Heal Everything with Dr. Ian Chambers

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome. Today's episode of the show. Today, I am super excited about this guest. I know I say I'm excited a lot about the guests that I have, and that's true, because at this point in the show, I only bring on people that I am truly excited to talk about. And I want it to be where I learn a ton and you learn a ton. And we're just bringing in the most brilliant people in the different fields that all come together to help us feel more confident, authentic, expressive, bold, and alive. That's the whole purpose of guests on this show. And today we're going to be talking to a man who's profoundly helped me in my life, physically and beyond. And I'll have a whole podcast episode about my experience with this, too. So if you want to know further about my personal experience with this, you absolutely can. But he is a chiropractor and he practices a very interesting form of chiropractic medicine, very different than anything else that I've come across. And I want to share. I've been working with him for seven, eight months now with profound positive benefits in my not only physical health, but beyond. And I know. I was like, hey, I gotta interview you. We gotta find out what is going on here. Because I want to share this with my audience. Because the benefits are not just physical. And as you might have listened in this show and know that I talk a lot about how the emotional challenges we experience, social anxiety, excessive niceness, not being authentic, holding back, hiding pleasing others, fear of disapproval, all that stuff that we're liberating ourselves from to be more free, bold and authentic when we're stuck or we're hurting or we're scared, we're going to have physical pain, too. Back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, jaw pain, stomach aches and migraines. And we might not think that it's related, but it is. And I've known it's related for a Long time. And so I'm like, what can I do to help heal the whole spectrum? And enter this work with Dr. Ian Chambers, who I'll be introducing in just a moment. And it's been profound. And so I said, hey, I got to find out. Let's unpack more of what you're doing so. So my audience can get it. And we did this interview and it was really good. And I told him at the end, I feel like we're just getting started. So I interviewed him for almost a full hour. You'll hear it just now in a moment. And we're gonna definitely have a part two where we're gonna springboard off right where we left off, because we start getting into the really juicy stuff about healing and health is not just the absence of pain, it is like optimizing your life. So we really get into that towards the end of this interview. Absolutely. Gonna love it. I. I am going to say this up front, that the audio connection was a little spotty at times, and so you might have a little hard time hearing him here and there, almost like a phone call sound. So it's a little grainy at times and I apologize for that. We'll definitely get that improved for part two. However, it is worth it. So if you notice yourself at times, you're a little irritated, like, what did he say? I can't get it. Just trust me, you're going to get everything you need. And listen carefully as best as you can, and you will. It is so worth it because there's something, there's some magic here that I really am excited to share with you. So let me introduce my guest here. His name is Dr. Ian Chambers, and after receiving a BA in History and Sociology from Simon and Fraser university in Canada, Dr. Chambers continued to study approaches in exercise physiology, nutrition, homeopathy, mind body medicine and kinesiology. He then went on to pursue his passion in studying the spine and nervous system and received a Doctor of Chiropractic degree, magna cum laude, from New York chiropractic College in 1998. So for almost 20 years now, Dr. Ian has continued to study, train and teach extensively with world renowned master in chiropractic, Donnie Epstein, who is the creator of the Network Spinal Approach that we'll be talking about in this interview. So since 2001, he has been a member of Dr. Epstein's teaching staff for Network Chiropractic, working at many healing retreats around the world. He also helped train other chiropractors and chiropractic students in this leading edge approach to chiropractic. He's recognized by his peers as a leader in the fields of chiropractic, natural healing and wellness education. So he currently has a practice in Bingen, Washington, which is about an hour outside of Portland. And when I was looking for a network care doctor, many people that my wife reached out to because she's connected with this community all recommended Dr. Ian. And I looked at it and it was like an hour away from my house and I was like an hour each way. Oh my God. Like, I don't have that kind of time. I'm running a business. I have a family. And you know what? He came so highly recommended. I was like, well, if you're going to do it, go with the best. So I began that journey and working with him for about seven, eight months. As I said, I'll talk about it more in a future episode, my particular journey. But it is a true treat to get some insights from Dr. Ian today. So thank you so much for joining us on the show today. So welcome. Dr. Ian Chambers. Thank you for being with us today. As you know, I have so many questions for you and I think our listeners are in for an incredible treat. Thank you for taking the time to be with us.

Thanks for having me here, Zeith. It's a pleasure.

Okay, so I've shared some in this show about some of my experiences in working with you, and I want to zoom back so people, because if we just start getting into the weeds of it, it might be a little disorienting. So we want to kind of zoom out so people have a better sense of who you are and what you do and what network is and just so people have a reference and then we can start to get into some of the magic of it. So maybe you could share just a little bit about you and your background as a doctor, as a chiropractor, and then also getting into this thing called network, spinal network care. Just kind of share a little bit about that story so we get a context of where you're coming from.

