The Patient Farmer

The following story is about a farmer that has an incredible non-reactive perspective on life:

On the first day of the harvest, the farmer's great barn door broke off its hinges due to a massive rain and windstorm. The next day all of the neighbors gathered around to share their thoughts of sorrow, regret and shame. The farmer just looked at the broken door with a relaxed and almost ho-hum appearance and shared his summary of the situation by stating — Hmm, I guess we'll see. Now of course the farmer's neighbors were almost outraged by his relaxed and nonchalant attitude and they quickly scurried away with mumblings of gossip under their breath.

The next day the farmer's best horse got free and ran through the broken door of the barn and all the farmer could see was the horse galloping off into the sunset with a most joyous and carefree pace. Of course, as you can probably guess, the next day all of the neighbors gathered around to share their thoughts of sorrow, regret and shame. The farmer just looked at the empty stall where his best mare once stood with a relaxed and almost ho-hum appearance and shared his summary of the situation once again by stating — Hmm, I guess we'll see.

Now the next day the farmer was awoken by the loudest stampede he had ever heard and his favorite horse brought back ten of the wildest, and most dazzling wild mustangs that he had ever seen. His favorite horse went out for a night on the town and brought back friends! The next day all of the neighbors gathered around to share their thoughts of excitement, disbelief and wonder. The farmer just looked at his open field with 11 of the most extraordinary horses he had ever laid eyes upon and with a relaxed and almost ho-hum appearance he shared his summary of the situation once again by stating — Hmm, I guess we'll see.

The next day the farmer's son was willingly working away at the broken barn door, as he wanted to ensure that the new wild horses would at least stay within their plot of land and not run off again. As the son began to work on the barn door, one of the large wild mustangs bucked his way past the son and the wild horse knocked off the newly repaired hinges of the previously broken barn door and the door came crashing down upon the farmer's sons leg. The leg was surely broken. The next day all of the neighbors gathered around to share their thoughts of sorrow, regret and shame and they generously brought over cards of sympathy and fresh baked bread. The farmer just looked at his son's crushed leg with a compassionate grin and rubbed his son's neck; and with a relaxed and almost ho-hum appearance he shared his summary of the situation once again by stating — Hmm, I guess we'll see.

The next day the army came knocking on all the town's doors for a mandatory draft for the war and all the young men were called to obligatory duty. All of course except the farmer's son who was protected from the harm of the draft and the farmer looked at his son, his wife and the sky above and said out loud — Hmmm, now, I see.

At The Center for Holistic Health, we look at our body's symptoms in this same manner, as we acknowledge that sometimes discomfort is not always bad. In fact at times we find that discomfort is the catalyst needed to bring about a desirable change. How might we listen to this symptom so that it can be seen as a warning sign or cue? Perhaps one's relationship is challenging or out of balance and the stress is overwhelming the body. It is not always wise to simply want to "handle" the stress a little better for he or she may stay in the same compromised situation. Perhaps life generates that discomfort to awaken one to make change. Maybe one's employer is out of integrity and that lack of alignment is causing sleeplessness.

The moral of this story is that sometimes we need to step back to get a greater perspective. If we can maintain the attitude and intention of objectivity, sometimes by saying Hmm, we'll see, it allows us to see the blessings of gold at the end of the rainbow and not be overshadowed by the clouds that happen to appear.

Chiropractor or Energy Worker

It's fairly common for me, as I'm sure it is for most people, to be in a social situation and be asked the question, “what do you do”? For most, I'm sure, the answer is quick and easy — I'm a doctor, or a lawyer, or an accountant or a teacher. For me, there doesn't seem to be an uncomplicated answer. I used to tell people that I was a chiropractor but that would immediately place me in a box that doesn't even come close to defining what I do.

The standard answer these days might sound something like this: I practice Network Care. It's a system designed to help people develop strategies of self-awareness, self-correction and personal growth. It consists of the light touch method, or Network Spinal Analysis, which uses the spine as an access point into the nervous system, and Somato-Respiratory Integration, which helps people connect to the body's natural rhythms. Of course, this can tend to produce anything from a blank stare to a look of complete bewilderment.

I had the opportunity to spend some time with my good friend and colleague Dr. Wayne Leyshon this past weekend. He had traveled from Charlottesville, Virginia, to attend a Network training seminar held here in Atlanta. I always enjoy our conversations which tend to revolve around our experiences and observations of various topics related to wellness and spirituality. One of the things we spoke about this weekend was what it is we're really doing when it comes to the application of Network Care.

