We (belatedly!) wish you a happy New Year.  Are you a goal setter? A resolution maker? For the last few years, I have set an intention rather than specific goals. This image suits mine perfectly: to live in aligned freedom. To take up space, to be myself without apologies, and to make sure that the choices I make are not made from the fear of disappointing others, but following the wisdom and calling I hold true. 

So how does this connect to the spine? Many of us lack proper alignment in our spine. We have picked up defense postures and stress through years of living through difficult situations either physically, emotionally, mentally, or even chemically. 

Are there any parts that no longer feel true to you? Are you holding on to stress, or have you built walls that don't serve you anymore? 

The tension, tone, and position of your spine have a direct impact on the tension and tone of you and your life.  For some this can look like pain that keeps you from doing what you love. For others, you find your body constantly under stress and things like sleep and digestion become very difficult. 

For those who are ready to get back to their free and authentic self this year, send us a message! 

Really? Chiropractic can help the position of my baby that’s Breech (or oblique, transverse, posterior)? We will explore more about the technique we use to help mamas, and common objections women have to utilizing chiropractic for pregnancy, and baby malposition in general. 

The chiropractic technique we employ to help expecting moms is called the Webster Technique. According to its definition - The Webster Technique is a specific chiropractic sacral analysis and diversified adjustment. The goal of the adjustment is to reduce the effects of sacral subluxation/ SI joint dysfunction. In doing so, neuro-biomechanical function in the pelvis is facilitated.

Sacral subluxation may contribute to difficult labor for the mother (i.e., dystocia or painful or long labor), caused by inadequate uterine function, pelvic contraction, and baby mal-presentation. Correction of sacral subluxation may have a positive effect on all of these causes of dystocia.

Some expecting moms have hesitations about trying the Webster Technique for a variety of reasons:              

-Won’t it hurt the baby? Or me?  Chiropractic is extraordinarily safe, with virtually no incidents reported per 2,000,000 adjustments. Personally, I’ve adjusted over 1000 expecting moms, and have performed over 100,000 adjustments with no adverse events.  Because expecting moms have surges of the relaxin hormone, to loosen ligaments and open up the pelvis, we use extraordinarily gentle techniques - light touch, adjusting instruments, and gentle drops.

As for your baby, he or she is protected by seven layers – your skin, your muscles, your fascia (surrounds groups of muscles), a layer subcutaneous fat, your uterus, the placenta, and baby’s bag of waters, or amniotic fluid. So soft tissue work involved in the Webster Technique on your round ligaments, the second layer from the outside, comes nowhere near baby.

-My previous baby was breech, is it just something about my body?  In almost 90% of cases, there is something about your body that we can work on – the position and alignment of your pelvis and sacrum. Since our posture, our jobs, and the way we move our bodies is often the same throughout multiple pregnancies, the Webster Technique can help get to the root cause of why your baby might not want to settle into a vertex position.

-I tried the Webster Technique once, and it didn’t work for me. The Webster Technique is shown to be 82% successful. Studies show that success rates go up when the mother starts care in her eighth month of pregnancy. The average visits it took for baby to turn was 6. So if you are less than 36 weeks and are willing to give it a good try, you have a great chance of baby turning!

-I don’t have pain.   Pain is an unreliable indicator of a misalignment.  Even without pain, it is still worthwhile to utilize chiropractic to optimize the structure and neural integrity in your sacrum and pelvis.

In addition to helping align the pelvis, which can improve baby’s position, chiropractic in pregnancy has two other major side benefits: decreased labor time, and increased comfort. Chiropractic care has been shown to decrease labor times by 24 percent in first births and up to 33 percent for second or third births! (The effects of chiropractic treatment on pregnancy and labor: a comprehensive study. Fallon J. Proceedings of the world chiropractic congress. 1991; 24-31.) The study also shows that the sooner the mother starts chiropractic care, the more robust the benefits.  Additional studies show that 75-88% of women experience a significant reduction in their back pain.  

Dr. Erin offers complimentary 10-15 minute phone consults for any expecting mother who is interested in learning more about whether the Webster technique is right for her. We would love to see if we can help, and have fair and affordable prices to ensure that care is within your reach.

Last week, we discussed how much the position, shape and tone of our spinal cord and posture will match the tone, tension, and shape of our lives. Trauma, stress, and other life-shaping events happen, and we change. Sometimes we change for the better – we grow. Sometimes we change to survive, to protect, to stay safe – we put on armor.