Absolutely. Sure. So I am a chiropractor. I graduated from New York Chiropractic College, which is in upstate New York in 1998. And just prior to graduation, I had an injury playing sports that left me with a lot of pain in my body. And it wasn't just the kind of run of the mill pain. It was like the kind of pain that puts tears in your eyes and makes you cringe when you turn just the wrong way. And I was receiving had been a chiropractic patient for years, in fact, since I was a kid. And nothing I was doing traditionally was really seeming to help it. In fact, a lot of times it really actually flared it up and really increased the challenges, so much so that it was affecting my sleep and causing me to actually feel depressed. And one day, a colleague of mine, a classmate of mine, kind of really just noticed me and said, you know, you don't look so good. I said, well, yep, you're right. And so she said, you know, I don't mean to barge in, but I have been seeing this other type of chiropractor who barely touches me. And she said, I honestly have no idea how it works, but I have. I can't. I was supposed to have spinal fusion surgery. I'm not going to have it. I feel the best I felt in years. So I had. I felt like I had nothing to lose because I was at a breaking point. And I went and I experienced this work called Network Chiropractic at the time in Rochester, New York. And it was unbelievable. The first adjustment I had. I felt like I was taking breaths that were. I knew I was breathing before, but I had no idea that I could be breathing so big. I felt my body kind of swell up. And again, it took a number of months for my body, my whole system to change. And actually, I was back in the gym, and I was a master swimmer. So I was back in the pool, and I was sleeping like I hadn't slept in years. And I still had no idea how the heck this worked. So that was my experience to this work called Network. Network Care Network, Spinal Network, Chiropractic. It has various names, but that experience left me with an understanding, a visceral experience, that you don't have to hit the system with a hammer in order to have it change. You can actually be very specific, very gentle, and actually work with the system. And actually, it can grow, it can change, it can evolve and produce new responses that can help people heal, physically, change patterns of the way they experience the world and respond to stress, and literally help them influence really, every aspect of the quality of their lives. And that was.

Are you still there?

Yeah.

Okay, the last part you said was. And that was. That was your first experience with Network here, right?

That was my first experience with Network. And so from that experience, I was so intrigued that I could be feeling as good as I did, all from such a very light touch to the spine. And so I went and I went to talk to my chiropractor, and I said, how Do I learn this stuff? And she said, well, there's a seminar coming up. And so I went to a seminar, and at the seminar, I met this man named Dr. Don Leftstein, who developed Network and a number of other different modalities. And in essence, in that seminar, what I walked away with was that the system is intelligent. Our bodies, our minds are intelligent. That there is something that can be awakened through very, very little intervention. And that. That whatever that is, that intelligence that's inside of us can actually grow and evolve and change to help us expand and reach higher levels of depth and higher levels of experience and the quality of our lives in every aspect. And that blew me away. And I was just like. I just knew at that moment that is, this is why I was put on the planet, and this is what I'm going to do.

Wow, there's so much in there, which is a different way of thinking about the body than I think many of us were brought up to think. I certainly was brought up in a more traditional allopathic medicine model, which was standard in a lot of places. Like, hey, when you're sick, you go to the doctor, they give you typically a chemical or a pill, and then that will solve the problem. And then slightly aside from that is kind of maybe more traditional chiropractic or something, which is like, well, yeah, you're bound up and you're tight, so we're gonna move you into the right place and get you aligned. And that's still like. Both of those are kind of like, hey, the body, you know, the body needs some help. And so we're going to give it the input. And, you know, both of those are pretty forceful or strong in a way. And so what you're describing here is this very gentle touch to the system. And it also highlights. I mean, you talked about physical pain, but you're also talking about activating higher levels of being able to live and function and perform. So what I love about the way that you approach this is it's not like you're sick and in pain, and then we get you back to normal. It's kind of like this spectrum of like, hey, how do we, you know, if you're in pain. Yeah. How do we help you get better? And then the whole process, though, is beginning this, optimizing to approach life better. And then that, of course, leads to less pain, but also more success, more of freedom, more of all these different things. So how do you see health and pain, both physical and emotional and mental? And is it separate? Is it all one Thing. How do you see that?

Well, that's a great question. So, I mean, and from what you said, you're right. Most of us were brought up in a way where, you know, the symptom is basically the bad guy. And our job, you know, is to find somebody who can remove the symptom. And if the symptom goes away, then, you know, for most people's standards, and that's a positive outcome and we should just carry on. Right. And again, when there's a life threatening situation, when there's a critical situation, making that shift from being in a lot of pain or a lot of suffering to, and moving just a little bit up to having less of it or perhaps even none of it is a great improvement to the quality of life. So I don't want to minimize that. And yet there's more. It's like some of the conversations that you and I have had in that where do we put our ceiling personally, where do we put our ceiling in our relationships? How good could it possibly be? Whether it's with our significant other, whether it's with our children, our parents, our co workers, our profession, and what about our health? Where do we put the ceiling on what we can experience, on the level of vitality? If you look at the root word for healing, which is H aol, it's howl and it's an Anglo Saxon root word. And basically it means, the translation means to make whole. And so healing is to truly allow a person to experience a greater sense of wholeness. And that to me means a greater capacity to experience and continually evolve and grow in the areas of physical health and function, emotional and mental health and function social, you know, the way that we interact with others in our environment, and ultimately spiritual, I mean, you know, our connection to a source greater than ourselves. And you know, I think in the last decade or so, a lot of more mainstream organizations, including the World Health Organization, if you look at a lot of medical dictionaries today, Dorland's medical Dictionary, Webster's online medical Dictionary, they've changed their traditional definition of health from the presence or absence of pain to the optimal expression of. I believe it's physical, emotional and social. So it is changing in the culture. But to me, health and the expression of health is an ongoing. It requires an ongoing engagement with, helping us to find better ways of functioning, feeling and expressing that as a whole matrix in those areas that I just mentioned.

Yeah, absolutely. And so when someone is in physical pain, do you people go to a chiropractor? I came in because of Reoccurring body pain. Usually it's in the back or the hips, and it could be anywhere. Different people. Knee, neck, wrists, everything, head. And, you know, I came in with sort of this awareness, which I've talked about on this show, of, you know, I thought it was purely structural.

