Fighting Tiger, Fleeing Rabbit

Posted by: The Balancing Center

A rabbit might flee if something startles it. A tiger might fight. Adrenaline is what provides both with the energy to either run or attack; both enter a defense mode where their senses heighten and not-essential-to-survival systems, like digestion and procreation, power down. The rabbit doesn’t have time to eat if it is on the run. The tiger isn’t concerned with sex in the middle of a battle.

While the kinds of threats to humans have changed since we hunted and foraged, our physiological responses to those threats have not. When a driver cuts you off in traffic or when someone verbally assaults you, your body enters the same defensive system as the rabbit or tiger. Your adrenaline increases, your senses heighten, and your body’s not-essential-to-survival systems shut down. You too cannot focus on eating or procreating if you think you are under threat. But once the threat is gone your body can return to its normal state: at rest but ready to spring into action.

What if you suddenly found out that your body has been operating under a low but constant threat for days, weeks, months, or years? That your adrenaline has been pumping at a low but steady rate for all that time? That the systems not necessary for immediate survival--digestion, circulation, elimination, recreation, and procreation--have been operating at reduced efficiency?  

Did you know that when you are out of balance, this is exactly what happens? If your spine is out of alignment, your body cannot get a good grip on the ground and your finely tuned physical sensors think that you are about to fall over at each and every minute. Your body goes into a mild defense mode to protect you from the perceived threat that you are about to trip or topple over.

 

As anyone who has ever been frightened knows, being in defense mode with your adrenaline pumping and your heart racing and your senses on overdrive is incredibly stressful. Mild but prolonged stress can take as large a toll on your body as short but intense bursts of stress. And because your body thinks it is in a mild emergency, your body thinks that this stress and defensive strategy are normal. It’s not looking to correct itself. And while it might seem like nothing is wrong, it also seems undesirable to walk around in a constant state of distress.

No need to fear, however! (No need to stress about it!) The doctors and practitioners at The Balancing Center offer a simple solution: get balanced.

If your body gets balanced, your body can actually, finally, and fully relax. You can breathe, rest easy, and take your time to go about your day. You’ll be able to stop defending and start digesting, stop protecting and start procreating! (If that’s what you want, of course.) Run into the office today to see how you can get out of defense and into health!

Connect to Health, Connect to Life

Posted by: The Balancing Center

How many connections did you make yesterday? Not only in the networking sense, but how many times did you seek out a way to connect to something or someone? Yesterday, my attempts to connect to the Internet easily ran into the double digits. I also texted several different people, caught trains, chatted with family, and basically spent my entire day, in some fashion, making connections.

This is how a day goes for many (if not most) of us because humans have an almost innate need for connection. We are born crying out, waving our hands in the air in the attempt to make a connection. As we grow, we seek to sustain and enhance the connection we initially craved.

When we lose our connections, whether to people or places or the Internet, it is frustrating or sad or painful. Considering how easy it is to lose the most obvious connections, it is no wonder we often overlook one of the most understated, yet important, connections we have ever wanted and needed: our connection to the ground beneath our feet.

Often we’re not even aware that we have lost connection to the ground. An accident or trauma, (whether physical or emotional), can cause damage to our spine so that our nervous system becomes locked, tight, or confused. Such trauma might be painful or uncomfortable, but underneath the pain and discomfort lies something even more harmful. When our spine is locked, damaged, or confused, the rest of our body compensates to make up for the trauma. This compensation often, if not always, causes our body to fall out of balance. For instance, if your neck becomes locked, your hip might tighten and your leg might shorten to keep you standing upright.

An imbalanced body means we have an uneven connection to the ground. Losing this connection causes our body to become even more confused as it seeks out an even and balanced relationship with the earth. But our bodies have amazing abilities to adapt to uncomfortable situations and we come to accept this imbalance and disconnection as normal. Our body has to now fight against gravity to maintain its locked position; we have to fight to keep our hip tight and our leg short.

And this is how many (if not most) of us go about our day! We’re generally not frustrated with this loss of connection because we’re not even aware of it. But even if we don’t notice it directly, that disconnection interferes with our energy and health in many significant ways.

Are you connected to the ground? At The Balancing Center, we help you answer that question. Whether you are or you aren’t, we work to improve your balance to get you even more connected to the ground. What was once a weak signal, one flickering bar, can become a full broadcast, five strong bars of connection.

So come on in, get balanced, and satisfy your lifelong search for connection!