Many who come to the Happy Spine wonder, “what the heck do they do there? They use such a gentle touch (not always:)) and I feel better, my body has healed and rebalanced and I even find that I’m sleeping better and taking better care of myself.”
The approach we use isn’t limited to the physical application of a set of techniques. We also apply a unique, holistic philosophy/worldview to the care. By that I mean “Discover, Transform, Awaken”.
A typical patient walks into the clinic and tells us that she’s been having symptoms of back pain, and other various body pains. She adds that she doesn’t sleep well and her digestion isn’t that good.
If we were practicing with the contemporary health care model, we would assume that the symptoms are there because there’s something wrong with the body. Our focus would be to help eliminate the symptoms, so that the patient could get back to their normal life. Sounds fair doesn’t it?
Instead what we do is we make a different assumption than the contemporary health care model. Our assumption is that the symptoms are there to tell you that something about the way you’ve been living your life doesn’t work anymore. Your body can not keep up with the demands that are being placed on it by you living your ‘normal’ life.
As we help your nervous system and body recover from years of living life, we also hope to help you Discover (become more aware of) how your habits (behaviours, thinking habits and habits of perception) have been putting a strain on your body (mentally, emotionally and physically).
If you had someone in your life come to you and say “honey, I can’t live like this anymore, something needs to change”, would you reply, “oh just shut up and tow the line!”?
In our contemporary health care system, this is often what we do to our bodies when we eliminate symptoms rather than understanding why they’re there in the first place.
If you’re going to feel symptoms, wouldn’t you rather learn something from the experience? What if you could, through feeling your body’s inner wisdom, discover and come to terms with something in your life that doesn’t work anymore? Wouldn’t you find more acceptance and capacity for change?
There’s a difference between “doing the right things” and “doing the right things for you”.
If you can Discover what needs to change and the seeds of motivation, Transform becomes available to you. With Transform you can tackle the emotional addictions that you’ve developed in your life. And you can literally Transform the thought patterns that are responsible for generating the emotional addiction.
By doing this, you actually change your body’s genetic expression. You have the capacity to change your body, your mind and your life.
But there’s more to life than just Discovering and Transforming. There’s Awakening too! What can you Awaken to? For one, you can Awaken to your true self. I don’t mean that to sound hokey. What I mean by ‘true self’ is that through Discovery and Transformation, you actually change your conditioned self; the self that has been molded and shaped throughout your life by many forces; Forces such as the cultural field, your family, your socioeconomic status, and how you get your needs met. I don’t necessarily mean that your whole life is a lie. What I do know is that when there’s an incongruence between your conditioned self (personality) and your true self, we get symptoms.
Throughout ones life we develop a personality but that personality isn’t necessarily who we really are. We may have had to forget or push aside who we really are in order to fit into school, our family, workplace or our community for example.
You can also Awaken to More. Have you ever felt a feeling of “is there more to life or is this it?” Years ago I had a moment like this that I still remember clearly. It was a “come to Jesus moment” as one of my friends likes to call it. In Awaken, we can feel more love and gratitude, follow our hearts and access more of our gifts.
Awaken helps to add a flavour to life: each one of us has more gifts to share with the world. Life is always calling us to more, it’s up to us how we answer.
Not everyone who walks through the door at the Happy Spine is in a place in their life where they want to Discover, Transform or Awaken. However those who do want to, can.
Next week I’d like to explore some of the pitfalls of Discover, Transform and Awaken, pitfalls that can have you spinning your wheels.