Last week I talked about The Artist’s Way, morning pages, and how regular journaling can be very beneficial for personal and spiritual development. I must be in some kind of Artist’s Way kick because I am going to talk about another idea I got from Julia Cameron — the Artist Date.

What the heck is an Artist Date? Basically, it’s taking time to do something fun for or with yourself — alone. They are meant to help inspire your creative juices, remove energetic blocks, and increase overall happiness. Take yourself somewhere you enjoy, such as the beach, the spa, the bookstore, or out to the park for a nice walk. Cameron encourages people involved in the Artist’s Way to step outside of their usual paradigm and do things that they’ve always wanted to do but have never gotten around to it — skydiving, learning to surf, or taking up crochet. Enjoy yourself.

The importance of taking yourself on a date is this: Too often we ignore our selves and sacrifice our happiness and needs for the sake of all those around us: our bosses, our spouses, our children, our parents, our friends, etc. I will agree that these things are important and I do not wish to attach any negativity to having friends, jobs, or a social life. However, the cultural trend is to have only these and nothing for ourselves. We have distraction after distraction from ourselves and being alone becomes a great fear for many of us. We are not in human form so that we can be slaves to what we perceive to be our familial, social, and career obligations. We must have balance. Living our lives for ourselves is equally as important as being and living with others. We are here to experience and partake of our experiences and our enjoyments, and these do not need to be sacrificed for the sake of another person or entity.

The simple act of taking regular time out for ourselves by going on little adventures enlivens us. It brings passion and lightness back to our daily lives and connects us to our spirit. Sacrificing all of our time for everyone else deadens us to our purpose, passions, and being. Life is a journey and an experience for us to have in its many facets– from interactions with others to experience of our self. Unfortunately, many of us forget that we even have a self.

Take some time out each week to practice some altruistic selfishness. Give to yourself and to the world by getting to know you.  It doesn’t have to be anything too big if you don’t want it to be, but stretch yourself, and most importantly, give to yourself, love yourself, and grow your happiness!

“Loyalty demands that you should always, in life or in death, be devoted to the person whether your heart is willing for it or not. It is a psychological way of enslavement.”
-Osho, from Intimacy: Trusting Oneself and Other People

I have been doing a lot of thinking about loyalty and love recently, and this quote from Osho has been galvanizing a lot of my thoughts. On the one hand, I consider myself a very loyal person; committed to my friends, my family, my partner through thick and thin, no matter what. On the other hand, I prize the freedom to live precisely what’s in my heart at any moment, to act on unencumbered desire, and to live my life on the hairy boundaries of fear, because the liberation of my spirit (call it attaining enlightenment, Nirvikalpa Samadhi, atonement, bliss, whatever) from the conditioning of my mind and body so that I can help others achieve the same is precisely why I understand myself to be here.

What strikes me as most disturbing about this quote is how directly it flies in the face of a lifetime of training in the virtues of loyalty. Suddenly I’m questioning some of my most deeply-held beliefs: that if I’m not loyal to the people with whom I’m in relationship, I’m a bad friend, lover, son, sibling, and that I’ve failed in my civic duties to help to maintain the cohesive structure of the society I participate in. I feel like this is a fairly common and pervasive social belief that most of us are trained in in some way or another. I also recognize within myself that this belief is at odds with another of my beliefs: that if I express anything other than what I most desire and wish to express, I am undermining the fabric of the society I’m trying to help to create. Namely, one of greater personal freedom, love, and kindness than the one that I grew up in.

“Love is a dangerous experience because you are possessed by something bigger than you. And it is not controllable; you cannot produce it on order. Once it is gone, there is no way to bring it back. All that you can do is to pretend, be a hypocrite.”

I’m disquieted by the answers I come up with when I think about the implications of these ideas as they apply to my life, right here, right now. Am I undermining my own search for freedom and the transformative power of love by trying to deconstruct and define the love in my life, and keep it familiar and safe? When I listen quietly to the sounds my heart makes, I have to confess that I am.

