from the publishers of Magical Blend Magazine
By Donald Epstein, D.C.

When people are speaking passionately and are in a creative “zone” or a state of well being, they may appear more beautiful and vibrant, perhaps even glowing. It makes sense that those individuals who are the most productive, creative, adaptable, and vibrant should be the most attractive to others of the species. This attractiveness draws people into relationships with one another, often resulting in sexual union and increasing the possibility of adding their unique gifts to the next generation’s gene pool.

When the “shoulds” of our culture-the stories that others have for who we need to be and how we must act – become the main determinants of our life, we have already compromised our inner connection and beauty. I suggest that as a result of this loss of connection, our physical, psychological, emotional, and energetic attractiveness suffers.
People may have “less than perfect” noses, figures, or hair. Their faces may show a lifetime of wear and tear, yet they may remain attractive and enticing to be with. People whose inner connection to their body and its emotions, to their purpose, to the life energy that animates them, and to the web of existence are not only attractive to others but are healthier, too.

People who are connected feel more deeply and experience more profoundly. They find it easier to release the tension and patterns that keep them from knowing what is right for them, and are also able to make healthier life choices.

A research study, conducted within the Medical College at the University of California, Urivine, demonstrated that patients receiving a healing method called Network Spinal Analysis™ (NSA) care reported significant improvements in their physical, emotional, and mental health, stress response, and life enjoyment. A unique wellness index was developed to assess these categories of health, with a whopping 76 percent of patients reporting improvements in ALL categories of wellness and quality of life. Although physical symptoms are most often reduced within the first couple of months, patients reported their overall life enjoyment and quality of life continued to improve year after year, with no apparent ceiling.

In NSA care, people notice the entrainment (or harmonization) of their spinal movements with their respiration. The experience is relaxing and renewing. Areas that were armored (protected), due to past tensions and traumas, often release as the brain and spine coordinate functions more effectively.

As care progresses, the body naturally moves and stretches in ways that self-regulate tension and body alignment. As the constricting muscle, connective tissue, and postural armor melts away, the patient feels more vibrant, peaceful, and energized. The body’s newly awakened ability to connect and release is accomplished by greater ease, flexibility, and often attractiveness.

Later in care, a second wave, unique to NSA, emerges. This wave is called the “somatopsychic” (body-mind) wave. Because your thoughts, feelings, and experiences are related to the tension in your body-mind, this tension is transmitted through your spinal cord to the cells of your body. (Dr. Candace Pert, former chair of brain biochemistry at the National Institute of Mental Health, suggests that the subconscious mind resides in the spinal cord, and that it can be accessed for healing through Network Spinal Analysis™.) This healing wave carries information and helps improve spinal and neural integrity. It is commonly reported to be accompanied by “non-ordinary states of consciousness” and has been documented to enhance wellness and life enjoyment. This wave seems to be associated with the body-mind’s release of the tension and information from past stress and trauma. The body then harnesses this liberated energy for healing.

NSA has very well documented stress dismantling effects. People with traumatic histories and stressful lives report the greatest changes in both short-term and long-term wellness. Seniors, who ordinarily expect to be getting “older” and losing their quality of life, report remarkable improvement in their wellness and quality of life, year after year. Visualize how the face, mouth, eyes, and posture become more attractive when the weight of the world drops out of a person’s tissues and structure. Imagine how personally exciting it is to be in the presence of someone who is totally empowered and authentic. Imagine how people would be attracted to such a person, without even knowing why.

Our loss of inner connection, and therefore outer grace and beauty, seems associated with the way we experience our world. When an event occurs that our brain determines is not safe for us to fully experience, the energy and information of the event is translated into vibration and tension, which is then stored in the body. It is not unlike the after-image of a flashbulb. Our body then walls off the offending energy and tension over time with muscular spasm, spinal distortion, reduced breathing into the area, and reduced movement. We tense more easily, and our physiology remains set on “defense”. In defense, we tighten. Our blood pressure tends to rise, we feel less emotion, and we live in reaction to the stress of the moment. Nerves that attach through the spinal cord into the brain connect every cell of the body, and tension in this main cable network creates tension in the body tissues. The brain continues to perceive life defensively, and produces stress chemicals that inhibit the ability to pay attention to the incomplete “energy” or “unfinished business”. We react to environmental challenges as threats. Novel or new ideas are stressful, we have difficulty making change, and we fear things that are different. We are in survival mode in many areas of our life. This is not only unhealthy, but is far from attractive to others around us. We have lost our connection to ourselves, our higher power, our inner resources, love, and sense of true beauty. Much of what many disciplines seek to correct through manipulation, massage, and therapy is often a symptom of this process. Until it is safe to experience that energy again, and our bodies develop the strategy to do this and digest the information from the trauma, we cannot really feel whole or well. The state of safety is one which promotes internal awareness and internal “growth”.