We.

I approached that way for many years, and then I suppressed symptoms with medication for many years. And yet I started to discover that actually there was this connection between my emotion, between my stress levels, between chronic tension from a fearful way of approaching life, like, it's not going to be okay. I got to be on guard. I got to figure all this out. And that was kind of such a familiar way of being that I didn't even know that it was problematic. It was just. That's how it is. And then over time, I started to discover, you know, actually, those things, those patterns of approaching life create not only emotional stress or fear or tension, but also physical pain. And, you know, I imagine a lot of people that come in might not have had some of that opportunity to learn those things, and they're just like, oh, my back hurts. It's because I got into a car accident 20 years ago, or it's because this thing happened, or I sit weird, or. And how do you see the source of their pain? Like someone's got a back pain. How do you start to think about it? How do you perceive?

Well, that's an awesome question, Aziz. And so being a chiropractor, again, the profession of chiropractic, for those of you that don't know, it, originated in 1895. And in 1895, you know, there was. I mean, a lot of things were happening. The profession of osteopathy, or osteopathic medicine, was also being developed around that time by a gentleman named Andrew, still looking at the body and trying to understand, you know, how does the body, how does the mind, how does it function? And a guy named Deedee Palmer was looking at the nervous system, and he's the originator of chiropractic. And he and his son DJ Palmer, some years later, you know, through their investigation, through BJ's, look inside the body, and a few other people, you know, their. Their experience was that the nervous system. And when I mean the nervous system, I mean that your brain, right, which sits in your skull, and then your brain stem comes down the upper part of your neck, it has this attaching tissue structure that's called your spinal cord, and your spinal cord runs through your spine, and it attaches at both ends in your pelvis. And in your neck and, and then nerves at every one of the bones you have in your spine, there's 31 pairs of those nerves. They branch out into smaller and smaller and smaller nerves until all of the non movable trillions of cells in everyone's body has three to nine nerve endings into it, meaning all of your muscles, all of your tendons, including all of your organs and the connective tissue around your heart, your lungs, your intestines, your kidney, everything. So there's this incredible network of communication, this highway of communication that's constantly sending signals from your brain to your body, cells, tissues, organs and glands and back up to your brain. And your brain is interpreting the information, right? So it's like this information superhighway. If there is a stressor, and what I mean by a stressor is that it could be a car accident, it could be a fall, it could be the way you hold your body every day, a physical stressor, it could be an emotional stressor, something that's happened to you, a period of time that was extremely stress, an event, a divorce, a bankruptcy, whatever it might be. It can also be a chemical stress, something that you, the way you eat, or something you were exposed to on the job or in your environment. Now, if the nervous system can't process the information from any one of those areas effectively, then it has a capacity of altering the flow of communication between the brain and your body. It can distort it, right? And so think about this. If you're, you know, we're all pretty used to having computers, and if our WI fi router is not working so great, what happens?

We can't connect to the Internet very well, right?

Or we're driving through the mountains. And I live in the Columbia Gorge. And so if you're driving in certain sections here, you might be talking on your phone, and then all of a sudden you go from four bars to like two bars. And then the person you're listening to or trying to communicate to either can't hear you or you can't hear them, or both. And so that's a great analogy for what happens when the nervous system is distorted. And historically, in chiropractic there is a term called subluxation, which if you kind of translate it into its Latin roots, it means less light. And so there's less light, there's less energy flowing through the system, and that alters how we feel. I'm not sure what I'm feeling. And that can also relate to the way that we process emotions or thoughts. It can Also relate to the way that our body's biochemistry might be functioning one of our organs or tissues, or there might be inflammation in a certain region which could be altering the flow of signals between the brain and the body and as a result produce a less than optimal level of function. As a chiropractor. That's historically the focus of our looking at the way that this system, the control system of the body, coordinates all of the functions, all of experience, how we sense the world, how we think, how we feel and how we express ourselves. And so by looking at that and by working in various ways to help keep that flow as unrestricted as possible, it is able to allow the body to move on this upward spiral of a greater level of health, a greater level of expression and quality of life.

So yeah, there's such a. So a key thing there is that there's this flow of information throughout the nervous system and we want to keep that optimal. And if that's not optimal due to stressors, then symptoms can arise, including physical pain. And so when you're working with people. So I guess, let me see here. When people think of more of a traditional chiropractic, there's kind of a movement of the spine, maybe a cracking or a popping. And is that. I always thought that that was because, oh, you're quote out of alignment or there's a rib out or whatever. And so it's like a physical thing. We're gonna get your body symmetrical through a movement of it. Is that only part of it. Is a traditional chiropractor also trying to get more communication through the nervous system through that alignment?

Well, ultimately, yeah. So in a more traditional sense, chiropractic, I mean, with the. Whether you physically move the bone with your hands or you use a clicker, some type of a device that provides a force. The, the objective ideally is to move or change the relationship at that region of the spine so it can open up the flow at that part of the nervous system to allow the brain and the body to communicate better than it was before. And, and that's it. And essentially, if that's achieved, then you know, in, in, in theory, that communication highway should be opened up a little bit more or a lot more. And then the body is able to do what it's able to do. It's able to come back into b like gravity. If you drop a pen or you drop your keys, you know where it's headed. If the body can get that communication highway open more effectively, then it's ultimately designed like a feedback loop. To help move the system to a higher level of order or a higher level of function.

