Its the start of a new week which makes it a great time to remember that we can choose what emotions we practice.
I invite you to stop and practice gratitude for 30 seconds to 1 min and see how it sets the tone for your day.
An easy way to do this is to focus on an event from your life (past, present or future) that you can be grateful for if you pause and reflect.
Start off by by thinking about the event. Remember or focus on any details you can and notice how this makes you feel. Focus on any feelings you have in or around your heart. You might even want to put your hands over your heart and breath deeply into your heart as you do this.
If this has has been easy for you and you still have time, find something else you can be grateful for and repeat the process.
Wishing you all a grateful day!
Gratitude practice
Eyes open or closed during an entrainment?
Should you keep your eyes open or shut during an entrainment?
The answer is- keep them shut.
Your eyes are the source of about 80% of your sensory input. When you shut your eyes, you are cutting out this extra information so it is easier to be aware of your breath, energy in or around your body or the movement of your body. Remeber awarnessis the first A in AAA. Aware, Acknowledge, Accept.
Face up or face down?
Someone reacently asked why we sometimes have you go back face down after being faceup on the table, and I figured more people might have this currisioty.
Face down care is typically Discover care where you are able to connect to and release stored stresses in your body. Its goal is to add stability to your body/ Nervous System. (Early transform care is also done facedown). If you come in with lots of stored stress/ tension, we will typically work in Discover or discover integrate to increase the ease and flexibility (decrease tension/stress) in your body/Nervous System before potentially going on to work in Transform or Awaken. Discover care helps you process stress to have more fuel for transform and awaken care.
When we have you lay faceup, we are working with either late Transform or Awaken care. The goal of these seasons is radically different than in discover care. These seasons are about growth and making effective change. They add a temporary reorgazational instability to your body/Nervous System. This combined with the new energy your system has from processing stress allows your system to reorganize to a higher level of function. As a practical example of processing stress, think about the energy that goes into holding a muscle spasm being redirected in a more useful way as your body relaxes during an entrainment.
The reason we might have you go back face down, is so we can recheck your spine, muscles and how everything is moving to make sure you are in better shape than when you came in, especially if you experienced a lot of instability or had really big changes in your body that day (ie: came in with a lot of stress in your body.)
As a reminder – instability with a new energy source or more energy = upgrade the system. Instability without a new energy source or more energy= downgrade the system or dis-ease.
If your spine is has large amounts of instability after going back facedown, we will usually do 1 -2 quick discover contacts to help your system organize to a higher level of stability.
Here is a video of Donny talking about the seasons of wellbeing from 2010. Donny is much healthier now than he was in this video. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=seasons+of+wellbeing+donny+epistein&view=detail&mid=6C1DC4B985C5E15D82976C1DC4B985C5E15D8297&FORM=VIRE
How to tell if your body is stressed- self awarness
Good morning!
How can you tell if you are in stress mode (in the automictic part of your body and nervous system)?
Its easy to know when you can actually feel your heart beating out of your chest or your palms sweating and mind racing. It can be harder to tell when you are not actively feeling the effects of the initial stress response. For example, are you able to turn off your flight or flight system after getting home from a crazy stressful day? In this case, a better initial question would be- how can you tell if you are in stress mode when you “feel” fine?
Self awareness is the answer which is ironic because this goes down when you are in stress mode. In a stress response your attention goes out to your environment to access for threats to your safety. This is why you can feel fine and also be in stress mode without knowing it. Luckily our bodies give us plenty of signs if you know where to look. These signs start out small and grow over time if the underlying internal stress environment is not resolved.
Some of the signs you might notice are:
Physically it will be harder to stand up straight and you will notice that you are defaulting to a leaned forward or slumped posture. It will be uncomfortable to correct your posture with your conscious mind since your subconscious mind is defaulting to fight or flight posture. Poor posture, poor muscular coordination, and poor biomechanics will lead to pain and tightness somewhere in your body. This pain will most likely come and go for a while and get worse or move to another area if Nervous system is not addressed. You might find your digestion not working as well as it has been and overall lower energy levels.
