Pain, often seen as a negative experience, can also be a catalyst for transformation. It's a concept that may seem counterintuitive at first, but when we delve deeper, we can understand the power it holds. Joining Annie and Susan is Dr. Aiden Kinsella, network spinal chiropractor and founder of Verve Wellness Studio in San Francisco. Dr. Aiden champions the integration of network spinal analysis as a means to reestablish the mind-body connection, enhancing natural healing processes and cultivating a profound sense of embodiment and aliveness.
Connecting Mind and Body
[00:12:20] “So often we’ll have a breakdown that happens in our life or we'll have an injury, or we'll have something that comes along, pain that comes along and interrupts the life we're living. And it's one of our most frustrating experiences as human beings, like, oh, I wish I could get rid of this or fix this or this hadn't happened. And yet often it's those really challenging moments that create a lot of disruption that bring us into new places.”
[00:16:08] “Even just first being introduced to the idea that they're not separate, that our body is not separate from our emotions, is not separate from our mind, is not separate from our identity and our personality, from our habitual behaviors, from our lived experiences, our traumas and our triumphs, none of it is separate. And the body is the place where all of these things meet.”
[00:58:15] “If it doesn't feel a little scary, no change is going to come from it. If I'm actually growing, I'm expanding, I'm stepping into more. I've got to feel all those feelings. So it's not that the discomfort goes away, but we start to have a different relationship with it. We're like, okay, and I can breathe with it and I can keep going through it.”
Connect with Dr. Aiden Kinsella
Website - https://www.vervewellnessstudio.com/network-spinal-care
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-aidan-kinsella
Audio/video editing and show notes by Podcast Abundance. Find out how they can help you too by visiting www.podcastabundance.com/services
00:04 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Hey there, I'm Annie Dickerson and I'm Susan Elliott On today's show. We've got a very special treat because I've invited my own chiropractor she's a network spinal analysis practitioner to come on the show. I've been working with Aiden Kinsella of Verve Wellness Studio for quite some time now. We've also been on multiple retreats together where she supports the people who are on retreat to integrate those learnings into their bodies. So I'm excited to share a little bit of her work with all of you.
00:40 - Susan Elliot (Co-host)
And Annie, you and your self-care routines are some of the most unique, fun things that you've brought to the show, and I say that because Aiden is no different in that it's not as if you just kind of sign up for chiropractic care, annie, or you just like go to normal therapy. Approach that potentially connects these parts of my life that are all a little bit disconnected or a little bit dysfunctional. That you can maybe tell because you understand the wholeness of our body and how we are all impacted, like our emotions impact the way we show up, impact our body, impact our energy, that impacts the work I can do, the types of things I can bring home to my family, all of these things. So I want you to listen out today.
01:26
Listener, for Aiden talks about how she's able to use the nervous system as a really huge guide to her chiropractic care, but she's bringing in all of these elements. That really just made sense to me as someone who hasn't gone through this treatment and now is very intrigued to get started, because deep down in my own body it's like I can feel that they're linked. I can feel the stiffness in my upper back or maybe this kind of emotional thing that I'm working through, or this big change in my life is manifesting in different patterns and ways. It's like it doesn't make sense to me, but the way that Aiden spoke about it today, all of a sudden there were some things that started to make a lot more sense.
02:09 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
And I wish I could say when I started this I had this master plan and I was like, okay, I'm going to do this to fill up this part of my life and this to address this thing. I had no idea You'll hear me in the show talk about how I started this work and it was really purely by a hunch, by an accident. A friend invited me and said I should try it. So I said, sure, why not? I started at a point in the business when we were growing like crazy and we didn't have a team. So I remember I would go twice a week to chiropractic sessions because they had a cancellation policy where if you cancel within 24 hours then you'd have to pay for it anyway. So often I would go just because I didn't want to have to pay for a session that I wasn't physically there for, even though there were 10 million other things on my to-do list I couldn't be doing. I'm going to go and lie on the table. And those two times per week that I would lie on the table were often the only two times in the entire week that I was without a phone, that I wasn't thinking a million thoughts in my mind at one time I had to. I was physically forced to lie on the table with no phone, no computer, couldn't produce anything, I had to just be, and at the time I saw it as such a nuisance. I was like I can't believe I signed up for this thing. This isn't doing anything. I don't know how it's working and over time this magic started to unfold, as Aiden talks about. It started to work its way through my nervous system and my energy, just gave me more capacity and I don't think we'd be here right now and the business would be where it is without this care that I started and it opened up so much more for me.
03:56
For the listener, if you've never come across network chiropractic or network spinal analysis, I just want to give you a brief overview. It's a gentle touch chiropractic or network spinal analysis. I just want to give you a brief overview. It's a gentle touch chiropractic technique involving light touches to the spine. It's not like traditional chiropractic where there's cracking and popping and all of that. You're lying on the table and it's very gentle touch and these touches help the nervous system and the body to unwind stored tension and trauma. So through network spinal chiropractic it helps the brain and the body to reconnect, and that's a big part of what we talk about in this show. So, through allowing your mind and your body to reconnect and come into the present moment, that's how you can truly come into your own and live the life you're truly meant to live. So that's how it kind of all ties together into your life by design, as well as your financial abundance, your investing journey, and that's what we hope that you'll see through this conversation.