I see. And so when, when you're working with people though, you are, you know, attempting to create that higher level of communication and function, but you're not doing it through strong movement of anything. In fact, the touch, as you said, is very light. And I've had the opportunity because I seen you work with my kids, and sometimes it's like a. And I also felt it myself.

Right.

Sometimes it's a physical touch, sometimes it's not even exactly touching the body. So what are you doing there? When you're doing something with the system, you're communicating with the system of the body to help this flow, help get those high bars, high wifi exchange, but in a way that's different than sort of just a straight up physical movement. Can you share a little bit more about what's happening there?

Yeah, sure. So again, just to clarify, I mean, these are not my concepts. I mean, my mentor, my teacher, Donny Epstein, he's the gentleman that's developed all this. So I've had the privilege of working alongside him for the last 21 years, learning from him, helping teach over the years. And so I'm going to give you the best understanding that I have from being a, a clinician of working with people like you, like your kids, like all my patients for the last couple decades. So essentially, historically, the original way of looking at the spine and addressing this kind of dysfunction in the nervous system was to look for bones that were out of place and push them back in to the best of their ability. And that works phenomenally well. Now the thing is, and I practiced that way when I graduated from school because that's the way I was originally taught. What I found was there was a lot of recurring patterns, meaning that even though you could put a bone back in place, quite often the body would default back into that same pattern the next day, the next week, whatever it was, the next month. And so to me, my understanding of the way the nervous system works is that it's designed to be self directed and self learning and self regulating. What does that mean? Well, it means that the nervous system should be ideally, constantly looking at the internal body as well as looking at its environment and learning and growing and changing and adapting to what it sees, rather than producing the same patterns, whether it's a pain pattern, whether it's a thinking pattern, whether it's a behavior pattern, whether it's a biochemical pattern in a certain region of the body, and if it's not doing that. Something's off. Donny Epstein, through looking at research in the literature at the time when he was developing this technique, saw a lot of it was medical literature, including some research by a neuroscientist named Dr. Alfrig in Sweden. And he found that there is a torquing of the spinal cord, the covering of the spinal cord called the meninges. Now, we're probably all familiar with the term meningitis, which is an inflammation of the covering of your brain and your spinal cord. And that's not a good thing to have. What happens is when the brain goes into a stress response, one of the things that it does is the brain will actually signal to the meninges to elongate. It'll stretch the spine of the spinal cord up to two and a half to three inches from top to bottom. So like a fishing line when it gets stuck in the rocks, and also will stretch it from left to right. Again, this goes back to our wifi analogy. It's like imagine that the nervous system that's designed to coordinate and send and receive signals at up to 220 miles an hour so fast to make sure that everything that the way that our brain functions, our kidney, filters, blood, et cetera, is all happening faster than we can snap our fingers. And yet the spine, the communication highway, is being stretched and twisted, so it's being altered and it's not allowing those signals to get through to those cells to do what they're supposed to do. Well, what he found was that this is in fact true, is that there's actually the elongation of the cord is happening at the ends of the spine. So there's these areas where there's these high concentrations of nerve fibers. And in those areas, because there's such a high concentration of a nerve fiber, you can make a very light touch, literally about as much as putting a contact lens in your eye. So the force is very small. But it's designed not to push a bone around, but it's designed to awaken a certain region of the brain that gets checked out under the stress response. And that part of the brain, when it wakes back up, it can start to regulate, it can start to change the tension state and start to almost like hitting reset on your computer. It resets the nerve supply and the signals going back between the brain and the body and it kicks in that inherent healing or self regulating mechanism. So the brain and body start to function better than it was before, more effectively than it was before. And as a result, over time it's like learning a new skill. You get better and better and better and better the more you do it. And the system, it keeps building on what you learned before. And the system becomes to function at higher and higher levels.

I love that. So there's a through that touching in those little areas, it will communicate to the nervous system and sort of draw attention to an area or draw focus or energy to an area that maybe gets closed off during a stress response and starts the channels.

Yeah, it's basically like if you've ever been feeling stuck and let's just say, like emotionally stuck or mentally stuck, and then somebody or something happens, and then you can almost feel like, you know, it could be a small thing. Someone looks at you a certain way, like someone you trust or someone you love. They smile at you or they give you a hug, and all of a sudden that stuck feeling just starts to drop away. It's called a nonlinear response. So by making a very small drop, like dropping a pebble in a pond, the ripples of that drop actually can shift a part of the brain to have the system come out of its defense response, its sympathetic response. And then the nervous system has new choices available to it for how it looks at the world, how it looks at itself, how it holds the body tension, how our organs start to function. We breathe more, our heart rate starts to lower, and then all of a sudden we're like, not as stuck as we were just a moment ago. And if the brain can learn over time how to get to that, then it starts to put itself back in the driver's seat of being able to make positive change.

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And so what I love to. That's kind of like the mechanics or the basics of healing. And there's like, you're talking about an information flow between the brain and the body and kind of this back and forth nervous system. There's also, from what I understand, like, an information flow between my brain, body, nervous system and the world around me and the field around me. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, because that might be something. That's the first part. Like, oh, yeah. Nervous system, brain and body. Most people will be like, yeah, that makes sense. How about this field around us and our communication between our body and this field? Can you share a little bit more about what that is?