Some emotional signs you might notice are: anxiety, worry, mental chatter/ running mind, trouble sleeping, irritability , and being on edge all the time.
Another things that is important is to observe your habits. Are you naturally wanting to do positive things and willing to delay gratification – examples could be reading, working out, meditating, yoga, journaling, eating healthy, going to bed in time, drinking / thirsty for water?
or
Are you craving things not so great for you in the long run? Such as going home to watch Netflix and skipping your working out, getting fast food instead of cooking, drinking to cope with stress, staying up late ect.
Finally observe how you are handling stress in life. Are you going with the flow/ making the appropriate shifts or are you trying to control and force everything? Check out this old post on flowing vs shifting as an preview to a possible triad of change email in the next weeks. https://nextlevelchirodallas.com/7-29-19-going-with-the-flow-vs-making-a-shift/
Any of these signs could help you determine if you are in stress mode. Only after you become aware you are in stress mode, are you are able to do something about it. There are many more ways to know if you are operating in your peak state or not, these were just some that I though of while writing this. Let us know if you have other ways of knowing that we did not include here.
Next week we will cover how we, your Network Doctors, check to see if your system is in stress mode and to what degree. We will also cover how this effects the entrainment you get that day.
Towards or Away- a new view of your Nervous System
| Good morning and wishing you a happy Monday!
As a refresher overview- the automatic or auto pilot part (technically called the autonomic nervous system) of our nervous system makes up about 90-95% of our nervous system (can also be called subconscious), and this automictic part has 2 modes it can be in. Sympathetic/ fight/flight/freeze or parasympathetic/rest and digest. One of our goals at Next Level is to help your Nervous system return to a parasympathetic dominate state, and then to continue to move in that direction. |
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Now that that is out of the way we are going to discuss how the orientation of your nervous system affects your health and life in a fun new way,
That way is towards or away. Towards will represent parasympathetic dominance and away will represent sympathetic dominance. |
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The towards direction starts off moving towards better health and function as more energy is automatically focused on cellular repair, homeostasis, upright posture, digestion and all other healing. As your body, mind, and emotions work better, you can start to improve your life.
Moving further in the towards direction requires more energy and momentum than simply helping your self. At this point you might find it easier and more appealing to be open to collaboration, community and helping others. It is easier to collaborate with others because in a parasympathetic dominate state, you do not automatically see others a threat / source of stress. More options are available to you in many areas of life as your brain function shifts to using more of the prefrontal cortex and less of the limbic system(animal brain). This allows you to see the bigger picture and make long term rational decisions as your automatic random thoughts will be geared more for long term growth rather than pain or pleasure. It is easier to delay gratification now for a better future. Continuing in the growth direction will require more energy and efficient use of that energy. This can be achieved by the leveling up of your nervous system via Network care. The far end of the towards direction moves you towards greater meaning and connection in life. This usually means some sort of spiritual practice or greater connection to your own beliefs or Religion. We say some sort because this can be deeply personal and different for everyone. |
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In contrast, in the away direction, energy is automatically focused on skeletal muscles that would be used to flight or run and on staying on high alert (think anxiety). Repair is minimal and healing is slow. Homeostasis is not a priority so hormones and blood chemistry can easily become out of balance. Instead of repair, the body slowly degrades similar to the way most people think about aging. Focus is generally not on making large improvements in life so much as conserving what you already have.
Moving further in the away direction leads to stagnation and isolation in life. It will be harder to get along with people, much less collaborate since new people will be seen by the automictic part of your nervous system as threats. The mentality will be “what does this person want from me” and we all know how fun that can be. Random thoughts will be driven more by the limbic system and will be more often concerning immediate pain or pleasure. It will be harder to see the bigger picture as blood flow moves away from the prefrontal cortex. This makes it harder to make good long term choices for your health and life. It is harder to delay gratification even if we know we will pay for it later. |
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I was recently asked if we promote any particular religion and why we have so many items associated with different spiritual practices in our office. The answer is no. We support all practices and do not promote or try to convert anyone to any religion, rather we simply believe in a higher power. We respect everyone’s own journey. Network care can help you move more in your own towards direction whatever that might be by helping your auto pilot be oriented towards growth.