04:59
You know, a big part of navigating any sort of change is the community that you have around you. Whether it's you're trying to lose weight or you're trying to learn how to cook or you're trying to start investing, Having those people around you to support you, to share resources and to be a sounding board when things aren't going exactly right can make a huge difference. When things aren't going exactly right can make a huge difference. So if you are on your journey to financial independence, to building wealth, and you are looking for a community to support you in that, we invite you to join the Good Egg Investor Club. It's a place where people come to learn primarily about real estate investing, and primarily the kind that's hands-off real estate investing, where you don't have to be a landlord, but certainly there's people looking for general financial wellness tips and resources as well. So if that calls to you, we invite you to join. Just go to goodegginvestmentscom slash. Invest. With that, let's dive into our conversation with Aiden Kinsella. Aiden, welcome to the show.
06:11 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
How are you? Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I'm great.
06:15 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Good. Well, I am so excited to have you here. The listener may not know this, but you've been my chiropractor now for a good long while. We've known each other. As I've grown my business, you've grown your business. This is something that I haven't really brought to our listener audience, which is some of the ways that I support myself personally in my body, my mind, my soul, my spirit all of the pieces to become the best version of myself that I can be, so that I can build the best business that I can and have the impact that I want to have. And network chiropractic is a huge part of that. So that's why I'm excited to dive in with you today. But first, before we dive into what network chiropractic is, I'd love to hear a little bit about what led you down this path in the first place.
07:05 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
Yeah, thank you. I ended up in this work as a child. I was 14 years old. My mom was always somebody who went to chiropractors, so chiropractic was part of my family healthcare system when I was a kid. When I was 14 years old, I was in a really bad car accident. My brother and I flipped a car coming home from a concert. I had a pretty severe neck injury. I was new. Getting adjusted would help, but I didn't want the force, that structural force, and so my mom took me to someone who did what I do, which is called network spinal analysis, because it's very gentle. That's the reason why she chose that. But the work is really designed about helping people navigate change and how it is that the nervous system moves through change. So I was going as a 14 year old.
07:48
I loved the care. It was definitely helping with that urgent discomfort of my neck pain. But what was so impactful for me was watching my dad. So my dad was the one who was bringing me to the chiropractor regularly and she said Tim, I'll take care of you to get on the table. And he said this isn't doing anything, you're just poking me in the butt. I think he's very like-minded. He's like this isn't doing anything.
08:10
My back still hurts, but over the course of the next nine months I watched my dad just wake up and come alive and start to take care of himself and take care of his body, start to run and exercise, and and exercise and like some part of him that had been on pause or in a steep slumber since his childhood, just woke up and came to life, and that was really inspiring.
08:30
And then I continued network care when I was 18, when I moved to California from the East Coast and had more of that experience for myself of waking up to who I am and what I want and being able to use my body as a barometer for how I'm doing and a feedback system to make decisions, to know when I'm in alignment with myself and when I'm making a decision. That feels like it's true for me and it's going to take me in a direction that has more energy and more progress around change. And so I knew at 19 through this work, that this is what I wanted to do, and I went to chiropractic school and here I am, and so I've been in practice 16 years Wow, I can't imagine at 14, that must have been such a terrifying experience to be in a car accident Sounds like it was really bad and to come away with a neck injury.
09:19 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
I'm thinking back to when I was 14, starting high school. You're thinking about the clothes you're going to wear, the people you're going to hang out with, and here you had this life changing accident and it kind of put you on a different path and it started to get you to think about different things. I love the story about your dad and I would love to hear a little bit about at 14 or 15 or 16, as you started to see these changes in your dad. How did you know that it was tied to chiropractic? How did you know it wasn't tied to maybe something else, like resolutions or new goals or a mindset or something else that he was doing in his life?
09:54 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
I'm not sure that I knew that then 14 and 15 and 16. But looking back at this time in my life, this was a moment when a lot of change started to happen in my family and for me this accident, like you said, was so impactful, not just because it was this kind of big traumatic event, but I was a homeschool kid, you know, and I was in high school at that time and chose to return to homeschooling. And even that decision, I graduated high school early. Because of that, I found my life's work, because of that.
10:23
So it's really been in hindsight, looking back, that was a fork in the road moment in my life. I've come to see that accident as one of the very best things that ever happened to me and so essential. And so often we'll have, you know, a breakdown that happens in our life or we'll have an injury, or we'll have something that comes along, pain that comes along and interrupts the life we're living. And it's one of our most frustrating experiences as human beings, like, oh, I should get rid of this or fix this or this hadn't happened. And yet often it's those really challenging moments that create a lot of disruption, that bring us into new places.
10:56 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Yeah, I don't think my mom would know that there's even different types of chiropractic. She would be like go to the doctor, they'll prescribe you something, you'll figure it out. But first of all, that your mom was going to chiropractic just before the accident even, and then once the accident happened, that she knew, okay, you didn't quite jive with the traditional type of chiropractic, but she knew to seek out this other type of chiropractic, which is what you do now. So tell us a little bit about that and how she knew, how you knew, that there were even more options out there.
11:30 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
I think it partly comes back to this, like you got listening to the body. So my mom was really brave. She was kind of went against the kind of mainstream status quo culture. In a lot of ways she homeschooled us because the schools in the town weren't that great. She worked in the school when she first moved to the small town we lived in in New Hampshire and was like this isn't going to work for my kids. She planted and grew and harvested our food. She made our clothes. It just was really passionate about being creative in this way. That was kind of a mainstream social structure didn't really provide for her. She wasn't that interested in that. Also took her down.
