It has come to my attention in the last few years how important and necessary is the work that we do at the Happy Spine. This isn’t going to be about flagrant self-promotion:). If I wanted to flagrantly self-promote I would mention a practice member’s comments this past week. As I asked him to lift a part of his body, he says to me without skipping a beat,: “this is like non-violent yoga”. I have never heard anyone make that type of comparison before! I have to admit that I didn’t know there was such a thing as violent yoga:).
But I digress. Yes, the importance of the work we do. Looking back on the past 4-5 years, one must admit we’ve gone through the ringer haven’t we? We’ve experienced all kinds of tremendous fears, uncertainties, loss of loved ones, family excommunication, and we’ve generally seen a rise in Inhuman behaviour.
Whether it’s casting dehumanizing labels such as sheeple, conspiracy-theorist or anti-vaxer, or using social media to polarize and attack others, as a species we have a history of descending into the world of the Reptilian brain. Lately I’ve been enjoying a podcast about the history of World War I. It’s fascinating to hear of how it all evolved, how various countries used propaganda to motivate their populations to ultimately do unspeakably horrible, inhumane things. And they said it was the war to end all wars. That was part of the propaganda (and/or naive hope).
When we stop seeing the human being in front of us and we place more importance on our beliefs and on what we think is right, we lose our humanity. The only way to recover from this is to focus on being humane.
Having compassion, hearing out the other person even though you disagree with them, or to consider more than just one possible outcomes, is the basis of maintaining our humanity and by proxy, our society.
So what does our work at the Happy Spine have to do with this?
Inhuman thoughts and behaviour happen as a consequence of living from the Reptilian brain. Some examples of what it’s like to live from the Reptilian brain are:
- wanting or needing to prove that you’re right and they’re wrong,
- you’re either with us or against us
- losing sight of the human being in front of you
- feeling righteous and justifying your thoughts and behaviour to yourself by dehumanizing another
NeuroSpinal Optimization helps the nervous system to switch out of Defense and Survival of the Reptilian brain and into the PreFrontal Cortex where we are able to think more rationally. When we are living from the PreFrontal Cortex, we’re less likely to feel the need to defend ourselves and to be in fear altogether. We make better decisions and we can consider more than one perspective at a time when we’re living from the PreFrontal Cortex. We don’t have to be at war with each other, or with the planet. And power comes from inside of ourselves; it doesn’t have to be exercised over others in order to feel powerful, even when there are good intentions.
Living from the PreFrontal Cortex also is accompanied by an increased level of Heart-Brain Coherence, where our physical, emotional and mental health is at its best.