December 3, 2024 By

Contribution vs blame

I am listening to an audio book called “Difficult Conversations”- How to discuss what matters most. It’s a bit dry, but it makes some great points that relate to life and Network care. One point that stuck so far was to acknowledge how we and others contribute to a situation rather than blaming anyone including ourselves. This is one of the key gifts/components of Discover care. In Discover, we become aware of how we are contributing to our problems or situation. Once we are aware how we contribute, we can begin to make changes. As a quick recap, Seasons of Wellbeing is a model Donny Epistein created for human healing and growth. Discover is all about the problem, Transform is about the solution, Awaken is about finding the gift in the wound and the ultimate perfection of life, and Integrate is where we mix the seasons for the best experience. Discover care and integrate is where we start the journey of Network care. It’s done face down and the contacts are relatively quick and light. You can read more about this is previous blog posts https://nextlevelchirodallas.com/the-season-of-discover-into-the-season-of-transform/

In Network, these light contacts help to process stored stress and to take your Nervous System out of fight, flight, or freeze. As stored stress is released, the body can unwind and our thinking and feelings shift from survival based to growth based. This lets us have increased connection to our bodies and intuitions so that we can notice where we are contributing to our problems or pains.

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November 20, 2024 By

Expectations

Expectations reduce the joy in life-Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

This is such a great life quote that I was reminded of last week. I believe it can also apply to Network Spinal entrainments. What it means to me as far as entrainments go is that it’s important to be open to your experience on the table. Try to not have expectations as to what will happen or what your body needs. Our bodies are made with perfect intelligence, and when they are working properly, they know just what they need and when they need it. Network entrainments help reconnect your body to its own innate intelligence, and this intelligence uses the energy liberated during your entrainments to help your body unwind, grow, heal and evolve.

Limiting your expectations can help you have new awarenesses, help you enjoy your entrainments more and to get more out go your care

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November 20, 2024 By

Where do you play in life?

Where in your life do you play? Play or being playful adds energy to your life and to what you are doing. 

Play is crucial for childhood development, and it’s also important for adult development and health. Play helps to activate the neocorectx or new/ human brain (including the frontal lobe which is activated in Network). It also reduces stress hormones and promotes neural flexibility and growth. 

You might hear me making sound effects while entraining. This is one of the ways I stay playful at work. It does nothing for the actual entrainment, but it’s fun for me and adds free energy to our interaction. I also play at home with our kiddos (A LOT) and I am playful at jujitsu.

Play can be different for everyone, but in general it involves letting go of being serious even for a few moments. Andrew Huberman has this to say about play”…how it changes our feelings, thoughts and actions and indeed, how it can rewire our brain to function better in all contexts.” You can watch his podcast about play here https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/using-play-to-rewire-and-improve-your-brain

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November 13, 2024 By

Safety part 1

Safety is a fundamental human need that needs to be met in order for us to heal and grow. Sometimes, we consciously know we are safe, but our bodies are locked into fight, flight or freeze. In other words, our bodies don’t know we are safe and are acting out of defense physiology instead of growth physiology. There are a few ways we check for the degree of safety in your body/ nervous system.

The biggest and simplest way we access safety is via posture. Does your resting posture look more relaxed and upright or does it look like you are ready to fight, run or curl into a ball (rounded back and head forward of your shoulders)?

Two others way we check for this is by checking what we call adduction and abduction stress in your legs and pelvis. This is where we gently check how easy it is to press your legs together(adduction) and spread them apart(abduction). When your legs bounce apart when we try and press them together, this represents a subconscious bracing against being knocked down or being knocked off balance. Think of the feeling of being on an airport bus or train that is starting to move or that is stopping, you spread your legs to brace yourself.

When your legs resist being pulled apart, this represents a pattern where your tail bone is tucked towards the front of your body and is similar to a dog tucking their tail after being attacked/struck.

With Network Spinal care, we regularly see improvement in all of these indicators as people heal and have more safety in their bodies.

Next Level Chiropractic – 14200 Midway rd #110 Dallas TX 75244

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November 13, 2024 By

Not all pops are the same

Not all pops (in your spine) are the same.

Most pops that happen naturally are good for you. Some of these are your body’s response to increased tension. These small and sometimes constant pops are your body doing its best to manage and release tension. Natural pops during of after an entrainment are your body adjusting itself. These are typically bigger and can even feel like something clunking into place.

Pops that come from a chiropractic adjustment are typically good for you. These pops restore motion to a stuck joint.

Pops from an adjustment after or during a Network Spinal entrainment help to reenforce the progress made during the entrainment; they set an energetic shelf for your body to fall back on.

Pops from self adjusting are not good if you use force to make them happen. These are different than pops that come from movement, stretching or foam rolling. These pops come from the joints above or below the stuck joints. They feel good for a short time, but they also re-enforce the problem or stuck joint.

Next Level Chiropractic -14200 Midway rd #110 Dallas TX 75244

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November 13, 2024 By

Expectations

Expectations reduce the joy in life-Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

This is such a great life quote that I was reminded of last week. I believe it can also apply to Network entrainments. What it means to me as far as entrainments go is that it’s important to be open to your experience on the table. Try to not have expectations as to what will happen or what your body needs. Our bodies are made with perfect intelligence, and when they are working properly, they know just what they need and when they need it. Network entrainments help reconnect your body to its own innate intelligence, and this intelligence uses the energy liberated during your entrainments to help your body unwind, grow, heal and evolve.

Limiting your expectations can help you have new awarenesses, help you enjoy your entrainments more and to get more out go your care.