12:04
My brother had some what we would now understand as neurodivergence, but then she noticed right away that if he would have food coloring his behavior would go crazy. So she just did her own research. At a time when there wasn't the internet, you know, you had to subscribe to magazines and find books and things, and so she found out about organic food and she found out about the kind of low sugar things and she was in her own kind of spiritual discovery and she was exploring the relationship between meditation and consciousness and how that affects your body and your health. She just was really set the stage for that kind of learning, so I grew up in an environment where we were already doing things differently and I think that that's been something that I stand on, because of her to take a lot further.
12:45 - Susan Elliot (Co-host)
Yeah, even to be able to have the ability to open yourself up to finding your life's work so early in life is really quite rare.
12:52
But I think that if you have hindsight, I bet your hindsight could look back to seeing how she set you up to ask about, like, what are the problems that I want to solve instead of what job do I want to have, or what am I want to solve instead of what job do I want to have, or what am I going to be.
13:06
Instead, you saw change happening and how, if you really went in a little bit deeper into what works for the individual and those kind of all led you to this place. I'm really curious what would you say to our listener who didn't have that experience growing up and maybe wants to just investigate a little bit more of these two what seem like divergent worlds of ours the physical world of, like, my body, my aches, my pains. Maybe I exercise, maybe I don't regularly, but I know it's a good thing. I feel good when I exercise. Or it feels good when I get body work done when I go to the chiropractor. But then also the challenges in my life, the mental side, the emotional side how could someone get started trying to bring those together or at least let them kind of intertwine a little bit more.
13:52 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
I think, even just first being introduced to the idea that they're not separate, that our body is not separate from our emotions, is not separate from our mind, is not separate from our identity and our personality, from our habitual behaviors, from our lived experiences, our traumas and our triumphs None of it is separate, and the body is a place where all of these things meet. Also, my creativity and my imagination, and even my spiritual practice. It's all happening here, where we have this very brief opportunity to be in a physical body for a lifetime. All the data is here and all of your experiences are here. So, even just being introduced to the idea that my physical experience of my life and my mindset, my job and the things that I want to do with my life, those things aren't actually separate, Hold on.
14:43 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
What do you mean? Last Tuesday I had a cheeseburger. That's somewhere in my body. Or when I graduated from college, that experience lives somewhere in my body. What do you mean? All the data is here. How can I tell? Can I see it? Where does it live?
14:59 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
Yeah, everything that you've ever felt or seen or thought or done thing that you've ever felt or seen or thought or done your body has a memory of. Our nervous system is a data collector and a pattern generator. So the second you are conceived in utero your nervous system is the first thing that develops, and in utero your nervous system is learning from the environment that it lives in, which is your mother. So all the physiological and hormonal cascade that's happening in your mom's body is starting to teach you. And then there's even this epigenetic information that comes in through our DNA. So even from before we're conscious, we're starting to learn about. How is it that I respond to change and how is it that I respond to uncertainty?
15:41
Your body and your nervous system is really pulling the strings.
15:45
When you decide to have a cheeseburger, when you decide to do something new for your career, what hurts your feelings?
15:52
Why it's the knee that hurts and not the elbow that hurts or the ear that gets infected. So there's a relationship between what's emerging physically in our physical body, what's happening for us on an emotional level, and what's happening in the decisions that we're making and the stories that we're telling ourselves. So the nervous system is the place where all that meets. So that's probably why I was saying in answer to your question, susan, just knowing that is me introduce the idea that these things aren't separate, just because in our modernized culture, especially how we deal with health, you go to this doctor to deal with this thing and you go to this doctor to deal with that thing, and the knee guy is not going to talk to you about what's happening with your guts, but they're all connected. So just knowing that they're connected is part and that your nervous system is learning all the time and it's going to just do what it learned how to do and it's going to keep doing that until it has an opportunity to do something new.
16:41 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
So there's something kind of that's something I haven't really come to understand until very recently. I've been in chiropractic care now for, I think, about five years, since pre-COVID in 2019. I went actually for the first time because a friend of mine who also had been in a car accident had started going to this chiropractor. This chiropractor she was like this is different from any chiropractic care I've ever received. I was like what do you mean? And she's like okay, picture this. You go in. There's different people lying down on the tables and then the chiropractor comes around but they touch you really lightly, there's no cracking, there's no popping, and then people are like making noises, people are crying. What in the world? I'm like, sounds like nothing I've ever heard of before. Please sign me up.
17:36 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
You say please sign me up.
17:38 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
What was that? Whenever there's something new that I've never experienced before, that I'm like Ooh, I want to try that. I want to see what that's about. So I decided to go and first of all, in my vision of it, when she said, picture three people lying face down on a table, for whatever reason, I pictured a very dark room. I thought it was going to be very tight, close quarters. I walked in and it was this bright, beautiful space, light streaming in, music going and you could just feel the energy of the place before you even got on the table.
18:10
But for a long time I kept going. I didn't quite know what was going on. I hadn't put two and two together, that the mind and the body were really connected. I was just like, well, I'm going for my body, and I didn't have any aches and pains specifically, but I was just, like she said, to try it. So I'm going to try it for a period of time. And I kept going for a little while and it's almost like what you described with your father. I didn't expect these life changes to happen, but these things started to unfold in my life. At the time. We were growing our business like crazy and without this work, I don't know if I would have had the capacity. It's almost like my metaphorical spine. It made it all spongy rather than all rigid and tight, so that I could bend and flow with all the changes that were happening in the business.