Oddly, this answer brings with it a kind of joy. It tells me that more freedom is on its way, more wild love, a greater expression of bliss and tranquility and illumination. It also brings with it enormous fear. What do I have to give up that I don’t want to let go of in order to feel this freedom? My friendships? Closeness with my family? My relationship with my romantic partner? The joy in me whispers that perhaps there’s a way to surrender utterly what those things are now, and not have it be a loss, but a win. How that unfolds is ultimately out of my hands. All I can do is let go and watch.

Living on those hairy boundaries is hard, but worthwhile. With each victory over fear, another opportunity to resist fear instead of embrace it will present itself as a challenge. Remembering to rise to my highest sense of honor, and acting from what I know to be right fills me with a sense of accomplishment that the feeling of achieving a material goal can ever touch. That doesn’t make it especially easier to do, however!

I live in California, home of sun-bronzed Gods and Goddesses of Hollywood, Gym Culture, and the Surf, Epicenter of the Cult of Thin. In California (and, I’ll wager, in all of the USA), we are trained to hate our imperfect bodies. I could make an argument that this is all the result of the Puritans abnegation of the flesh, blah blah blah, but that’s neither here nor there. What’s telling for me is the degree to which people hurt themselves, doing lasting harm to their bodies, in order to change them from what they are into something else. This isn’t just the diet industry that I’m talking about. Whether you’re overweight or fit, active or a couch-surfer, we are living in an environment that trains us to want our bodies to be other than what they are.

So enough with the negativity and cultural condemnation. What can each of us do about it? If what I’ve said thus far resonates with you personally, try this meditation on body forgiveness. It may sound a little corny, but it helps and works to release internalized Somaphobia (body hatred and fear):

Get naked and sit comfortably. Ease your breathing, and notice how deeply you’re breathing. Notice how slowly and easily you’re breathing. Place both hands on one of your feet. Don’t try to do anything to it just yet (ie, don’t massage or squeeze or stretch it), just feel how it feels between your hands, and feel how your foot feels when it’s being held. Say “I forgive you, foot, for ever not meeting my expectations. I accept and love you just as you are”. If it feels like it wants to be squeezed, give your foot a couple of gentle squeezes, almost like you would reassure a child or small animal, and release it. Repeat this on the other foot. Be loving! Be kind! Be silly! You’re talking to your foot like it’s a person; if that doesn’t make you feel a little silly, I’m not sure what will. Do it anyway. Name your body parts as you go, if it helps!

Place your hands on your ankle. Tell your ankle that you forgive it for not meeting your expectations, and that you love it and accept it just as it is. Take your time. You’re not doing yourself any favors by rushing through showing yourself how much you love and care for yourself. Repeat on the other side.

Now the calves, the knees, the thighs, the hips. Place your hands on your genitals. Forgive them. Tell them you love them. No, seriously. If you feel ridiculous, you’re probably on to something really worthwhile. Touch your bottom. Touch your anus. Forgive them for disappointing you, for not being what you wanted.

Forgive your belly, your love-handles, your low-back. Forgive and love your breasts, your ribcage, your sternum. Accept and be grateful and loving toward your shoulders, arms, armpits, forearms, hands, fingers. Accept and forgive and love your throat, neck, chin, jaw, skull (spend a little extra time on that place where your skull joins your neck - as a predominantly seated culture, we tend to carry more tension and see more problems here than other people).

Touch your face, bit by bit: lips, teeth, eyes, cheeks, nose, forehead, eyebrows, ears. Don’t leave anything or anyplace out. Forgive all the pieces of you that have disappointed and let you down. Accept them and love them as they are.

Now go look at yourself in the mirror (ideally, full-length). Tell your naked body that you forgive it for ever failing to meet your expectations of it. Finally, look yourself in the eyes in the mirror and forgive yourself for having expectations that your body be other than what it is, was, has been. Say “I love you, ______” [your name here]. “I forgive you and I love you.”

If you get stuck anywhere in this process, derailed or unable to continue, stop and reflect on where you got stuck and why. If you just can’t look yourself in the eyes and tell yourself that you love yourself, strive toward being able to - you deserve your own love first and foremost.