Yeah, sure. Well, I'll certainly do my best. I mean, I think we've all had experiences where something happens around us. Like, for example, someone says something or someone comes into the room and we have felt our whole system light up and get lighter and more energized. And I think we've all felt the, the opposite of that, where we're maybe we're in a meeting or we're looking at our finances and all of a sudden we feel like, oh my God, this is horrible. And you feel your body, you feel your physiology, you may even feel your energy and your attitude just totally contract. Does that, does that make sense in terms of just a fundamental leaping off point? Yeah. So I think on an intuitive level, we all recognize that we inside ourselves and all the stuff we just talked about with the nervous system in the body are intimately in relationship with the world around us. And how we do that is really, you know, to put it fundamentally is through energy. We know through organizations like Heart Math Institute in California, that we can measure the field of the heart. When your heart is beating, the electrical signal produces a characteristic energetic environment that can be measured with instrumentation. It's called heart torus. Now it's one of the most stable and constantly changing energetic signals that our human physiology produces. You can measure the heart Taurus, you can see what it changes, how it changes shape, when someone's happy, angry, depressed, etc. You know, there's even been interesting studies that show like the energetic field or the, the energy around a plant changes when that person who owns the plant is in another continent and they have an accident or a trauma. And that's some of the research for Rupert Shellcake. So basically there is an exchange in our internal environment and our external environment that our system registers on an everyday basis. One of the, I think brilliant things that Dr. Epstein has started to map out in the last couple of decades is how to use common vernacular. How do you, how can you hack this body field relationship and get it to learn how to use it in a way that helps you master your life, learn, teaches you how to master and become more consciously proactive to live an experienceable life that you really truly want. And so the, the energy has always been there. It's just that I think in our culture, science wise, that people are now looking at that as a very real avenue of exploration to help improve the human experience.

Yeah, it's really interesting when you're sharing that. It makes me think about there's kind of this separation between the fields of study, right? Chemistry, physics, medicine, and breakthroughs in one area don't necessarily automatically lead to that information being integrated into the other field of study. For example, when it comes to physics, there's been research for A really long time around knowledge of and research of the zero point field, this sort of ever present energetic field that exists in everything. And you've talked to any physicists are like, oh yeah, yeah, that's, that's the thing. We have formulas for it. And yet that doesn't necessarily penetrate into medicine or the sort of standard perception that we might have, the cultural perception around something like this. And yet the fascinating thing about that zero point field is that it's, it's teeming with energy. It is like in, you know, these crazy numbers, you know, the physicists will say like within a cubic centimeter of nothingness, of empty space in the room that you're in, there is, you know, enough energy in the zero point field to like blow up the earth or boil all the oceans in the earth or something like that. So there is so much energy everywhere around us. And that's been a big shift for me in working with you is, you know, because you, when I'm there, as you're, as you're. It sounds like you're, you're impacting my nervous system through the touch, but also through things that you'll say that are usually very short kind of guiding phrases. And part of it is like kind of getting me out of this sort of more collapsed state of kind of inward focus and sort of binding into my body and like, okay, I'm going to get in there and fix this problem in my head or kind of tighten my body. And you seem to be continually guiding me to be more out in the field around me with my awareness and with my focus and with my energy. And can you share a bit more about that process? Do you do that with everyone? Is that good for everyone or some people? I know there's this distinction between internal and external. So I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about how we can tap into this field.

Yeah, absolutely. So again, the idea of people being more internal versus external in terms of the way that they move through the world is. It's not new. It's been around for a long time. Everybody can think of people in their lives, at work or in their family who. Some people are just really private. They keep their cars a little closer to their chest. Other people are just very outgoing, they're very gregarious. They seek out interactions with others, whereas other people are like, hey, if I, you know, if I'm left to my own devices, man, when I'm done doing what I have to do, I just want to go home, you know, grab a book, whatever. It is, I don't really want to have another person around. So there are certain kind of. If you think about, I like, I like using the computer analogy, you know, because we all have a hardware, right? We have a brain, we have a spinal cord, we have nerves. And then we also have software. And our software is kind of unique to us. And the more you get to become more friendly, user friendly really to your own software, you can actually start to discover that maybe there's ways that it's not hasn't been working the best that it could be, or there's ways that you've learned to maybe switch things up so that the way the software systems functioning isn't as good as it could be. And by becoming more aware of where your orientation lies, say when you feel stressed. So I'll give you an example. For me, when I feel stressed about something, I go internally. I feel a lot of pressure in my body. I feel like my neck tightens up, I feel like my chest cavity gets really tight, it's really hard to breathe. And one of the things that I'll also hear is I have a lot of internal self critical thoughts like telling me how bad I suck or you know, how I could have done something better. And so the reason I'm bringing that up is my natural orientation is more external. Which just means that when I am in, what I call like to think of is like when I'm in my essence, when I'm in my flow, when I'm in my zone, I'm feeling good, I'm in flow with life, things are happening, there's not a lot of effort. It's just like, you know, you're in the zone and I'm external, I'm focused on what's going on. I love connecting with people and I'm usually in motion doing something right. I'm moving my body in some degree. And so when I'm aware of when I'm stressed, if I can identify like, oh look, my focus is in my body, all I'm doing is feeling all this constriction. I'm aware of these negative thoughts in my head. One of the things I've learned to do is a, first of all become aware of when things are stressful. Where am I at? Where's my orientation? And then start to shift it or at least become better at shifting it. So for me that means putting my attention outside my body. I might look out the window or I might imagine myself getting bigger, like expanding my awareness of energy to be beyond my physical body. Taking breath that could even breathe through my body. It may sound a little weird to some people. And then I put my focus on positive thoughts. Like, you know, man, I am awesome. I've got this. Or I really shift. And I don't know if you can even hear it in my voice, but when I was talking about being internal, but my. My. My words were really quiet. Not as energized. As I start shifting my focus, I can feel in my body how the energy is starting to move through me very differently. Does that. Does that help a little bit or does that make sense?