It was mentioned at this weekend's seminar, that men and women will tend to have gender-related postural distortions caused by social stigmas of our culture. These postures become life long patterns of protection, all due to fears of our natural expression. Men, in particular, will have inflexibility in the hips because it is generally not accepted for a man to swing his hips when he walks. Women, on the other hand, will tend to display a posture with shoulders rotated forward. It was postulated that as young girls mature and begin to develop breasts, they can become somewhat self-conscious and even embarrassed about the changes occurring in their bodies. This would then cause them to hold a slumped posture to downplay the pubescent change.

Wayne shared a workshop experience he had attended some time ago. The whole idea of the workshop was to help people shed the “personality protection” they display to hide their true selves. The theory being that how we act most of the time is just that, an act to hide who we really are because of the fear of not being accepted. Some might call this the ego. According to Wayne , when the workshop attendees were able to shed their protection it was impossible not to feel love for each of them.

If you think about it, we can't truly experience relationship with someone else if we're hiding who we really are. It would be, at least to some degree, fake. This thought is a little frightening to me. When people are in perpetual stress physiologically, and most all are, they are operating from fear and are unable to let go and express who they really are. (Unless of course, they've had a few drinks at the office Christmas party) The body becomes rigid and inflexible in this physiology of fear or protection. In fact, there is a direct relationship between inflexibility in the body and in life.

It's true that Network Care helps people to develop strategies of self-awareness, correction and stress reduction. Statistically, and in my experience, people in Network Care deal with stress better, make healthier choices and have an overall increase in wellness and quality of life. While these benefits are amazing in and of themselves, there is an important aspect of health or wholeness that is even more significant, one that is frequently overlooked and that precedes them as a result of Network Care – the ability to express one's true self and just to be who you really are. Of course people are going to make healthier choices and a have higher quality of life when they're free to express who they are.

Network has been described by many as transformational because it is an amazing tool that enables people to shed their armor and become more connected to their true selves. Now when Wayne and I are posed with the question of what it is that we are really doing, we can say this: We are helping people to express who they really are.

Judgment; The Barrier to Harmony

Over the past dozen or so years as I have developed my skills as a practitioner and my understanding as a healing facilitator, I've come to realize that certain concepts that pertain to healing relate in all other areas of life. In other words, there are universal concepts that apply not only to healing but to family, community, the environment, the world and spirituality as well. One of these concepts is judgment. A day rarely goes by in the office without visiting this concept, and just to make a distinction here, I am not talking about exercising good judgment in life choices; I am talking about being judgmental. What does this form of judgment have to do with healing?... just about everything.

Some of the most common comments I hear from clients (at least new ones) are “its right here,” meaning that's where it hurts, or “I have a bad ---” (you can fill in the body part). When someone labels a body part this way, they place an immediate judgment on said body part, as if it is bad or wrong. This myth is heavily supported by the very prevalent medical model.

Whenever the brain is overwhelmed with either the amount or content of information coming to it, that information has to be redirected to some other part of the body. The brain, in effect, disconnects and is protected from the offending information or energy. Many times, when some part of our body is hurting it's actually doing a job for us by dealing with or holding the energy that the brain can't deal with. And the pain you may feel might just be your body trying to let you know that you're not dealing with or resolving something that's going on in your life. If anything, we should be thanking the hip or back that's hurting instead of calling it bad. The energy transfer mechanism was a great short term strategy but eventually there is a need to reintegrate all the disconnected parts since true health can only occur when all the parts are communicating and in harmony.

Judgment is one of the most common pitfalls my clients run into when they are practicing SRI (Somato-Respiratory Integration), exercises designed to promote self-awareness and connection to internal body rhythms. They say, “It didn't work. I tried doing SRI but the pain wouldn't go away.” Well, SRI isn't supposed to eliminate physical pain. That would be like trying to eat soup with a fork. SRI is about promoting communication and harmony in the body; it is not about trying to shut your body up so the pain goes away and you don't have to listen.

Just to give you an example, if I had, at some point, severed my communication with you and later wanted to reconnect or re-establish our relationship, I would have to first make you feel safe to open yourself back up to me. If the first thing I say to you is that you're wrong, how open are you going to be to further communication? Not very, I would imagine. Most would agree that making someone wrong doesn't cultivate trust and safety of expression. But this is in effect what happens when we begin by casting judgment on our body. How can we expect to foster a relationship when we start by judging?

As soon as we come from judgment we are unable to objectively see another's point of view. Judgment creates a barrier to true harmony whether it is in your relationship with your body, the people in your life, your community or the world. What's interesting is that if you are truly in harmony in your own body it is impossible for your perceptions to come from judgment. You realize that there is a connection between judgment and health and that it is vital to recognize this to have a true experience of life on all levels.