We have a rosery from the Vatican, a Taoist blessing, statues of Hindu deities, flowers from the Hare Krishna temple, multiple photos of Buddha and more. Everything except for some of the photos has been gifted to us over the years. When we see them, we are reminded of the feelings of gratitude and connection. The art that we have purchased mostly comes from events we have done with Donny (gates and AWEs), and they remind us of very energy rich times for our family. Having these around the office makes it even easier for us to serve from an energy rich place. Next week we will cover how to tell if your autopilot has shifted to any degree of sympathetic dominance or stress mode. I also plan on covering why you might feel “worse” after an entrainment in coming weeks. |
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Our Hours for: 9/09/19-9/13/19 Monday- Thursday: 10:00am-1:15pm and 3:30pm-6:00pm Friday: 3:30pm-6:00pm |
8/26/19- Rest and Digest
| Good morning and happy Monday!
Thank you to everyone that has emailed, texted, gifted or otherwise sent love this way! We are very grateful. Sarah and Atlas are doing great. He is an eating and pooping expert at this point and even sleeps really well (during the day 🙂 lol). Max loves being a big brother and overall has been doing a great job dealing with all of the change. Over the last few weeks, we have discussed how Network care, specifically the respiratory wave, helps to stimulate a parasympathetic tone. Generally speaking sympathetic and parasympathetic are the 2 modes of the our human auto pilot with sympathetic being the fight, flight or freeze mode and parasympathetic being the rest and digest mode. Lets take a closer look at what rest and digest means. To rest is to be able to recover. In this state, your body is able to focus on recovering, making repairs and maintaining homeostasis throughout all of its systems and subsystems. It is also able to digest all of the things that it lacked energy to digest while it was stuck in stress mode. In stress or survival mode, energy is pumped into your skeletal muscles that you will need to fight or run for your life instead of to digestion. Digestion can of course mean digesting food that we have eaten or that has become lodged in our digestive system somewhere. It can also mean digesting unprocessed emotions or feelings that we previously not allowed ourselves to feel. It can mean digestion of old thought patterns that have previously been playing on repeat. It can mean digestion of stored chemical stresses from any chemicals exposure you have previously had- think air and water pollution, processed food, bug spray, cleaning materials etc. In the case of rest and digest, digest can refer to the processing of ANY stored stress. As some of these old thoughts and emotions get digested, sometimes there is an overflow from the subconscious (where most of this is happening) to the conscious. When this happens we might find ourselves feeling grumpy, angry or frustrated for no reason at all. (this can also happen with positive emotions, however most of us have shoved down way more of the darker emotions than the positive ones) This generally will not last very long, and the best thing to do is to simply be with whatever comes up. Do your best not to judge anything or avoid feeling what you are feeling. That is how we got in that position in the first place. The remnants or overflow will never be as stressful or extreme as the original stress that was stored. Again, most of the digestion will be in the subconscious part of our bodies. This usually only happens once or twice and does not last but a few hours or moments. The great part is that after digesting something, you can get the benefits from it. Over time, expect to experience a fuller range of emotions with the potential for more and more positive emotions as you gain momentum in the growth (rest and digest) direction. Our Hours for: 8/26/19-8/30/19 Monday- Thursday: 10:00am-1:15pm and 3:30pm-6:00pm Friday: Closed Have a great week, Your Next Level Team |
8/19/19- Somatopsychic wave
Good morning and happy Monday!
We had a baby–Thank you for all of the love and support! We appreciate all of the emails and texts!!
