You are the healer.
 

The Wishbone's Connected to the Healing Bone
By Jan Henrikson

Healthy Lifestyles
A Journal of Simple Living and Wellness
September 1999

Carol Lynn is dancing Tahitian again, "I am experiencing more movement in one month of Network Chiropractic adjustments than in 12 years of standard chiropractic treatment," said this enthusiastic practice member of at-ease Wellness Center in Tucson." "My energy has changed, my life shifted and projects are coming together. I have more movement walking and can even dance Tahitian again."

Other practice members of at-ease - a mother and her daughter - could care less about dancing. They are now drug-free. The mother is off Prozac and her daughter is off Ritalin. And a man who had forsaken his art has opened up an art studio.

To what do they attribute such transformations? First is the willingness and the courage to take responsibility for their own health. That combined with Network Chiropractic protocol and Drs. Joan Norton and Nicholas Tivoli, two highly educated and highly intuitive facilitators, create a powerful opportunity for wellness.

Developed by chiropractor Donald Epstein, Network Chiropractic is a non-invasive process of healing drawn from a myriad of chiropractic techniques. It's not about curing or diagnosing symptoms. Its intent is to clear blockages in the nervous system, allowing the body to experience ease.

Since the nervous system controls and coordinates every other system in the body - glandular, reproductive, digestive, circulatory and immune - any interference to the spine also blocks the natural flow of health throughout the body.

Interference to the spine may come as an emotional crisis, physical illness, mental trauma, or chemical stress endured at any given moment in life.

"We are the only creatures on earth who can change our biology by what we think or feel," says Dr. Deepak Chopra in his book Ageless Body, Timeless Mind. "A remember stress ... releases the same flood of destructive hormones as the stress itself."

Say a stress is locked within your body-mind. At at-ease, you, as a practice member lie down on one of eleven adjusting tables in a spacious room, fragrant with incense, soothing music, and walls bathed in soft deep purples and other underwater colors.

Norton or Tivoli attend to you, but don't stay glued to your side. They act as mobile midwives, moving from member to member, guiding and assisting each member in his or her own process of release and transformation.

With light taps and touches they locate and adjust your vertebral subluxation complex. As Norton explains, "A subluxation is a misalignment of the spinal bones and/or tension of the associated nervous tissue causing interference in the information flowing between the brain and each and every cell of your body.

The meningeal system, which is the thin sheath around the spinal cord, "is believed to hold imprints caused by mental, emotional, or chemical stress. Whatever's going on during a stressful time gets locked into this meningeal system. So as we adjust, whatever has been imprinted in this system is released.

As the old patterns, memories, traumas and joys are released, you may cry, scream, laugh, and even speak in languages you don't consciously know. Or you may be silent and still. And it's all okay. There is no agenda. Nothing needs to be fixed or analyzed. No advice is given except to allow yourself to experience whatever you are experiencing.

And what you experience may trigger reactions in the other practice members present. Just as the body is a network of responses so is the adjustment room a network of practice members, each assisting the other in their healing process.

"It's like an instrument," said Norton. "If you play a violin while standing near a piano, the piano string corresponding to the violin note will start to vibrate. This is called resonance. If the piano did not have the corresponding string, it could not resonate. If one person on one table has something going on, people down on other tables will resonate with it. Sometimes I'll hold a sacral contact on one person and in the rest of the room you'll see a line of butts start to go up. And they're all face down, eyes closed. The idea of separation is such an illusion and this work shows that we are all connected to each other and are all each others healers."

Tivoli and Norton fine-tune each other as well. Partners in and out of their healing practice, they met in chiropractic college and are both graduates of the Sherman College of Straight Chiropractic.

Over a period of two years, Norton made a ten-hour drive, each month, to Destiny Chiropractic with Dr. Jean Squire. Through adjustments, she was able to relive childhood dreams and heartbreaks and release them. At forty +, she decided to live the path of her heart

"I would go for long walks and bawl my eyes out. I fought this change tooth and nail. I did not want to begin a career again after all these years. After all, I should be looking forward to retiring, not to another 6-7 years of schooling. I finally quite fighting it and surrendered to the process. With the adjustments, the nervous system is cleared and you get in touch with your Higher Self and the power just comes through. The process of getting adjusted brought about authentic empowerment in my life."

Tivoli had a different experience with the Network Chiropractic process. A Taoist familiar with bodywork, he had no idea the force of the emotions that adjustments would unleash in him. "I had lots of rage and anger that I wasn't even aware of. All of that rage and anger came out on the adjusting table. This process touched some different levels of healing that I had been unable to reach with the other techniques. This process was so life-changing for me, that I knew that this work was something that I had to do."

A study conducted within the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, College of Medicine, University of California reveals that there is a profound connection between Network Care and self-reported positive changes in the health and well being of member respondents. They report experiencing everything from fewer colds, flu, and headaches to less anxiety and more aliveness and adaptability.

As at-ease practice member Jan R. said, "During the last ten years, my activities have gradually diminished because of pain and a lack of flexibility. After a few months of Network adjustments, I feel twenty years younger and am able to once again be an active, energetic individual. My husband would give up anything to keep me getting Network adjustments ... He says I'm so much easier to live with."

Mark, another practice member, agrees with her. Not that she's easier to live with. But that, "this is the most effective and powerful technique I've ever experienced. It's non-intrusive. I feel at-ease, greater wholeness, greater harmony of mind, body, and spirit and release of tension. It's a powerful tool of purification.

No bones about it.