Through gentle contacts along the neck and lower spine (where the spinal cord attaches inside the vertebral column), called network adjustments or entrainments, greater body awareness is achieved. The body moves away from defense and towards growth, we are attentive to our inner cues, energy, and respiration, and we are no longer focused on the outer circumstance of the moment to dictate our health. Our spinal tension patterns, alignment, and posture reflect our movement between defense and growth. We experience a greater sense of grace, gratitude, connection, inner power, and love, all previously inaccessible to a brain that is functioning in defense. In time, this energetic, physical, emotional, and spiritual state becomes more familiar and sustainable. When a person can express her authenticity and self-confidence, she radiates beauty, strength, power, love, and hope.

Most of us remain in defense mode throughout our lives, and the higher, more evolved brain does not have the opportunity to develop its unique properties and learn new strategies for experiencing and responding to life.

When at peace, the internal growth programs can be switched “on,” because the body does not need to protect itself from injury. It can then assess if our reactions, adaptations, and symptoms are appropriate or not. We can feel more profoundly and use subtle information within to make healthier choices. We can be more compassionate towards others and ourselves. We can activate internal software for experiencing life, changing our course, and for healing. Our brain can pay attention to the body’s tension patterns, its spinal alignment, its posture, and its current state.

In order to fix something, we must first be able to find it. As our brain is better able to inventory the body, it can better orchestrate healing. This naturally occurs as NSA care progresses. The individual not only becomes aware of spinal tension patterns, vertebral motion, and respiration, but also the energetic motion through the body.

Outer beauty begins with inner connection. The body you wear today was fashioned from the internal memories of your interactions with the world. NSA has the potential to give you new strategies for experiencing life, heightened inner connection, and new levels of wellness. Now that is beautiful!

Dr. Donald Epstein is an international visionary in the use of the structure of the body as a vessel for the expression of human spirit, wellness, and community. He is the developer of Network Spinal Analysis™ and Somato Respiratory Integration™, and is the author of The 12 Stages of Healing and Healing Myths, Healing Magic. He lives in Boulder, Colorado and can be reached at 303-678-8086 or by email at www.donaldepstein.com. Visit www.wiseworldseminars.com  to learn more about his work.

Techniques
Written by Donald Epstein, DC
TAC, Volume 27, Issue 5

A patient calls in the middle of your weekend feeling great distress about their experience under your care; what do you tell them? You have a patient who seems to be so unresponsive to care, you feel lost. You are looking for your practice members to take more responsibility for their health, wellness and healing processes. If you have ever encountered any of these experiences, I am about to share with you something so powerful that it will absolutely transform your practice and patients.

The single most important exercise a patient or practice member should do to feel greater safety in his/her body, and take the “charge” off symptoms, consists of turning the attention within. How do we get the patient to trust this innate healing ability enough when feeling stressed or in pain? How do we recognize and promote a greater self-responsibility in care?

We wear our stress response in our bodies as what I call “defense postures.” The structural distortion, tension patterns and subluxations are a testimony to, and physical anchor for, events that overwhelm our body-minds.

Somato Respiratory Integration™ (SRI) exercises (based on my book, The 12 Stages of Healing) are designed to help the brain reconnect with the body and its experience. These exercises reconnect breathing with awareness of the body and its natural rhythms. They help the individual experience his/her body more fully, instantly shift the individual’s state of consciousness to one that supports trust for the body-mind and healing process, as well as promote increased peace and ease.

These exercises appear to consistently reverse the process of defense physiology, spinal distortion and the disconnection that hinders the progression in chiropractic care. They can provide the acute patient with a tool to help dispel fear and encourage trust in the body or his/her experience of the body. The exercises can also be helpful to the practitioner in communicating the brain/body/emotion/stress connection.

Introducing Somato Respiratory Integration™ Exercises: Stage One
This exercise is recommended anytime an individual is overwhelmed by his body, experience or symptom, and also if he feels helpless, fearful of his body, is difficult to adjust, or just needs more internal connection and a greater degree of internal safety. When an area of the spine does not adjust easily, or has recurring defense patterns, this exercise can be performed as a means of developing connection in the region directly anterior to the spinal tension pattern. It can be magical in its result.

