 Why do I tell patients to take a deep breath?
Besides being necessary for our survival, breathing techniques can be used to communicate with different parts of our nervous system. During short term and acute stress (for example, you slam the brakes suddenly to stop your car), your breathing will increase to get more oxygen into your blood. More blood flow going to your muscles will help you run away from or fight any threats. These "stress breaths" tend to be quick and shallow. You are mostly breathing into the upper lobes of your lungs. If you go from this acute stress state into to a chronic, long-term stress state, this shallow breathing will continue and this sympathetic breathing pattern will be your normal. When your body is in the sympathetic stress pattern, a certain pathway of chemicals are released and your body has a set response....and important things like digestion and healing are put aside. When you are in a state of relaxation, your parasympathetic nervous system is dominant and your breaths are deep, slow and rhythmic. Air fills all the lobes of the lungs. You may even see your belly rise and fall with your breathing. Start by tuning into your breath and noticing the way you breathe. Studying your breathing patterns will give you an indication of the state of your body. While you may or may not feel like you are stressed, you body may still be stuck in a stress pattern. This is a great time to come in for an appointment so we can change the state of your breath. 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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 The days are getting longer again and the weather is getting warmer. We can feel the start of the cold winter leaving our bones to give way to the spring. For every season, there is a different energy associated with it. With the shifting of the energy, comes an opportunity to make changes in your life. The energy of spring is associated with newness as you get the garden ready for planting, you may see shoots coming out of the ground and buds start to appear on the trees. In life, it’s a good time to start something new. When your life flows with the rhythm of nature, magic can happen. Tune your body and your activities into the season around you and watch as things appeared that were never there before. What newness are you preparing to bring into your life? Leave a comment below. 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.  How often have you heard someone say “My mother had it, my aunt has it, and my cousin has it, I am destined to get it too” or “It’s all in the genes”? The truth is, according to Dr. Bruce Lipton, 80-90% of all diseases are actually stress and lifestyle. Even in the case of identical twins, 70% of diseases that result are environmental and related to lifestyle. If we take cancer alone, an article published in the NCBI shows that only 5-10% of all cancer cases can be attributed to genetic defects whereas the remaining 90-95% have their roots in the environment and lifestyle. This is great news! While it’s hard to change our genes, it is possible to make changes to the way we think and feel about life. It also means that we get to take more responsibility for our health. The Bioterrain The bioterrain is the environment inside your body. It contains the fluids, nutrients, minerals, etc. Each cell is made up of a membrane that surrounds it. This cell membrane controls the internal environment of the cell by allowing fluids, nutrients, etc. to flow in and out. It is therefore important to have both a good, healthy environment inside your body and cell membrane layer. What makes up your environment and your membranes? The building blocks from your cell membrane come from the food you eat. Your cells use the nutrients that you feed it to replicate and grow. Cells made up of deep fried french fries versus a green salad will be created differently simply because of the raw materials you use. You literally are made up of what you eat. The reason that diseases “run in the family” is because beliefs, behaviours, and structures run in the family. An interesting study found that people who were considered to be the “black sheep” of the family, tended to not suffer the same diseases as the rest of the family. Ill health occurs because you did not make the change in your life when you needed to make it. Change could be physical such as in exercise and diet, stress related, work, relationships, speaking up, etc. When life is calling you to be or do one thing and you resist, tension starts to build up in your body and your spine and if not resolved, your body may start to get signals. 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.  Healing can take on various forms. It can be as simple as healing from a papercut to living your best life with a complex and chronic illness such as Lyme disease. Either way, there are 5 commitments that you can make to your health and healing that can speed up the process of getting to your goals. Let’s first start by the definition of health. The World Health Organization says: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” This means that the goal of health should not only be getting rid of pain or physical symptoms but should include how you feel emotionally, mentally and spiritually. It also means that sometimes, you may have to live with a disease for your life or for long periods of time. Does this mean that you can’t be well? No, it does not. Here are 5 Healing Commitments that can lead to better health:
If you have any other healing commitment suggestions, write them below! Need some help to heal? I am still taking new patients virtually! Give us a call 613-446-6060 or e-mail the office info@biohealottawa.com  Like it or not, we are all healers. We are the only ones who can heal ourselves. No doctor can make you heal. Doctors, healers, etc. can help facilitate your healing, give you guidance and even enhance your body’s own healing capabilities but they cannot do the healing for you. If you don’t believe that you can heal from something, you will make it harder for your body to do its job properly. Conversely, if you believe in the power of your body, you can give it the best shot at recovery. So, how do we let our body know that we believe that it can heal? We start by talking to it and here’s a simple exercise to connect with your body.
