Many people experience the lingering impact of chronic pain. Some ignore or muscle through, hoping toughness will get them through the day. Some feel stuck or powerless to do anything about it. Some have sought treatments and insights from various professionals with varying results. The truth is, chronic pain is systemic - it's rarely the symptom of just one isolated issue or part of the body. In this blog, I'll walk through my approach for including the whole person in identifying sources of chronic pain and healing it.
I use the CHEK Totem pole to determine what should be evaluated and assessed first in the body mind construct. From top to bottom, the pole is a system for organizing survival reflexes to be sure symptoms below are not coming from imbalances in higher order control systems above. This pole is used to get to the root cause of a person’s pain, health, or performance challenges.
White Bird= This is the psyche which represents the most essential aspect of the pole because of the influence the psyche has over the choices we make and all the other systems below. The symbol consists of:
The Soul-bird represents the human soul; the consciousness
within all humans that is always connected to Great
Spirit/Source/God, whichever term you choose.
The Sun represents the male energy called “Yang” in Chinese
philosophy. Yang energy is always expanding moving outward.
We must stay balanced in our yang energy. The sun also
represents our circadian rhythm and its importance on health
and well-being.
The Moon represents the female energy called “Yin.” Yin energy
is always cooling and moving inward and multiplies the power
of yang/male energy. Yin also represents sleep and the afterlife.
Respiration: The red skull blowing smoke is respiration. This is the primary system for acquiring life-force energy. Respiration represents an exchange between environment and spirit. Faulty breathing patterns lead to many knock-on symptoms like anxiety, chronic
muscle imbalances and sympathetic overload.
Mastication: The skull with a fish in the mouth represents mastication. The technical explanation deals with how the TMJ is functioning and how the teeth fit together. Many chronic pain symptoms are driven by poor mastication. The symbol also represents the choices we make around what we choose and how much we choose to consume.
Vision: Seeing is believing. We can only see reality to the degree that we are balanced in the above systems. Imbalances in vision lead to altered body postures when moving, communicating with others, or taking in entertainment. These altered postures can drive tissue pain and dysfunction.
Hearing/Listening/Balance: This symbol represents not only the physical function of our vestibular system for balance, but also represents general life skills needed for sacred listening to ourselves and others and becoming aware of imbalances in body-mind or life.
Upper/Cervical/ Adaptation: This symbol represents the physical region of the occiput and the top three upper cervical vertebrae. The entire musculoskeletal system must adjust to an out of balance upper cervical region driving chronic pain symptoms. This symbol divides the
head above and the body below. Relating to saying “As above, so below.” Adaptation refers of our ability to look in all different directions in life to be balanced and flexible in our thinking and actions.
Organs: Our organs have reflex pathways to our body in the central and peripheral nervous systems that share sympathetic ganglions to tissue and other organs. The organs are where we convert one element of physical or psychological reality into our choice making. Meaning that distressed organs can cause pain syndromes in tissue and can also affect our sense of sentience or self-awareness.
Emotions: This symbol represents how our thoughts and emotions influence our sense of well-being. This is a floating symbol that can go as high as the white bird(psyche) and as low as the organs. Emotions can override respiration by taking your own life. Emotions can also represent the well-being of our glands and organs. For example, anger is related to liver and shame is related to the heart.
The Sacrum or the “Sacred Bone”: This symbol represents integration. It is the keystone of our upper body to the lower body. Core & sacroiliac joint dysfunction can cause back, hip, shoulder, and lower limb pain. It is where our core self-expression is expressed below through the legs for grounding and upward through the arms to create and fulfill our dreams in life effectively.
The Slave Joints-Everything in the body not discussed above is a slave to all higher order systems. For example, a recurring knee problem is a core dysfunction of sacral stability and not staying grounded in the reality of current limitations. Sacral stability could be driven by upper cervical dysfunction. An upper cervical subluxation could by driven by too much yang energy not being balanced with yin energy.
Another aspect of this symbol is encouraging people not to become slaves to their conditioned beliefs. Anything worth believing is worth questioning.
Each of the above work as integrative parts of you - no one is in total isolation of the other. This is why a truly "holistic" approach to healing is so effective. Instead of focusing on a localized symptom, we gain understanding of the whole you, and how the parts are working together (or aren't). Based on this information, we develop a plan to heal your pain, and move toward optimized functioning.
If you are curious about this approach, and want to heal your chronic pain, email or call for a free phone consultation.
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