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What Is A Network Spinal Analysis, Or Network Chiropractic, Entrainment?


This video is an example of entrainment. Watch how these metronomes entrain to each other, eventually adopting a coherent and harmonious rhythm together. Now consider these metronomes to be molecules within a cell, or cells within your body, or individuals within a culture and you can start to see the power of the principles of entrainment.

Would You Like To Experience An Entrainment?

On many a weekend during the summer months I can be found at my booth at one of the local street fairs or the Louisville Farmer's Market, standing next to a sign that reads, "Experience A Free Entrainment." As people walk by my booth, some look inquisitively at the sign. I ask them, "Would you like to experience a free entrainment?"

Frequently, I get the same wrinkled brow and the same response, "What's an entrainment?"

Yes, what is an entrainment? Most people are unfamiliar with the term itself, much less what it means to receive an entrainment. Usually they can't resist when given the opportunity to experience one for free. In this innocent way a person may stumble upon the life changing effects of the experience of connecting directly with their authentic self and resting more deeply in their body than they may have ever remembered doing so before.

After this initial experience, many people decide to pursue a regular schedule of care in order to continue deepening into the healing process. However, as people begin experiencing the often enigmatic physical, mental/emotional and spiritual undulations of their awakening, they may struggle to explain to themselves and others exactly what is happening to them, and therefore they may also struggle to justify continuing the journey. It's at this point that people often ask if there is a book that they can read or some resource that they can reference that will help them understand the transformation that they're going through as a result of regularly receiving this kind of care.

Process of Healing and Evolution

I began receiving consistent Network Care myself in 2001 and, caught off guard by the emerging details of my own process of healing and evolution, I had asked the same questions. I discovered that there is no single source that one can go to in order to have it explained in a succinct way. My understanding of the process of healing and evolution that an entrainment catalyzes is an amalgam of the information that has come to me through many different books, CD's and YouTube videos on varying subjects including, but not limited to anatomy, physiology, biology, chemistry, sociology, spirituality, astronomy, poetry, philosophy and quantum physics; from the words of spiritual teachers, to lectures given by the developer of Network Spinal Analysis, Dr. Donald Epstein; as well as the feedback of the practitioners from whom I have received care over the years, and maybe most importantly, through the direct experience of my own process and through close exposure to the healing and evolutionary processes of the many people that I've worked with as a practitioner myself since 2002.

The Universal Principles of Entrainment

The process of healing and evolution is driven by the Universal principles of entrainment. Entrainment happens when vibrating bodies (e.g. musical instruments, sound waves, clock pendulums, fluids, cells in the body, the nervous system, organ systems, schooling fish, members of a social group, planets, so on and so forth...) share information with each other, directly, through resonance. As vibrating bodies entrain to one another, they move steadily toward a more coherent and harmonious relationship with each other. The principles of entrainment are Universal because everything in the Universe is vibrating. Thus, everything in the Universe is sharing information or energy, and everything is coming into a more coherent and harmonious relationship with everything else. Through entrainment the Universe is becoming less fragmented; more whole.

Awareness

As entrainment applies to the work that I'm doing at the Network Life Center, it's necessary to understand another important Universal factor - Awareness. Awareness is the Universal Presence which creates all things and maintains them in vibrational existence. The Universal principles of entrainment drive the growth and evolution of Awareness by creating a situation in which Awareness is constantly interacting with Its infinite vibrational parts, and thus coming into a deeper relationship with Itself.

Human beings are a special one of Awareness's vibrational parts. As a thread in the fabric of Awareness, we are swept along with the ebb and flow of Its evolution. The evolution of Awareness manifests itself in our bodies and in our lives as the undulations of our own process of healing and evolution. This may sound obscure and esoteric, but actually it's so commonplace that we don't tend to notice the proverbial forest for the trees. Our healing and evolution (the forest) is equal to the inevitable ebb and flow of thoughts, emotions, sensations, symptoms, conditions, circumstances, situations, people and experiences (the trees) in our daily lives. These objective and subjective experiences compel us to turn our attention inward and look at our relationship with all of our parts and our relationship with the World. As we do, we are naturally drawn toward a more coherent and harmonious relationship with ourselves and the World. We, too, are becoming less fragmented and more whole.

Our Attention

Human beings are unique among animals because we have the ability and the opportunity to consciously observe our relationship with Awareness and make conscious choices about how we interact with Awareness. Our bodies, and the life force energy within them, are a source of Awareness. In addition to this, our attention is a conduit for Awareness. Awareness goes wherever our attention does, infusing Its creative and sustaining influence into the object, or objects, upon which our attention rests. Throughout the day our attention could be directed towards thoughts, emotions, sensations, people, activities, material items, work... whatever. Whatever we place our attention on, the principles of entrainment will propagate those vibratory properties and characteristics throughout our bodies, our lives and our World.

It goes without saying, then, that it's very important to be conscious of where we're pointing our attention. In The Power of Now, author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle says, "The key is to be in a state of permanent connectedness with the inner body - to feel it at all times. If you keep your attention in the body as much as possible you will be anchored in the Now" (131). The 'Now' upon which Tolle has based his teachings is the same as the Awareness that I've been talking about. As I've said, our bodies, and the life force energy within them, are a source of Awareness. Tolle suggests that whenever we are waiting; in a traffic jam, for the bus, at an appointment, etc..., we should use that time to let our attention rest on our inner body. In this way we will develop "a state of permanent connectedness with Being (132)." 'Being' is yet another name for Awareness. If our bodies are sources of Awareness, and our attention a conduit for Awareness, when we turn our attention toward our bodies, we are turning Awareness toward Itself, and our bodies and lives become a kind of Awareness reactor.

