FOHAC News Practically Here Now #246

Published: Sun, 04/20/14

Fair Oaks Health News

Welcome

April 20, 2014

Practically Here Now

Hi ,

Easter is a widely regarded time for connecting with our spiritual nature as well as for discovering wonderful things like bright eggs and sweet treats. For me a true spiritual treat is creating a stronger relationship with spirit/God. This article is an Easter Egg for those that would like a spiritual tool for improving our relationship to life.

There is a well-established understanding among spiritual seekers that being here now in the present moment is a key to spiritual unfoldment. Most seekers have experienced the heightened consciousness associated with times of being totally immersed in the present moment as a sort of temporary peak experience. But beyond a few totally cool experiences, most folks have no practical relationship to actually living in the now moment. The demands of the things to do in the future and the traps of the tons of unfinished emotional business from the past occupy most folk's attention most of the time.

What does "be here now" look like on a practical level? What does it mean to be really present?

Physiologically there is a part of our brain that is always in the here and now - the brain stem. It is responsible for controlling our breathing, heart rate, digestion, and so on. It is also the source of the five "F" survival drives: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Feeding, and Fornicating. Fortunately we do not need to spend our conscious attention on vegetative functions like heart rate and digestion, but the five "F's" do grab our attention and require participation. This is where we begin learning the practical meaning of "be here now."

The brain stem - also known as the reptilian brain - constantly surveys our environment checking for threats to our survival. It evaluates these threats and has a pre-programmed response to the threats built out of instinct and historical experience. Threats are viewed in a health priority as follows:

Safety from immediate harm
Clean air
Protection from the elements
Freedom from fear of harm in the next few hours
Clean water
Sleep
Mating
Food
Pleasure
Movement
Social Participation/Recognition/Real Feedback
Quiet alone time
Touch

This part of your brain is looking out for your survival needs. This is where "being here now" actually begins, yet these are exactly the things that "spiritual" people try to avoid having their attention pulled towards (other than quite alone time.)

Big concept: It is exactly how you participate with getting these needs met that creates and defines your spirituality.

Modern psychology would have you believe that resolving your emotional baggage is the key to spiritual development. Social institutions like religion would have you believe that working to solve hunger, poverty, and illness is the true measure of spirituality. Modern positive-thinking-approaches see physical success and prosperity as the goal of spirituality. On the other hand many spiritual disciplines would have you believe that denying the needs of your body and putting all your attention on something higher is the way to be spiritual. I see all these as ways to apply your spiritual mental focus, but you have not really dealt with the basic reality of the moment-to-moment challenge of spirituality until you embrace the skills of simply getting your survival needs met in an effective yet respectful manner.

The question is what skills and personal virtues do you employ when getting your survival needs met? Survival needs are always in your face and the most constant test and challenge to the expression of your personal spiritual development. Spirituality is a 24/7 job. Spirituality is not something you do just on Sundays, or for 20 minutes each morning, or even at prayer time several times a day. Spirituality is how you relate and participate with life every minute of every day... just like you have to do with your survival needs. Do you see how improving your life participation skills simultaneously address your survival needs? Mental focuses for applying your spiritual efforts are not going to happen if your survival needs are not met first.

So many people I know are frustrated with their spiritual life because they have not addressed the survival need level. They feel themselves flying high and in the flow of spirit some of the time but then feel totally unspiritual the rest of the time because they have gone into fear over some survival need popping up. This constant bouncing up and down in consciousness makes them feel crazy. When you see that everything is spiritual, and how you relate to everything is the development of your spirituality, then these self-judgments can be let go. Address your survival needs as the most basic of spiritual tasks and you can actually begin to really be in the "here and now." Your survival needs are the most "here and now" things you normally ever experience. Of course they are spiritual.

So how do you improve your skills and virtues (what I call tone) when dealing with your moment-to-moment needs? In my experience improving my relationship to life begins with interrupting the automatic reactions of the reptilian brain. It wants to jump into action at the first hint of danger. Almost always it does this without stopping long enough to really take in all the information available in the situation. It likes to think of everything as an immediate threat to which it wants to either fight, run away, or hide from. The spiritual choice is actually a fourth option - one that requires the use of your midbrain to override your automatic reactions. I learned about this choice most clearly when I was learning Aikido.

In Aikido you are taught that the safest way to deal with threat is to engage it softly and fluidly. If you tense up to fight the threat, it will hit you with great force. If you try to run away or freeze, it will chase you down. But if you engage the opponent and guide his/her energy of attack around you until it looses its balance, then you can bring the situation into a safe setting. To do this means overcoming fear, and it is from this understanding that I came to turn the word FEAR into an acronym: Failure to Embrace and Accept Relationship (or Reality). Fear is the opposite of a high spiritual tone.

So the idea is to pause and take in "what is" in the present moment without filtering out what you want to deny. The biggest thing I find people want to deny is their own unimportance in life. They want to believe that their feelings and existence matter to others simply because they exist. This terribly distorts their perception of reality and prevents them from engaging life in an effective manner. The second most common thing I find is that people want to oversimplify life and deny the rich complexity of everything. They only look at how life connects to them and deny the vast connections between everything that have nothing to do with them. Understanding that most things that come your way have nothing to do with you at their source radically changes your stance toward these things. The illusion that you are entitled to be treated certain ways by life vanishes once you see that it is not about you.