I’d like to start by defining how I’ll be using the word “posture,” because my use will elaborate on the vernacular use somewhat. In every day use, “posture” is the degree to which a person is standing upright. Posture can be markedly “good” or noticeably “bad.” It goes beyond just upright-ness, and for the purpose of this article in particular will be used to refer to the entirety of how every part of a body is oriented in relation to the space around it, everything in that space, and in relation to every other part of the body. That means that when I’m talking about posture, I’m including the tilt of the hands as well as the tilt of the shoulders. Perhaps “embodiment” or “characterization” are more accurate terms, but they’re also less-widely used and understood outside of theatrical contexts.

We all rely on postural cues to tell us what’s happening with the people around us; from a sagging chin telling us someone may be tired or sad to  a  tilted head signifying curiosity, we read the emotions of the people around us constantly through the way their bodies move - and don’t move.

Try this: look in a mirror. Notice where your shoulders are, your head, your hips. Close your eyes for a breath or two, and recall a time when you felt a powerful sense of sadness or loss. See what you saw, feel what you felt, hear in your mind what you were hearing when you were feeling this sadness or loss, and then open your eyes and look in the mirror again. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to note that your posture has shifted to one that reflects sadness; slumped shoulders, collapsed ribcage, downward-facing eyes and chin. The change in your posture may have been pronounced, or it may have been subtle.

Now, try closing your eyes and imagining yourself in a time or place where you were having the most fun you can remember having, or even the most fun you can imagine anyone having. Wait until you can really feel, see, and hear what you’re doing in your mind’s eye, then open your eyes. When you look in the mirror again, note how your chest has probably risen, your abdomen may have widened. Your neck is probably longer.

Now, try this: standing in front of a mirror, softly widen your chest, let your arms hang gently from your shoulders, square your hips softly, raise your head. Did you happen to notice, as you were doing this, that you felt more powerful? Proud? Aloof? Centered? Or perhaps you felt like you were standing more the way someone who was feeling one of those things might stand?

Many people in the healing arts, from massage to energy work to chiropractic, refer to emotions being stored in the body. Three models we might use to describe this idea are:

1. Since postures reflect emotions (as seen above!), if subtle postural features get “stuck” in our physiology, our bodies store the emotional content of that posture. When we receive some form of healing work that releases the structural holding pattern (which was brought about by excessive force entering the body), then we “re-experience” the emotional content of whatever trauma caused the posture to get stuck in the first place.
2. Since emotions are reflected by postural sets, if emotional habits become entrenched in our psyches, our posture will unconsciously express the emotional state that we’re habitually in. Thus, when we receive effective psycho-emotional work (therapy, coaching, energy work, whatever!) that allows us to break old emotional habits, our posture will change (i.e., the formerly anxious person who, upon making a significant breakthrough in therapy, walks taller, moves more easily, and feels less worn out).
3. Emotions are really just the way the conscious mind perceives the status of the physical body. If we’re standing upright with ease and soft focus, the conscious mind interprets that as “I feel content.” If we’re feeling sad, slow, depressed, and melancholy, that’s just the conscious mind’s interpretation of literal physical discomfort brought on postural habits, which may in turn reflect nutritional deficiencies, reactions to consumed drugs, or a host of other stimuli that trigger a response in the body that the conscious mind interprets as “I am sad.”

A combination of the three, emphasizing the third model, is what I’ve been working with most recently. Here is the best way I’ve found so far to explain what I mean:

Imagine someone with chronically misaligned vertebrae in their neck (perhaps they were in a car accident years ago). The nerves there are constantly sending low-level pain signals to the brain about their predicament. The brain has, for whatever reason, been unable to do anything about the misalignment and pain so far, and so has relegated those pain signals to “background noise.” We filter out almost any repetitive stimulus after a while. Now imagine that person standing in front of a group of people and do a speaking engagement. Doesn’t it stand to reason that bringing that extra bit of attention to their vocal apparatus would very subtly heighten the awareness they would have of the pain signals coming from their neck? Then of course, lacking conscious awareness of the pain in the first place, all they would consciously be aware of is “I really don’t want to be doing this!” This physical avoidance response could well be interpreted as anxiety about speaking to groups, when in reality it is literal physical pain that the mind has sublimated but is brought to the fore situationally.