The Human Heart

Different parts of the body are associated with different frequencies or aspects of Awareness. The heart is both a receiver and an amplifier of a special range of Awareness frequencies; the aspect of Awareness that sees and feels all things as they are, and accepts them as part of Itself, without judgment. We experience this frequency as compassion, loving kindness or acceptance. Our hearts are a gateway through which the vibration of compassion, loving kindness and acceptance can come into our individual and collective bodies and lives, and from there, into our World.

My experience has shown me that the human heart sits at the epicenter of our process of healing and evolution and that letting our attention include the heart has the effect of activating compassion or acceptance, which has a profound catalytic effect on the healing process. A research and education organization, known as the Institute of HeartMath (IHM), has conducted many scientific studies over the last twenty years which confirm what I'm saying about the profound effects of combining the power of our attention, the amazing attributes of the human heart and the principles of entrainment ("Science of the Heart"). I have written more extensively about this research in an article entitled "The Principles of Entrainment and the Power of the Heart: Creating Healing on a Personal, Social and Global Scale." This research has also been compiled in an ebook entitled "Science of the Heart," which is available, free of charge, on the Institute of HeartMath home page (www.HeartMath.org).

Putting the Four Factors Together

So, to recap, there are four factors involved in an entrainment: 1) We have the Universal principles of entrainment, which is the tendency for vibrating bodies to share information with one another, directly, through resonance. 2) We have Awareness; the Universal Presence which creates all things and maintains them in vibrational existence. 3) Then there's our attention, which is a conduit for the creative and sustaining power of Awareness. 4) Finally we have the human heart, which is a gateway for a special band of Awareness frequencies that we experience as compassion, loving kindness or acceptance.

Practical Application

How exactly do I utilize these four factors during an entrainment session? First, I bring my attention to my body and let it rest there. While there, I let my attention include everything that arises within my body. There are only a few possibilities: physical sensations, emotional sensations, mental images and mental talk. I acknowledge each of these subjective experiences with a sense of acceptance, allowing and loving kindness; giving myself permission to feel them and experience them just as they are with as little judgment as possible. Upon doing this I often experience flows of sensation from other parts of my body that converge at my heart center.

Next, I include the person I'm working with by letting my eyes (and thus my attention) rest on them. As I do this, certain flows of sensation in my body come to the forefront of my awareness, sort of asking to be acknowledged with greater depth. This is where things get really interesting. As I give these sensations my closer, kinder attention, it becomes apparent that the sensations in my body could be met more deeply by touching (touch being a particularly potent channel for attention) the body of the person with whom I'm working. Indeed, as I reach out to touch the person that I'm working with, the sensations in my body begin to resolve as I get closer to certain spots on their body (usually somewhere along the spine). It becomes immediately apparent when I have touched the right spot, or spots, with the right amount of pressure and in the right direction. The sensations that were asking to be acknowledged with greater depth in my body usually break up into a flow of sensation that converges at my heart center. Interestingly, the same resolution happens in the body of the person that I'm working with, after which some other layer arises and presents itself to be acknowledged. We continue until a momentum is created that allows the person's system to sustain the process on its own, which usually takes about thirty minutes.

The Effect is Measurable and Reproducible

The process of healing and evolution that an entrainment catalyzes is a measurable and reproducible phenomenon that is always evidenced by a decrease in the overall tension in a person's body, a positive change in their posture, a constructive shift in their perceptions of themselves and the World around them, an increased ability to adapt to stress, enhanced and refined body-mind awareness, increased range and depth of emotional expression, heightened sensitivity to their internal rhythms and the rhythms of the World around them and a tendency to make choices from that point forward that will permanently support, sustain and further these changes.

The sense I get is that, by letting my attention rest on whatever's arising in me and giving it permission to be felt, the nervous system of the person I'm working with is compelled by the principles of entrainment to co-opt the same permission, directly, through resonance. Since much of the tension and disconnect in our bodies and lives is the result of not allowing ourselves to feel our disowned parts, dissolving the resistance to feeling can have a far reaching physical, mental/emotional, and even spiritual, impact. Again, the Institute of HeartMath has reproduced this exact phenomenon in multiple studies along with its positive side effects, leading them to conclude that their studies represent some of the first successful demonstrations of a testable theory of the mechanisms behind healing modalities such as the care that we provide here at the Network Life Center ("Science of the Heart").

Defining An Entrainment

How, then, do I define 'an entrainment?' An entrainment utilizes attention to invite Awareness to interact with Itself through the human heart, and touch to create a bridge by which the Universal principles of entrainment can spread heart-centered Awareness from one person's body and life to that of another, and so on, to the rest of the World.

No other animal, except humans, can consciously decide to bring their attention to their heart for the purpose of spreading its positive effects to themselves, their fellow humans and the World. The fact that this ability exists in us is confirmation that it is a major reason, if not THE reason, that we are here.

Where is your attention right now?

Works Cited:

"Science of The Heart: Exploring the Role of the Heart in Human Performance." Science of the Heart, Science of Coherence, Heart Rate Variability, Institute HeartMath. 08 May 2012 <http://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/introduction.html>.

Tolle, Eckhart. The power of now: A guide to spiritual enlightenment. Novato, CA: New World Library, 1999.

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