Network Care is a powerful new approach to
healing and bodywork. Using precise, gentle touches, it triggers
your body’s natural healing capacities, helping you release
tension from your spine and body. At the same time, it
dramatically improves your health and well-being in every area of
your life – physically, mentally and emotionally.
Developed by an American chiropractor, Dr
Donald Epstein, Network Care (Network Spinal Analysis) is a method
that unifies the best of a large range of techniques and practices
developed through chiropractic and other types of bodywork. It
combines detailed knowledge of anatomy and physiology, in
particular the functioning of your brain, nervous system and
sensory perceptions, with that of your body’s physical, mental,
emotional and energetic responses to stress. Network Care has
evolved and developed over the past 20 years into an approach
that’s both gentle and effective. It used very precise,
strategically timed touches to key areas of your spine. These help
your body and brain to recognize and release tension and stored
energy throughout your body. Your brain, nervous system and body
let go of defensive stress responses and are able to function with
much greater clarity and efficiency.
The Basics
To understand how network Care works, it’s
first important to know a few basic fundamentals about the way
your body works. The human body has within it over 100000 billion
nerve cells which do everything from operate your pancreas to
control your body temperature. Your nervous system consists of
your brain, spinal cord, sense organs (eyes etc) and the nerves
that travel to all the different parts of your body. Your nervous
system is what keeps your entire body working. Vital messages
travel throughout your body to keep your organs functioning,
regulate hormonal balances, monitor your heart rate and blood
pressure and contract your muscles, allowing you to move. Your
nervous system also directs all your thoughts and behaviours and
allows you to experience “sensation” and emotions. It is also
important to understand that your body responds to stress. Stress
comes in a variety of different forms that can be physical,
mental, emotional or chemical. From falling off a bike to the
death of someone close to you, or constant intake of chemical
toxins through medication or other accidental exposures – all
these experiences are stress in some form and your body responds
to all of them. It responds most commonly by tightening up.
Stress responses are mediated through the base
or primitive section of your brain. These are the “subconscious”
parts of your brain, which direct bodily functions like breathing
and heart rate as well as being the seat of your “emotional
brain”. All your sensory information travels through these regions
first before going to your brain cortex or “thinking” parts. This
is why you can find yourself responding to a stress, like
recoiling from touching a hot stovetop before you become fully
conscious of what has happened.
Your body responds to stress
There are lots of different types of stresses
and many different stress response patterns. The best known of
these is the “fright, flight, fight” response. Imagine yourself
walking down a dark alley and somebody jumps out at you.
Instantly, the muscles of your body tense, your shoulders rise,
the base of your neck tucks down into your shoulders and the backs
of your arms, buttocks and calves tighten. What your body is doing
by responding in this way is sounding the “alarm” button. Your
body is protecting you by bracing you for possible impact and
preparing your muscles to either fight or run away. In response to
a perceived stress the primitive areas of your brain direct
changes in many of your bodily functions as well as altering your
thoughts, emotions and behaviours. In the case of the fright,
flight pattern it does this in three main ways. First by building
tension in different parts of the body. Most of these tensions
centre around the spine but also include the muscles and ligaments
of your limbs. You can get an experience of this when you watch
someone have a nasty accident. Your body “cringes” in patterns
that centre around your spine. The second way your body naturally
responds to stress in the fright, flight pattern is to shift
energy and blood flow away from your digestive and reproductive
systems into your heart, lungs and muscles so you have enough
energy, blood flow and oxygen to save your life. Growth, repair,
digestion and reproduction get put on hold when your body believes
it needs to shift all reserves to save your life.
The third of your body’s responses affects your
mental and emotional states. During times of stress your attention
shifts to your external environment. You block off from your
feelings and divert all your attention to what is happening around
you. In times of stress we also “bottle up” feelings at the same
time as storing tension in our body. This is one of our most
important survival mechanisms. It’s not good for your survival to
curl up in a ball and cry when someone jumps out at you in a dark
alley, or when your children are in danger. So we “bottle up” the
feeling until the stress passes at which time the body naturally
releases the tension and emotion associated with the stress.
Your body in “defence”
Your body often goes into defence in response
to an uncomfortable or unpleasant feeling or experience. This can
happen in times of severe trauma as well as in times of relatively
minor stress or discomfort. Your body will naturally “let down”
the tensions and resume its normal functioning once the stress has
passed and you feel safe once again. However, if the stress is
constant, repeated or overwhelming, you can get stuck in the
stress response patterns. When this happens the stresses or
uncomfortable feeling can stay “hammering away” under the surface,
never being fully connected or released. These tensions and stress
responses build up over time and can affect the nerve supplies to
various regions of the body, organ systems as well as the brain.
