Dr. Austin and I are recently home from a family vacation in Scottsdale, Arizona where we had the time to complete an exercise on defining our family values. As we narrowed down a huge list of life that is important to us, we found the crystallization of "what makes us uniquely us" a subtly energizing experience. It was in the next sentence that he said "let's do this for Blossom!"
Well, a process of crystallization from probably hundreds of small elements of craft and knowledge we both adore and find dear in our unique approach to chiropractic and our culture at Blossom is going to take some time. Meanwhile, we have settled on a few concepts we know will be among them, and reverence is one of them.
Being intensely creative, I started imagining on our desert drive home how I would love to start a blog on our Blossom studio website that helps our clients to also go deeper into the unique subset of knowledge and culture that we offer. I have been massively inspired and benefiting from reading a blog on parenting (where we found that family culture course) and each week they give me amazing practical exercises I can bring into our home and family life. I thought, wow, I could help curate that for our clients.
That brings us to this month's entry. (Okay I might share more than that, but I am still on a personal "ambition sabbatical" through next Spring, so we'll see how inspiration moves me). I am going to share an element of what Reverence means to us in terms of Chiropractic Philosophy & Practice (Chiropractic Philosophy & Practice) how we uniquely practice Reverence in the studio (Studio Culture), an opportunity to dive into a resource for creating it in your home this season (Resource), and a practice I have designed for living it (Practice). It is my hope that this sharing helps you to expand some of your ideas on health and healing and practical ways of adding what you find nourishing at Blossom into your daily life.
Chiropractic Philosophy & Practice: Reverence
Chiropractic at it's foundation is made up of what our founders call a "three legged stool." The three legs are philosophy, science, and art. These come together for each practitioner to form the unique expression of chiropractic that they do. In each blog I will share a little bit about the elements of philosophy, science, and art that our principle is derived from.
In our core philosophy is an understanding that the individual has within them an Innate Intelligence and they are connected to the whole of nature around them through a Universal Intelligence. Coordinated, the two work together to bring about harmony and growth.
I like to think of this as "Reverence" because it is about having an above the mundane relationship with the incredible intelligence that makes up our intricate human bodies (which I go on to see as made up of Body, Mind, Heart, Soul all interwoven to express through the body). In viewing the outer world as having this incredible Universal Intelligence, we are able to see ourselves in relationship with a world we can harmonize with. We'll explore that as we go as there are a lot of ways that comes into application inside of the actual practice of chiropractic and a lifestyle of understanding one's connection to life, and that there is an intelligence healing power within the body, being, and life.
Studio Culture: Reverence in Practice
Both Dr. Austin and I have a sense of reverence for the studio, the art, philosophy and science of chiropractic that we deliver there, and the human beings that we touch when we arrive. In a recent conversation about this topic I was sharing with him how I see Blossom as a Temple, and that people I serve there as living in a body which I see as a temple as well for the sacred life within. I loved hearing how he said he sees it as a Dojo, with a reverence to preparation and a reverence to the care provided.
In this vein, we both have our unique ways in which we prepare for our shifts, which we also see as heading into the temple or dojo of sacred service. He prepares with meditative movements that get his body ready for the art of the adjustment, and I prepare with meditations that dive me deep into a heart opened state of coherence that I can bring to the entrainment of the adjustment.
Seeing this as a space to be revered helps us to anchor to the special trust between clients and ourselves, and the somewhat Mr. Rogers ritual of taking off our everyday selves in order to shift into our highest selves, our doctor selves, serving a sacred trust of chiropractic that day to the person who is in our hands.
Resource: December Visioning with Lifeways
The term "Reverence" to name that sacred feeling of love and awe and appreciation of the beautifully conscious and intelligent nature of life itself is something that solidified for me through my study of parenting with Lifeways free online classes. They are classes for parents, caregivers, and teachers in early childhood.
I have been loving the courses and I think one element that I really love is that they help to bring home a quality of simplicity and reverence to our home and to our parenting choices. I especially love that during a holiday time that can mean total sensory and calendar overload, they encourage careful and slower, more deliberate consideration of activities. As a chiropractor I love this because it means a deep respect of the nervous system and the request of nature for us in Napa this time of year. The days are shorter and colder. The light is about burrowing within and taking care.
When I get lost in ideas of how many gifts I need to get or how many activities I should be doing I am reminded that slow, simple, and less is what is nourishing during this time.
This upcoming class is a nice way to receive a free glimpse into Lifeways online classes and I think a resource many of our family clients will appreciate. I haven't done it specifically, but my take is that it will offer simple ideas to plan out a December that resonates with your desired family celebrations and pace, along with handmade gifts you can make. Let me know if you sign up!
http://lifewaysnorthamerica.org/workshops_training/december-visioning-a-free-online-mini-retreat/
Practice: Golden Healing Heart Coherence
This past February I began a training with the HeartMath Institute called "Ad Hart Training" where I learned more about their research into the physical and emotional benefits of coherence and their methods of testing for it using heart rate variability. In short, I started nerding out using a measurement device that connects to an "Inner Balance" app on my phone where I could see how different forms of meditation were helping me to deeply calm or not via my "Heart Rate Variability" measurements. I started recognizing the inner feeling of coherence and in essence, the process of deep heart opening, and how it created a feeling of, well, bliss in my mind. It's truly a continuation of a process of exploring Love that I have been on since the making of Love Bomb and very much since the four hour interview I did with Joseph Chilton Pearce in his home. Interestingly, I think now that reverence is an amazing term to describe Love as Verb that crosses cultural tradition and religion.
The benefits of practicing a form of coherence meditation and being in coherence in general are incredible and well documented. After studying about Relaxation Response research with Dr. Herbert Benson years ago and his first study on the epigenetic benefits of 20 minutes a day of doing that type of practice, I am now engaged in loving the addition of doing this type of meditation in a way that also elicits coherence. They have discovered that a session of coherence in one day can have an effect of a body expressing positive epigenetic changes that last for hours after. It turns on the good stuff. An epigenetic change means that the process turns on the expression of genes that equate to healing and longer life. Rabbit hole on that here.
Well, inspiration must have been flowing in Scottsdale, as I got inspired by the desire to record a new meditation. I finally got a moment to do this recording last week and I am loving the result. It is a combination of self-compassion practice meets heart coherence practice meets reverence practice meets visioning of your future self/rehearsal of where you want to train your body/mind to go in your health and your life. Those of you who have had my guidance in the resting room might recognize elements of it as I am very frequently playing with the delivery of some form of these practices in an individualized way for clients. The track I chose musically to back up the spoken meditation guidance is meant to entrain the mind to a delta wave state. In essence, this is a meditation designed to be deeply relaxing, deeply coherence inducing, and very constructively positive for moving forward in a healing and life unfoldment process.
And that rounds out blog entry number one! Wishing you lots of slow, lots of love, and lots of reverence in the next month and this season of the light within, however it is that you might celebrate.
Love & Blessings,
Dr. Rhea Zimmerman Komarek