I recognize that this model is somewhat simplistic. I’m still revising and expanding it, and wish to construct the most elegant and functional model I can, so keeping it as simple as the data I get will support seems reasonable.

I also realize that it may strike some people as dishonoring to the validity of their emotional experiences. I suppose all I really have to say to that is:

As a Chiropractic student, I have found one of the greatest challenges I face is overcoming a popular misconception of Chiropractic as bone-crunchers and back-crackers. I addressed some of these misconceptions in my 3-part series called “What is Chiropractic?” (part 1, part 2, part 3). I have also, because I’m a student, been asked on numerous occasions how to find a good Chiropractor. It’s a tricky question to answer, in part because everyone has different ideas about what they want a Chiropractor for.

If you’re looking for a Chiropractor, here are some questions to ask yourself:

• What am I looking for?
  • Symptom relief?
  • Ongoing health care?
  • Wellness support?
• What specific goals am I hoping to achieve working with this Chiropractor?
  • Greater flexibility and ease of movement?
  • Increased feelings of centered tranquility?
  • Higher athletic performance?
• How important to me is a personal connection and relationship with my Chiropractor?

Here are some ideas for things to talk to your prospective Chiropractor about before beginning care:

• Make sure your they talk about the nerves or the nervous system. The bones are levers for keeping the nervous system functioning well - obstructions in bony movement imply disruptions, impingements, and interference to the nervous system, but aren’t the targets in and of themselves.
  • If what you need is just a stuck bone to be rehabilitated and mobilized, a Chiropractor is trained to help, but that’s not the real Art or heart of the work.
  • Listen for signs that the bony fixation is the most important thing to the doctor you’re talking to, they may have gotten distracted by the medical model of symptom relief and forgotten the big picture!
• Ask your potential Chiropractor what about the work really excites them. If they don’t speak with passion and enthusiasm about something that gets your attention and makes you excited too, then they’re probably not a good doctor for you.
• Ask if they do regular health talks or patient education programs. These programs should be free, occur regularly, and should be focused on explaining the how and why of Chiropractic to new patients. If they do offer health talks, try to attend one before beginning care. If they don’t, ask them what they do for patient education. If they look at you blankly, smile and find someone else!
• Trust your instincts! If you don’t feel like you want to spend more than 20 minutes with this person if you don’t have to, don’t work with them - you need to feel fully safe, supported, and secure with your Chiropractor in order to grow, heal, and progress.

While no set of recommendations like this could ever be complete or speak to everyone, I hope this article can give you someplace to start when looking for a Chiropractor.

I received my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Linguistics from UC Santa Cruz. Linguistics is a funny sort of science, as it is based on empirical data (corpora of real linguistic utterances from real speakers of real languages), yet at the same time the theoretical models that it generates are, on the whole, not meant to reflect the actual physiological and neurological processes that are generating those data. That is to say, except for in specific cases, theoretical linguistics does not generate theories about what the brain itself is doing, it models language generation as an object.

All of this is to say that my formal education trained me in building abstract models (almost like mental machines or programs) of real world phenomena. Making models in my head of how things might be working, refining the model when presented with new data, proceeding as though that model were true until presented with new data that doesn’t fit the model, and constantly looking for data that the model doesn’t predict are deeply ingrained habits now.

What I have noticed recently is that this habit of refining my mental models of how complicated systems work is one of the most powerful spiritual practices I have. We all have core models of how we perceive the Universe to work. Some of these models are functional because they predict useful things for us, such as “I believe that gravity will keep me attached to the Earth.” This belief is accurate enough to serve most people in most circumstances. If you’re an astronaut or rocket scientist, this is not a functional enough model of the Universe for your daily life, because your daily life involves forces that are great enough to overcome gravity’s ability to keep you attached to the Earth.

Some of the models we hold are less functional. I suspect we’ve all met people who carry models that include beliefs like “everyone who loves me will eventually betray me,” and others who use models that include beliefs like “the Universe is conspiring to shower me with blessings.” The thing about models of complex systems (such as, for instance, the Universe!) is that they tend to be self-reinforcing. People who believe on a core level that everyone that they love will betray them will tend to disregard evidence to the contrary as being outlying and insignificant data (if they even notice it at all) and use any evidence that supports their belief to reinforce their model of reality as being correct.

