Sanctuary for Heart Magic :Unwinding Spines & Unleashing Hearts utilizing Network Spinal Chiropractic in Boulder, Colorado: range of motion

STRETCHING OPEN

New ranges of motion

We tend to live in a pretty comfortable range of motion of ourselves. This range is a container, box or bandwidth that includes who and what we know ourselves to be. We often don’t even know that we are living our life inside of this range, it’s simply what we know. There wouldn’t even be the thought to question or stretch it because we are merged as it. However there comes a rhythm where we know we need to stretch. We feel the confinement and don’t even really know what we are confined in. We simply feel that the clothes we are wearing are too tight and a sense of restlessness and impeding uncomfortableness is on the horizon.

When we hit the point where the way we have been living, operating and viewing ourselves from is too small or limited we must stretch. That stretch occurs outside of the normal range of motion. Due to the fact that it is beyond where we normally hang out, or perhaps have ever been, it feels uncomfortable and unfamiliar. That uncomfortableness can deter people from stretching. If the stretch is deferred then we will go back into our familiar range, inside our familiar box of self, but feel slightly miserable. Often our tolerance for misery is high, some people even pride themselves in this. Yet this high tolerance to low level misery is the enemy of stretching out of our current range of motion.

The pain of staying inside of our limited perspective, with it habits and ways of functioning, must become greater than the perceived pain of uncomfortableness, uncertainty and the potential lack of something we aren’t even really clear about, but which boils down to loss of love in some form or another. If the pain doesn’t become greater, or our tolerance is exceptionally high for misery, then we will stay un-stretched and feel ourselves slowly wither away as we resist our own change and progress. When we thwart ourselves in such a way we remain in a sea of our own frustration, often feeling like nothing works and like we will never be different than we are. If instead we use the fuel of misery, and allow, feel and actively participate with the stretch, even though its uncomfortable and we don’t know what’s on the other side yet, we start the journey of going beyond the box of our current self. The truth is that the range that we have been in has someway and somehow served us, perhaps even really, really well. We must however be willing to un-attach to our ranges and release the aspects of our identity that are connected with those ranges, when the rhythm of stretch presents itself.

EMBODYING YOUR STRETCH

Inviting change

When the rhythm of stretch presents itself it is ultimately stretching us open into more of ourselves. It is not stretching us into some bad or wrong place even though our mind might try to convince us in these ways. Stretching does however imply change. Change in experience, change in feeling, and change in sense of self. When I have you stretch certain parts of your body on the table it is the activation of stretching your range of motion and thus range of self of sense. You may find it hard to stretch certain areas and easier for other areas. You may feel not entirely present during the stretch or find yourself mechanically moving your body without your awareness behind it. You may find yourself meet some resistance to the stretch or you may go into automatic pilot mode having stretched that area before.

It is important to notice your experience of stretching. How does it feel to stretch? Where do you go? Are you present? Does it feel hard? Does it feel too easy? Do you want to give up in the middle of it? Do you want it to be over? Are you bored and not present? Are you slow to move? Are you fast to move? Do you release into the stretch? Do you resist the stretch and maintain your holding patterns? You can use these questions as a way to see how you respond to stretch in your life. How we respond to stretch in our bodies is how we will respond to it in our lives.

On a physiologically level when you stretch your body in the spots that I am touching it activates certain receptors in the tissues in that area. The activation of those receptors allows oscillation to occur at the tissue level in the area of stretch. That oscillation can be felt as vibration or energy at the area. In Network terms this is the development of the energetic portion of the spinal gateway. Remember the spinal gateways are those areas that get touched during entrainments and which grow into little energetic vortices as you continue to stretch them open. As you stretch they grow. They grow into your subtle energetic body, first reaching into your emotional body and then beyond that into your mental bodies. When the spinal gateways are in subtle layers of your mental bodies you are able to more clearly see the boxes, stories and limited containers of self that you are in. Through this sight you gain more energy for transformation and greater fuel to be ready to relinquish those more limited ranges of self that come from your limited perspectives.

The stretch is the beginning of something anew. It’s the birthplace of a new range. You must stretch in order to come out of the birth canal so that the new expressions of you can come into form. Yes it’s uncomfortable. Yes it’s uncertain as to what will come out exactly. Yet we must move forward. We must emerge and we must be fully in. Along the way of our emergence all that no longer works and no longer serves must go. There simply isn’t room for it. Holding onto it weighs us down and interferes with what’s coming through now. There is a sweet love and a sweet goodbye to who we were. There is deep gratitude for how it served and shared. Now there is this here, a new range, a new expression, a new experience, a new sense of self, a new way to participate, and a new contribution and sharing.

