The body is absolutely incredible— it has the ability to adapt to whatever is going on around us.

Our nervous system is more than just a physical part of our body. It’s a conduit of consciousness and awareness.

Without it, we wouldn’t be able to feel, respond, react, or express emotions.

Our spine and our posture– the way we are held by our spine– directly impact the way we experience the world.

Our emotions are literally reflected in our facial expressions and spinal posture.

When we feel safe, we walk tall with a spring in our step.

But when we feel threatened, our muscles tighten, our brows will furrow and the spine projects forward.

The body does not recognize the difference between physical, chemical, and emotional stress… it is all recognized as a threat.

In other words, the body doesn’t know the difference between a lion, and financial stress… but it does know how to hold your body when there is a stressor present…

And it has the exact same response as if there was a lion– you stop breathing deeply, your digestion pauses, and you get ready to RUN.

Our postures and emotions are meant to be temporary— when the body holds onto the flight or flight response, or anger, or sadness, it creates stress in your nervous system and spine. It interrupts the flow of energy, leaving you feeling stuck… and your nervous system becomes blocked, unable to deliver the messages it needs to.

When you’ve had the same stressor for 2 weeks, 5 months, or even 10 years, that’s a long time for the body to be holding a fight or flight response– and to breathe differently, pause your digestion, and not focus on healing you because it’s waiting for the lion to show up…

And those defensive postures your body held to protect you begin to creep in more permanently.

Every one of our bodily positions serves a purpose in relation to our stress.

For example, when someone is feeling depressed, their spine becomes hunched forward… hunching forward protects the vital organs in the front of our body, and can even tighten the membrane around the brain bringing it away from the skull in case we suffer a blow.

With the pressures of modern life, challenges we faced as small defenceless children, or even our beliefs about the world can keep us in a state of stress, locking the nervous system into a fight or flight response.

Spinal blockages begin to form where your nerves come out from the nervous system into your tissues from your body holding itself in fight or flight. And when there are spinal blockages from prolonged stress in your spinal gateways, your life force becomes choked in those areas.

Often, we become so tuned out that we no longer recognize it as the effects of stress and trapped emotions.

But to heal, we need to recognize physical pain, illness, and disease as our body’s way of saying, “HELP! I need you to release this stress and restore a state of ease and flow to my system”

Until you remove the stress, your body will continue to hold you in the most perfect and incredible way to help you fight or run from that lion… and that makes healing impossible.

Imagine if you came in for a healing session with a lion following behind you, it’s just not going to work because your body, at that moment, has other priorities: keeping you out of harm’s way.

The first thing you need to do is help your nervous system switch to a parasympathetic response so it can rest, digest, and heal.

As you tune into your body, you can begin to see pain or disease as a way for your body to communicate with you so you can heal, rather than an inconvenience you must endure.

And since you now understand the function of your nervous system, and how spinal blockages interfere with your body’s natural ability to restore itself, you can support your body and allow healing to happen.

There is nothing wrong when the body talks to us with pain or symptoms— there is nothing broken in our bodies. There is a spinal blockage, and we need to find it. We need to understand the message your body is trying to send, and then assist your body to heal.

You can start by understanding which of your Seven Gateways is storing your stress… As you move those blockages out of the spine and change your physiology, your body can start to be free– and healing can happen.

Once you start to do that, you can have a different future where the body can start to feel free– because when the body is free, we can feel freer in our mind and freer in our lives.

— Hi, I’m Dr Carli Axford, founder of The Spinal Flow Technique ™, and The Sacral Flow Technique ™.

I believe the power to heal is inside all of us, and it’s my mission to help you tap into the flow of healing and wellbeing within YOU.