Meet our newest source of instability. Atlas Sol Johnson was born on Thursday evening 39 hours after Sarah’s water broke. Our hearts are overflowing with love. We are so grateful he decided to join our family. Our dear friends have set up a meal train for us and I have included the link under the photo below if anyone feels drawn to participate or donate gift cards. Please do not feel obligated. I am only including it here since so many of you have asked if we were registered anywhere or if they could get us anything.
Our journey this week was more challenging and rewarding than we could have ever imagined. We were pushed up to and past our breaking points in many ways and were also loved and supported beyond what we could have imagined from friends, family, soul family and even strangers. We are beyond grateful. This week we berthed Atlas Sol Johnson, and in the process Sarah and I were reborn as well.
Somatopsychic wave
Over the last few weeks, we have talked about the respiratory wave. The respiratory wave helps you connect to and release stored stress and stimulates an overall parasympathetic tone in your body and nervous system. This wave creates more stability in your spine and overall system.
The other wave in Network is the somatopsychic wave (sp), and it creates temporary instability. It does this in order to help your spine and overall system reorganize to higher levels of efficiency and function.
This wave is muscular in nature and its job is to carry energy and information (from stored stress processed via the respiratory wave) up and down your spine and from different parts of your body into the gateways we are working with. Essentially it picks ups up newly liberated energy and information as it travels through your body and carries it to the areas where we make contacts. This allows your system to use the energy that was previously bound (as stored stress) to grow, heal and reorganize.
Network helps improve your spine and life by stacking levels of stability and instability during each entrainment and from entrainment to entrainment as described above. We are constantly accessing if your spine needs more stability or instability before each contact we make. Some days your system will require more stability and some days your system will require more instability. If you experience a lot of instability in one session, you will likely need more stability the next session. This is another reason we recommend coming regularly. Imagine cleaning out a closet or garage. At first, things get a little more messy or unstable as you take things out. Later the overall system moves to a higher level of stability as you get rid of things that you no longer need and then put things back in a more efficient/functional way.
In general, the sp wave looks like a sine or ocean wave that moves up and down your spine. The way your individual wave looks and the way you experience this wave depends on your Triad of Change (to be covered later). Some people will have very large or small fluid waves, some people will have large or small jerky or staccato wave and some people will have more of a feeling of a wave. That said, no two persons Network wave is exactly the same. Everyone has a unique wave just like they have a unique fingerprint or gait (the mathematical pattern of the way you walk).
In general, learning something new, getting better at anything or growing as a person requires stacking levels of stability and instability. Too much stability is boring and leads to stagnation. Too much instability leads to constant stress and burn out, and it is hard to make progress without laying a solid/ stable foundation. This is why we are constantly accessing if your spine/life needs more stability or more instability at the start of and throughout each entrainment (I say life because, as Donny says, “the shape, position and tone of your spine equals the shape position and tone of your life”).
