Happy Wednesday to You!
I hope all is well in your universe…☺
I had a very busy day yesterday, but a productive one. That always makes me feel good.
I needed a break from heavy lifting so I did an active breathing meditation on my Concept II rowing machine. That was lovely. For 20 minutes, I focused only on the feeling of the breath passing in and out of my nose.
As my body began to be more and more oxygenated, I enjoyed the sensation of the paramagnetic charges running through my arterial system. I could feel the life-force entering all my working muscles.
Inside of my inner-mind, I could see light of a beautiful rose color bursting from the red blood cells on their way to the little workers that were hungry for more oxygen. Once there, the color changed from rose red to green and yellow.
Along the way, I had beautiful, peaceful moments of timelessness where I didn’t hear the sound of the rowing machine, know I was rowing, or even that I was Paul Chek.
I enjoyed the deep peace of deep dreamless sleep and left my session feeling loved by me and took that love into my work and relationships for the rest of the day.
It doesn’t take a lot to create inner-harmony. Just a willingness to feel the peacefulness underlying the dance. I can’t imagine how I would get as much done as I do if I didn’t have the discipline to care for myself each day.
Such small additions to our personal lives can be magic when it comes to handling stress and keeping life’s many interesting events in perspective.
I apologize to anyone who tried to make the South Pacific Webinar yesterday, the service we used was experiencing technical difficulties, and no one, including myself could get online (very frustrating and very stressful). We are working on another date in a couple of weeks and will announce that shortly.
Monday evening, I shared the airways with Sean Croxton and Joel Salatin, one of the worlds most successful, wise, organic farming experts (polyface farms). It was a true joy.
Joel’s philosophy of farming and farm management is a beautiful parallel with what I teach my students via the CHEK Institute.
Sean Croxton is a CHEK HLC practitioner that has done, and is doing A LOT to help the world heal and I’m grateful I can participate in his radio shows and summits.
Sean sent me this message today by email:
“Just wanted to thank you for the awesome show the other night. My listeners and I agree that it was one the BEST shows ever!”
Feel free to watch this clip and enjoy a little dialogue between Joel and I. There’s one of my favorite little (Meta and physical) jokes on this clip and I hope you enjoy pondering its deeper meanings.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meROLqFJbd0
CHEK TOTEM Pt. 4: VISION
We are now at the third symbol of the CHEK Totem Pole – Vision.
Just as a reminder, the CHEK Totem Pole (CTP) is based on survival reflexes that developed over the entire period of human evolution.
The approach I teach to assessing the human body is based on what I uncovered from my own clinical research, and my studies of anatomy, physiology, psychology and related sciences.
To survive, we must:
1. Breathe
2. Have water, food and teeth that can effectively masticate it to allow digestion and elimination.
Next, we must have vision.
Now, some of you may be saying to yourself, “how can you hunt and gather food without vision?” That would be an intelligent question.
The CTP is based on survival reflexes and essential (core) needs. The CTP is specifically formulated to describe how the human body distributes resources and importance to biological survival.
If you had no vision, your body could still survive somewhat effectively provided you were able to breath, drink water, and eat food.
Therefore, I have placed vision below those necessities, for in most every culture there have been blind people that were able to get by with the help of other people and animals (seeing eye dogs for example).
Clinically, it can easily be seen and demonstrated that as a person’s vitality diminishes (largely due to ineffective breathing and poor food and water choices or availability), vision begins to diminish.
Francis Marion Pottenger, MD, author of the book titled, Symptoms Of Visceral Disease and Pottenger’s Cats (among others treating diseased patients) noticed that when treating people with diseases such as tuberculosis that reading or using the eyes to focus on anything specific (such as watching TV in today’s world) resulted in decreased digestive function.
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The optic system consumes a large amount of available nervous system energy when engaged.
If a person’s vitality drops to the point that there is a shortage of energy to functionally operate any of our key biological systems, vision will begin to diminish so that energy can be distributed to more essential survival systems, such as the respiratory, thermo-regulatory, and immune systems.
That said, without vision working optimally, we are stuck in a co-dependent relationship with our family or tribe, which would have put an energy drain on our supporters, ultimately diminishing the whole families or tribes chances of survival.
WE NEED VISION FOR TWO GROSS REASONS AND ONE SUBTLE REASON
Focal Vision: Focal vision is the visual quality that offers us what is often referred to as character recognition.
In the photo above, you see girls playing soccer. The ability to recognize the jerseys of your own team mates, and the opponents, as well as the soccer ball all fall under the classification of focal vision.
Without focal vision, we would not know what to hunt, nor could we effectively recognize what may be hunting us!
From my clinical experiences treating people with all sorts of diseases and injuries while also checking their focal vision through vision testing, I can assure you that as our vitality diminishes, so to does focal vision typically diminish.
We will return to this topic again shortly.
Ambient/Proprioceptive Vision: They eyes are MAJOR players in proprioception.
Proprioception is a word that means sensing where you are at in space; sensing your own body parts relative to the rest of yourself.
Ambient vision affords proprioceptive sense of what is moving outside your body relative to your body’s position in space.