Your body has the capacity to store an enormous amount of tension
over long periods of time, mostly due to its ability to
compensate. The simple movement of turning your neck to one side,
for example, incorporates the movement of every vertebra in the
top half of your spine. It’s not until your body literally cannot
absorb any more tension that symptoms can begin to emerge. It’s
often the areas that are working well that become painful or stiff
because they have been compensating for the more solid, stuck
regions over long periods of time.
When your body is stuck in these tension
patterns, there is a decreased flow of energy and information
throughout your body, especially through your central channel and
nervous system, leading to decreased organ function. Your
“secondary” systems such as the digestive and reproductive systems
can become sluggish. Mentally, emotionally, energetically and
physically you become increasingly restricted and rigid. You are
less and less able to feel and experience all the different
aspects of life, pleasant and unpleasant. Your ability to feel and
express your essential states of being – passion, strength, power,
value, and love – decreases. Your ability to assimilate new
information, concentrate, cope with stress and change and make
lifestyle improvements diminishes. When new experiences, feelings,
opportunities or stresses come along, you experience them through
the filter of unprocessed feelings, rather than being clear and
fully present. Your body and brain are stuck in the past.
How Network Care works
Network Care works by using precise touches to
key areas of your spine as well as other body movements and
positioning, all specifically and strategically designed to help
your body and brain to discover, connect with and release the
areas of tension and stored energy throughout your body.
Rather than push your body around or try to
make it do things it doesn’t naturally want to do, the touches and
other body movements used in Network Care are like wake-up calls
to your body’s powerful healing capacities. The method is
structured around ways of asking your body exactly where it wants
input and how much pressure would be ideal at any moment in time.
It is a way of being in the right place, at the right time, with
the right amount of input, working with your body instead of
pushing against resistance.
The defensive stress responses stuck in your
body often carry with them the tone or energy of the undigested
feelings or stresses form your past. The precise touches used in
Network Care draw your body and brains attention to become fully
present with these stored tensions and energy. This triggers your
body’s innate healing abilities to transform these tensions,
integrating the energy, information or “emotional charge”
associated with them.
One of the most important and empowering
aspects of Network Care is that your body actually learns how to
more effectively connect with and release or integrate tensions
and stored energy. As people progress through Network Care, they
find themselves naturally wanting to move. These movements evolve
through the different levels of Network Care into distinct,
coordinated waves. They are your body learning new healing
strategies, ways of self-correcting and more effectively
regulating it’s own tension. To the point that your body learns
these new strategies, you keep them for the rest of your life.
Experiencing Network Care
Network Care is structured in levels that build
on each other. Throughout these levels your body learns to
accelerate its ability to transform and release deeper layers of
tension and stored energy. Your first visit to a Network Care
practitioner is typically an extended consultation in which the
practitioner will ask you about your health history and perform
detailed assessments of your body. They will be finding out if and
where your body has become stuck in defensive stress response
patters. After the initial consultation, visits usually take
between 5 and 20 minutes, during which time you lie facedown on an
adjusting table, fully clothed. As you progress, the practitioner
may get you lying on your side, on your back or sitting up at
specific times.
Each visit consists of a series of touches made
typically along your neck or tailbone in the beginning.
Practitioners use various methods to assess what your body is up
to and what input is required. A short amount of time is allowed
between each of the touches for your body to begin working with
the input. This continues until your body says, “that’s enough for
today”. The input from your practitioner triggers your body to
transform the tensions and integrate stored energy which your body
will continue to use over the following hours and days. Throughout
the first level of Network Care, visits are recommended every
second day to continue the momentum of change and maximize their
effect.
One of the first things many people notice when
beginning Network Care is their breathing becomes freer and
easier. As you progress through the treatments, your body will
begin to spontaneously move in order to quickly and effectively
dissipate and integrate tensions. This is often first noticed as
the desire to move your feet, ankles, wrists or hips. These
movements grow and evolve into often quite large visible wave-like
movements. They become progressively more specific, refined and
coordinated. Different parts of your body begin to move or rock in
harmony with each other and with your breath. People often notice
sensations such as tingling, warmth or different aches and pains
as they progress with the work. Every now and then, you may notice
emotions arising. After a Network Care visit, most people notice
their awareness and thoughts are dramatically clearer and more
peaceful.
|
Somato
Respiratory Integration (SRI)
Soma means body
therefore SRI is body breath integration. SRI is a series
of exercises designed to help us connect with tension held
in our bodies and assists us in learning how to use it
productively. There are 12 exercises that correspond with
the 12 Stages of Healing. Learning how to use these
exercises will assist us in adapting to the fluctuations of
our daily lives. SRI is a perfect compliment to Network
Care. At the SRI workshops we will explore how to use the
SRI exercises on a regular basis. It will include both hands
on and lecture format. Over the course of the evening we
will move through a number of different stages. When used
with your Network Care it will accelerate your progress.
Network
Intensives
We are now offering
Network intensive days. These days can be transformational.