I look forward to seeing everyone in the office this week
Love
Homer and Sarah
08/5/19- Respiratory wave
| Good morning and Happy Monday, This is the first week of our new hours. The only things that have changed are that Tuesday and Thursday morning shifts now match Monday and Wednesday, and all morning shifts now go through 1:15pm We ask that you are in the door by 1:15pm to get entrained during the morning shifts. Afternoon hours have not changed. So why this change? We have noticed that 1:15pm seems to be a natural cutoff, and that not many people come in from 1:30-2:30pm. Having different hours on different days was confusing. This will simplify things making it easier to come get entrained. This will also allow me to go home for lunch Tue and Thur to see our newborn, give Sarah a short break, and pick Max up from extended day a couple days a week. I love being at the office, and being able to go home and come back (instead of staying at the office all day like I had been on T and Th) will allow me to be more energy rich and to provide better care. Respiratory wave What is the respiratory wave? There are 2 waves in Network that carry energy and information through your body. The first is the respiratory or breath wave. This wave allows your Nervous System to become aware of stress and tension stored in your body and begin to release it. It starts at your tail bone and travels all the way up your body to your head and back down, eventually carrying energy and information into the Gateway (where we make contacts) we are working with. How much of the respiratory wave are you aware of? Do you feel it moving up your spine rocking each bone as it goes? Does it stop or get stuck somewhere? Are you aware of it moving through your neck all the way to the top and back down your spine? Do you feel it go into the gateway and maybe notice a lifting or rocking in your body at the place we made a contact? The more you are aware of, the more you can connect to and release. As Donny says, “You have to feel it to heal it.” This is why you might notice pain that you were unaware of as you lay on the table. This wave is all about adding stability and ease to your system. It is generally the first thing to develop and that people notice. It usually starts out only moving part of the way up your spine and body and gets bigger/ moves further with repetition. We might ask you tuck your chin or lift part of your body to help the wave progress. The respiratory wave also drives your parasympathetic system (the rest and digest) and reprograms the way you breath off the table as well. Many people report being more aware of their breath during daily life, and that their breath is deeper of fuller than before starting care. Each of the roughly 20,000 breaths you take each day can make you more or less healthy, and most of these breaths are unconscious. Regular Network care is a great way to make sure that each of the 20,000 breaths you take each day is working for you instead of just keeping you alive. Here is an article on the benefits of deep breathing. |
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Our Hours for: 8/05/19-8/09/19 Monday- Thursday: 10:00am-1:15pm and 3:30pm-6:00pm Friday: 3:30pm-6:00pm Our next planned Fri closure is Fri 8/24. **Dr. Jarrett works Friday afternoon** |
| Have a great week, Your Next Level Team |
8/1/19- Important update to office hours
| Hi everyone! As we get ready to have a new baby, we are making some changes to optimize our future lives. Starting next week, all of our morning shifts (M-Th) will be from 10 am – 1:15pm. Please feel free to come all the way up to 1:15pm. I do not plan on leaving until close to 1:30pm. This change will allow me to pick Max up from school a few days per week and to go home for lunch to give Sarah a break and be with our new baby on Tuesday and Thursday. We will also be going through our face cloth holders and removing any tags for people who have not been in in some time. Finally, be on the look out for a possible re organization of the entraining room. We are experimenting with a few different layouts and will see if we like any of them better than our current layout. See below for more information on upcoming epienergetic events. The gate is a great entry point to the event world. At the gate you receive 5 Network sessions by some of the top entraining staff in the world as well as group exercises. The gate happens to be at the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center which conveniently has a water park in it. The AWE event is a great entry point to Donny events. At the AWE you are worked on by Donny exclusivly. Click here to get more information and register. |
| The next Transformational Gate is at the end of this month in Denver, CO. At this hallmark EpiEnergetics community gathering you will develop, experience, and explore your unique spinal wave that awakens, enlivens, and heals. Non-authentic nervous system and spinal patterns are replaced by your authentic healing signature. Experience the 12 Stages of Healing coupled with extraordinary awakening. Formerly exclusively available to those actively in NetworkSpinal Care, this program is now also available for seekers wanting to discover the sheer magic of the body’s wisdom and life’s unfolding! This weekend is a MUST for seekers to know, understand, and optimize their bodies and the organizing energies that fuel us all. More than seventy thousand participants from six continents have come through The Gate. See you on the other side! |
AWE announecd for October!
For Seekers wishing to hack the energetic code of your incarnation. You can be part of an intimate group that will experience EpiExchange, an energetic method created and exclusively provided by Donny Epstein. Through talks, exercises and table sessions we will go beyond experiencing energy in the field and actually begin to form personal Energy Houses in the fields of attendees! At AWE, by helping link the forces of creation through your field, you will actually experience EpiField Exchange. Beyond change or personal development you can exchange your organizing EpiField and be a higher, more congruent, more authentic and effective version of YOU. You will forever alter your concepts of what is possible at this life-changing weekend of AWE. |