Network Spinal Analysis: Does It Work? Interview With Network Chiropractor, Shea Elizabeth From Lafayette, CO
Network Spinal Analysis represents the epitome of body work; it is at the leading edge of body/mind/spirit integration. This work will transform the planet.
Candace Pert, Ph.D., author of Molecules Of Emotion
Does Network Spinal Analysis Work?
At the BioSoul Integration Center the foundation for my work is a gentle, energetically oriented, light-touch technique known as Network Spinal Analysis.
NSA is a technique that was born of chiropractic and it’s practiced by chiropractors around the globe.
At least initially, the reasons that people seek help at a Network Chiropractor’s office are similar to the reasons that people seek help from any chiropractor—usually some pain, problem or issue has started interfering with their life in some way.
However, the reasons that people continue Network Spinal Analysis care are often different than conventional chiropractic because the outcomes that Network Chiropractors are shooting for are often different.
Although chiropractic’s origins are very holistic, looking at the physical, mental/emotional and spiritual aspects of a person, in the minds of the masses conventional chiropractic has become something that’s merely good for fixing back pain.
Network Spinal Analysis (aka Network Chiropractic or Network Spinal) has managed to maintain a more holistic and integrated approach to health, wellness and spiritual evolution.
The fact that Network Spinal Analysis is shooting for broader outcomes than just making pain go away, along with the fact that Network Spinal Analysis doesn’t look anything like conventional chiropractic, can lead a lot of people to ask the question, “Does Network Spinal Analysis work?”
To answer that question I interviewed Shea Elizabeth, D.C., a Network Spinal practitioner who co-owns and operates The Well Healing Center In Lafayette, Colorado.
We talked about what it looks like in your body and life when Network Spinal Analysis is “working.”
If you prefer to watch and listen you can check out the video interview that I did with Shea Elizabeth, D.C. that is the source for this blog article:
…or listen to the podcast version and/or look for the BioSoul Integration Podcast wherever you listen to your audio podcasts:
What Does It Look Like When Network Spinal Analysis Is “Working?”
Dr. Jay: The question, “Does Network Spinal Analysis work,” is kind of a loaded question.
The answer to the question has to do with what we’re trying to accomplish with Network Spinal care.
For example, I was watching the Joe Rogan podcast one time.
He was talking about an experience he’d had with a chiropractor in the past and saying how it really didn’t work out.
And he was saying he should have gone to a “real doctor.”
But, of course, there are doctors of all sorts.
You wouldn’t want a doctor of anthropology adjusting you, and you probably wouldn’t want a doctor of chiropractic performing your surgery.
My point is: it matters what your goals are in the first place.
For instance, the medical world is really good as saving people’s lives when their lives need saving.
Unfortunately, chiropractic, has become something that people use to get rid of back pain… on average.
So what does it look like for your clients when Network Spinal Analysis is “working?”
Dr. Shea: The straightforward and simple answer to that is my first goal is to help the nervous system release what we call adverse mechanical cord tension in the body.
I’m sure that anyone who’s seen a regular chiropractor have heard the word subluxation thrown around.
The bone-one-nerve theory has actually been disproved in a lot of ways.
The truth Is that the biggest stressors in the nervous system are from mechanical cord tension.
Mechanical cord tension is tethering of the cord that has its basis in stress that is stored in our nervous system that we haven’t integrated yet.
So one of the things that I assess is the effect that tethering of the cord is having on the nerve flow between the brain and the rest of the body.
And then the other piece for that we really really look at is the fact that we are 99% energy and 1% matter, right?
We are organized by the same intelligences that organize the universe.
We are all one.
And so we have this bound energy in our systems as a result of the different experiences we’ve had in our life.
I just got back from a program with the founder of Network Spinal Analysis, Donald Epstein, and he made it very clear that emotions are not stored in the body.
It is the vibration or the frequency of that emotion.
On a fundamental level that’s what we are, vibrating energy.
And so our goal is to help unbind that energy in the nervous system so that there is more free flow happening.
One of the things we talked about a lot this weekend is having less energy available In our life.
When we have less energy it changes our perception of reality.
When we have less energy it affectts the way we hold ourslves—our tailbone is tucked, our chin comes forward.
When the shape of our spine and our posture changes, it changes the way we see the world.
This weekend he brought me up to the mic and it was very uncomfortable.
He asked me about one of my struggles in business and in my practice.
It was very uncomfortable and I had my hands kind together facing my body.
I had a really low energy state answer.
Then he had me open my hands and answer the question.
My answer had more energy.
And then I opened my arms up all the way and my answer changed again.
