I am not trained as a talk therapist, so I address the emotional body using a mind-body therapy called neuroemotional technique (NET). Neuroemotional technique (NET) is like EMDR or emotional freedom technique. It seeks to influence behavior and thought subcortically using reflexes.  It combines the concept of the conditioned response from behavioral psychology, the understanding that certain organs process out certain emotions from five element Chinese medicine, and the treatment is the chiropractic adjustment of the levels of the spine that innervate the involved organs.

The conditioned response from behavioral psychology is based on an erroneous current association of two things that did go together sometime in the past, but do not necessarily go together now. In NET our treatment is to disarticulate those two independent things so we can have a new experience now, instead of being looped into a repeating pattern of behavior or thought that are a defense or coping mechanism from the past.

Five element Chinese medicine teaches emotions should come into us and go out of us. Each organ is responsible for helping to digest and excrete emotions. So for instance, the lungs help metabolize grief, the liver metabolizes anger, the colon metabolizes stubbornness, and the kidneys metabolize fear. If an emotion gets stuck in the body, that is not healthy for the body. Using muscle testing NET identifies where an emotion is stuck, which emotion is stuck, the first time the emotion got stuck, and what the event or experience was associated with that initial trigger.

The treatment to release the stuck emotion and invite reprogramming of the nervous system around that original event involves touching the emotional reflex point on the forehead and the reflex point for the involved organ while the levels of the spine that innervate that organ are tapped or adjusted and a restorative breath pattern is practiced.

In NET our idea is that there is no bad emotion. All emotions are totally fine. But, an emotion should come in and go out. We should not have any go-to emotions or steady state emotions.

With NET we want to help move people from a place of survival to a place of thriving. To do this, we must embrace flexibility.

In a survival state, people believe control keeps them safe. But the fact of the matter is that we are not in control, therefore control cannot keep us safe.

To thrive, we must be flexible because we cannot control what happens to us, we can only determine how we respond.