18:58 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
Yes, and your nervous system, which of course is your brain and your spinal cord and your network of nerves. But your spine determines the bandwidth of energy and information you can process. Your nervous system can either be in defense, bracing against change, or adapting, growing, learning, healing, changing all synonyms at a nervous system level. So when your nervous system is more in defense or it's got more protective patterns running, we are tighter, so we're less flexible. So it might be a little bit more closer to a fetal position head forward, shoulders tight, shoulders rounded, stomach tight, not breathing, not moving. If that's the case in our spine or areas of our spine, the amount of energy and information that you can process is more narrow. So one of the things I describe to people is when you've had some network care, especially over the course of time, like maybe three to five months, it's like upgrading your operating system. It's like going from dial-up connection to try to run your life on to having broadband. Your capacity grows.
19:59
This is kind of a wild idea for most people, like what do you mean? My spine changes and my business grows. But when you understand that the nervous system is related to how much information you can process and with what efficiency, how effective, your emotional kind of agility in response to ups and downs and challenges and conflicts and changes, and your connection to yourself and your authenticity and your knowing, your creativity. But of course. So I'm curious for you, annie. Now I'm interviewing you chiropractors. When did that change for you that this is a body thing, not a mind thing? I'm doing this for my body. When did all of a sudden you were like whoa, was there a moment? Or did it emerge over time?
20:41 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
It took a long time for those things to come together for me, because nobody flat out said your mind and your body are connected. Or maybe they did and I just wasn't ready to receive that. But I remember for the first several months I would go and lie on the table like a rock. It was like couldn't you move your hips here? I don't think so. How do I move that part? And I was like a stick person. I couldn't quite move or access those parts of my body.
21:09
And now you've seen me on the table many times now I was like a stick person, like I couldn't quite move or access those parts of my body, and now you've seen me on the table many times. Now I'm like flopping all over the place because I have all this capacity. But as far as that mind-body connection, I really think that's been within the last year. But it's partly as a result of the meditation that I've been doing with our good friend Karen Chong, who was on the podcast just a couple of episodes ago, but as part of doing the network chiropractic work, together with creating the space in my mind and my energy body as well. I think it all started to tie together for me at that point, before I was doing a lot of mindset work, affirmations separate from the body, and this allowed me to tie it all together.
21:56 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
Awesome, yeah, and becoming more aware of your mind is really powerful. To doing mindset work and examining our belief systems and the stories that we're telling and the meaning that we're subscribing to things is really impactful. But when you add to that capacity to observe ourselves, to also what's happening in my body and how am I emotionally responding to these things, it's a superpower. Here's the thing. It's just physiology. Your lower brain centers are designed to hijack your higher brain centers. You do all this high level repatterning of your mindset and the story you're telling and looking at your beliefs, but if you get scared, all that goes right out the window. It's not gone, but literally, when you become stressed, in a moment, 70% of the blood supply to the frontal cortex of your brain drains out. It all goes to your heart and your lungs.
22:46
So if I'm relying on my capacity to think differently as a way to change my life, then I also have to really control my environment to avoid stress. And if I'm really controlling my environment to avoid stress which means I'm not coming into contact with people I don't agree with. Things are going the way that I expect them to. I'm spending a lot of energy to manage people and things, spending all this energy to sort of control my life. That's gonna create a physicality and an embodiment of, like you said, the stick figure. There's gonna be a lot of tension, not a lot of flexibility and flow, and a lot of control of the body, a lot of control of our emotions, a lot of control of our day-to-day experience, so that I don't disrupt that thing I'm trying to create with my mind, which is really powerful.
23:35
But when we start to turn to this different kind of agility in our body, which starts with even just like paying attention to what's my body feel like right now, am I breathing when I think about making that decision? What do I feel? Sometimes you'd start this practice and you're like I don't know, I don't feel anything. Noticing you feel nothing. Is noticing something? Noticing you're disconnected is connecting.
23:57 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Yeah, I guess I'll say my professional life stick figure me was trying to control everything. I had nine jobs in the 10 years after college and I was like this isn't working. This isn't working, I'm going to the next one. I'm going to the next one, I'm going to control the situation and make it what I want. I want to have the impact that I want to have. It's not working here, so I'm going to go to the next one. And then, at this inflection point, when we started this business, I realized I needed more capacity. The same systems that worked for me before or didn't work for me before definitely weren't going to work for me anymore, because growing a business is a completely different animal. So seeking out things like this completely opened that up for me to enable me to have that flexibility. And now I'm like find me an edge. I want to see what other edges there are in me so I can overcome them. I'm not scared of them anymore like I used to be, because I used to not have those tools.
24:56 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
And if we think about the Annie that was managing and controlling, to find that edge and step into something unknown meant like a bunch of stuff that you didn't have a plan for, versus the you that knows that anytime I discover something new like I can feel something new. That means I also discover new capacity in myself, and you know that from wisdom now versus just from a concept.
25:17 - Susan Elliot (Co-host)
What are some other things that people come into the room, with the room that you're operating in here, that you're doing this work Maybe it's physical, maybe it's emotional, and how do you see those shift kind of in the first three months, let's say, of that I'm looking for like maybe different variety of problem statements that they come to you.
25:36 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
So usually people come to me because they're in some kind of pain and then that could be a physical sensation or it can be a challenging situation, and that's not unique to me. Pain is what motivates us. Pain is what makes us go. What's going on, something's wrong. And our first response to pain is usually something's wrong, probably with me. I better figure it out and fix it Over the course of care with somebody. When I'm working with somebody, they come to understand that pain is an invitation for change. Always Pain is the messenger saying hey, something either already changed that you got to get with, or is changing or is about to change. So pain is how homeopathy is pulled in, except for in a situation like Annie's sharing, where you've got a friend who's like, hey, you got to go try this thing.