This is what brings me to my real point about my spiritual practice: we are all operating, eventually, only on models of reality. Our minds aren’t capable of conceiving of the totality of the Universe all at once and making all of our decisions from that understanding, so we model reality based on our experiences. Having a model of reality that explicitly includes its own constant revision and refinement by the actively seeking data that lies outside of the model’s ability to handle them creates an ever-expanding model which is capable of dealing with ever-greater and more complex circumstances.

I don’t know about you, but I’d like every experience I have to reinforce the idea that the Universe is a pretty good place to be, so I have intentionally structured my model of reality to be more like “the Universe is conspiring to get me what I want” and less like “the Universe screws me over consistently.” How have I been doing this? I consistently look for patterns of synchronicity, of getting what I need when I need it, and of always having what I need. I spend time picking through difficult and painful experiences to find the exact way in which the painful event was actually, somehow, exactly what I really wanted, and then I made a conscious and concerted decision to stay focused on the good I was getting from the experience. This not only keeps the pain or hurt valid and real (instead of dismissing or ignoring it), but it charges it with the power to transform my life even further into what I want. My model of reality is no more accurate than someone who believes the Universe is out to get them; the Universe is infinite, and all models that remain experientially consistent are, for all intents and purposes, equally accurate. My model just feels nicer to me than I imagine models that hinge upon the idea that the Universe is a horrible place to be would feel.

What beliefs do your models of reality contain? Do you like what they’re getting you, experientially?

Recommended Reading:

Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia, by Rob Brezsny

When the word yoga is mentioned, most of us in the West think of a physical and mental exercise wherein the practitioner places his or her body in a series of poses (asana) while controlling the breath and focusing the mind. This type of yoga is known as hatha yoga (properly pronounced as ha tuh). Studios that teach various forms of hatha yoga are everywhere and we have all either tried it or know someone who has. However, hatha yoga is but a small component of the rich and ancient practices of yoga.

So what exactly is yoga and where did it come from? What is its aim? In this article I’ll attempt to answer these questions by providing a brief history of yogic philosophy and descriptions of some of the various forms of yoga.

Yoga is one of the world’s oldest spiritual traditions. This family of practices was born in India but the precise date of their origination is unclear. According to traditional yoga philosophy, the entire cosmos consists of a state of duality between the eternal and abiding purusha and prakriti. Everything in the universe can be classified as either purusha or prakriti or consists of a combination of both. Purusha is the formless, pure realm of spirit (for lack of a better term) and consciousness. Prakriti is the realm of nature and physical materiality. As humans, we are simultaneously composed of both these essences. Our body is physical, and thus is part of prakriti. Our soul (jiva) is non-physical, pure consciousness and is purusha. Traditional schools of yoga hold that because our purusha, our true self, is part of prakriti, it becomes so caught up in the physical nature of reality that it forgets its true being, that of pure, formless essence and consciousness.

This is where yogic practice comes into play. The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit root yuj, meaning to yoke or restrain. Early yogic applications focused on restraining and controlling the senses in order to realize separateness from one’s purusha and prakriti so that the true self, pure consciousness, could be known. Ultimately one would experience nirvikalpa samadhi where the purusha no longer has any ties whatsoever to the prakriti. In this state, the purusha is free, completely liberated.

As I stated before, it is unclear when yoga first began. There are seals from the Indus Valley civilization (c. 3600 - 1900 B.C.E) that clearly depict beings in various asanas. It is highly probable that early forms of yoga, like tantra, were developed by the Dravidians (the indigenous people of India) long before the Aryans came into India and brought with them the Vedas (holy books of ancient Hindus dating to at least 1500 B.C.E.) and what we call Hinduism. However, these forms of yoga probably would not be very recognizable to us today. There is no mention of yoga in Hindu scripture until it is passively alluded to in the Upanishads (c. 900 - 300 B.C.E.) and clearly described in the Bhagavad Gita (c. 200 B.C.E.). This suggests that by 200 B.C.E. Hinduism, like it did with so many ancient Dravidian beliefs, practices, and philosophies, had married and adopted yoga.