Just like in battle, armor creates stability and safety.

This armored identity or spinal “sense of self” stabilizes our health by sustaining certain energy levels, certain tension levels in the muscles and ligaments, and certain emotional biochemistry (molecules of emotion, as Bruce Lipton, PhD calls them). Tight muscles and ligaments stabilize the bones, tissues, organs, and nerves at a certain level… even if it’s not in a great place, it’s better than the WORST place. We know who we are and what to expect.

This is a useful short-term strategy and a painful, energy sucking long-term strategy.

In creating this stable, certain spinal sense of self using the protective branch of our nervous system, it also prevents us from moving forward to actually heal.  Our nerve system can either protect against pain (sympathetic nervous system aka fight/flight) OR heal and grow (parasympathetic nervous system aka rest, digest, and reproduce). They are two different directions with two different outcomes. Staying stuck in Sympathetic nervous system requires a great amount of energy, and doesn't allow for natural rhythms of rest and repair.

As such, when this spinal sense of self is challenged, the protection nerves send fight (anger) or flight (fear) signals and create symptoms as we start doing something contrary to who our spine says we CAN be. “Stay within the lines. The lines are our friends. Terrrible things can happen outside of the lines!" 

Each spinal sense of self serves us for a period of time. If we get “stuck” in one, or if that part of us doesn’t function properly, it causes problems. When this happens, it starts to hurt as we outgrow an old suit of spinal armor that no longer fits.

This shows up as physical pain, anxiety, emotional reactivity, digestive challenges, sleep issues, or any of the other Secondary Conditions to an underlying NeuroSpinal Dysfunction… and usually when we’re not doing anything different than usual.

At this stage of healing, I often hear people say, “I don’t get it doc, I was just doing what I always do! Why is my body betraying me?”

What we’ve always done is EXACTLY why we’re hurting. We’ve outgrown the old and MUST make room for the true.  As Donny Epstein says, “If you’re living someone else’s life, it’s supposed to hurt.”

Like a crab sheds its shell when it grows too big, we too must we shed our spinal attachment to an outdated or dysfunctional sense of self, or we risk becoming crushed by it as we continue to grow.

To do this, you must update your spine to make room.

As you progress through the process of optimizing your brain and spine through Network Spinal care, there is a point where – in order to actually heal and resolve the underlying process behind our problems – we break through those hardwired neurospinal masks, the spinal identities that no longer fit and, ultimately, were never really us in the first place.

We call this part of the process Level 2B, when a powerful “wave” of movement and energy moves through the stuck or “subluxated” regions of the spine that are anchored in to these old patterns. 

These processes invite periods of instability, when we are “off center” and thus more open to radical changes… because stepping past the illusion of our hardwired defensive identity don’t happen with a slow and gradual process. That gives it too much time to strategize and entrench itself. Rather, transformation is a thunderbolt, a radical shift, a seismic event that happens in an instant. Rather than muting the instability, we dare to dive into the waves of uncertainty.

Like a baby bird, we’re pushed from the branch… and we realize that we can fly.

In order to heal – not just manage a painful or stuck situation – we MUST break our addiction to stability and certainty, to an outdated suit of armor.

The counterintuitive part of it all is that, as we shift our function and focus from who we were, we naturally and healthily become who we are. This is one of the classic outcomes of Level 2 in Network Spinal Analysis – liberation of the Undefended Self.

A healthy spine and nervous system that have been optimized to be who you TRULY ARE, even in stressful situations, to be present, loving, and real when life turns up the volume, is a magical thing.

…and IT TAKES SO MUCH LESS ENERGY TO BE REAL!

A healthy spinal sense of self supports knowing who you are, why you’re here, and what you’re made of. To joyfully lose yourself in service, you must have a healthy self to deliver that service.

Find your spine, find yourself.

Change your spine, change yourself.

Free your spine, free your self.

Have you ever gone looking for yourself, or needed to redefine yourself? Changing our hair or style of clothes naturally go along with our big changes in our life to help reflect our new reality. Anyone remember graduating college and thinking “Now what?”, reaching mid-life and wondering “What have I done?”, or having the kids move out of the house (or retiring) and wondering “Who am I NOW?” Redefining our sense of self is crucial during these big moments. 

WHY do we do this, WHAT do we do about this, and HOW does this connect with the spine?

