 Being mindful means: “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.” – Jon Kabat Zinn In our current world, we are always being bombarded by information that is trying to get our attention. It could be the ads we watch on TV, social media or even well meaning family and friends. If we are constantly reacting to everything around us, we jump from one thing to another and our mind lacks mindfulness. We have been so busy multitasking, we haven't stoped to ask if this is a skill that we shold get good at. So, how can we begin to change this? Here are two questions to ask yourself: 1. “What is happening now?” This question tunes you into the present moment awareness without engaging it or becoming distracted by it. The experience of watching and simply being aware of your emotional spectrum as “information.” 2. As you watch and are aware of your emotions say to yourself, “this is just information.” If you can receive what is coming in as simply information instead of a threat, then you can choose how to engage instead of reacting. Need help on your healing journey? Give our office a call. I am available for virtual consults and in-office consults. 613-446-6060. For more information about virtual treatments, Click HERE. Looking for more information about Neuro-Optimization? Click HERE. For more information about my office (Bioheal Ottawa), click HERE.
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 Disconnection in our body happens during a traumatic or chaotic event or loss. We disconnect as a form of protection. Most times, we aren't even aware of it in the moment. This is done because there is too much for us to process. Signs that you may be disconnecting are:
Numbness if the most common manifestation because it's too painful to feel. Disconnecting is a normal process, however, most of us, stay disconnected and never reconnect with the lost parts of ourselves. Here's a short exercise to reconnect to your body. Lie on your back with your arms on your side. Breathe in through the most and out through your mouth. Think of a past experience that was mildy traumatic or chaotic in your life. If you're just starting out, don't go for your most painful experience right away. While you are going back to those moments, notice where your body starts to tighten up. Where do you start feeling uneasy? Wherever the area, put your hands on it. Take 10 full breathes with your hands on that area. Say to that area, "someone I feel disconnected." This acknowledges this part of your body. Take your hands off your body and once again place them to your sides. What is the same? What is different? Need help on your healing journey? Give our office a call. I am available for virtual consults and in-office consults. 613-446-6060. For more information about virtual treatments, Click HERE. Looking for more information about Neuro-Optimization? Click HERE. For more information about my office (Bioheal Ottawa), click HERE.  When we are feeling stressed and overwhelmed, we’re told that we need to seek self-care. Our well meaning friends and family tell us that we need to take care of ourselves. This is NOT what we need. Taking care of everything and everyone by ourselves is probably what led to the feelings of stress in the first place. We do not need more self-care. What we need is community care. Going way back to the neolithic period, we lived in communities. This was imperative to our survival. Certain members of the tribe would be in charge of gathering and hunting food while others would look after tidying, watching the children and defending the tribe against predators. The only way to survive and thrive was to work together. If someone committed a terrible crime, their punishment would be to leave the tribe. This was essentially sentencing someone to death. Now, in the North American culture, our families consist of the members of the same household and our tribes are those same people. The burden of all the tasks now rests on the shoulders of only a couple of people. It’s no wonder that mental illness is at an all time high. Throw in a pandemic and you’re setting up a society for failure. Luckily, the tribe concept is not all lost. Various cultures and communities still live multigenerationally or near each other in order to help out. This can often be seen in Indian, Asian, Muslim and Italian cultures where a family consists of many families getting together along with members of a community. If you were at your limit and stressed, do you need to add meditation, exercise, cooking, etc. to your list of things you need to do? No, that would make you feel worse as you already feel like you don’t have enough time in your day. Instead, you need your neighbours to make a meal for you, a friend to take your children for a few hours or cleaners to come to your house. May the post pandemic world be filled with communities that come together in order to help support each other. The world does not need more isolation, the pandemic has shown it. It needs more “family.” Would you like to be part of a healing community? Join in one of my free monthly workshops. We meet on Zoom and you can connect to others who are forward thinkers, learners and who want to heal and help others. Need help on your healing journey? Give our office a call. I am available for virtual consults and in-office consults. 613-446-6060. For more information about virtual treatments, Click HERE. Looking for more information about Neuro-Optimization? Click HERE. For more information about my office (Bioheal Ottawa), click HERE.  Let’s face it, we have all had unpleasant experiences in our lives. Most often, they involve other people. I’m repeatedly asked, what is the best way to move past a hurt that you’ve experienced? What I have found is to remember the kindest version of what happened to you. A few months ago, I had a disagreement with some family members. They had their version of what happened and I had mine. So, how did I move forward? I chose to look back on the conversation to find the positives:
