taking yet never feels full.  It only experiences temporary fulfillment.  Motivation and desire comes from creating and therefore the only way to fill this pit is to give to life.  

There is a magic that happens in creating that you don’t experience until you shift from consuming life to creating it.  See creating is the same as loving.  To create is to love.  When you create or give to life you are instantly included in all of it.  When you follow the call or the inspiration to create, you are taken care of.  Somehow, someway life will always support you.  You likely will not know how it will happen, and you might fall into doubt from time to time, but with continued focus on creating simply to create you will come to see that this is the case.  

There is nothing to grab and hold onto in this life.  You are a creator not a getter.  You are not a passive recipient or an effect of life, you are the creator of it.  When we try to stabilize life, or stabilize our outer experience so that we can consume it, we stagnate and feel lifeless.  We feel lifeless because we aren’t utilizing our life giving potential.  We focus on what isn’t, what we don’t have that we want, and feel powerless to our circumstance.  When instead you see that everything inside of your current experience is something you can ‘give life/love to’ rather than something you ‘have or get’, you activate and utilize your creator power.  When you ask yourself in every situation, what can I give to this, you come to life.  You feel energized.  You elevate.  It doesn’t even matter what you do or the things you create.  It matters only that you come from being the creator, from giving, from loving.  

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

GETTING BEYOND COMPLACENCY

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GETTING BEYOND COMPLACENCY

What do you tolerate? 

It’s easy to get lazy.  As humans we are creatures of habit.  After we do something a time or two or three, and the novelty of it wears off, we go into automatic pilot mode.  We assume that what is will always be the way it is because now we are used to it being that way.  We create the illusion of solid and fixed, and with this we stop being fully present.  Our experience of what was once novel and exciting now become more ordinary and with that we slip into a habituated state of being, which you could also call your “usual” state of awareness.  But who really wants usual and ordinary?  None of us do and yet it’s easier to maintain the lower frequency of usual than it is the higher frequency of excitement.  

In order to get beyond the habit of our usual state of being we need to literally stretch our bandwidth or increase our capacity for what we can maintain.  For most people stretching is a bit uncomfortable because it comes with a sense of effort and work.  It takes more energy to get out of our normal habituated ways of being then is does to continue with our automatic thoughts, behaviors and perceptions.  This energy expenditure is exactly what is required to increase our capacity and maintain a higher frequency, yet many chose the way of utilizing as little effort and energy as possible.  You could also equate this to not having enough desire or momentum to create change.  You might think you want something to be different in your life, but you don’t really want to put in the energy to make it different.  

We all have different tolerance levels.  Some people might tolerate being 10 pounds overweight while another person won’t tolerate being more than 2 pounds over.  Some people tolerate being out of alignment or distracted 50% of their day, while others won’t tolerate more than 10%.  There is no right or wrong here in regards to where you are at, it’s simply important to take note of it.  Take inventory of what your tolerance levels are in all the important areas of your life.  Then honestly ask yourself if you are ready to shift your level.  If you aren’t ready, what would it take for you to be ready?  In this way you get clarity around where you are and even if you aren’t ready to shift anything at least you can accept it and do the preparatory work required in order to be ready.  

Our vibrational state is up to us and only us.  No one can or will shift it for us.  Your level of desire and willingness to participate is key.  To move from your normal baseline to your next level is your work and responsibility.  You can use things or people as permission slips to feel certain ways, but ultimately you must become the source of your frequency in order for it to sustainable. 

FREQUENCY OF EXCITEMENT 

Becoming more childlike 

As much as we all like to feel excitement, most people aren’t feeling it much.  Our focus tends to be on all the things that need to get done, rather than on feeling amazing and following what feels good.  Many of our automatic patterns of behavior help us be efficient doers, which can at times be helpful, but they can also make us robotic.  We are going through the motions of life and doing all the things, but for what?  To get everything done so that we can do everything again tomorrow?  Where exactly do we think we will get to once all the doing is finished?  From what I can tell the activity of life, of this infinite creation, never stops.  We could constantly find ourselves doing something.  The goal is not the cessation of doing or activity, but rather to be present right now.  To find and feel our excitement in this moment and not when something is finished or done.

The frequency of excitement is high.  Think of a small child and how excited they get, and how much energy they have.  It’s off the charts.  They are pure examples of living excitement.  Yet we often feel tired by that level of excitement.  We don’t have the energy to keep up.  Where does energy come from anyways?  Why does it feel limited to us, but infinite in a small child?  Energy comes from excitement.  You generate energy through excitement.  Now I am not saying that rest is not beneficial.  Rest is necessary for these bodies.  What I am taking about is all the rest of the time when you are not resting.  You may also find that you require less rest the more you are able to maintain a higher frequency of energy in your day to day life. 