According to Encyclopedia of Hinduism* the earliest structured form of yoga was likely practiced by the Jains (c. 900 B.C.E) and involved severe worldly denial and physical restraint. “The early Jain monks and Thirthankaras (perfected beings) would train themselves to ignore the body completely and train the mind to ignore even the strongest positive and negative stimuli.” Renunciation and worldly denial is still quite prevalent in many forms of yoga today. “Yoga of this sort is ultimately about controlling all bodily functions, so that even the autonomic nervous system can be under the adept’s control. When Swami Rama first traveled to the United States in the 1970’s, he demonstrated such control by stopping his heart completely for more than a minute while being attached to a heart monitor.”

This is a very extreme path of yogic practice and not all schools are quite so severe. When Buddhism was founded (c. 600 B.C.E.) it promulgated another view that did not advocate bodily denial. Its focus was that of mental control where the practitioner focused on the breath and physical sensation in the body.

After Buddhism, other forms of yoga began to develop in Hinduism. In the Bhagavad Gita there is a lot of emphasis on devotional yoga or bhakti yoga. Here primary mental focus on the deity is the goal. There is also karma yoga where one’s attention is ideally placed solely on good worldly conduct. Astanga yoga, the eight-limbed yoga of Patanjali, from whom we get the Yoga Sutras, “…involved a sitting yoga, sometimes called raja yoga, which focused on breathing. As one observed the breath, one developed ways of concentrating the mind and eventually controlling the mind”.

Next we come to the ever popular hatha yoga that “…is an amalgam of practices that may have emerged separately and were later combined”. The primary progenitors of hatha yoga were the Nath Yogis, a group who sought physical immortality through alchemy, the ingestion of mercury, and asana. Hatha yoga today does not involve alchemy or mercurial ingestion, but combines the teachings found in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, such as breath control with asana. Hatha yoga is, essentially, an active meditation and within its scope there are various schools with differing postures, techniques, and philosophies. Examples of these are Iyengar, Vinyassa, and Yin. Kundalini yoga is another popular school of hatha yoga that focuses on awakening the serpent Goddess-energy at the base of the spine (kundalini) and moving this force through the energy centers along the spine, or chakras (pronounced as a “ch” as in Chalk as opposed to “sh” as in ship).

Hatha yoga is quite profound and beneficial. I have been practicing for at least 12 years. I sometimes jokingly refer to myself as a fundamentalist yogi because I love it so much and feel that everyone could benefit from it.

Breath control is the foundation of hatha yoga. This, coupled with asana practice, produces such an amazing feeling of peace and compassion. It also develops concentration, ease in the body, relieves tension, and makes overall spiritual practice easier.

The beauty of hatha yoga is its adaptability. In yoga, there is no place to go, except for where we already are. The point is to strive to improve ourselves bit by bit, moment to moment. The postures have ideal forms, but these forms are only pointers. In practice, we simply try to get as close to these forms as we can. It is a continuous push to better ourselves, our bodies, and our minds. It doesn’t matter how physically flexible we are, insofar as we engage the body while focusing the mind and the breath.

Essentially all yogas are ancient Indian sciences that we can use to invoke our own inner power, to better ourselves as human beings, and to realize the divinity of ourselves and the world. These are practices that we can harness to live deeper, more meaningful, and more compassionate lives infused with zest and vitality.

*All quotes are taken from pages 511 and 512 of this encyclopedia.

Reccommended Reading

The Alchemical Body, by David Gordon White
Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, by Mircea Eliade
Encyclopedia of Hinduism, by Constance A. Jones and James D. Ryan
Yoga Spandakarika, by Daniel Odier
The Shape of Ancient Thought, by McEvilley
Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, by B.K.S. Iyengar
Light on Yoga, by B.K.S. Iyengar

One of my favorite recent reads was The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, by Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee. The book does a beautiful and elegant job of explaining some very difficult neurological concepts in a clear and straightforward way. The concept I’m focusing on for this article has to do with tool use. According to the Blakeslees’ research, we have areas in our brains dedicated to mapping our bodies in both motor function and sensory data. These “body maps” respond dynamically to our environments and the tools we use.