When you can look back on an event and see what you can learn, it will be stored differently in your body and your nervous system then if you simply harbored the emotions that you experienced. Feel and experience your emotions, then go back and find the opportunities for growth. Take a look back on the last time someone upset you. What was said and what was exactly done? Take inventory of what you have learned. Take action to make changes if necessary and remember the best possible outcome of an event. We are all doing our best. If everyone experienced the same situations and circumstances that you did, perhaps they would have empathy and understanding. Differences of opinions happen because others have not walked in your shoes. Need help getting past a past hurt? Give our office a call. I am available for virtual consults and in-office consults. 613-446-6060. For more information about virtual treatments, Click HERE. Looking for more information about Neuro-Optimization? Click HERE. For more information about my office (Bioheal Ottawa), click HERE.  We are aware of many ways that toxins can enter our bodies. Whether it's pollution from the environment, chemicals in our food or even mold in the house. One source of toxins that we aren't usually aware of is that coming from toxic people. Toxic people bring negative emotions, chaos and drama into your life. While you may not be able to stop talking to all of them, you can try to limit your contact. Negative emotions like anger and resentment causes your body to react with stress which in turn decreased your immune system. They also rob joy from your life. When you spend time thinking about your past experiences, it keeps you from enjoying the present moment. So, what do you do? Go through your contacts and decide if they bring positive or negative energy into your life. Now, we all have up and down times in our lives and can't be happy 100% of the time. We want an average experience to be on the positive side. Observe your body because they it will react right away as you think of the different people in your life. If they don't add to your life, they are either neutral or they take away from it. Limit your interaction and contact or even eliminate those that take away from your life force. Spend time with those that add to it. People can also switch categories. It's up to you to determine how much energy you have and want to give to the relationship. Instead, focus on yourself and the things that bring you joy. What are you passionate about? What would you wake up early for? Remember where your focus goes, your energy flows. If you are currently trying to heal from a chronic medical condition such as lyme or an autoimmune disorder, it is especially important to keep what energy you have for healing. Need some help connecting with the inner you? Give our office a call. I am available for virtual consults and in-office consults. 613-446-6060. For more information about virtual treatments, Click HERE. Looking for more information about Neuro-Optimization? Click HERE. For more information about my office (Bioheal Ottawa), click HERE.   Believe it or not, our body is designed to bring inspiration and pleasure. Ever watch olympic athletes and marvel at what is possible for our human body? Those athletes push their body to the maximum and to new limits, breaking records and dazzling audiences. Billions of people around the world are inspired to cheer or get involved in athletics themselves. A 100m race is over in less than 10 seconds and each athlete is so fine tuned and aware that they know what each body part is doing at any given moment. There exists within us a great intelligence. This innate intelligence allows us to heal ourselves. Dr. Christiane Northrup says “It is possible to thrive in a body instead of simply waiting for disease to happen. It boils down to this: Regardless of our individual circumstances, each of us has inner guidance available that we can tune in to in order to create vibrant health- now. We are born with this inner guidance, which comes in the form of the emotions and desires that lead us toward things that feel good and are good for us, and away from things that feel bad. It is that simple.” Our body is in a constant state of flux. Cells in our body die and regenerate all the time. Our red blood cells live about 120 days while white blood cells live more than a year. Skin cells live about 2-3 weeks and colon cells die off after about 4 days. If we cut our finger or break a bone, our body can heal from it. We don’t question this. So, why is it that we don’t believe we can heal from low back pain or neck pain, or even cancer? If our body has a healing intelligence, why is it we only believe it works for the “small” things and not the “big” things? Cut and bruises are ok, headaches are not. There is a limiting belief here. If our body is always regenerating, why is it that we still have the same hurts we had years ago? Patients come in all the time and tell me that their neck has been hurting since the car accident they had 15 years ago. The individual cells of the neck have already regenerated and so were not the same ones that got into the accident, so why hasn’t your body healed from that yet? It’s because it’s our consciousness that does the remembering. Our perceptions, thoughts, emotions, structures and behaviour patterns give off a certain vibration or frequency in the cell and that’s what is remembered. A cell must forget who it’s been and move beyond for healing to occur. Need some help connecting with the inner you? Give our office a call. I am available for virtual consults and in-office consults. 613-446-6060. For more information about virtual treatments, Click HERE. Looking for more information about Neuro-Optimization? Click HERE. For more information about my office (Bioheal Ottawa), click HERE.  Albert Einstein once said “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” This is true of your pain and symptoms. The knowledge you have acquired so far has gotten you to where you are today, what shift will need to happen so you can get you to where you want to be? The truth is, if you want to end your pain and what you’ve been doing so far hasn’t been working for you, the first thing you’re going to have to do is open your mind to changing how you think about your pain! So, what does pain mean to you? Pain can mean different things to different people. For some, pain is seen as an annoyance, nuisance, something you have to “deal” with or get through. For others, it is something to be scared of and when they’re in pain, they feel powerless or like a victim. Some people believe they have nothing to do with the pain at all and that their life was going along “just fine” until the pain showed up to ruin it! There are others that get a sense of significance because when they are in pain, they get more love and attention. There once was an elderly lady who got sick often. Whenever she was ill, her family and friends would come and visit and do things for her and make her feel better. For her, she found out that being sick meant being loved. When she became aware of that, she simply told her family that she needed to spend more time with them and she got sick less often. So, what does pain mean for you? Need some help with your pain? Give our office a call. I am available for virtual consults and in-office consults. 