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that's definitely informed the work I do with people because I, you know, there's a sort of a big part of confidence coaching. Helping people become more confident is to help them take actions in the world that they're scared to take. I believe that confidence is a byproduct of that action we take. And yet the sort of the art and science of it is like, well, how do you help people get to a place where they can take those actions? And, you know, one of those components is that, well, we have a lot of fear of certain outcomes or. Or past pain of we tried something and people didn't like us or something. And what I found is that pain. People have these tight areas in their body and they're squeezing around their chest, and there's this sort of emotional reservoir. And so one of the things I would teach people to do is to go into that emotion and to be with it in a state of acceptance and let go of needing to fix it. It's almost like tapping into that innate intelligence you were talking about is like, when we can bring awareness to something, it can start to unravel it. But one thing I've done since my work with you is as I'm guiding people towards that, I'm having them be with the feeling, but not just to collapse inward into it, but kind of be with the feeling and also letting your awareness fill the room that you're in and holding that and being with that feeling. And one thing I was curious about is that's what's extremely effective for me. And I think I fall into that external category for someone who is more internal. First of all, man, so many questions about this, because a lot of people listening, and I definitely identify with this. It's like, well, I do feel more internal in a lot of ways. Like, you know, I like to connect with people, but I also love my alone time. And some people would go crazy if a day or Two alone. And I'm like, oh man, you know, being alone sounds great in a lot of ways. And yet it turns out that external nature is much more my essence. And that doesn't mean I don't like my alone time anymore. It just means there's a way of being with my body and with my awareness. And so I'm wondering about someone who truly is more internal. How do you know that that's not just like social anxiety? So there's like a fear and avoidance of other people. And then so A, how do you know it's really internal? Someone's orientation is more that way. And then B, if it is what's optimal for them, do they not expand their awareness into the field around them as much? Or it's just so different from my way of being that I'm really curious about that.

Yeah, those are awesome questions. So you're absolutely right. I mean, for somebody who is truly more of an internal way of referencing that energizes them then going inside and actually going inside. But they'll find that their stress comes from thinking into the future, you know, being. Having to be thrust out. Maybe they're doing stuff that they're way out and they're kind of having to work with people all the time and. Or it's just their, their. The part that creates pain for them or suffering for them is moving them opposite to their natural orientation. Does that make sense? Whether they're internal or external and the.

Working with people is causing them stress or something like that, how do we know that they're internal versus because, okay, here's an example from my world. There'll be a lot of people and so people might. I wonder if people are hearing this and saying, oh, is internal like introverted and external like extroverted? Because there's a lot of people that I've worked with who, you know, they might consider themselves more introverted. And yet their level of kind of privacy and distance from others turns out it's pretty heavily influenced by a lot of fear, mistrust and low self esteem and social anxiety. And so as we work together and they become more free, more confident and you know, they become more expressive with their friends. It turns out they have this deep hunger for authenticity and expressiveness. And then it comes out like crazy. And they still, you know, might like their alone time and stuff. So I guess, yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

So, you know, you're kind of covering a couple different things. One is for many of us, right? I myself included We've learned due to. Due to some type of a trauma. And that doesn't mean, you know, that it has to be an extreme trauma. It could just be that the way that you grew up or in some area, the way you were rewarded or not rewarded or given praise or not given, that you just learned a certain way to kind of create a coping mechanism to get through a time. And that time is not now. That time was sometime in the past. And so the only thing that's really still there, though, is the way that you negotiate or try to manage your environment to create safety. Right. And I think we can both agree that safety is essential in certain situations. But if you're looking to move to the next level of order, safety isn't necessarily the boat that's going to get you across that sea. You have to be willing to take risks. But there certainly has to be enough safety there for the person to then say, you know what? I'm getting on that boat and I'm going on that voyage, and I don't know exactly how long or when it's going to, but I'm up for it and I'm going to do it. So sometimes we find out as we explore that there's a way that we've learned that we may call normal right now, because that's all we know. But usually it's associated with some degree of pain. And so through the process that you're describing, it sounds like you're helping people uncover and work through and dissolve some of those bound energy patterns that then allows them to really, truly embrace and really experience, maybe even for the first time, what it really feels like to be or rediscover what it feels like to really, truly be in their essence, which may in fact be a little more in one direction or in the other direction than they have been. And that's usually the hallmark of kind of knowing a little bit more about whether something's authentically internal or authentically external.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's very helpful. I love that you just said something in there that I think is worth highlighting too, which was bound energy. And that's something that I've heard you reference in our sessions. And I'm going to put out what I think that means, and then you can correct or add to that. But when I think of bound energy, I think of kind of that, like bringing something into the physical and making it more solid so I could bind energy in my body. In fact, that was a total mind blasting when you called pain in my body bound energy. It's such a different way to think about it than like just sort of some default way of like danger, death, damage. That's probably associations I had to pain and just think, oh, it's bound energy. That means I think like, oh, I'm taking like my physical body and I'm like squeezing it and making it more dense and tight and then there's pain. And then I also think of bound energy as, you know, not just in my own body, but you know, energy can be bound into this microphone stand that I'm standing in front of in this building, right? It's like, like energy is bound into trees and objects and wood that constructs. Then also energy could be bound into my career, my structures of my life. Those are. When I think of bound energy, that's kind of what I imagine. And then unbound would be like energy that is open and free flowing and sort of energy in the field or something that hasn't become solid or manifest physically yet. Is that, am I on the right track or how do, how do you see it?