Lie on your back or be seated. Touch your upper chest at the top of the ribs with both hands, palms facing downward, and breathe slowly and gently in through your nose and out through your mouth. Inhale just deeply enough to feel your breath meet the rhythm of your chest rising. Exhale just enough to feel the rhythm of your chest falling. Localize the area of motion and breath to just the zone under your hands. Do not allow other areas of the body to recruit motion. Repeat this process for a few respiration cycles. Now, do the same exercise with your hands placed at the bottom of your breastbone and breathe the same way. Then place your hands on your abdomen (near your navel) and repeat. Remember to breathe gently just into the area where your hands are placed.

If this exercise is very difficult to do in one of these regions, move to a different region that feels more comfortable and at which you can focus the breath and movement with greater ease. Let the peace you experience there spread to the region where you felt discomfort. Once the individual has found the “connection” in peace and can focus the breath and motion into just that area, then the practice member can alternate between this area and the area of distress. When he holds the area of distress, he should attempt to get breath as close to that area of the body as possible and moan or make the sound of that area—the sound that area would want to make if it could speak. This technique requires the brain to hook up to the area again.

After the sound is made in this area (no more than 30 seconds on this area of distress), have the practice member bring both hands back to the area of connection or peace of the SRI Stage One exercise. At this point have the practice member sigh or make a sound of peace, ease, or relief at this area. Alternate between the area of connection or peace and distress for a few minutes (usually up to 10 minutes). Notice if there is more comfort, or if the practice member has greater wellness, or if the sounds between both areas seem to merge.

This is actually only the first of twelve exercises encompassed within the SRI exercises. Each of the exercises in a series of twelve represents a unique state of awareness and different somatic-respiratory rhythm. As an individual advances in his/her own healing journey, there are exercises to support that growth and development. For those seeking evolutionary strategies for the future of their practices, look no further; Somato Respiratory Integration™ exercises lie waiting to serve you.

The following article, written by Donald Epstein, D.C., and published in the American Chiropractor magazine is an excellent description of NSA. It positions NSA as a unique evolution of chiropractic, still honoring the vertebral subluxation and chiropractic.

Network Spinal Analysis, a tonal approach developed by Dr. Donald Epstein as a subluxation classification, analysis and adjusting method. It has evolved into approach to wellness that incorporates low force contacts, applied at specific Spinal Gateways™, assisting in the development of new strategies for living and healing.

Sensory and motor responses are initiated that assist in the self regulation of alterations in tension and energy states within the neural, osseous, and connective tissue matrix of the body, and also self regulate the vertebral subluxation.

Since 1995 the Care has been advanced through a series of Levels, which are designed to coincide with a specific set of desired clinical outcomes as well as the

patient’s assessment of their functional status, somatic awareness, and quality of life. Each Level shares a specific spinal and neural strategy of self-assessment and self- organization. These outcomes are augmented by patient self-assessment of wellness and quality of life.

The Spinal Gateway™ may be considered to be an access point for auto-assessment of the nervous system relative to its awareness of spatial and temporal self-identity, and to its adaptive strategies. It is located on, or adjacent to the spinal segments having physical vertebral-dural attachments. There are Five spinal cord tension patterns (called Phases). All forces are applied in relationship to these phases.

In stress physiology and defense posture the body presents spinal facilitation, and multiple spinal cord tensions (fight or flight). This is associated with a reduced capacity to make constructive choices for one’s body, emotions and life.

Dr. Epstein proposes that the subluxation, and altered postural states are emotional responses of the brain acting in defense. He suggests that the alienated energy and information is redirected and sustained through spinal cord tension and subluxation. The Network adjustment, called entrainment, is associated with the brain/body shifting to a more peaceful physiology. Energy, which was formerly bound in adaptive structural changes appears to be liberated for constructive purposes. This supports fundamental self-assessment, enhanced self- regulation of spinal and neural integrity and re- organization.

Network Spinal Analysis™ has been the subject of academic study, research and publication for its unprecedented effect in wellness and quality of life, adaptability to stress, enhanced life enjoyment, facilitation of constructive lifestyle changes. Also studies are being conducted as to its influence on the advancement and evolution of the nervous system’s strategies for self-organization.