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

Connected Movement

Motion guided by thought

Unless you are a dancer, athlete or have practiced a lot of body awareness you probably don’t really pay too much attention to how your body moves. Rather than tuning into our body’s natural movements or allowing our bodies to be moved we tend to think or do our movements. Thinking our movements comes from our thinker deciding it wants to do something and then our body following through on that thought with the necessary actions. For example say you are sitting on your couch and you have the thought that you would like an apple from the kitchen. Your body then gets up and walks to the kitchen in response to this thought. This is the process or act of doing. This motion is guided by the thoughts in your head and often not in connection with the larger rhythms of your consciousness.

When motion is guided by thought alone it is mechanical in nature, meaning you have to do the motion and there isn’t a sense of aliveness inherent within the movement itself. In this previous sentence you are the thinker (as that is what most people identify themselves as) and the thinker/you is guiding the motion. The process of pure doing, or moving guided by thought, involves effort and there isn’t a synergistic flow to it or something that is energizing it; you have to put all the work into it. Another way to say this is that the movement is not connected. Disconnected movement is movement guided by thought that feels like you have to do the work to produce the action. This is how most people move most of the time.

When our thoughts are the primary motivator of our movements we are then thus limited in our movements by the thoughts we think. Our thoughts decide what movements we take, where we go, where we don’t go, how we are and aren’t able to express ourselves through our movements (including the movement of voice/sound) and what we think we are physically capable of doing. The effects of this are vast and include how the movement of a single joint in our body moves or doesn’t move, the way a muscle or group of muscles tense up, or the posturing we hold ourselves in and extends into the expression of our purpose and what we move towards and away from in life. When our movements are guided by the mechanical nature of thought intelligence we experience the limitation of our thoughts through this physical body which intelligence moves within.

Intelligently Guided Motion

Beyond the thinker

You may be wondering what can move us besides our thoughts? Believe it or not there is something more intelligent then your thoughts that can guide your movements. We are largely conditioned to believe that we are the thoughts we think, or one step beyond that, that we are thinker of the thoughts we think, and that our identity stops there. This creates a limited perspective on who/what we are and that limited perspective is what gets expressed through these bodily forms as movement.

What is this intelligence that lives beyond our thinking minds which can inform our movements and how do you access it within your own consciousness and experience? One of the first pieces I’ve found to be fundamental for people in discovering themselves beyond their thinking mind is the development of body awareness. What this means is learning how to drop your awareness from your head/thoughts into your body and simply rest it there. Through learning how to rest your awareness into different parts of your body you begin to notice yourself and your energy within your body rather than be focused in your thoughts. This opens your awareness to the more subtle aspects of your being. This is simple in application, but requires a consistent practice to discipline where you allow your attention to go as it will almost always want to immediately go back into your thoughts.

Navigating your awareness into your body you begin to learn presence and how to simply be without doing. It is then through the next step of turning your attention towards your beingness that you become aware of yourself at that level beyond thoughts. It is also here that spontaneously organized movement can arise that is generated not through your thoughts but through your being. Here movement is effortless and not limited, controlled or determined by your thoughts. It is also not mechanical, but instead has it own coordination and defies what the thinking mind previously thought possible. The mind cannot makes sense of it, nor is it necessarily supposed to be able too. Here, you the person, must have also developed enough trust, faith and surrender or you will not be able to experience beyond your thinking mind. Without trust, faith and surrender the mind is simply unwilling or not ready to let go. It needs more time to keep its confined, limited and illusionary sense of safety a little longer before experiencing freedom.

At first some people experience this more organized, spontaneous movement as scary, strange or other worldly, but it is simply the waking up of your awareness to the beingness aspect of itself where thoughts don’t interfere and the intelligence beyond your thinking mind can get a moment to enter your body and organize it in a more efficient configuration. Life is always evolving and moving towards greater organization, intelligence and knowledge of itself. This is built into the blueprint of creation. It is natural that we are waking up to this next aspect of ourselves where we tune to the more subtle aspects of our nature and our thinking minds get out of the drivers seat. Here a more highly ordered and energized intelligence (that we are) can stream through and use the vehicle of the thinking of mind to express through rather than the thinking mind running the show. Overtime and with more tastes we become more stable and rested at this level of our being and our identity shifts from thinker into illuminator or simply pure awareness.

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