Well, that's pretty juicy. So I think everybody can resonate with that. So essentially just a quick trip back, not for too long, but remember high school physics and basically you learn that there's two types of energy in the universe, right? There's potential and there's kinetic, right? And so potential is bound energy. It's bound up in the system. But this is the beauty. We forget about this with bound energy. Whether it's pain in our shoulder, whether it's hypertension, right? High blood pressure, there's tension in the arterioles of our body, whether it's mental tension, whether it's tension in our relationships, whether it's tension in our finances or energy bound up energy that hasn't yet been liberated. Energy that's bound has the potential to do work and it actually, this is cool because it's actually a fuel source, right? If you think about it, when it can be tapped into, then it can be liberated and used and turned from bound and free energy is energy in motion and that's the kinetic, right? It's moving and once it's moving, it has the ability to produce, it has the ability to create. But the bound energy is the energy that's kind of there waiting to be tapped into so that it can become. And that's just the way that energy works in the universe. It gets bound, it gets free. It's really not one better than the other. It's just a lot of times our judgments, our experiences of the way that energy binds is not something that we really enjoy. And we live in a culture that really has, you know, pooh, pooh, bound energy. Rather than seeing it for what it truly is, we try to make bound energy go away. We don't want to focus on bound energy. Bound energy is bad. Well, it doesn't feel good to have bound energy. Absolutely. But here's the thing. If you don't, if you aren't able to get the message that it has for you by killing the messenger before you even get the message, you'll never have the ability to learn how to harness that energy. And that's what changes. That's what changes the way an organ functions. That's what changes the way we see things and respond differently at work or with our relationships or to our health. Being able to interface with energy in a way that allows us to feel more successful, more confident, more capable at turning bound energy to free energy.

And so in that case, the bound energy would be like physical pain in the body. And you're saying that there's a message in that pain you found?

Absolutely, yeah. So that's one great example. Another great example would be bound energy in my finances, for example. Let's say, you know, I've been wanting to launch this business, or I'm at this level of my career and I'm just not getting advanced. There's like, what's. Where is it being held back? So, yes, you could find it in your body. You could really find bound energy anywhere you choose to look if you look through it from that lens.

Wow. And so is the binding of energy. You mentioned finance. Would the binding of energy be like trying to create. So something like a business or money in your bank account, like that is the bound version of that?

Yeah. Or let's. Absolutely. That would be 100%. Or let's just say a relationship that's not doing great or it's okay, but it's not like the best, most energized relationship, whether it's with your son or your mom or your sweetheart or whatever it is, energy that's being held back or energy that's not being fully expressed. Energy. When it's being. When it's free, it moves. And when energy is moving, it has the capacity to create. But learning how to take bound energy and turn it into free, that's alchemy. That's where magic is.

And so if the energy becomes more unbound in a relationship, then is the idea that it feels better and there's more expression and more feelings, positive feelings. Experienced.

Yeah. And so here's the great thing, and I'm glad you brought that up. So there's more available energy, which means there's more energy to tap in, to utilize, to create. Right. Rather than down energy. And so here's. And so here's the thing is that everybody's comfort level, everybody's relationship to bound and unbound is different. It's not to say that unbound is all good and unbound is bad. It's just that there's learning how to interface with them so that, you know, learning how to work with them. So let's say a sudden phone call comes in and you get a call that says, hey, by the way, you know, oh, this is your tax accountant calling. You owe another 25. I'm sorry, I made a mistake. You owe extra 20,000 on back taxes for last year. So you could, which many of us probably would go, oh my gosh, this is horrible, and freak out. Or you could look at it and I'm saying not to feel emotions. It's normal to feel whatever you feel. But at some point, fairly quickly, you could turn to shift into a more resourceful state and utilize that information as a way to create and open up to maybe not just 20,000, but who knows, 200,000.

So you're saying, like, oh, that bound. There's some binding there of 25,000 that I'm now going to lose is how we might think about it, right? And I lose this extra money. But you're saying that there's a way to relate to that as unbound. Okay, this bound energy is going away and unbinding, so more flow can come in.

That's right. What if the bound energy was springboard, that if you bounce on it in just the right way, you could learn how to utilize it as bound energy to propel you into a new direction. So it's actually a fuel source. Same thing could be said with your shoulder or your back or your. Or your knee. You know, we're so quick to look at what's happening and label the experience as something we don't like. If we do that repeatedly, we develop a mode or a way of either anesthetizing ourselves or avoiding that type of experience so we don't ever have to go there again. Rather than investigating, experiencing, working with the energy, learning how to soften around it, learning how to extract its wisdom so that we can utilize it to move us in new directions. And, you know, regardless of where your healing lies, whether it's in your body, in your relationship, at work, your family doesn't matter. The same principles apply.

Yeah. And that probably opens up a whole nother set of questions, which I. We're almost out of time, so I'm not going to totally unpack that, but I do want to just ask one question which listeners might have is like, wait a minute. Okay, so how you said if you springboard it off in the right way, you know, because there's. I mean, you know, the typical thing is, oh, loss sucks. You know, all this relationship isn't going well, or this thing. I didn't like that, and all my pain sucks, you know, and you're saying, wait, actually, there's a way to, you know, release that bound energy, or as it's unbinding, to springboard, and kind of bring more of that available energy into the system. How do we do that? What's the most optimal way to springboard?