26:21
The most common thing that people say about network care is this changed my life and that's not because it's magic, but that's because it's designed to help the nervous system move through change. So life is changing all the time. We're dealing with change constantly. Our orientation to that really determines the quality of our life. We either experience that as a storm we're in and we're trying to survive, or an exciting wild ride that we're co-creating with, and all of that is a function of how much available energy you have. You see me doing this in my body, where I'm expanding and contracting through my spine. That has to do with how much energy I could actually move through my nervous system and through my spine.
26:58
So people will come in because they have some discomfort, physical or in their life, and usually by the time they come to me, they've tried things. They went to a traditional structure a chiropractor, maybe. They got some massage and body work. They went to a physical therapist, they talked to their doctor, they did a course of EMDR around their trauma, they did some meditation practice, they went things and usually they're talking about this kind of frustration with this chronic pattern in their body or their life. And somebody says, hey, have you heard of network? Have you heard of a wellness studio? Have you heard of this thing? And there's people who do what I do all around the world too. I'm not the only one. So they call me and they go. This is what's happening.
27:32
The other thing that will bring people in the door besides a chronic thing that's not responding is they're seeking support for their nervous system, and this is really exciting for me, having been in practice for 16 years, when I would first meet people in the practice, I would introduce this concept of what the nervous system is and teach people about it, which we're all still learning about it. But now nervous system is something people talk about and the idea that, oh, my nervous system can become dysregulated and there's a relationship between my nervous system is overwhelmed or stressed out and my capacity to think, or my mental health or my physical health. This is a thing that's more known now, and so now I have people calling the office saying I'm looking for support for my nervous system and sometimes that's because of something physical. They have going on Lots of people. They're like hey, I've been doing this work in therapy, trying to heal around some of the traumatic experiences I've had, or I'm trying to grow and change.
28:23
I keep doing the work, but it's like, oh man, it's in my body and where do I start? Kind of like what you were saying in the beginning, annie, about like the cheeseburger where is it? So we can introduce that concept that the body keeps the score, which is that great title of the book about the role of the nervous system in change and healing. But it is true, but where do I start? Where do I start? So lots of people are calling me for that too.
28:44 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
For the listener who's like I can't picture this. I don't understand what this means. So most people know what traditional chiropractic is, with some cracking the popping and all that. Take us from there and then paint a picture of what you do. Is it related, Is it not? How does it differ from traditional chiropractic?
29:04 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
So network is absolutely a chiropractic technique. It's really different than traditional chiropractic in the most obvious way is that I don't move bones, so I don't manipulate the spine. And the reason why is actually more interesting and that is the doctor who developed this technique was asking a very specific thesis question in the development of the technique, which is where can I put the least amount of force into the nervous system that results in the greatest amount of non-linear change? This was his thesis question. So not how do I find what's wrong and fix it which is how most healthcare looks at the body, not diagnose a condition and treat it but how do I interact with the nervous system in a way that enhances self-awareness, self-regulation, repatterning growth, evolution, change? So I had him look at what was really well established in the field of chiropractic at the time this is in the 1980s as well as what we understood about the nervous system and physiology differently and for a different purpose and outcome. He also found that there's a relationship between spinal cord tension, adverse mechanical cord tension, and the stress response. So when you become stressed for a physical reason, a chemical reason, like something you ate or exposed to, or an emotional reason or life stress of any kind. Your spinal cord tightens, so the envelope around the brain. The spinal cord tightens, just like a muscle will tighten. Our connective tissue tightens and the body does this on purpose to mute what you feel inside. It's like turning the volume down on all the immense amount of information that's happening in the body so that we become hyper-focused and hyper-vigilant on our external environment. Great for running for your life, for saving your life. Really ineffective strategy for healing, for growth, for self-awareness and for being yourself. Like I can't feel this. That's a chronic state most people live in is that the volume is turned so down on being able to feel what's happening in their body and what's happening emotionally that they can think about it. But there's a disconnect there. There's a very specific mechanical shape to that. So the doctor who developed this went on to map all the different ways that the spinal cord can tighten and this is where he veered in a really radical direction from traditional chiropractic that instead of developing the technique that you apply a force to reduce that tension, he instead developed a technique. So you apply this light touch at what he calls the spinal gateway, which is, you know, the yin yang symbol, how you'll have that one dot in the other color. So the spinal gateway is this little spot of ease right where that spinal cord tension is coming from. It's a place that, when I contact that spot, the frontal cortex of the brain can perceive what's happening there. So it's essentially like saying, hey, pay attention here to the most responsive part of the brain about an area of the body that's being governed by the lower brain centers and is in a feedback loop of disconnection and defense. So when I touch that spot, people's breath starts to open up, the body starts to unwind, muscle tension drops.
31:53
I describe it when you haven't felt it, if you imagine your hands in a fist and you didn't know it and someone pointed out to you like why is your hand in a fist? And you looked at it and went, oh, I didn't realize I was doing that and you could just release your fist as soon as you had the oh or oh. No, I'm holding onto something here. That's why my hand is closed. Point being, you can make a decision in that moment of do I need to be holding like this?
