Feel your feelings or
your body will feel them for you.
 

Children and Chiropractic
The Network Chiropractic Model
Donald Epstein, D.C. (Founder of Network Chiropractic) and
Jackie Knowles, DC

Aware parents search for means to help improve their children's concept of self. Early in childhood the patterns that one carries throughout a lifetime develop. In the process of parenting we seek to initiate the process by which our children can learn to discard outworn, outgrown ties to objects and events. We hope that in our parenting we have not taught our children to judge too much, but have taught them gentle discernment of right and wrong.

Western psychology states that all of our psychological ills occur out of a poorly defined sense of self. According to Brunner, the self that we consider to be "me" that is real and substantial is developed by selective and imaginative remembering of past encounters with objects and events in our world.

Traditionally, psychologists have attempted to find out where an individual had become stuck, or where in their development an individual phase was incomplete, or not fully developed. Then a process of completion or purging of the noxious event or memory was initiated.

In the development of self, one must pass through a hierarchy, or a ladder - a progression of stages or phases. One cannot move on to the next phase or stage until he or she has successfully negotiated the previous step.

Children pattern their body-mind connections after those who they model. They will learn to hold their neck forward and shoulders tense when in confrontation or fear in the same fashion their parents do. We believe that they observe the energy flow in their parents and the energy blockages and emulate that in their own body-mind. Our children model after us how to react or respond to our environment. It appears that the judgments we make with our body, our face, and our spine are learned by our children as they learn to deal with life in a similar fashion as mommy and daddy.

Before children pass through the state of understanding language... they feel what we are about, what we fear, and what we love. It seems that they watch and know what we feel about the world, at a core level. They may recreate our flows and blockages, by learning to redirect their energy and emotion in the same way that we do.

Most diseases and syndromes and most illnesses, are not real entities per se. Rather than being inherited, most are learned behavior patterns of the body-mind. What children get from their parents or modeling figures is a learned means of dealing with the world and learned postural patterns.

Disease, illness and the very way we view the world are related as a function of the program within us. We teach our children to have the same type of judgments and experiences, including diseases, as did our ancestors. This begins at the developmental stage prior to language, and is compounded by the words we speak.

These learned mechanisms of function are called dominant patterns. The nervous system reacts to stimuli such as pollen, food, bacteria, viruses, or new situations based upon its dominant patterns. Using these encounters, a developmental matrix is formed from which our sense of self evolves. Whether one learns to trust one's inner power, or react with fear to new situations, is dependent upon patterns incorporated within this matrix.

Even the most significant diseases are a learned neurological response anchored at a somatic level(s). Events that we have not fully recovered from, that remain within our nervous systems, are added to our matrices. They create filters through which we interpret life.

When the nervous system becomes locked in the memory of an old physical, mental, spiritual, or chemical trauma, it still acts as if it is occurring. A person is unable to perceive current events independently from the filter of past events. This state is associated with the spinal system (the switchboard of reality) becoming fixed or locked, or rigid, as it "holds" on to information no longer present from the environment.

Our reality is produced as an effect of such redirected energy. This may manifest as physical, or mental, or emotional distortions, disease, and if the growth does not develop beyond the pattern, eventually disease itself.

The sense of self is synthesized by selective and imaginative remembering of past encounters stored within the developmental matrix. The development of the self is an inside job.

Spinal subluxations are interference's which occur in the nervous system which limit our ability to progress past a particular trauma or event, or redirect energy. This interference is sometimes projected into our concepts of future.

Network Chiropractic is based upon classification and adjustment of spinal subluxations. Very often, just a gentle touch contact is all that is needed to release the "spinal magnetic tape" and to release the learned patterns which are inconsistent with our fluent growth and development. The result of this is a natural clearing of that which is not us. The earlier in life a child has the opportunity to receive these adjusting clearings of the nerve system, the earlier in life the judgments, the traumas and the blocked energy flows which our children have learned can be released. Unbound, they may develop a healthier sense of self.

Becoming clear, in the now moment, spinally unrestricted, happy and joyful is the beginning of a healthy development of self, affecting every perception and experience throughout your child's lifetime.