And so just by changing the posture and changing the perspective that my nervous system was holding, I could make a different choice and see what was happening from a different lens.
What Network Spinal does is It helps our nervous system change the meaning of pain, of symptoms, of struggle.
When we start Network Care, a lot of times those pains and those struggles come from wounds.
When we get more energy in our system and we’re liberated those turn into opportunities for change and growth.
As we get even higher in it, and we start to connect with the heart.
Network Spinal takes you through these processes where we’re turning our wounds into the gifts that we’re going to give out into the world.
I have goals for my patients on a physical level, but I also expect to see their lives change.
What Do Pain And Symptoms Represent When Seen Through A Holistic Lens?
Dr. Jay: What sold me on Network Chiropractic were some changes that happened instantly in my life, AND my low back pain changed drastically for the better.
What do pain or symptoms represent when viewing through that holistic lens that you just mentioned?
Dr. Shea: This is one of my favorite questions to answer because it’s something that everyone’s thinking about.
When we go to see a chiropractor, 99% of the time it’s to get rid of back pain.
But the way that we look at pain and look at symptoms from the Network Spinal Analysis paradigm is that it’s a messenger to tell us that something needs to change.
Symptoms and pain are usually the last thing that happens.
A lot of times there are processes happening in our bodies way before pain shows up.
So I have those patients that come in and they just bent over to pick up their keys and threw out their back.
My approach is to talk about the processes that were happening under the surface for a long time before their back went out.
In Network Spinal what we help our patients to see is that pain is a messenger.
Donny said something really profound and provacative this weekend.
He said I hope that the pain or the symptom doesn’t go away one week before it was supposed to teach you what you were supposed to learn as a result.
Now, of course, I don’t want to see people suffer.
But we have to teach them that they can work with that pain and look at it and get what it’s trying to tell them—then they can grow from it.
Restorative Healing Versus Reorganizational Healing
Dr. Shea: This brings up the question of restorative healing versus reorganizational healing.
Restorative healing is to restore a person back to their prior minimal state.
I don’t know about you but that’s not what I want from healthcare.
What I want is what we do in reorganizational healing, which is to uplevel the human beyond where they were when they came in.
This is so you’re always being more adaptable, you’re always having more energy available and you’re always upleveling your nervous system, your health and your life.
So we help you see pain as a messenger to help you grow, to help you uplevel so that you can share your gifts with the world.
Dr. Jay: Giving our gifts is what brings real life satisfaction—real happiness—after all, anyway.
So it sounds like our bodies are kind of always talking to us then, and maybe pain or uncomfortable symptoms are just kind of a turned up version of what our body’s already already been telling us.
I also love the idea that life is evolving and we’re being asked to evolve with it and pain or symptoms are just one of the ways that life nudges us toward our evolution.
If that’s the case then if life is nudging us in some direction and we’re not listening then it’s probably going to hurt in some way.
Dr. Shea: That was one of the biggest conversations we really talked about at the seminar I was at this weekend.
You actually don’t have to wait for some huge loss or some huge thing to happen in your life to up level.
As you start to heal and you start to have more energy available, you get to start to listen to the taps on the shoulder.
You start to become more attuned to your body sensations, to the signs and the signals that are telling you things need to change.
When this is the case you’re not having to have your whole life fall apart every time you need to make a change.
You start to get more tuned to the little nuances so that you can just continue in a little bit more of a graceful way.
Why Couldn’t We Hear The Messages In The First Place?
Dr. Jay: Well, that makes me wonder, what happened to us that we couldn’t hear those messages in the first place?
Dr. Shea: You know, I think it’s really has to do with our cultural conditioning.
The mainstream health paradigm looks at symptoms as bad and seeks to mask them and to numb them.
So when symptoms come up, we’re not taught to be curious.
We’re just really not taught how to tune in to that emotion, or to that feeling, or whatever the sensation is in our body.
So I think it’s about starting to retrain yourself as an adult.
And also if you have little ones, teaching them how to be with their body.
Dr. Jay: Sure, it starts way back when we’re little kids but even when we’re in the womb.
From sensing into our parents and the other humans around us we learn how to rest in our own bodies and listen to our own knowing.
That’s where we start to learn that there’s this conversation between us and life.
That’s also where we learn not to listen to that.
I think about the context or the goals that I have for my clients, and I think about the experience I had with Network Spinal way back in the day that sold me on it.
I was kind of a cynical—a jerk, basically—hard on myself and others.
I walked out of my Network Chiropractor’s office one day and I remember it felt like a 300 pound weight had been lifted from my shoulders and the sky was alive in a way that I don’t remember it being before and the trees were more vibrant.