32:11
So as we start to work with somebody and I usually work with people for a course of care 12 visits or 24 visits, depending on what they're coming in with. Over the course of those 12 to 24 visits, your nervous system, again and again is discovering all these ways in which it's holding so, again and again is discovering all these ways in which it's holding. So I like to say network's a little bit like therapy for your body when you go to talk therapy and you're like, oh, this is what happened and that's why I do that. Oh, this makes sense, I see what I'm doing now and I can make some behavioral change. And it's also a little bit like grad school for your nervous system where your body's really developing these new learnings and new pathways.
32:46
Then in a moment in someone's life they become stressed. Part of the body knows how to tighten, but it also now has this new connection between the frontal cortex and the brain. So you can start to become aware of that when it happens, instead of that being something that your body does on autopilot. So people will say after a couple of weeks of care you know that shoulder that was so tight is much looser most of the time. But every time I get off the phone with this person I notice that tension. Or when I do this specific exercise, or when I eat this food, that tension builds up. So that kind of awareness that we're installing new neuropathways for in the body means that you're able to notice so much more about the relationship between the choices you're making in small ways day to day and whether that's contributing to a nervous system that's shutting down and going into defense or it's contributing to a nervous system that's growing and expanding and adapting and increasing its creativity and capacity.
33:41 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
I remember when I was first starting chiropractic care, within I think, the week or the week after, there was a weekend workshop. I remember I was like oh sure, sign me up for everything. I went to the workshop, we went around and introduced ourselves. I was like I'm.
33:58
Annie, I've been under care for the last couple of weeks and they were like ooh, a newbie, and everybody's so excited. And then I was like why, how long is everybody else? We went around the circle and some people said three years, some people said 11 years, 15 years, and I thought what? No, I'm just going to do this for a little while and then I'm going to stop, because surely there's an end point to this. I've been doing this now five years and I have no plans to stop at any point. In fact, I'll probably be doing this the rest of my life. Wherever I move, I'll have to make sure there's a great network spinal analysis practitioner there first before I go. But what does the life cycle of this look like for people? They come to you, they start out with some sort of pain, chronic pain. Where do you typically take them? Is there an end point, or can people just continue on and what does that look?
34:54 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
The thing I want to highlight, that's so different about how we're thinking about and working with the body, is that it's not restorative, it's not corrective. So, again, because we're not looking at what's wrong and how do we fix it, oh, here's the diagnosis and here's the treatment for that. If you were going to somebody and they were treating a specific condition and people were saying I've been here three years and 15 years, we can be like I don't think it's very effective. You want to see rehabilitative perspective. You're looking to see what's the problem and how is it changing. It's not that we don't need corrective care Sometimes we do, but with network we call it reorganizational healing. That it's really about an increase in your nervous system's capacity for self-awareness, for repatterning and for change. So in that way we're always helping the nervous system learn. So every time somebody comes in, for every single visit, I'm doing three things. One is helping the body and the nervous system reconnect where it's become disconnected. Number two, helping the nervous system redirect its energy and resources from a place that's bracing against change, having that energy be reassigned to whatever work needs to be done, whatever healing, digesting, processing, growth, changing that your life is asking of you. When we have an area that's been chronically tight. We have a lot of energy there. Actually it's just stored as tension. So it's like you can think about like walking around with all this backpack full of tension, it exhausting, and what those people really need is more energy. They've got it, they're just wearing it like a backpack instead of having to be available and flowing through their body. So that's another big part of an entrainment is helping that energy that's marching orders from the brain to say just hold tight, hold tight, hold tight to start to move actually through the whole system. So people feel energized. And then the third thing is learn something new. So your nervous system is learning something new every time. So in that way, if you are, every time you get on the table you're learning something new and you're reclaiming energy from where it's stuck. That makes more sense why people would keep coming.
36:52
Some people come into a short period of care. Some people come to 12 visits and that's it, and they're complete. Some people do four or six months of care and they're complete. It really just depends on what their goal is, what they're wanting, and the people who do continue care over time, like you're saying, who found like this is the best way for me to stay energized, aware and nimble like, really at a place where I can navigate change.
37:15
But those people aren't coming in for the same thing. They're coming in each week or each month saying this is what's alive for me right now, this is what I'm working with, this is what I'm trying to do. This is where the challenge is. This is where I have energy, this is where I don't have energy. So they're not coming for the same thing that brought them in the door maybe five years ago. They're not coming for the same thing that they were working on with me six months ago. So that gives a different kind of context for why somebody might keep coming. As it's about, how am I riding that edge of change with the most energy and the most authenticity and the greatest bandwidth and capacity that I'm capable of in this moment?
37:50 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Okay, if there's a listener out there who's like I love this, but I don't have a network spinal doctor in my area, or I don't currently have the financial resources to bring this into my life on a regular basis. Is there some other way that they can start to integrate or start down this path so that when they're ready or they're in a place where they can access this care, they can get the most out of it?
38:15 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
Yeah, I think there's a growing body of resources available through the internet, through books, through the field of somatic. Yeah, I think there's a growing body of resources available through the internet, through books, through the field of somatic therapy. Somatics there's this growing field where people are sharing different tools of how you can use your body and your awareness of your nervous system to self-regulate, to become more connected, to become more energized. So network, I would say, is a very, very cool, specialized thing, but it's only one tool and there's so many. So I would encourage those people who don't have a network doctor near them to just start searching and reading and asking questions about who's specializing in embodiment, who's talking about the nervous system and the capacity to feel and this relationship to healing and to their agency and their energy. I think there's a lot of things.
