Diving In

You can’t learn to swim by looking at a lake.

Sitting on the shoreline, observing the water, and studying the technique of other swimmers will never teach you what it’s like to dive in. It is only by taking the leap that we can know how it feels to be immersed in a different element.

The ability to experience life with fullness often requires the energy for courage to do something new or uncomfortable. The extent to which we can tap into this energy and let it fuel the experience of life is directly related to the integrity of the spine and the nervous system.

The quality of the relationships we have with ourselves and others, the choices we make, how effectively our physiology functions, and how well we feel and move is all mediated by the clarity and the coherence of the nervous system. This is the reason chiropractic is interested in the spine and improvements in these quality of life measures are a hallmark of the discipline of Network Spinal Analysis.

It’s one thing to get your feet wet, but the best way to explore the breadth and the depth of the Lake of Life is to dive in.

See you in the water.

Consuming Consciously

Your diet extends far beyond what you eat at meal time. The nutrition (or lack thereof) you obtain from the food you eat is a combination of quantity, quality, and value. If you don’t eat enough, or if you have too much, you won’t feel great. If you have the “right” portions, but they’re made of junk, that won’t be great either. A third consideration, which I think is as important as quantity and quality, is value. How are you consuming? Are you taking notice of what you’re eating? Are you eating alone or with friends and family? Are you watching TV, trolling the internet, stressing about work? Are you paying attention to not only the food itself, but the experience you create when you eat it?

Consuming food is the most accessible example for the talking about consuming consciously. Your brain and your body consume everything that you expose them to. Activities that you do on the regular become a “diet” for your senses. If you sit a desk all day, make an effort to move. You wouldn’t eat white rice for 75% of your meals, so don’t subject your body and your posture to the cast of a chair for 75% of your time awake. The information you expose your mind to becomes the nutrition (or lack thereof) for what you think, how you think, and how you feel. Listening to Mozart on the ride to work will have a different impact on your mind than listening to talk radio. Reading Rumi or Rilke will provide different nutriment than the news. Having an exciting conversation with someone (in real life) about bike mechanics, coffee, or whatever you find interesting will be more novel, more energy rich, and provide more value than casual observations about the weather.

What we eat, what we listen to, what we read, who we engage with, and what activities we perform - consistently - will serve to mold who we are and what kind of experiences we have. We live in a time when we are overtly and covertly pushed to consume. If we can bring this process to a more conscious level, we give ourselves the opportunity to make a choice to ask: how much, what kind, and is this important to me?

Network Spinal Analysis

Network Spinal Analysis is a chiropractic discipline that focuses on the patterns of stress in the central nervous system and how they are reflected in the body. Using gentle, precise, and specific contacts made along the spine, the body is able to become self-aware, to unwind these tension patterns, and to learn new strategies for how to adapt to the physical, chemical, and mental/emotional stressors in life.

There is a tremendous amount of research in this discipline. Case studies have reported improvement in things as diverse as cervical lordosis and lumbar scoliosis (restoring normal curvature), vision in a diabetic, psoriasis, balance and Meniere's disease, attention in adults, and continue to be published by the Annals of Vertebral Subluxation Research.

More interestingly, Network Spinal Analysis has published one of the largest chiropractic studies to date evaluating quality of life changes in people receiving this care consistently (ranging from 1 month to 3 years under care).

It found significant positive progressive self-reported improvements in all categories: physical state, mental/emotional state, stress evaluation, life enjoyment, and overall quality of life.

Perhaps most interestingly, the Somato-Psychic wave, a phenomenon unique to Network Spinal Analysis, is being studied as a Central Pattern Generator (CPG). As practice members progress in care, their spines are naturally able to release old patterns of tension and reorganize movement patterns at higher levels of complexity. When this occurs, it looks as though a wave is traveling along the spine. Gait (how we walk) is also a CPG. It too represents a fundamental, complex, and unique sensori-motor pattern of an individual.

The gentle and profoundly effective chiropractic discipline of Network Spinal Analysis offers the opportunity for people to make significant positive change in their body, their outlook on life, and their overall quality of life. As it has been and continues to be researched, there does not seem to be a limit on how people perceive the improvements in their well-being while receiving this care.

Retrospective Assessment of Wellness and Quality of Life  

Literature Review Involving NSA Care