Like I mentioned earlier there is a stretching phase.  A phase when it feels like it takes a lot of energy to elevate yourself.  It’s true, it does.  Stretching is not effortless.  It requires work.  Work that will then require rest.  However at some point you will maintain at a new higher level of vibration that feels lighter, freer, and more childlike.  A child may swing on the same swing 50 times at the park and it will not be normal or ordinary to them.  They will find a way to feel excited about it each time, and then when some other object at the park strikes their fancy they will run over to it and play on it.  They continue to generate and follow their excitement.  

Giving yourself permission to live life in a more joyfully free and excited way is a permission slip worth giving yourself.  Trust the rhythms of life more.  The comings and the goings.  The ebbs and flows.  The natural pacing and rhythms.  Trust yourself more.  Your feelings and intuitions.  Your joy and excitement.  Follow them.  Do your best not to let your rational mind make things ordinary and normal.  Find novelty in swinging on the same swing 50 times.  Life is not flat or mundane on its own.  It requires our perspective of it to be flat or mundane.  Through what perspective do you see life?  If it’s not what you desire, are you ready to shift it?  Be willing to do the work required to raise yourself up and to get to the next vibrational level of yourself.  

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

THE ULTIMATE RECEIVER

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THE ULTIMATE RECEIVER 

Where’s your focus?

Receiving.  Most people have difficulty receiving.  As much as we all want to manifest and create we don’t give much attention or space to receiving.  Rather we work hard, and then harder, to create what we want and then wonder why we are so tired and still don’t have the life we desire.  While it seems that receiving would be the simplest of things, we defect it, avoid it or feel like there is never enough of what we need because we can’t receive what’s in front of us.  To receive is to be open, to be receptive, and most people spend their existence being closed off, shut down, narrow minded, and in judgement rather than in open receptivity.  We then wonder why life doesn’t look or feel like we desire.

We are quite wired to see what isn’t.  We focus on where we’re going and what we think we are going to get when we get there, and rarely see what’s here.  This is because we tend to live in a lack mindset.  We view whatever is here now as if it is missing something.  Something that we need to work to find or get into our lives.  We might perceive that we don’t have relationships that we want, money that we want, opportunities that we want, skills that we want, the inner state that we want, the outer environment that we want, feelings that we want, and on and on.  It really seems that life isn’t quite here yet, but will be here once something arrives inside of our experience so that we can give ourselves the permission to temporarily stop seeing through our lack glasses.  Our focus on lack is intense.  It pretty much takes up our entire bandwidth whether we are conscious or it or not.  This is why we feel bad so frequently.  

The thing is that in order to receive you have to see what is here rather than focus on what’s not here.  Since this is a mostly rare way for us humans to focus we are always feeling depleted.  Depleted because our focus is constantly on what isn’t in our experience, or what is in our experience that we don’t like.  When there is something we don’t like or doesn’t feel good, we attempt to get into our experience whatever we perceive is missing, which we believe will make us feel better.  At the core of this game of lack that we are playing out in our physical reality, is a sense of inner lack.  A sense that something about us is missing or incomplete.  A feeling that we somehow need to be different or more than we are.  So we reject ourselves.  We work really hard to prove ourselves.  We over stretch to attempt to meet what we think the people of the world want from us.  All the while not really realizing that we aren’t receiving our own selves.  Again we wonder why our life isn’t as we desire it to be.  Why aren’t we manifesting or creating what we want.  As long as we continue to come from lack, to come from the perspective that something is missing, that is all we will ever create.   

GRATITUDE 

The “how”

You might say that our “inability” or difficulty with receiving, stems back to the fact that nearly all of us feels a sense of inner lack.  You could call this the “not enough”  or “not good enough” perspective or wound.  It’s like an article of clothing that we all get when we are first born into this world.  Most of us have been wearing this piece of clothing for so long that it’s kind of become like a part of us. We’ve identified with it and let it become who or what we think we are.  It colors everything we see.  Other people, or reflections in our environment, have mirrored this not enoughness back to us and we’ve come to believe that lack must indeed be a very real thing.  After all we experience it and see it, don’t we?  

We experience what we see and what we see depends on the glasses (or clothes) we are looking through.  Said another way, we experience what we believe and not necessarily what is.  The good news is that all articles of clothing can be taken off even if they are really, really tight; even if they appear to be fused to our skin and inseparable from the tissues underneath, they can still be removed.  Essentially what I am saying is that every belief that you have can be changed or a new one can be chosen.  It may not be as hard as you think it is.  How might it be easy you ask?  All that is required is a quadruple shot of gratitude taken several times a day.  It is the instant cure for your lack mindset.