This is easy to experience. If you try standing on one leg while looking up at the sky or ceiling with your eyes closed, you can probably do it for a short period of time without falling over; the better your balance the longer you can do this exercise.
If you stand on one leg, look up at the sky or ceiling and close your eyes, you will loose the proprioceptive sense offered by ambient vision and you are very likely to find that your balance becomes challenged immediately upon closing your eyes.
Anytime we have problems with balance, it is essential that we realize that ambient and focal vision are dependent upon several other systems exemplified in the CTP:
A. No breath, no vision!
B. No food and water eventually leads to no vision because there is no living body to see anything any more.
C. Your eye must be functional; its parts must work together as a functional whole.
D. The vestibular system is responsible for coordinating the reflexes that keep your eyes focused on any visual target while your body and head are moving. If the vestibular system malfunctions, visual problems are a common result.
E. The upper cervical spine is intimately linked to both vision, proprioception, and vestibular righting reflex generation.
We will talk more about that when we get to those sections of the CTP.
IN-SIGHT
Our focal and ambient forms of vision are essential in the process of developing insight. Insight is a word that refers to both seeing and feeling what is arising and/or occurring within you.
As you can see by my diagram, your perception of any event or environment is based largely on three factors:
A. Conditioned Beliefs: Our beliefs largely regulate what we see and what we believe. If we have no concept of something, chances are very good we will not see or have beliefs about it.
If we have a faulty belief/concept about something or someone, chances are very good we will not see “what is actually there in reality, but will see only what we’ve been programmed to believe.”
Those of us that practice art therapy are very aware that when several people look at a piece of art, what they see as individuals is very influenced by their prior conditioning.
B. External Environment: What we perceive is dependent upon what is in our external environment for the following reasons:
1. We are psychologically programmed by parents, family, tribe and society or culture as children. These are all influences that we take in from out external environment. Our external environment also influences what we perceive to be safe, or unsafe. We will naturally develop heightened awareness to anything we perceive to be a threat in our external environment.
C. Internal Environment: Your internal environment is largely influenced by:
Your programming influences as discussed above: once a belief is in place, it has very powerful regulatory effects on your internal physiology. If you live in a place where there are lots of poisonous snakes, your family or tribe will have taught you how to be more aware of them so that you can more effectively perceive their presence, increasing your chances of survival.
If you have been programmed with ethnic/racial biases and you end up in a place where the supposed dangerous people are around you, your internal physiology/environment will be excited due to the flow of stress hormones, governed by your internal perception of the outer environment.
The problem is that much of what causes us internal environmental stress and disorder, isn’t true!
This is one of the main thrusts of my PPS Success Mastery training program; to teach you how to feel and perceive reality as it is instead of constantly projecting your programming into, and outside yourself.
2. Diet and lifestyle factors.
In my diagram above, I’ve listed many of the key essential factors that relate to the regulation of your internal environment. How you perceive your outer environment is largely influenced by the relative state of health and balance in your internal environment.
It must be remembered that the brain and nervous system both live in, and are dependent upon your blood for oxygen and nutrient delivery, as well as waste removal.
Any physiological factor (the essentials of which I’ve listed in my diagram) that is out of functional balance (homeostasis) WILL influence your own inner-vision, or insight.
Anything that alters your insight, also alters your perception of your outer environment.
The interesting thing to realize is that your internal environment and your external environment mirror each other at large.
If you are suffering health and vitality challenges and don’t know where to start, or have limited energy, you can either start from the top of the CTP by having your breathing assessed and corrected by a skilled professional such as a Chek Level 3/HLC 3 or Chek Level 4 Practitioner or someone with the necessary skills to guide you.
You can then work down the totem pole to mastication and diet and keep going as your willingness, time, energy, finances and equipment availability allow.
For many, that alone is too complex, draining and/or expensive. If that is the case for you, then there are two other approaches:
1. Outer Environment: Start by reading a book on Feng Shui. I like the teachings of Lillian Too, a world famous Master of Feng Shui.
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You can learn more about her and her teachings at https://www.lillian-too.com/
When we organize our outer home and work environment so that environmental energy flows naturally, we become enlivened by our environment, not drained.
Most are quite surprised by how different they feel when they arrange their home and work environment according to the principles of how energy flows naturally in nature. Significant healings can take place from this change alone!
2. Inner Environment: My book, How To Eat, Move and Be Healthy! is an essential first step to restoring harmony in your internal environment.
Additionally, everyone wanting more peace and harmony in their internal environment would be assisted greatly to study a beautiful little book called “The Journey” by Arnold Patent.
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It will be quite a beautiful experience for you!
By doing the things you can do, and are willing to do to bring balance back into your life, the Universe will respond in kind.
Soon, you will find that the people and opportunities you need to create and live your dreams effectively manifest in your life as though they were waiting for you all along!
Tomorrow I start teaching CHEK Level 4, my most advanced training for student’s who have completed all the prior levels. To get through my comprehensive training program takes minimally 4 years and most take 6 years.
My mother, Meera Censor will be joining us for the first four days. She is a certified Non Violent Communication teacher and I’ve invited her to give this portion of the class. I’m very excited to share her wisdom and skill with my students.
Have a great day!
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