To spend a day on yourself, listening to your body and the
wisdom it has. The day includes multiple entrainments, SRI,
meditation of various sorts and a light lunch. These
intensives are a great way to advance your care. Life often
pulls us back into patterns we have developed in the past, a
day like this gives you an opportunity to create new
patterns that can impact both your health and your life.
Suggested prerequisites:
- SRI workshop or familiarity with the 12 Stages of
Healing
- to be in at least early level two Network Care
Please
ask Dr. Rob or Casey for more information & dates. |
Network Levels of Care
During the first level of Network Care, called
Basic Care, your body moves from being stuck in defence, feeling
relatively “unsafe” and often rigidly defended in places, to a
point of relative “safety”. This signals the beginning of the
second level when the practitioner can then begin to assist your
body to transform deeper layer of tension in more refined ways.
Throughout these first two levels, most people
notice dramatic improvements and changes in their posture and
flexibility. Different aches and areas of discomfort often
improve, along your spine and in other regions of your body. As
your body comes out of defence, your normal, healthy bodily
functions and rhythms begin to assert themselves.
Your brain functions improve and your
perceptions become increasingly clear. Instead of experiencing the
world and reacting to it through the filter of past stresses and
built-up emotional charge, you are more able to experience events,
change and opportunities as they truly are and respond to them
more effectively and with greater flexibility and creativity.
People discover that situations they used to
find stressful no longer seem so, and when stressful events do
arise, they relax out of them much more quickly. They are more
productive and able to make constructive change in their lives.
With a greater connection to their feelings and the flow of energy
through their body, people find healthy lifestyle improvements
virtually automatic and almost effortless. The effectiveness of
other types of healing practices such as exercise and meditation
is also dramatically enhanced.
Progressing through the third level of Network
Care onwards, your experience is focused on growth and expansion,
rather than the recovery often felt during the first two level of
care. During Level Three, your chest and the regions around your
heart open dramatically. People experience themselves becoming
more present, both in themselves and with others around them. They
notice increasing levels of openness and accelerated change.
Stressful events in your life or tensions and feelings arising
from the past are experienced more as fuel for growth than things
to protect yourself from, and they are fully felt and integrated
quickly and with less struggle.
Your ability to respond to stressful events and
people and relax out of them continues to expand. You become
increasingly healthy and fully alive with a greater capacity to
express yourself and your essential states – your passion,
strength, power, value and love. People in this level often
describe themselves as becoming increasingly “heart centered”.
Research
Several recent studies (see references below)
have shown that Network Care dramatically and consistently
improves people’s enjoyment and quality of life in all aspects
(physically, mentally and emotionally), with benefits including:
- Greater energy
- Improved flexibility
- Reduced symptoms, pain and headaches
- Fewer colds or flu
- Markedly reduced stress levels plus much greater capacity to
cope with stress
- Heightened emotional and psychological well-being
- Improved ability to think and concentrate and much greater
ability to focus and stay on-task
- Reduced anxiety and depression
- Much greater ability to relax
- Greater life enjoyment
- Greater confidence and ability to express oneself and
communicate effectively
- Higher productivity and ability to accomplish goals
- Increased ability to adapt to change and manage problems and
adversity in life
- Increased satisfaction and contentment with self, work and
life
The research has also shown that people in
Network care have a dramatically greater ability to change their
behaviour, make lifestyle changes and take up and maintain healthy
lifestyle habits such as good nutrition, regular exercise and
meditation. The benefits of Network Care were evident to
researchers as early as a few weeks into care and continued to
grow dramatically from there. The longer people participated in
care, the greater benefits they experienced. Network Care is
taught only to qualified chiropractors at a postgraduate level.
There are practitioners of network Care working in nearly all
capital cities of Australia and in many regional centers.
For further details about Network Care or to find a
practitioner in your area, visit
www.networkcare.com.au or tel: Natural Wisdom on
(02) 9331 0400.
References
Blanks, RHI, Schuster, TL, Dobson M, ‘A Retrospective
Assessment of Network Care Using a Survey of Self-related
Health, Wellness and Quality of Life’, Journal of Vertebral
Subluxation Research, Vol 1, No 4 1997
Epstein DM, ‘Network Spinal Analysis: A System of Health Care
Delivery Within the Subluxation-based Chiropractic Model’,
Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research, Vol 1, No1, 1996
Travis Wild completed his degree in
chiropractic at RMIT University in 1993. Since then he has
studied and practices in England, Portugal, the USA and
Australia, completing the highest levels of post-graduate
training in several different chiropractic methods. Travis has
been practicing Network Care in Australia since 1996. Together
with Kelly Davidson he runs Natural Wisdom, a practice in the
Sydney suburb of Paddington. Established in 1998, Natural Wisdom
is Sydney’s first dedicated Network practice.