When you pick up a tool, the body maps associated with your arms and hands expand to include the shape of and a set of potential uses for the tool (i.e., a stick comes loaded with concepts like “poke things with,” “reach things with,” etc.). When you pick up a simple tool, the map of your hands extends into that tool, and the tool becomes, for all intents and purposes, a part of you. The map includes the tool as long as you’re holding it, and different tools have different sets of potential uses loaded into them. Further, the more you use a tool, the more likely you are to develop permanent tool maps. This can be thought of as (at least part of) the brain’s role in muscle memory.

Bear in mind that these maps are physiological regions of the brain, dedicated to “virtualizing” our bodies and environments. These internal representations of our bodies don’t end at our skin, however. Simply having someone stand too close and noticing the deeply invasive feeling of being almost touched is enough to demonstrate that.

In my next article, I’m going to discuss some of the ramifications of this observation about personal space as I perceive it to relate to what are often called “psychic” perceptions.

Recommended reading:

• The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, by Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee

I am a self-identified phobophile. I love my fears. Fear is a powerful teacher, because fear marks resistance, and resistance is a good place to discover breakthroughs. “Here be dragons!” the signpost reads. But here also be treasures, if you have the patience, trust, and willingness to look.

Fear is a billboard, a mark on the map. Fear is as clear a signal that you’re going the right way as pain is a signal that you’re going the wrong way. As usual, let me employ some metaphor to clarify what I mean:

When you burn your hand on a stove, your immediate reaction (mediated mechanisms in the spinal column itself, not the brain) is to jerk your hand away from the hot stove. Contrarily, when you’re afraid of burning your hand on the stove, your (brain-mediated) reaction will probably make it very difficult to get your fingers to touch the surface you know to be hot. In this sense, the pain response is like suddenly throwing your car in reverse, while fear is like hitting the brakes hard. Technically speaking, both of these cause the car to undergo negative acceleration (acceleration in the opposite direction of current movement), even though the results are quite different. The distinction is in some sense one of degree, and result. Pain leads to movement away from the source of pain, fear leads to reduced movement toward the object of fear.

Pain is a signal from your body that something is wrong, fear is a signal from your body that something might go wrong, based on previous experience of pain from something going wrong. And that, ultimately, is what makes fear such a profound teacher; fear is fundamentally not a feeling that happens in the Now. Fear is based on either a perceived future threat or a recalled prior threat.

When I’m feeling afraid, rather than taking a tip from Rogers and Hammerstein and whistling a happy tune, here are the steps that I go through:

1. Clarify precisely what I’m afraid of. Being stung by that hornet buzzing around me? Looking foolish flirting with an attractive stranger?
2. Identify what I’m avoiding experiencing by going into fear; ie, I’m avoiding experiencing pain with the fear of the hornet sting. I’m avoiding rejection with the fear of looking foolish to the hot stranger.
3. Identify the potential benefits of avoiding the experience the fear is tied up in. The benefit of not being stung is not being in pain. The benefit of not being rejected is not being in pain.
4. Identify the potential benefits of having the experience the fear is tied up in. The benefit of being stung by a hornet escapes me just now. The benefits of approaching the stranger is learning to handle rejection without taking it personally, possibly getting the stranger’s number, making a friend, making a networking contact, etc etc.
5. Optionally spend a moment identifying where the fear came from. Knowing the source of a problem, the painful previous experience that led to fear of similar experiences in the future, can sometimes be helpful in getting the rational mind to step in and override the fear. Sometimes. As often as not, however, I find that I get bogged down in finding the details and understanding why I’m afraid instead of simply taking action. The fear of being stung by a hornet probably comes from being told that it hurts at least as badly as a bee sting, and I know I don’t really enjoy those. The fear of being rejected could come from any number of previous experiences, social programming about how bad rejection is, how mommy wouldn’t let me have ice cream when I was 7 and really wanted it… I think it’s ultimately not that interesting an endeavor, despite traditional psychotherapy’s position.
6. Make a decision about how to handle the fear. I decide to avoid the hornet, moving calmly away from it so as not to excite it. I decide that I’m powerful enough to handle rejection if it comes, and attractive enough to merit a phone number if that comes, and remind myself that whatever reaction I get, it’s not about me (see The Four Agreements for more on that!).
7. Take action! This is the most important step. Intellectualizing is useful only for making sure I’m doing what’s really in my best interest. Running screaming from the hornet reinforces an intense and phobic reaction, so I walk calmly. Telling myself I’m strong enough to handle rejection but not asking for the stranger’s phone number is sending mixed messages to myself, and actions speak louder than words (or thoughts) to the subconscious.
8. Acknowledge myself. I always give myself a little mental high-five when I take considered action in response to fear, instead of just reactively avoiding it. Even if the considered action I take is not to push into the fear, and I don’t talk to the attractive stranger, I make sure to acknowledge myself for at least weighing the pros and cons and making a decision. This reinforces a feeling of having personal power, making it easier to tackle future fears as they arise!