613-446-6060. For more information about virtual treatments, Click HERE. Looking for more information about Neuro-Optimization? Click HERE. For more information about my office (Bioheal Ottawa), click HERE.  When we get a signal from the external world, our senses receive and perceive it. It is then picked up by our nervous system which causes us to react. When a signal comes from our internal world, we experience the sensation as pain, pleasure or an emotion and we react to it. In either case, when a signal is received, we (our body) has a response. How do we (our bodies) know how to respond? Well, we respond with the behaviours that were learned the first time the signal was experienced....usually, this dates back to our childhood. Have you ever observed a grown adult acting like a child? Or, told someone to “grow up” or “act their age”? That “adult” person is on “autopilot”. Whatever emotion, sensation or pain they are currently experiencing is causing them (their body and emotions) to “re-live” the time when they felt the same way in the past and “re-activate” how they reacted to the situation, sensation, stimulation at that time. For example, if at the age of 3, you wanted a big red bicycle from your parents for your birthday and you did not get it. You may have taken this to mean that your parents didn’t love you, you weren’t deserving, or some other negative thing reflecting your disappointment and hurts. You didn’t consider another “truth”. You developed a perception or “a belief” at that time, along with its associated body chemistry reaction and emotions. The truth could have been very different - maybe your parents did not have enough money to buy you a bike or the stores were all sold out, or there were none available in your size, or….? . Whatever the reason, you perceived this experience of not getting a red bike when you were 3 years old as not feeling loved and being disappointed, and that hurts. A lot. Your body remembers and stores your life experiences in your nervous system and they show up in a certain posture you do, behaviour patterns, breathing patterns, energy and movement, expressions, etc. Later on in life these “stored” emotions, reactions and patterns surface whenever something comes up or triggers you (it could be a taste, smell, song, etc.) that has any link or resemblance to the past event or situation. You end up reverting back to that past first experience, how you felt (those 3 year old feelings) and how you reacted. When in your adult life have you noticed that you reacted like a child? Need some help with your limiting beliefs? Give our office a call. I am available for virtual consults and in-office consults. 613-446-6060. For more information about virtual treatments, Click HERE. Looking for more information about Neuro-Optimization? Click HERE. For more information about my office (Bioheal Ottawa), click HERE.  When you react to something, there is a deeper meaning than the emotion that you are experiencing in the moment. Your reactions are like symptoms. Imagine that your lawn is filled with weeds and you wanted to get rid of them. If you simply mowed down the weeds, what would happen? The weeds would come back a couple weeks later. This was because you never got down to the root of the weed. If you instead pull out the weed at its root, it wouldn't come back again. If you never get down to the root of your symptoms, then your illness, dis-ease, etc will continue to come back. If we simply put a band-aid on the symptom and don’t look deeper down at the root cause, we will never heal fully. If you notice that you keep reacting emotionally to people, things, situations, etc. in the same way, you will continue to react like that until you find out the root cause of your problem. Think back to the last time you were angry. Who was there? What were you talking about? If you examine it fully, you probably weren’t mad at the person you were talking with but what they represented. What was the underlying cause that you were reacting to? Were you angry because you were not being heard? Not feeling valued? Not feeling good enough? Was there an injustice of some sort? Remember that our reactions are our perceptions. We react because we have a rule that was broken according to the way that we see the world. When else have you reacted similarly in the past? Why did you choose anger to react then? All these questions are designed to help you figure out how to go deeper to find the trigger for your emotion. What did you find out about yourself? Give our office a call. I am available for virtual consults and in-office consults. 613-446-6060. For more information about virtual treatments, Click HERE. Looking for more information about Neuro-Optimization? Click HERE.  The emotion of anger often gets a bad rap. When we are growing up, we are often told not to show your anger, or to control your anger or even to suck it up when we are angry. This is most often by well meaning parents, teachers and people we look up to. Instead of the negative side of anger or more so, the negative actions that stem from anger. Let’s look at anger and how it protects you. Anger is protective. It makes others not want to associate with you when you are angry. It keeps people away. This can be a good thing if you are in danger. You can shout and use your voice to save yourself. Anger gives you more energy. Ever notice how difficult it is to fall asleep when you are angry? The saying, don’t go to bed angry probably comes from the fact that you can’t actually get sleep when you are angry. Anger can give you power. If there’s an injustice that you want to stand up for, getting angry for the oppressed can help fuel you to take action to help make a change in some way. When you say "Enough of this!", your angry brings you power. When you use anger as a shield, it can ward people off. This is most likely needed at the time that you put up your shield. The challenge is, most people never examine themselves to see if the anger shield is still needed. Imagine having your anger shield up and keeping people away from you and at the same time, feeling alone and wanting to connect to others. Something that serves you well on one level of consciousness will not on another. Anger gets a bad rap and it doesn’t have to. At the same time, when you are done with your emotion of anger, make sure to examine if your shield is still needed. Need help to take down your anger shield? Give our office a call. I am available for virtual consults and in-office consults. 613-446-6060. For more information about virtual treatments, Click HERE. Looking for more information about Neuro-Optimization? Click HERE. |
AuthorDr. Amanda is a non-traditional chiropractor who focuses on Neuro-Optimization Chiropractic in Ottawa, Canada. 
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