I had this amazing feeling moving through my spine from this place where my back usually hurt into my heart.
At the time I was like, what is this amazing feeling?
Under the influence of this feeling I was thinking how great my girlfriend was and how great my parents were and how great this opportunity I had at chiropractic school was—some version of thinking about all the possibilities
This isn’t how I usually was.
Looking back I realized that feeling was called gratitude.
But at the time I was like, what is this amazing feeling?
A vail had been removed from my eyes.
I saw how, if I was having trouble in my life in any way, it was largely my own doing. \
And I saw that because of that ignorance, I had hurt myself and others.
I felt the pain of that more intensely along with the gratitude.
But I could see things that I couldn’t see before.
So that’s the context that I hold for my clients.
I want them to have a similar experience.
I want to help them see through the vails they’ve created.
What Is The Basis For The Goals And Context That You Have For Your Clients?
Dr. Jay: I just I wonder if the context that you have for your clients, and the goals that you have for them… does that come out of some healing experience you had?
Dr. Shea: Yes, when I was in chiropractic school I was very much in a a structural model and a physical model.
I was a strength and conditioning coach before that.
I worked with athletes, training in the weight rooms, doing stuff like that for a long time.
So when I went to school, I actually was working on a sports chiropractic model and trying to move into working with rugby players and other athletes on their sidelines of their games.
I also had some of the worst anxiety.
I had a highly overdeveloped stress response.
I just wasn’t really thriving.
A friend of mine, dear sister of mine now, introduced me to someone who practices Network Spinal.
I had an entrainment, which is the Network Spinal version of a chiropractic adjustment.
sending himadjustment. And I laid on the table and I laughed hysterically for probably 20 minutes.
I had been on lock down by a hypervigilant nervous system for a really long time.
And because I wasn’t even allowing myself to feel the hard emotions, I was also dampening my joy.
Don’t get me wrong, since then I’ve had a lot of tears in my process, as well.
But all that joy was really novel to me and what I experienced after was similar to what you’d said, a huge weight being lifted.
The freedom that I felt in my system changed everything.
And from there I continued care and my relationship to my anxiety changed.
It was apparent that this is what I was here to do.
Network Spinal Analysis Is A Calling
Dr. Jay: So you felt something bigger than you calling you to do this work?
Dr. Shea: Yes, when I was a strength and conditioning coach I wanted to go back to school.
And so I was looking into physical therapy and interning and doing all these things.
I was invited to hear the chiropractic president of my school speak.
And as I was sitting there listening it was like, this is what I’ve been looking.
Because what I was looking for, and what I knew, thanks to my upbringing, was this trust in the human body’s ability to heal itself.
And I was looking for something that could help me empower people.
I wanted to be able to help people and show them how powerful they are.
And I knew that in my early twenties and probably even before that, and when I found chiropractic, I’m like, this is it.
I wanted to be in service and I wanted to be a part of something that was about life.
And then I got into Network Spinal because I had that experience of suddenly being liberated from years of anxiety and fear.
How Is Network Spinal Analysis Different From Other Energetically Oriented Techniques?
Dr. Jay: When people see Network Spinal being performed, it might look strange.
When I was in chiropractic school they showed us videos of different chiropractic techniques.
There were those that were “sanctioned” techniques.
There were those that were questionable.
And then there were some “weird” ones.
At the very bottom of the barrel were those techniques that no self respecting person would subject themselves to.
Network Chiropractic was on that last list.
They showed us a video of some guy in an eighties track suit.
And he was working on someone on this makeshift table in his garage.
He was taking these gentle contacts on his patient’s body and it looked like he was sewing something in the air, above the guy.
His patient was writhing around on the table in an apparent state of bliss.
Everyone laughed, but I didn’t think it was funny.
I was intrigued.
Network Spinal Analysis Can Appear Shocking To The Uninitiated
As an aside…
Network Spinal Analysis was the subject of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Lab: Episode Five in which long time Network Chiropractor, John Amaral, performed Network Spinal Analysis on Gwyneth and her crew.
What the public saw was probably rather shocking.
You might be interested in the in-depth blog post I wrote about this Goop Lab episode and how the media did what they often do, which was to put a salacious spin on it.
Now back to the interview…
Dr. Shea: Thankfully it’s become a little more refined since the eighties and nineties.
People aren’t flailing off tables and big wave experiences so much anymore.
I always start with that fact that it’s a gentle technique.
We’re not putting direct force into any bone.
We’re looking for gateways in the nervous system.
So we’re looking at areas of opening where there’s actually free energy around the bound energy.
The way that it is different thank other energetic techniques is that we are accessing the nervous system directly.