The neurological patterns that sustain our body and emotional tendencies create an identity, or sense of self. These patterns reflect what we do and don’t do, what we feel and don’t feel, what we accept and don’t accept. In other words, they define the rules and stories of our life. According to Donald Epstein, developer of Network Spinal Analysis and more, these patterns are anchored in through the reflexive circuits of the spine and organize our POSTURE.

Our spinal posture reflects how we’ve adapted, consciously or unconsciously, to “fit in” to our family, culture, or world and the rules we’ve learned to live by. Distorting the natural shape and position of our spine distorts our perceptions and the ability to express our self – enhancing certain qualities and muting or minimizing other qualities. As you stretch a nerve, you change the signal it sends, so different postures stretch and relax different nerves, allowing or inhibiting different parts of ourselves.

This is why “body language” can tell us A LOT about a person in a glance.

Look at the posture of these three figures:

Which one appears to have a relaxed self-confidence?
Which one looks like someone who might doubt himself or herself, like a person that sees only the negative?
Which one appears rigid, like the person behind the spine might have to prove that they’re right and be in control?

In addition to the influence spinal posture has on our health, it is suggested that dysfunction in our spinal posture represent dysfunctions in how we can express the real “us” – like a suit of armor or a “mask”.

A person’s personality habits can be perceived through how their spine holds their posture. In the picture, the person on the right has a healthy spine free of defense physiology, so that person is flexible to express the full RANGE of their identity. The people on the left demonstrate two extremes of how the fight or flight reflex can influence posture. As such, they are limited in the ranges of expression available. One will tend to find what’s wrong, what’s missing, and struggle with DO-ing. The other will tend to try to control, to dominate, and overdo things – they’ll struggle with BE-ing.

This is not who they are, but it’s who their spine lets them be – it’s how their nervous system wears its armor.

This armoring or “masking” is a physical process. It’s subconscious. We don’t walk around thinking “Gosh, how can I disconnect from my true self and make myself sick at the same time?” Many of us have had a number of traumas, physical, emotional, or both, that cause the disconnect. Becoming aware is the first step  - it begins the process to restore us back toward health, good posture, and the truth and fullness of our identity.

Next week we will discuss the process of coming home, and all the benefits once we do! If you know your posture is off and you are ready to take the next steps, fill out that contact us form.

The principle of Network Chiropractic Care and Reorganizational Healing can be simply expressed by this quote from Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki Roshi:

“All of you are perfect just as you are and you could use a little improvement.”

The essence of this quote from a healing perspective is that there is a perfection intrinsic to you: the perfect doctor, the perfect teacher, the perfect guide, the perfect whatever you need. In chiropractic, that’s called your “Innate Intelligence”, the organizer of your body and mind that expresses healing via your nervous system through the spine.  This helps you and your body be adaptable, dynamic, and responsive to an environment that is always changing.

The “perfection” is that this Innate Intelligence is especially “smart” at adapting to three kinds of forces: physical, emotional/mental, and chemical:

• Physical forces includes accidents, head traumas, cuts, bruises, sitting, slouching, poor posture while driving and exercising, playing sports, falls, lack of sleep.
• Emotional/mental forces includes relationship stress, time and deadline stress, job stress, family stress, social media bully stress and comparison, and more.
• Chemical forces includes air pollution, treatment chemicals in the water, poor nutrition, medication, recreational drugs, and environmental toxins.

When your nervous system adapts to these outside forces, you express health. Health is an inside job, and our state of health is the sum of the choices we make along with the state of our nervous system. When your nervous system can’t adapt to these stresses properly, breakdown and a lack of health occurs. This is the “needs improvement” category. See…

Sometimes our nervous system can’t adapt to it all.

Life happens. Sometimes it’s more than we can bear, and our brain and spine get overwhelmed. A lack of health is a sign that our nervous system cannot fully adapt to what is occurring – there is a gap between our current level of function and what is required to handle what is on our plate. There’s interference to our perfection, it doesn’t fully express, things break down. We show symptoms - physical, mental, or emotional.

Vitalistic chiropractic removes the interference to your perfection (the adaptability of your nervous system, or your Innate Intelligence) so that it can fully express: self-regulation, self-healing, self-referential, vital and energized from the inside out.

Network Spinal Analysis and Reorganizational Healing (the chiropractic approach we use in our office) applies this principle and then takes it farther. We remove the interference to your body’s adaptability by helping your Innate Intelligence get smarter to resolve it from the inside and better adapt the next time. The amazing thing about your brain and nervous system is that it LEARNS!