Once you take in the reality of "what is," the next step is to feel what your needs are, beginning with your highest priority survival need at the moment. These days we are fortunate enough that our immediate survival needs are dealing more with things like paying attention while driving rather than hungry tigers jumping out at us. Protection from the elements is readily available to most of us most any time. Our immediate future is relatively secure for most of us. So the next big set of survival needs usually deals with needed resources like food, water, and mates. I include mate as a resource here because although to the action side of our brain a mate means sexual pleasure, to the receptive side of our brain a mate involves securing a complex of many of the higher priority survival needs as well as several lower needs.

Once you feel your real needs in the moment, the question becomes what skills you can employ to effectively get those needs met. For example, say you are hungry, you could steal food, you could beg for food, or you could buy food with money. Obviously the better the skill the fewer the negative consequences. Stealing is more likely to have negative consequences than buying food. Your ability to get any higher needs met, like social participation with real feedback, is greater with more respectful relationships to life. Higher tone actions begin in your perspective and stance on the situation you are facing. How you see things controls how you act toward them. This is why it is so important to take in what is real and not color it with our ego-based illusions. When we can see things clearly it is much easier to generate appropriate actions that flow from virtuous states of consciousness. Virtuous states are high tone feelings that promote long term success by generating win-win interactions based on mutual respect.

It is also tremendously helpful to take in realistic feedback about our actions in order to guide ourselves into even more effective ways to participate with life, which does not happen when we are seeing life through our ego agendas. With real feedback you can then adapt your perspectives and actions to become even more effective in the future.

So what is the practical "be here now" lifestyle? It begins in being practical with achieving your moment-to-moment needs.

Take in the full truth of the present moment
Feel your true needs
See things from the clearest and highest perspective
Act from this perspective with win-win respect
Receive feedback on your actions gracefully
Adapt your perspective and actions from the feedback

This is where 90% of your spiritual growth takes place. The other lovely 10% of wonderful spiritual connection while in meditation or service or yoga or whatever is to be savored and enjoyed. Your life really becomes spiritualized when you take your spirituality down to your basic survival need level. This is the physical world level of Self-Actualization. As you become skilled and confident in your ability to get these needs met, your consciousness has the room and time to engage the bigger picture of manifesting your unique gifts and learning how to bring their expression into harmonious connection with the rest of the world. Without the solid foundation of spiritualized

survival skills, your growth in other areas keeps falling down. Being spiritually high for a day or a weekend is relatively easy. Being able to sustain it for a lifetime is the real challenge, and that requires a solid foundation of positive, effective survival skills.

Enjoy,

David

Ultrasound Physical Therapy

Now available in the office

Tuesday afternoons and Fridays

On the Wire

Heart Disease Cure

Many years ago two time Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling developed a cure for heart disease. He asked the important question - what actually causes heart disease? He discovered that subclinical vitamin C deficiency caused cholesterol levels to go up - specifically the sticky type called Lp(a), and that this binds to lysine strands that protrude from weak or damaged blood vessels. He created a high lysine and vitamin C therapy that would actually reverse hardening of the arteries.

Pauling Therapy

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"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.."

~ Buddha

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Chewing gum over 10 minutes reduces stress

A dental college in Tokyo found that chewing gum more than 10 minutes caused subjects cortisol levels to drop. Cortisol is one of the main stress hormones. So next tax season I know to load up on my favorite cinnamon flavored xylitol sweetened chewing gum before crunching those numbers.

Gum

"Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others."

~ Buddha

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Pups Poop Along North-South Magnetic Lines

Spinal stimulation allows paraplegics to move legs

In some amazing research 4 paraplegics were able to regain some movement in their legs after having electrical stimulators implanted in their spines. Even with no connection between the brain and the legs subjects were able to voluntarily produce movement in their legs.

Paraplegics

"The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows."

~ Buddha

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Our address is 9725 Fair Oaks Blvd.

Finding the new location is very easy. Coming from highway 50 up Sunrise Blvd, you turn left and go up a block. We are on the right hand side - the building just past the Subway Sandwich shop. If you are coming down Sunrise from the Mall area then just turn right on Fair Oaks Blvd and up a block on the right.

If you are coming from the Roseville area you could come down Sunrise Blvd, but that is a long trek. It is probably shorter time wise to come down Auburn Blvd - San Juan Ave like you have been for the Sunset office, but instead of turning left at Sunset, keep going straight 3 more lights to Fair Oaks Blvd and turn left. Go down 2 lights to New York Ave, go through the intersection, and immediately turn into the turn lane once the center divider ends. We are on the left.

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visit http://www.fairoakshealth.com"

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About Dr. DeLapp

Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years. He began experimenting with medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis. In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education. Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic. He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice.
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health.
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities.
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth. The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework. Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.

Fair Oaks Healing
& Arts Center
Staff