The questions we ask determine the answers we get?

In his private practice in the early 80's, Dr. Donald Epstein found that very gentle touches to specific areas along the spine could result in significant changes in a person's physiology. In addition, the people he treated had amazing shifts in their consciousness and transformation in their lives. Since his technique adopted ideas from a number of chiropractic theories, he called it Network Chiropractic. By monitoring results through his clients' reported outcomes, Epstein found that clients were not sustaining the shifts or changes that they'd experienced in his care. Consequently, he's been continually modifying and adding to the work he now calls Network Spinal Analysis.

One, if not the most significant developments in the evolution of Network Care has been the emergence of the spinal gateway. A gateway is a point where the areas of rapport or relative free energy contacted by the practitioner become more and more energetically sensitive. Practitioner contacts to these gateways assist the central nervous system in moving from stress physiology and defense posture toward one of adaptive self-assessment and reorganization. As the gateway develops, it becomes so energetically sensitive that a person will begin to respond well before an actual contact is made. If you observe Network practitioners working, you will notice them mindfully approaching the gateway from as far as a few feet away before making contact. These gateways even become sensitive to the thoughts of the practitioner and the person receiving care.

Over the last several years, I have read numerous texts and publications about the connection, power and influence of thoughts upon perception and outcomes. Deepak Chopra, Ekhart Tolle, Edgar Cayce, Catherine Ponder, Joseph Chilton Pearce and Louise Hay are just a few authors that come to mind when thinking about this work. While each author has a slightly different spin, I think they would all agree that whatever we focus upon in our lives tends to expand. Negative thoughts produce negative outcomes and positive thoughts produce a positive life experience. I'm sure we can all think of people that constantly focus upon the drama of their lives and continually create more of the same. Conversely, people who are positive most of the time seem to have an easy flow about their lives.

There is a direct correlation between our state of mind and the questions that we ask ourselves. For instance, if a person who was depressed took notice, s/he would find that questions like, “Why is this happening to me?” or “What's wrong with me?” were at the forefront of his or her thinking. While there are very few people who don't feel down or depressed at times, and I can't think of too many people who truly like feeling that way, how often do we actually consider changing the questions?

Network Care is classified into progressing levels of care offering different strategies to correlate with a person's state at any given time, and Epstein has classified the different states people experience in the healing process, and ultimately in their lives, into four seasons: Discover, Transform, Awaken and Integrate.

Questions in the Discover season, or state, might include, “Why me?” “Why doesn't this end?” “Why did s/he do this to me?” and “Why do I keep doing this?” Questions in the Transform season, or state, might include, “How can I express more of my courage?” “What's on the other side?” and “How can I resolve this?” Finally, in Awaken and beyond, the questions might include, “How can I express more love?” “How can I grow the gratitude?” “What is the gift in this?” and “How can I more fully express my soul?”

As a practitioner, it is extremely important that I'm mindful and aware of my own state because it completely affects a participant's ability to progress. Basically, I have to monitor the questions in my own head while I'm working. For instance, if I'm working with people in the Transform level, attempting to bring them into Awaken, my questions must hold the space for that transition. If I ask myself, “How can I fix this?” which is a Discover question, it would actually hinder their progress to the next level. I actually would want to be asking an Awaken question to help move them from Transform to Awaken. By the same token, if participants are asking themselves Discover questions while working in Transformation, that will inhibit their progress as well.

In fact, the questions that we ask ourselves all the time in our daily lives completely affect our states of mind and existence. You can try this out for yourself. Spend the day tomorrow monitoring how you feel and what questions you are asking in you mind. If you don't like where you are, try changing the questions. Write me and let me know how it goes; I'd love to hear your feedback.