In general we tend to be incredibly ungrateful.  This is why the lack mindset is so strong and pervasive on this planet still.  It is why human consciousness doesn’t evolve.  It’s why people continue to be asleep, disconnected and working hard to prove themselves or get what they think will make them happy.  Every time you don’t receive yourself you are ungrateful.  For many people that is their constant state of being.  They know nothing else.  For others it’s more intermittent or dispersed, but nonetheless still present.  The level of self-rejection is high among humans and this makes it nearly impossible to receive, and ultimately therefore create, as creating is receiving.  When you have a belief that you are not worthy, that belief is incompatible with receiving.  It’s incompatible with being open to life or others.  It’s incompatible with manifesting your desired reality and seeing the abundant world that you want for yourself and others.

Many people don’t know that they aren’t receiving.  We are so used to pushing our energy in the outward, doing direction that the receiving, inward direction is quite foreign for most.  If you are very innerly or outerly busy this is key sign that you aren’t receiving.  Do your thoughts never stop?  Do you talk incessantly?  Do you listen or receive others without thinking about what you are going to say or do next?  Do you constantly need to be doing stuff for yourself or for others?  Is it hard to tune into yourself for more than few moments?  Do you feel tired a lot?  Are you “doing” your meditation rather than actually meditating?  These are all signs that you aren’t receiving.  In order to receive you must be worthy and know that nothing is missing from you.  That you are complete and whole as you are.  To bridge the gap from incomplete to complete you must only find, feel and radiate gratitude.  Gratitude for yourself, gratitude for what is in your experience now and gratitude for all future experiences.  At any moment you can tune yourself to become a stream of infinite, unconditional gratitude.  It is always here and available for your choosing.  

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

Well-being is not a luxury, its a must!

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Well-being is not a luxury, it’s a must! 

Feeling great is your birthright 

There has been a surge in wellness services in the last 10 years.  The intention of these services is not to fix a pain or problem, but instead of help people feel great in body-mind-spirit.  A portion of the population utilizes such services because they have an inherent value around feeling amazing in their body and life.  A larger portion of the population doesn’t seem to value such services, typically reporting that such services are a luxury and not a necessity in their life because there is not an imminent life threatening problem staring at them in the face.

Kevin Trudeau quoteThe other conundrum is that when people feel relatively good they often don’t realize that they can feel even better.  They create a ceiling for themselves that looks like “I’m doing good and this is as good as it gets.”  This may be an unconscious script running in their mind as a result of perceived limitations of how good a person can feel.  There may also be underlying beliefs about how good they can allow themselves to feel.  Some older belief systems conditioned people that it was bad to feel too good, thus capping what feels permissible.

I’m about to tell you what nobody may have told you before – It is your birthright to feel amazing.  Not only that, but your body is meant to express full health and you are supposed to feel energized and alive, no matter your age.  I’ve met plenty of vibrantly alive 90 year olds in my time.

Lifting your ceiling 

From feeling Good to feeling Amazing

raise ceilingIf we want to claim our birthright we need to raise our standards on what is possible for our well-being and place greater value of feeling great.  Being pain or symptom free does not mean your are well.  Having only positive emotions or thoughts does not mean your well.  Being well means you experience a sense of joy and bliss being alive in your body and you are actively finding ways to increase your capacity to feel even more amazing.  

Why is well-being and feeling amazing so important and not a luxury?  One, because when you feel amazing it rubs off on everyone you meet.  They start to get a taste of it and start to feel better themselves.  By allowing yourself to feel better and better, you heal, and so do others.  Two, the energy state that is created in your body when you feel amazing is incompatible with the energy state that creates disease and ill health.  Disease thrives is a poor/low energy state.  Health thrives in a rich/high energy state.

So you see well-being is not a luxury.  We must begin to reframe our thinking and choose better.  Instead of focusing on eliminating the “bad” stuff in order to maintain a neutral “baseline” state, we must focus on how we can feel even better (despite the perceived bad stuff), in order to get to a richer, juicier, more alive state.  When you prioritize feeling amazing and take action steps towards greater well-being you will begin to see the limitations of your previously perceived ceiling and experience more aliveness and feel great-ness.

Dr. Amanda Hessel, DC, Network Spinal Analysis & Somatorespiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

Lack is imaginary

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Lack is imaginary 

Just because you don’t have something doesn’t mean it does not exist 

14396897 - happy young blonde girl opening a gift boxSay a stranger walked up to you and gave you tickets to watch your favorite musical artist at RedRocks this summer.  Prior to receiving these tickets you weren’t even aware that your favorite group was coming to town.  What a gift!  Later on that day when you get home you look in your bag for the tickets to put them in a safe place and you realize that they are not there.  After searching for hours, retracing steps and going over every possible place they could be you give up and deem that the tickets are lost forever.

The next day you go to your favorite coffee shop and it dawns on you that you took the tickets out of bag when you paid for your coffee yesterday.  When you ask the barista if they found your tickets, the barista says no, but you can feel that there is more to the story.  You can’t prove it, but you have sense that someone in that coffee shop found and took your tickets for themselves.  You feel bummed, a little angry and like you are missing out big time.