Next Level Chiropractic -14200 Midway rd #110 Dallas TX 75244

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December 7, 2023 By

What does it mean to be relaxed?

What does it mean to be relaxed after your entrainments?

First of all, it feels good to be relaxed and we intuitively know that it is good for us. The longer its been since we have been relaxed, the more noticeable the effect will be.

In general, being relaxed post entrainment means that your Nervous System has been operating at least partially in fight, flight or freeze as a default. This is common in todays world. There are countless demands on our time and attention as well as many other stressors in everyday life. Network Spinal entrainments help to calm this part of your nervous system and also help to stimulate the parasympathetic or rest and digest part of your nervous system.

In stress mode, our auto pilot is focused on our external environment in order to reach for threats to our safety. When we relax, our bodies are able to take a breath and take a look at what’s going on inside of us. This internal focus allows for greater healing, cellular repair, and of course higher quality resting and digesting.

When we think of rest and digest, we commonly think of food digestion. However, when this part of our Nervous System is active, we also are able to process undigested thoughts, feelings and emotions. Just like undigested food, these things can build up and weigh us down.

When the change from pre entrainment to post entrainment is exceptionally large, in terms of a revved up or stressed nervous system to a calm Nervous system, you might experience a crash or extreme tiredness a little while after your entrainment. If you can, this is a wonderful opportunity to listen to your body and give it the rest that it needs.

Next Level Chiropractic

14200 Midway Dallas TX 75244

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November 15, 2023 By

Network spinal and breathing

Network helps us breath better on and off the table. It stimulates and activates dormant and often unused parts of of respiratory systems as well as resetting our natural pattern of slow deep breathing. All of this happens automatically. An important caveat is that during entrainments, you do not need to try to breather deeper or control your breath.

Here are some simple guidelines for conscious healthy breathing:

Its almost always best to breath in and out your nose. This warms and cleans the air, and it helps absorb oxygen better. You can also breath out your mouth with pursed lips if you are not able to exhale through your nose. Either way, it is helpful to place the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth behind your front teeth. Side note: You will feel like you are suffocating the first few days of practicing exclusive nose nose breathing. This is a short adaption period and it can be helpful to use a pulse ox to monitor your oxygen levels. Humans today are chronic over breathers and your oxygen levels will likely be fine even though you feel like you don’t have enough air.

Now lets take Network principles into account.

Breathing in your mouth and out your nose is appropriate and natural in moments of Awaken, awe or ecstasy. Essentially, when something is so great that it takes your breath away, you might find yourself mouth breathing for a small while.

Breathing in and out your mouth is also associated with merging an old way of doing things with a new way.

You might also need to breath in your mouth during entrainments in order to get enough air in or to activate the season of transform and/or awaken.

Take deep slow breaths into into your stomach to activate your diaphragm.

Exception: Focused Heart breathing uses more of the secondary respiratory muscles. The benefit of this type of breathing comes from the focus on your heart.

The ideal breath is roughly 5.5 seconds in the nose and 5.5 seconds out the nose. Practicing this even for a few minutes a day can have huge benefits and help you re learn to breathe through your nose. Come see us when you are in Dalas!

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October 18, 2023 By

Torticollis in older kids

Stress is sneaky. We often don’t notice it building up or the effects it has on us. This is partly because increased stress activates our fight or flight response, and when this happens our body awareness goes down. We then stop our healthy habits which lets stress build up even more. Our bodies do a great job adapting to let us keep pushing forward until we reach a critical mass of stress storage. When this happens, old pains or problems come back and/or new pains and problems show up.

We are seeing signs of increased stress and stress storage in both adults and kids over the last months. Some of these include; people having more headaches and pains, more tension in both the active and passive systems, people complaining about sleeping wrong or not being able to sleep, people stopping healthily habits because they do not have time or energy, people getting sick and more.

Most noteworthy is that we have seen multiple cases of severe torticollis or wryneck in school age kids. Prior to this year, we have only had 2 cases in 13 years of practice. Both of these were in very young children. Network spinal is a great way to quickly resolve this issue. This seems to be a sign of increased stress everywhere. We are all feeling it, or at least we are all subconsciously experiencing it if we are not feeling it.

Things we can do:

We can all do our best to keep up healthy stress mitigating habits.

We can view stress as making us stronger by challenging our nervous systems (akin to working out)

We can focus on the good and practice gratitude for what we do have and what is working

Regular entrainments also help to process stored stress and to keep our nervous systems in growth and out of fight or flight mode.

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September 27, 2023 By

Too many body apps open?

Do you ever leave too many apps open on your phone or too many programs running on your computer? I’m pretty sure we have all been there. Our phones or computers start to glitch or not work as fast. As soon as we close out the unneeded apps or programs, things go back to normal. 

The body works the same way 

Sometimes we have multiple phases or patterns happening at the same time. We could be subconsciously still holding on to prior emotions and thoughts from days, months or even years ago. These thoughts and emotions might pop up consciously from time to time and then go away again. 

Network helps close these extra apps. Said differently, Network entrainments help us connect to and process these recurring loop emotions and thoughts so that we can return to a calmer baseline. 

Sometimes these are the entrainments that you can’t seem to relax or tune in. These entrainments are just as beneficial as ones that are deeply relaxing or energizing, just in a different way. 

Donny’s concept of AAA helps us close out apps (thoughts and emotions) in real time. Here is a link to an old newsletter about AAA https://nextlevelchirodallas.com/epienergetic-seasons-aaa-and-the-gap/

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