One of the things I get the privilege and honor of working with patients, every day, is talking about their emotional health. In my opinion, there is a triad to having good health. Our mission at Live Free is to treat the physical, chemical and emotional health of the body. Most often, we only get treatment for one or two of those components, but what about the other ones? When you are stressed at work or home, do you get digestive issues or get tightness in your neck and shoulders? Is your physical pain or symptoms not physical at all, but emotional? We all know that stress affects our body, but how many of us actually work through that part of our health? There are so many techniques out there that we can utilize to address this component. I just got back from a training in Colorado and wanted to tell you about it.

A few weeks ago, I went to a seminar for a stress technique called NET or Neuro-Emotional Technique. NET was developed in the 1980’s by Drs. Scott and Deb Walker. These practitioners realized the impact that stress and emotions had on the body and wanted to create a technique to address this. NET specifically works with the ‘physiology’ of emotional/stress responses. This technique teaches that our physical body will create a response (or symptom) when there is a perceived threat to our environment or survival. This could be something as simple as someone not asking you to play on the playground when you were five causing you to feel left out and not worthy of community. This ‘emotional complex’ or perceived threat we tell ourselves create a conditioned response or muscle-memory pattern. Over time, this response (feelings of loneliness or low self-worth in this case) can start creating chaos in our body and organ systems. If we are in chaos too long, our body will compensate and create symptoms that can eventually lead to dis-ease. Our bodies are designed to compensate until they no longer can. This is why we want to get to the root of the problem.

When we are reminded or triggered by that original event (ie. from a smell that reminds us of that time or hearing or seeing the person or even someone not asking us to go to a party when we are older) our body remembers that stored emotion and will start to light up certain areas of the brain that is connected to those memories. When the brain is activated in that way, our body will try to protect itself and can create a ‘fight or flight’ response. Whether that be joint pain to something more intense like a panic attack, our body will express that conditioned response to that trigger. NET is one tool we use to find the root of that response. If your response is connected to a stressful event, we use a series of steps using muscle testing to help your body process that stressor. A 2017 clinical study of NET by Dr. Anna Tobia, she took cancer survivors and processed their cancer stories with them. An MRI was taken of their brain while listening to a tape of them telling their cancer story. When listening to that story, their brain felt like they were re-experiencing that event and the parahippocampus, which stores our memories, lit up in the brain. After 3 to 4 sessions of NET, they were rescanned while listening to their story. The parahippocampus no longer lit up on the MRI as compared to the control study that did not get NET. What this tells us is that they were no longer having a physiological response to that trauma. This is huge science for the mental health aspect of our body. If we can change our physiological response to our triggers, think of how our body can function!

In the triad of health, we at Live Free want to address the physical, chemical, and emotional health of the body. We want to make sure we are getting to the root of the issue. If you are not taking a look into your emotional, mental or spiritual health, we might be missing a big pillar of getting well. As we said earlier, there are so many techniques and modalities to address this. Whether it is counseling, prayer, meditation, talking with a friend, or even a stress technique like NET, take a look into your health and see what is missing in your journey. You might need to find multiple practitioners to encompass all three of these components but that is the beauty of all spectrums of health care. There is so much power in working together and using different modalities to get to wellness. Find your tribe and start living free.

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