We do so by upgrading how your spine and nerve system adapt to physical, emotional-mental, and chemical forces. It gives “a little improvement” to your perfection, so you can express your Innate Intelligence more fully when life happens. By having a more adaptable spine and nerve system, you can heal what you previously couldn’t and also grow healthier during new stress, rather than getting “stuck” because of it.

This helps you close the gap between where you are now and the level of health you were born to have for the life you are called to live.

As we said, you’re perfect exactly as you are AND you could use a little improvement. We are honored that you choose us to help you make those improvements.

For those who want to learn more about our Minneapolis, MN chiropractic office and our approach to health, and join us at one of our many complimentary workshops. You can also call (612)354-2231 to schedule a complimentary consultation with the doctor.

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.” – Helen Keller

If you are like me, this sounds like a great idea in theory, but is much harder in practice. I grew up with a scoliosis, which meant that having great posture was nearly impossible for me. 

What does good posture mean?  Both from the side and from the front, your head should be on top of your rib cage, your torso on top of your hips, and your pelvis over your knees and feet.

The most common postural misalignment we see is forward head posture, and rounded shoulders.  Demanding desk jobs, time on devices/computers/iPads, lots of reading, holding children, and even cooking and baking put us in a posture of looking down and 

The benefits of good posture are well-documented both in studies and are noticeable in the dynamics of a room -

1.  Deeper sense of confidence and owning your height
2.  Greater energy.  Poor posture is not energy efficient, and requires lots of extra muscles to fire
3.  Deeper breathing.  When your shoulders are rounded forward, the lungs simply don't have the room to expand to their full capacity.
4. Less pain - For every inch that your head is forward, it effectively doubles the weight of your head, putting stress on the muscles in your upper back, neck, and potentially even your low back. Some people have headaches or TMJ, others carry tension in their shoulders, and for some low back pain is the biggest
5. Increased range of motion - Making it easier to exercise, and get through daily activities.
6.  Less wear and tear  on your spine, hips, and knees occur as the weight is distributed properly across all the joints in your body.

We recommend many postural exercises for all including YWTL exercises for the shoulders and upper back, chin retractions for forward head posture, stretching, and core activation.  For an assessment and personalized exercise program to balance asymmetry, please contact our office at 612-354-2231.

Trying to get pregnant?  Whether you are just starting the journey to prep your body to house a precious treasure, or you know the agony of trying for months or years, we take the same approach: try to add health to your body.  Optimizing your gut and balancing your hormones are two huge pieces of the fertility puzzle.

Leaky gut is a pervasive condition that causes your body to have trouble doing all the things your gut should do – digest food, absorb nutrients, and protect your bloodstream from things such as viruses, bacteria, parasites, undigested proteins, etc. When things that belong in the gut enter the bloodstream, your body attacks this and this can cause inflammation, autoimmune conditions such as thyroid, IBS, Crohn’s or other gut disorders, and PCOS.

Healing and sealing the gut is a process that requires time and diligence.  Foods such as processed chips/crackers/cereals, grains, sugar, and conventional dairy and meat often need to be avoided to repair.  A focus on healthy fat (olive oil, coconut oil, nuts, avocado, fish oil) is often the best way to feel satiated while reducing grains. See our Top 7 post for the best foods to eat to repair your gut and get those nutrients back into your body. We also highly recommend Weston A Price's Motherhood Diet to prep your body to build a tiny person.

As far as hormones, only detailed lab tests can tell us what your specific imbalances may be.  However, a common piece of the puzzle is insulin, which lowers the sugar in your bloodstream. A healthy diet and exercise are the best way to keep insulin in check, and this affects many other hormones.  Reducing stress in whatever way feels good to you is another huge piece of the puzzle – deep breathing, meditation, movement/exercise, cultivating good relationships, and one of my favorites - chiropractic care.

If you are interested in learning more about your increasing fertility, please call us for a consult.

Any other chronic seasonal allergy sufferers out there?  After I accidentally avoided allergies one year by doing a fast followed by a cleanse, it made me wonder… what actually caused my allergies?  Why did pollen from trees, grasses, weeds, and flowers as they begin to fertilize other plants (or occasionally molds that can form underneath the snow) create a histamine reaction with itching, sneezing, stuffy sinuses, and watery eyes for me and some people, while others handle the change in seasons with relative ease?