Well, so, okay, that's an awesome question, and you're right. It is. It's like opening up a whole. Because there's no, like, here's the magic pill. Here's the.

Yeah, exactly. In 30 seconds or less. What's the secret?

Exactly. But here's the key, you know, here's the key. At least it gets us in the doorway of being able to help move the system more in. In that direction. So to use this as an analogy, right? So if you think about, you know, if you've ever put oil on a cold pan, like on your. On your stove, right. And you put olive oil in, you're getting ready, you turn it on, and then you're looking at it and nothing's happening, Right. You're like, all right, this is going to be a while, especially on a cold winter morning. And then at a certain point, right, the burner's been on for a little bit. All of a sudden, what happens to the oil in the pan as the pan starts to heat up?

I guess it would bubble at first, start to heat.

Yeah. And then it might start to spread. Right. It goes from being kind of more of a solid mass to more of a liquid. It might spread to the edges. And so what has to happen in order for it to change forms.

More energy from the heat is introduced into it.

Exactly. So this is the key. Whether it's oil going from more solid to more fluid, whether it's some heat being applied to ice turning into liquid to vapor. Our ability to see and connect with wherever we're feeling bound, whether it's in our body or in our finances or in our relationship, is to learn what we do have the capacity to do is to use our awareness right to whatever degree that we have today and to be able to find a way that over time feels more authentic and more reliable of bringing our attention. And something could be as simple as focusing on your breath. Now for internals, if you think about the area of stress or bound energy in your life, I try to get people to localize it in their body to see if they can get a body centered relationship to the stressor or whatever's going on and then just start to move your attention and move your breath towards that area. And as you do that a little bit at a time, as much as you're able, very typically, internals, as they move their breath internally, will start to notice that the hardening, the tension, the fear, the protection starts to dissolve a little bit. And that's again, this is a bigger topic we can certainly talk about another time, but this just is a way to start to move our attention to help us soften and open the bound energy so it could become more free. Now an external, I would invite that person to shift their body position and open it up a little bit. I would invite them to start to focus on breathing outside through. Imagine they could breathe through their skin into the space around their body. And for some people who are a little bit, you know, kind of new at this or just a little bit external, they might feel like they could breathe an inch or two inches outside their body. Other people might feel like, you know what, I can breathe through the roof of my house. I can breathe all the way to the top of the mountain. You know, them looking out outside my window. And wherever you're at in that spectrum, learning how to breathe towards a little more of what you perceive your natural orientation to be is going to start to be a, like a dissolving agent that helps you melt the tension, melt the bound energy and starts to have you learn how to become able to engage with them in a more positive and a more proactive and a more authentic way.

Yeah.

Wow.

There's so many, so much in there that we could unpack and perhaps if you're up for at some point, we'll get you back for a part two and we will just springboard off of right where we are because I think we covered so many of the foundation and now there's so much in there around introducing energy into the system. How I know there's concepts like energy, poor, neutral and rich, that's a whole other topic. So I want to respect your time and we will perhaps circle back to that. And one thing I will say though is people listening if they're interested in this, you're not the you know, this is a methodology that I know is worldwide. And so if someone's curious about network spinal network care, how might they go about finding see if there's someone in their local area that can do this kind of work. And any tips on finding and selecting a network doctor?

I would say so the kind of the main website would be the best place to look, which is epienergetics.com and they've got a another research site that can talk a lot more about some of the sciencey stuff of all this called epi energetics.org and I believe they do have on that website an ability to locate a practitioner near you. So I believe they do have a link or a drop down menu where you can find locate a practitioner, pop in your zip code or your city and they will show you the closest person to you that you could contact and reach out.

That's fantastic. And in another episode I'll be covering my journey and experience with network care in much more depth. And if that hearing that one as well as this appeals to you, obviously I am a fan and recommend exploring that because I think there is so much healing. And then and one last thing I'll say is just like healing being defined as beyond the absence of pain and truly like what is an extraordinary life. So I obviously want that for everyone listening. And Ian, thank you so much for sharing so clearly and with analogies and examples in a way that's so approachable, how we can really optimize our lives.

Oh my absolute pleasure. Aziz. This has been a lot of fun and thanks so much for inviting me to be here today.

That brings us to the end of our episode but not the end of this conversation. Oh yes, we're going to unpack more unbound energy, rich, transforming, unlimited energy available. All kinds of good stuff that we're going to tap into at that next level in the next interview. So stay tuned for that and let's look at your action step for today. Time for action, action, action. I'd say for your action step I'd look at where you have pain and I love how we don't separate physical pain from pain in your finances or pain in a relationship. But where is there pain for you right now? Is it physical pain? Start with that, see if there's that there. But then also emotional pain, relationship, finance work, something just where is there pain right now? I invite you to consider holding pain as bound energy that has a message for you. And if that were the case, what is the message? Now you don't come up with this in like one second. I mean, you might get an intuitive guess or sense or something, but this isn't like I gotta sit down and figure out this math problem with some charts and graphs. It's like just be curious, be open. Wonder, huh? I wonder what the message might be. And maybe there's multiple messages, but let me listen, let me become really curious. And what that does is not only is there value in of course, finding that message to unbind and free yourself, but also just the asking is a whole new way of relating to the pain that's not rejecting it and hating it. And my life sucks until this goes away. So so much there hope that serves you and until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep.

Level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social media socialconfidencecenter.com.