39:01
And then two books that I would recommend to anybody. One is the Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate. Everything I Know to Be True About Healing in that book just came out last year. And the second book is what it Takes to Heal by Prentice Hempel, and that just came out this year, and Prentice is an embodiment coach. So from a non-chiropractic lens, but also woven into how it is that we make change at the level of an individual and a community and social change. Brilliant book with this, like, our body and our healing are central to making the kind of change and living the kind of life we want to live in a world we want to live in it. So those are two books and resources I would share as well.
39:43 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Amazing. Every book that you've recommended to me has been a home run, so I'm definitely going to add those to my list. You said the word embodiment. I just want to give space for that word, because for me that word didn't mean anything. I knew, intellectually, what embodiment meant, but I didn't feel it until very recently. And after a retreat that you and I both had attended recently, I came home and for almost an entire week I felt fully embodied, like alive in my body and present in the moment, and I was like, oh my gosh, my whole life I've been chasing all these external things, this accolade and this achievement and this award, and impacting these people, but if I could just feel like this all the time, who cares about any of that? I just want this. I just want this aliveness in my body. So to me, that word embodiment is something that I'm, at this stage, putting a lot of exploration and discovery into, because I've felt that I've tasted that, what it can be and more. This is the gold mine. I want more of this in my life.
40:47 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
I love that you did that, that you hey, here's a word and you're throwing around and I think you did a really beautiful job of describing it and specifically, the thing I want to repeat is this feeling of aliveness and capacity to be right here, in this moment, fully. That's what it feels like to be embodied, which is different than to be aware of my body. That's part of it, like it's just hard to become aware of my body, but there's a difference between okay, hey, I got this body thing, I don't know what to do with it. It's really about aliveness. We are sensory, sensual creatures. We can feel so much, and that's also part of why most of us are walking around not so connected to our bodies, because we feel so much. So any practice that gets you in touch with your breath, in touch with your emotions, in touch with the sensations of your body in a way that's enlivening and energizing and pleasurable is going to bring you more of that kind of aliveness and capacity to be present, which is a superpower.
41:48 - Susan Elliot (Co-host)
I think we all start this process of designing our own life a lot of us and thinking about our five-year, our 10-year plans. We kind of get our finances in order to support the life that we're working towards. And it's almost like we have to start by throwing some spaghetti into the future, like that, and setting up for expanding our beliefs about what's possible to be able to work our way backwards to this present moment. And it's funny how the more people I talk to who have asked these deeper questions of themselves and of their life and how they're living, you can see that they're all working back to like it actually matters how I feel right now, today. It's interesting how it'd be great if we could just start with that.
42:30
But you know, I think there's a purpose and there's utility and thinking about the future and setting things up, being able to support ourselves and move towards healing A lot of the stress, for instance, like financial stress, being able to set ourselves up and to invest in the things that are going to put us in the freedom zone later. But really it's like what is your freedom zone now, or what is that feeling now? And it's lovely to see what kind of practices you have. What are you doing for your future self, but Lynn? What are you doing for your future self but Lynn? Like, what are you doing for your present self to your current self right now, and how could you help your future self do even better if you can actually just embody your full self right now?
43:09 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
There's a developmental relationship too as we grow up, certainly if we had different values around this, if we're all raised to deeply appreciate our embodied experience and our emotional experience, versus it being this thing that gets in the way all the time or is problematic or socially awkward or all those things, so certainly if we had a different relationship with our body.
43:28
But also there's what you're speaking to is that we've got to kind of go out and find the world a little bit. It was all part of self-discovery to go after and pursue the things even if it's the accolades or the things I'm interested in. And then we have this opportunity to kind of reflect and come back and say, okay, I thought that was really important, but I don't feel that great, or it took so much energy to get here that the gains I got from it aren't really worth it. So it's a process that we're growing and learning. Growing and learning from the moment we're conceived to the last breath we take. We have this capacity to grow and learn and deepen. So we start to come to value this ability to be here in this moment as part of wisdom that comes from realizing all the energy we put into something that took us out of the moment and how it wasn't quenching.
44:14 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Well, network Chiropractic. I still don't fully understand it, but it's been magic for me Every step of the way. It's like my hidden superpower. It's like every time that I go on the table. It powers me up for more change and more capacity. So I hope everybody gets a chance to experience it, to experience it. So with that, let's move into the final part of our show, the Life and Money Show, spotlight Round Aiden, we're going to ask you three questions. We ask all our guests Are you ready? Yes, all right. The first question is about your life and money. So what's one thing you're doing to live a meaningful and intentional life?
44:54 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
by design, I am getting up early five days a week and moving my body.
45:00
How early is early for you, just curious 5.40 in the morning I meet some friends at my office space where there's some room to move around and we do a whole variety of strength, mobility work, flexibility work, all kinds of things for about an hour and a half. And I do that Monday through Friday. Wow, a couple of years to get that discipline in place. But it is the most brilliant thing I've ever done for myself is to just start my days with a long time an hour and a half being with my body and moving my body and allowing that to be varied and different on different days when I feel different. It's brought so much energy and intention and connection to myself and change.
45:46 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
It's brought about a lot of change for me, and to do that together in community is super powerful. I've gotten up early, but it's like me by myself in a room, but to do it together with people, I mean that's a game changer. I'll add that to my list next. That's great. Second question is about others' life and money. So share with us one life or money hack and by hack we loosely mean a tool, a tip, a resource, even a book that has really helped you on your journey that you think may help the listener as well.