So, yes, we’re working with energy but we are also looking at the integrity of your nervous system.
Network Spinal is still a chiropractic technique.
We are looking at your parameters and your nervous system and how you know what’s happening there.
And then we reassess.
So we want to see change actually in the physiology of the nervous system.
But in terms of chiropractic, it is different because we’re not putting a force into the spine.
We’re applying light contacts to the spine to help the system find the prefrontal cortex which allows our system to reorganize the tension.
Does Such A Gentle Technique Make Physical Changes?
Dr. Jay: People who are used to bones moving with conventional chiropractic might balk at such a gentle technique.
Are there actual physical changes that happen with Network Chropractic?
Dr. Shea: The people who come to our office generally want more.
They don’t just want to come in and get a bone moved one day and have it moved the same way the next day.
They want to see that their spine is actually adapting and changing and moving forward over time.
Do bones move? Yes.
Does Pain go away? Yes.
It’s not a quick fix adjustment.
It’s a more long-term solution.
We’re helping the person create strategies to help them adapt to stressors in their life while they’re not even in the office.
We want to focus on what’s working in the body and amplify that so that parts that aren’t working can take their cues from the parts that are, and reorganize themselves accordingly.
Furthermore, when you put too much force into a really solid structure the system can’t handle it.
Are Kids Good Candidates For Network Spinal Analysis?
Dr. Jay: So, why kids?
Dr. Shea: Like you mentioned earlier, a kid’s first experience of how to do this human thing starts with what they feel going on with mom’s nervous system—that’s their first experience of the world.
And then after they’re born they’re growing and changing so quickly.
We want to give their system the best chance it can adpt to and process all the information it’s getting.
And so it’s important they’re getting their spine checked to make sure that they’re clear vessels for all of this information and to make sure they don’t just pack on stressors and tension in their nervous system.
Rather than get to a certain agae where they have all this pain and then they get themselves back to health they get to start out free and vibrant and keep more of that througout their entire life, staying ahead of the curve.
Wrapping Up
Dr. Jay: Is there anything else on your heart or you feel is important for people to know?
Dr. Shea: What’s been really coming up for me a lot lately is how important it is to really start to ask different questions about your health and in your life.
Right now we have a lot of stress and a lot of polarity between belief systems in health.
My challenge to anyone reading this article or watching the video or listening to the podcast is to start to ask some different questions and to ask yourself if you can just give yourself the permission to open up to some magic and to open up to something that you didn’t maybe believe in before, because it didn’t go in alignment with your belief system.
I think that’s the way that we’re going to start to shift as human beings into a more collective state is to just start to say, maybe we don’t know at all.
To say, maybe the way that we’ve been doing it hasn’t been working and there are other ways, right?
I just really want to invite some curiosity into people’s thinking.
If You’d Like Explore More Deeply
People from Boulder, Lafayette, Erie, Superior, Broomfield and Westminster come to my office in Louisville, CO to receive hands-on BioSoul Integration.
If you’d like to explore more deeply click the link to get your free, personalized BioSoul Integration Guide.
The Guide will help pinpoint where you are on the map of the healing journey so you’lll have an idea of where you are in the bigger picture and what the next steps are.
You’ll Learn:
- The Two Main Forces That Drive Our Growth And Evolution & Which Of Those Forces Is Impacting You Right Now
- Twelve Stages Healing That Are Common To Everyone’s Journey & Which Stage You’re In Right Now
- How To Speed Up And Smooth Out Uncomfortable Parts Of The Healing Process
- How To Know When You’re On The Path To Expressing Your Authentic Self And Living Your Purpose
- How To Achieve Deep Life Satisfaction Regardless Of External Circumstances
- How To Plot The Course To Get To Your Ultimate Destination- Wholeness
Sincerely,
Jay
About the Author Dr. Jay Uecker
Dr. Jay is the founder and owner of BioSoul Integration Center in Louisville, Colorado. He’s a chiropractor, a hands-on healer, an in-person and online soul integration coach and the author of If It Didn't Hurt: How To Resolve Your Pain And Discover Your Life Purpose. For two decades Dr. Jay has been helping people navigate their healing journeys. Over the course of that time he’s worked intimately with thousands of people. Those who are most drawn to Dr. Jay's work are those who are seeking to integrate and embody their soul's essence and their soul's gifts so they can share them with others. Life will keep nudging us in that direction, anyway. BioSoul Integration helps to speed up the process and smooth out the rough spots created by the innocent and unconscious resistance that lives in our primal brain and nervous system. Click the link to get your Personalized BioSoul Integration Guide.
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