In this story it seems that you are now lacking tickets, however if you follow the story you see that the tickets have simply moved from one person, to you, and now to another person.  Before the stranger gave you the tickets you did not feel you where lacking them, in fact, you didn’t even know that your musical group was coming to town.  As you can see lack is simply a story (aka an imagination that you made up) that you don’t have something, not an actual deficiency of it existing.

Expanding your imagination

Moving from lack to always present: “I” to “We”

When something is not in our immediate experience we have the tendency to think that it is lacking, especially if we had a taste of it before and now its not here.  We do this with money, relationships, health, business and happiness.  Perhaps you see other people with the things you want or behaving in the ways you want to be in the world and you feel jealous.  Jealously is simply a desire paired with your belief that you can’t have, get or deserve what it is you want (which by the way is another made up story of lack).

To move from lack to always present (also known as abundance) requires a shift in “I” consciousness to “we” consciousness.  When you believe that you are a separate person, living in your bubble of reality, and feeling that life revolves around your story of it, then you will perceive lack.  Most people are living their lives in this way.  It drives us to protect ourselves, secure our future, and remain in survival mode perpetuating the belief that I must take care of myself to preserve my life and attain the things that I want.  It is why we do things that we don’t really want to be doing and why we suffer so greatly.

Shifting into “we” consciousness means that just because I don’t have something present in my immediate experience doesn’t mean that some other aspect of me doesn’t.  In “we” consciousness there is less distinction between me and you.  There are still two different expressions (you and me), but of one being.  It requires that you put aside your thoughts of what you need to survive or what your family needs to survive, and think bigger, include bigger.  Ask better questions.  What does humanity need to thrive?  How is humanity already thriving?  How can I appreciate that even more?  What can I give to another aspect of me?  In this way you give instead of lose something and perceive lack.  You feel appreciation of what others now have, instead of jealous of what you don’t have.  In “We” you feel intimately connected with everything else.  Your personal self becomes less relevant than your collective self.  You begin to experience love, happiness, purpose and contribution on bigger scales.

Don’t just believe me, experience this for yourself.  Start by seeing something your previously perceived as lost or lacking as a gift to someone else.  Then include yourself in someone else and begin to taste “We-ness”.

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

Using anger productively

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Using anger productively  

Harnessing the power to transform

43775966 - angry bearded man screaming into the phonePeople use anger in a myriad of unproductive ways.  Those that express their anger unproductively use it to blame others for their problems, prove their rightness and feel in control.  People also repress their anger unproductively.  Doing this allows them to be insignificant, not take a stand for themselves or what they value and not be the authority in their lives.  Neither of these ways are healthy, nor do they harness the transformative power of anger.

One of the reasons why people don’t know how to work with their anger effectively is because it hasn’t been modeled in our culture.  We are taught that anger is bad or scary (so we repress it) or have learned that its what we need to do to manipulate a person/situation and be seen, heard and get our needs met (express unproductive).

The real purpose and power of anger is to use it to create standards for yourself and your life.  Lets say you are changing a story that you have about yourself that “you are not worthy”.  You declare a new story for yourself that now says “you are pure worth and love”.  In order to do this effectively you must first be fed up and pissed off enough that you’ve been dropping your standards on who you are up to this point.  It must become intolerable for you to entertain the story that you are not lovable.  If it is does not reach the level of intolerability you will sink back into old patterns.  Anger gives you the fuel to say, “no more, this is not good enough for me, I’m never going back.”

Permissioning & directing anger

Find your fuel

Anger does not need to be explosive to be impactful.  It does need to be direct, clear, unwavering and come from a place love for self and others.  Productive anger has the quality of being firm in what is being conveyed or upheld, and simultaneous soft in it coming from a deeply caring place of creating greater value for all involved.

People who have learned to repress their anger they can find it challenging to permission themselves to feel it.  Repressed anger can be masked in neutrality, boredom, niceness and uncertainty.  For these people, in finding their anger, they will often laugh when their anger arises to disperse their uncomfortableness with it.  People who have learned to express their anger unproductively find it difficult to soften and care about themselves and others in the midst of their outburst.  In directing their anger they will go into blame of self or others.

confident womanRegardless of how you have learned to deal with anger in the past the goal of productive anger is to help you be your own authority by moving through victimhood into empowerment.  From an empowered place you are the decision maker of what is right and wrong for you and you alone.  There is only your standards for your life and you are accountable to keep them.  It is moving through layers of conditioning about what you’ve been taught about how things work and who you are, to becoming the determiner, creator and master of your life.  Productive anger is key in this process of providing the fuel to transform the places you keep yourself small so that you can shine in your magnificence.  Using anger productively is fiercely loving yourself enough to care about your life.

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