46:15 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
Sound like a broken record, but it kind of comes back to what's my relationship to energy, bandwidth and capacity, because I will only experience the amount of abundance in my life just beyond what I can like kind of physically be with. So the advice or the hack or the tip would be that anything that increases your capacity to feel more will bring you more wealth and abundance, both in the really literal, financial way, as well as wealth and abundance in all the ways that I just have more access to more. So anything that increases your capacity to feel in your body or stay with especially challenging emotions, to be able to be afraid and breathe, to be able to feel ashamed and share yourself, to be able to be angry and feel that heat like, move up your body and breathe with it and feel enlivened by it, versus toss it or stuff it. Our capacity to feel our body, our breath and our emotions brings us more abundance because it brings us more energy.
47:21 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Oh my gosh, you're speaking so much of what I've experienced in my life. Especially lately, I've been on this path of trying to share more of myself, being more vulnerable, and every time I do it, whether it's on social media or with friends every time I hit publish, I'm like, oh my God, what's going to happen? And I'm like you know what I'm doing this to open and to release and to go with the flow. I hit publish and amazing things happen. When I share with a friend or I go outside my comfort zone, amazing things happen.
47:52 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
But it does take that courage to take that step and I really want to highlight that it also takes that you're willing to feel those things, because it's not that we get to the place where I hit publish, it doesn't feel scary, it doesn't feel a little scary.
48:05
No change is going to come from it. So if I'm actually growing, I'm expanding, I'm stepping into more, I've got to feel all those feelings. So it's not that the discomfort goes away, but we start to have a different relationship with it. We're like okay, and I can breathe with it, I can keep going through it and I can also reassure myself with that knowing of like I know on the other side of this sensation or this feeling, I know what comes from it. So when my alarm goes off at 540 in the morning, when I didn't get to bed as early as I'd like to, and it's dark out and it's cold out, I know what I'll feel like on the other side and I know the kinds of interactions that I'll have for the rest of the day. I know how I will feel about myself, even, and how it's better.
48:51 - Susan Elliot (Co-host)
I appreciate your actual examples too there, of just like when you feel anger, when you feel vulnerability, because it's like, yeah, yeah, I'm going to do that next time. I feel something. But then when I am frustrated with my kid and not putting on their shoes, I can be like I'm feeling very anxious in my neck right now, but it's just a shoe and because it's not going to stop, and that's really important For the people who are listening and they're like, okay, well, what do I do in that simple moment?
49:22 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
It's like just breathe. Usually, when we're feeling something uncomfortable, we don't breathe, because when I don't breathe I don't feel as much. So just by choosing to take a deep breath when you feel afraid, when you feel angry, when you feel frustrated, feel ashamed, and then if you were to layer onto that, where in my body do I feel that? Where is the contraction, where is the sensation? Even if you come up with I don't know, that's okay, just asking the question. And then, if you want to get fancy with it, then what's the color of it, what's the texture? If it were made out of? A material would be made out of. If it was a sound, what sound would it be and make that sound, that emotion or that energy, that sensation can speak. If it could say sometimes I feel, what would it say? So, the breath, the location in the body, the color of it, the texture of it, the sound of it, and if it could complete the sentence sometimes I feel, what would it say? It's amazing what you can do with just those 30 seconds.
50:10 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Oh yeah, that was the best hack right there. It's the best toolbox because anybody can take that with them anywhere, if they're traveling, if they're at home, doesn't matter those micro moments, as they internalize and they start using those tools, even just the breath, just the first one, all right. Last question is about life and money in the world. So, aiden, what's one thing that you're doing to help make the world a better place, however you choose to interpret that question.
50:36 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
I'm really helping people come alive. My favorite quote is Howard Thurman don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it, because what the world needs is more people who come alive. And so that really sums up my mission and what I'm doing With each interaction I have, both in the office and outside of the office, is sharing myself in a way that is as alive and present as I can be, seeing people that way and supporting them to reconnect and rediscover that within themselves.
51:04 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Well, it's a beautiful thing and I can definitely speak to the feeling of coming into your office and during that time I'm on the table. I feel like you're rooting for me to come alive. I sense that on the table, whatever you're doing, whatever magic you're working, I'm like okay, for this time I know that it's not just me, but Aiden's here rooting for me and she's helping me help my body to come alive. So it definitely comes across in all that you do. Well, aiden, I mean, you are like an encyclopedia. You know so much. You've read so many books. I know people are going to want to dig in and learn more, based here in San Francisco or not, and they want to find somebody in their own home space. Tell them if they did want to get in touch with you or learn more about your practice. What's the best place that they can go?
51:55 - Aidan Kinsella (Guest)
So first stop would be my website, which is vervewellnesstudiocom, and on the website there's a link to book a call. You can book a free consult with me and I would encourage anybody, even if you're not local, and you heard this. You have questions? Book a call with me. I'd love to talk about this stuff. I'd love to share the resources that I have. I can help to see if I can connect you with somebody in your area who does this work. The other way is Instagram, which we're also Verve Wellness Studio on Instagram and we've got some posts and some content there and you can follow us to just stay in touch.
52:26 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Fantastic Aiden Kinsella network, spinal chiropractor and founder of Verve Wellness Studio in San Francisco. Aiden, thank you so much for being here with us and diving into these incredible topics with us. Thank you so much for having me so fun.
52:44
You've been listening to the Life and Money Show. The show all about helping you to create a meaningful and intentional life by design. For show notes or to listen to previous episodes, go to lifeandmoneyshowcom For more information on how to invest with us to create passive income and build wealth for your family. Go to goodegginvestmentscom. I'm Annie Dickerson and I'm Susan Elliott. And until next time, remember that life is an adventure and we're here with you every step of the way. Thanks for listening.