Published in The Chiropractic Journal September, 2000
By Donald Epstein, D.C.“NSA is a unique system for advancing spinal and neural integrity; developing new strategies of self-organization, and living life from the “inside out”

I am proud to report that studies of NSA patients’ self reported changes span the largest range of health and wellness domains for a non-medical approach. Even more exciting is that this study performed through the University of California, Irvine College of Medicine indicates improvements in all areas surveyed. Strikingly, 76% of the 2,818 patient self-reported retrospective assessments show statistically significant improvement in their Physical, Emotional, Stress, and Life Enjoyment categories of health and wellness as well as their overall quality of life. Even in patients in care for more than 3 years, there appeared to be no ceiling to improvement.

Network Care is associated with significant improvement in self-rated perceptions of “wellness.” Patients who have been under care the longest time reported the greatest improvement in wellness. This retrospective study reflects a large epidemiological group and could be a benchmark for future studies assessing health and wellness related outcomes among patients with a more holistic view of health.The completed longitudinal study followed a population in care over a one year period. The data collected further validated the questionnaire used to measure wellness and quality of life, and gave us great insight into the strong changes patients achieve in Network Care.

It was found that patients continue in care long after symptoms reduce or disappear. They make healthier choices in their life and enjoyed life more. The study of people receiving Network Spinal Analysis demonstrated that people found reasons other than physical symptoms to continue in care. This was revealed by their improved wellness and quality of life indicators.

Network care is delivered to enhance improvement in the patient’s passive, active, neural, and emotional sub-systems, advancing their spinal and neural integrity. Outcome assessment revealed predictable and reproducible development of new strategies of self-organization as one progressed through a series of Levels of Care.

Each Level of Care appears to be accompanied by an increase in self- awareness and self-responsibility by the patient for his spine, and nervous system, in relationship to his healing and life.

Rather than attempting to fix or control any problem, including nerve tension, pressure, stress, pain, fixation or subluxation, or to return a patient to a previous state, an NSA practitioner will seek to promote new properties within the nervous system and spinal tissues. These properties are believed to assist in advancing spinal and neural integrity, wellness, quality of life and self organization, allowing the expression of a greater degree of wellness.

Research demonstrates that even if a patient changes diet, exercise, meditates, and performs other health promoting practices, the wellness index questionnaire does not predict greater wellness, unless there is also a greater level of life enjoyment. This is paradigm shifting information. In my opinion, this supports the concept that an internal state of well being helps empower the educated choices we make, and that doing “the right things” does not necessarily produce wellness and health. Increased wellness helps our lifestyle choices to work for us.

The improvement in each of the domains of wellness almost doubled when NSA care was applied, as compared to when only constructive health/lifestyle changes were implemented.

You may have seen, experienced, or heard about the two types of natural body waves, one respiratory and one somatopsychic, that develop uniquely in Network Spinal Analysis care. These waves are believed to dissipate tension and re organize the functioning of the spine and nervous system. The awareness of the waves in patients is the most significant predictor of enhanced wellness on all levels measured.

The “somatopsychic wave” is a consistent, repeatable physiological phenomenon which can be studied as a non-linear mathematical model. This is of interest to other disciplines studying the dynamics of human function. At the University of Southern California, the NSA population is being studied to assess certain mathematical aspects of biological self-organization. Moreover, in a group of people expressing the “somatopsychic wave”, it has been observed that movements of the larger spinal muscles exhibit synchrony, or “entrain” within the population.

Preliminary studies demonstrate that the organization of the surface EMG signal (recorded on patients possessing the strategy of the Somatopsychic wave) develops greater levels of complexity as the subjects progressed through subsequent Levels of Care.

An exciting next step in research will be to characterize the mathematics of this wave in relation to each Level of Care. This would permit a correlation between each of the Levels of Care and such aspects of patient progress as enhanced self-organization.

I am actively supporting further clinical investigation. I believe it is essential to conduct ongoing research to further understand NSA’s mode of action. This will advance our knowledge and improve the quality of service we can provide to the public.

I have clinically dedicated myself to furthering the knowledge of the biological links which will help us express a greater range of our humanity. I believe this will help us make healthier choices for ourselves, be to be a more compassionate, vital, creative, self aware, and responsible human culture. I believe that by optimizing the individual’s biology, NSA will facilitate positive transformation on a global scale, changing the world a spine at a time.

Published in The Chiropractic Journal September, 2000