So try it. If you’re afraid of embarrassing yourself by dancing in public, eating too big a steak in front of your boyfriend, or pickles, then go through, step-by-step, what you’re telling your subconscious with your actions, and make a decision. You can’t choose wrong, but consider why you’re choosing fear very carefully, when you do!

Recommended reading:

• The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz

The Goals in Chiropractic

I can’t make claims about the goal of Chiropractic universally, because different Chiropractors have different objective criteria that they’re trying to meet. On the other hand, I can make claims about what some of the major themes that you’ll see among philosophically-grounded Chiropractors’ goals. Many talk about liberating the nervous system from bony and soft-tissue restrictions so that the body can heal itself. One of the big-picture goals that I’ve heard a number of Chiropractors, teachers, and students talk about is the increase of the conscious expression of Life.

For the sake of simplicity and clarity, let us take these two goals and apply an understanding of the goals of the Alexander Technique and a highly simplified understanding of the goals of a yoga practice to them, and note the similarities.

Alexander Technique and Yoga, as their goals relate to Chiropractic

Alexander Technique, briefly, seeks to train the student to consciously inhibit habitual movement (and cognitive) patterns in order to allow greater conscious use of the Self. Its underpinnings are epiphenomenological (meaning based on the internal states and processes of the students’ body and mind) and underscores the individual’s ability to consciously reconstruct their habits (clenching the jaw before rising from a chair, for instance), thus creating intelligent habits of movement (keeping the muscles of the face relaxed while standing up) to replace the old, dysfunctional ones.

Yoga is a slightly trickier to quickly and easily define. In the West, yoga is generally understood to be a physical practice of exercise that emphasizes breathing and stretching. This is not an entirely inaccurate characterization, but it misses the philosophical underpinnings of the practice and the much larger spiritual framework from which it sprang. To grossly simplify, yoga is any practice (physical, devotional, what have you) that leads the yogi through the layers of the Self toward an inner understanding that liberates the spirit from the weight of the body and the machinations of the mind.

Chiropractic removes interference from the nervous system that can produce all manner of disease symptoms, anxiety, tension, and pain. In so doing, a greater feeling of stillness and peace are more often experienced. We are able to think more clearly when we’re not distracted by extraneous sensation.

All three practices have at their core, in some sense, an aim to create a greater feeling of stillness in the body in order to cultivate a greater feeling of stillness in the mind, so that the Self that is the observer, the formless and featureless Atman (in Yogic terms), or Innate Intelligence (in Chiropractic) can experience only itself, without the distraction of the material world’s distractions. This stillness has inherent within it a greater capacity for movement in any direction (such as yoga is particularly well-known for giving its practitioners).

From this perspective, Chiropractic can serve to function, in many ways, like assisted yoga. The goals are very similar, only the methods differ. By receiving regular, skilled Chiropractic care, a yogi or meditator or student of the Alexander Technique can expect to deepen and accelerate their practice, allowing them to make more strides in less time and with less effort.

For those not practicing yoga, Alexander, meditation, or any other technique that serves to still the Body/Mind complex, Chiropractic can be a wonderful way to achieve many of the results that these techniques achieve with less time investment.

Recommended Resources:

• How to Practice, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama (XIV)
• Body Learning, by Michael Gelb