 Spring allergies, or allergies of any kind, are actually linked back to an interconnected triad – our neurology, our immune system, and our gut!  (to learn more sign up for our next Gut-Brain workshop HERE!)  So to improve the root cause of allergies, addressing improvements in those three areas can actually the work to beat those pesky allergies for good.

Here are my top tips to minimize or avoid spring allergies:

1. Get adjusted! The nervous system is in charge of both the immune system and the digestive system. Upper neck adjustments show a huge improvement in immunity, and often instantly clear sinuses for people.
2. Address any leaky gut issues. For most people a fast is difficult, but a period of clean eating avoiding dairy, grains, and sugar to minimize inflammation and mucus production during allergy season is sustainable.
3. Support your gut health. My favorite supplements are bone broth protein powder and probiotics.  Fermented foods, from kefir water to kombucha to kimchi are fun and tasty ways to get healthy bacteria into your gut.
4. Local honey! Bees that have used the pollen in your area to make honey can help your body process pollen more easily.
5. Use DoTerra Breathe oil – I love to diffuse it around the house, rub it on my collarbones, or rub it into my hands and take a few deep breaths to clear up my sinuses.

Anyone else have a strong connection to their gut? Butterflies when you’re excited, a pit or sinking feeling down low when you hear bad news… or a belly ache when life is coming at you too hard or fast? Some people even have to run to the restroom when dealing with a difficult situation.

These are all examples of a hyper sympathetic, or fight or flight response.  The most notorious and longest of your 12 cranial nerves, the vagus nerve, leaves your skull and sends signal down to all of your vital organs, including your lungs, heart, and digestive tract. That ancient protective path of the body that enables you to run away from a threat diverts blood and energy away from your digestion and sends it out to your limbs, raises your heart  and breathing rates, opens your pupils, and may even cause your bowel or bladder to empty quickly.  

For many of us, the need to run away from a threat doesn’t come very often, but stress in life doesn’t ever seem to stop.  Our boss wants or needs us to do more, sleep is hard to come by, children are whiny or demanding, the other drivers on the road are crazy, etc. etc. etc. For the vast majority of Americans, living in a constant state of fight or flight has become the norm.  This is incredibly draining of our energy, and for some of us keeps us so wired that we can’t sleep properly. Our bodies’ physiological requirements to fuel this state of fight or flight are difficult to keep up with and make us crave sweets, carbs, and caffeine to get through our days.  Often times, these foods are the opposite of the ones that would boost our immune system and help heal our gut.  So a vicious cycle continues, and our leaky guts and poor digestive systems send undigested proteins out of our intestines, which can cause a host of problems including autoimmune problems, mental health issues, and of course pain.

So when we can’t slow down in life, how do we decrease our stress and improve the signal of our vagus nerve?  We need to signal to our brains that we are safe.  Here are 10 great ways to improve the tone of the vagus nerve:

1. Positive Social Relationships
2.  Cold
3.  Gargling
4.  Singing, Chanting & Humming
5.  Massage
6.  Laughter
7.  Yoga And Tai Chi
8.  Breathing Deeply And Slowly
9.  Exercise
10. Chiropractic care and Craniosacral work

The Gut-Brain Connection is getting more and more attention as the source of all sorts of issues, from mental health issues such as anxiety or depression, to autoimmune disorders, to digestive problems.

How can a leaky gut cause so many varied issues?  If undigested proteins can get through the gap junctions in your intestine, inflammation will occur, which can cause widespread issues.

So how do you know if your issue stems from this vital  part of your body? The gut can be damaged by exposure to antibiotics, prolonged stress, toxins, or medications especially Tylenol (acetaminophen).  If you have one or more of the following issues, chances are your gut may need some work:

• Bloat, reflux, gas, or cramps
• IBS or IBD (Irritable Bowel)
• Food sensitivities or Allergies
• Hormonal Issues such as PCOS or PMS
• Skin Issues - psoriasis, eczema, acne, or inflammation
• Thyroid Disorders

If you have leaky gut, we would love to talk to you more about how we can help.  Elimination of foods and improving the signal of the vagus nerve, which connects your brain to your gut will likely be necessary to fully heal. But to begin with, we recommend the following foods which may aid in repair:

• Bone Broth
• Fermented Vegetables (juicing vegetables is also super helpful!)
• Raw Cultured Dairy (or Fermented kefir water if you are dairy sensitive right now)
• Sprouted seeds such as flax, chia, and hemp
• Organic beef, lamb, and wild-caught salmon