This exercise is great for connecting with your body to find out what it really needs. Need more help? Give us a call 613-446-6060  If 10 people touched an infected door handle, why is it that some of them will get sick while others will not? They came into contact with the same bacteria, virus, infection but the responses are different. It comes down to each individual’s immune system and its ability to detect and get rid of invaders. Now, most conventional medicine such as antibiotics is geared towards getting rid of the bug and that is an important part of fighting an illness. However, that should not be the only focus. Sometimes, anitbiotics, don’t get rid of all the bugs. What then? Do you get another round? What if you need multiple rounds and your body becomes resistant? Other considerations for treatment should include treating the terrain. The terrain is affected by exposure to toxins. This could be from the environment and pollution, from chemicals that our food is exposed to, an accumulation of heavy metals, etc. The terrain and each cell of our body is made from the foods that we eat. If you are eating a diet full of candy, chips and pop, that is what your cells are created with. There is no one diet that works for everyone. Whether it’s paleo, intermittent fasting, a plant based diet, etc. Try one and see what works for your body. The basis for most healthy diets does not include candy and sugary cakes. Genetic abnormalities or changes will affect the terrain as well. It is important to note that just because you have a gene for something, it does not mean that the gene will be expressed. The right environment for gene expression needs to be in place for it to turn on. Remember, health is not only about the presence or absence of illness, our environment plays a vital role. Need help with your environment? Give us a call 613-446-6060  This level of healing is where we explore the choice to stay in your head or to go with your intuition. Your identity is only a mental concept that was created by your mind. It is not real. It is made up in your mind from a series of rules about how you think you should act, think and feel. Your perceived capabilities and also weaknesses/shortcomings are also included. This concept of your identity then gets installed in your body at the level of your spinal cord as it passes through the spinal canal. Once there, your identity has a stranglehold on your spine and makes any thought of changing, painful. That’s why it’s often said that change is hard. The work we do here, tricks the mind by going through you body. As the somato psychic wave passes through the level of your spinal canal, it clears out tension that anchors your identity to your spine, so you can more clearly see who you are. Your chest rises and lifts, allowing you to connect the experience and the joy of just being. Once you visit this place, you know what is there and you look for ways to get back there. You find ways to make your life more supportive and you change. For more information, come to a workshop 613-761-1600  Last week, we talked about the second level of healing where we expand and grow your comfort zone in your body and in your life. In this next level of healing, 2 stretches are involved and we get the different parts of your body to communicate with each other. This is a new language for your body. This level takes place either with you lying on your side or sometimes on your stomach. On your side, you may not feel too stable. This is done intentionally to destabilize old patterns in your body and in your life. It’s the level of healing when you choose to question the rules that you’ve put on your life. I.e. I’m not good enough, I don't make enough money, I'm not smart enough, etc. Rules about love, relationships, finances, health, etc. In this level of healing, you get to face yourself. It’s where you look that something that you promised yourself you’d take care of something long ago and instead stepped away. That time where you said you’d start to exercise and didn’t. When you said you’d eat better and didn’t. When you said you’d walk away from a relationship and you didn’t. Because this is difficult for most people, it’s hard to get through this level of healing. This level of healing involves choice. You can choose to run back to level 1 or step up into something new. In this level of healing, we also develop something called a somato psychic wave. It is 1 of 2 central pattern generators that is known to man at the current moment. The other being, walking. It is being studied at different physics labs in the world. For more info on the scientific articles: https://wiseworldseminars.com/network-spinal-analysis/ground-breaking-research If you choose to get through this level of care, you may notice that your relationships with others change. You changed the rules about yourself and now are asking others to treat you differently. This can lead to difficulties as you went and change your rules and didn’t tell anyone else. It’s a good idea to come to office workshops at this time so you can have a community of supportive individuals.  In the previous article, we discussed the first level of healing. After we’ve unlocked the limited areas in your spine and there is more awareness of your body through breath, we being the next level of healing which involves stretching your spine. We don’t do stretches before this because your body is too wound up. Imagine tuning the strings on a guitar. If you keep tightening them and stretching them, eventually, they will snap. Similar to your body, if it’s tense and tight, we don’t want to stretch it beyond what it can handle and snap. Along with the physical stretching of your spine which is good for increasing range of motion, working your tense muscles, increasing flexibility, injury prevention, etc. we do an emotional stretch. The emotional stretch helps you to grow outside of your comfort zone and expand your boundaries. In life, your comfort zone in your body is the range of motion that your spine can move through and that also defines the range of emotion that you allow your body to experience. We make the areas we stretch even more receptive to the feelings that we’ve been trying to avoid and in doing this, you feel the emotion of a few minutes and you see how much effort and energy it took to avoid this. You realise that it’s ok to go there and your comfort zone expands. Stay tuned next week for the next level of healing.  I’m often asked how the work that we do in the office is translated into what you experience in your life. Here’s how. Firstly, when someone first comes into the office, we do a complete consultation and examination to see if our care is right for you. We assess your body for what may be going on physically and explore emotional and mental stresses in your life that may also be contributing to your unique situation. After, we create recommendations specifically for you. Almost every patient starts off with the first level of healing. This level is about self discovery and they learn what isn’t working well in their body or in their life. In this level of healing we build the awareness of the body through your breath. You get a chance to notice how you hold tension in your body and how you’ve hidden physical, emotional and mental stress. When you don’t feel your emotions in the moment and hide it deep within your body, over time, your body will run out of places to hide your tension and this can lead to illness and/or disease. Where you have locked your feelings in your body, is where you have limited the range of motion your spine can experience. In this first level of healing, we use gentle light touch treatments and breathing exercises to work to unlock the areas in your spine that are limited. Want to find out more? 613-761-1600 |
AuthorDr. Amanda is a non-traditional chiropractor who focuses on Neuro-Optimization Chiropractic in Ottawa, Canada. 
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