Could you “be External”?
Just making ONE switch could free you ✨
Good morning, beautiful sunshines! Thank you for receiving my weekly message on this gorgeous Monday morning 🌅
This morning’s message is for those of you who I sometimes call the “bright souls” of New Day. You’re the ones who like to go deeper, and who bring so much energy and aliveness to me and New Day ☀️💗
I’ve had a lot of trouble “understanding” what I feel called to share.
But I can’t let my own difficulty in fully understanding, and embracing this concept, continue to derail me from sharing about this with you, because it could really, REALLY help you. Both in your care with me, as well as in life (as is true of most things Network Spinal) ☀️✨💗🌍
The concept/theory/distinction that I want to share with you comes straight from our technique forefather, Dr. Donny Epstein, creator of Network Spinal care 💥
According to a fairly recent theory of Donny’s, all people can be considered either “Internal” 🔍 or “External” 🔭.
Which are you? And why does it matter? Let me explain.
First I’ll back up a step. “Internal” 🔍 or “External” 🔭 refers to the most natural and energized way that you observe, sense, or “see” reality.
Everyone has a part of their nervous system through which they “observe” themselves and their thoughts as part of a larger capital-R Reality.
For example, I can “see” and feel my shoulder by focusing INSIDE my body, and how it occurs for me there. That’s one version of reality 🔍🔍🔍
I can also “see” and feel my shoulder by picturing myself from the OUTSIDE 🔭🔭🔭 (which could be from far above you, in front of you, and more, but I am getting ahead of myself for what I can share in one sitting 😂)
Similarly, says Donny, you can also “see” or access the concept of “fear,” “joy,” “betrayal,” “sadness,” etc as Internal to you, or as External. And it is important that the way you are perceiving, whether Internal or External is the most natural and energetically resourced for you personally.
Because if it’s not energy-rich for you– say if you’re actually “External” but you have tended to focus on your shoulder from the of inside you (and probably also betrayal, fear, etc)– focusing that way will keep you stuck in health and life 🥲
For example, a person who is actually “External” may typically have a habit of focusing Internally when their energy is low, and this energy-poor focus then continues to keep us energy-poor.
With the shoulder example, we might then become obsessed with thinking about fixing our shoulder. And in the process we find that most things we try to do to address the shoulder (stretches, PT, forcing ourselves to change our posture, etc) only seems to make us slightly better or slightly worse. And the efforts tend to feel like A LOT of work 😅😱😭
If this pattern sounds familiar to you– physically or otherwise– which I think it will for many if not most of you, please read on because you might “be External”🔭 (I’ll explain why I keep putting this in quotes eventually as well 😂). 🌍✨
How do you “see yourself”, your body, and it’s parts? And is your habitual way of observing bringing you energy?
Or is it energy-poor (or energy-neutral at best)?
“But,” you might object, “I thought ‘being present IN my body’ was the point, Dr. Katie!”
I totally understand how the concept of “being External” might seem to run counter to everything you thought was important to being healthy in your spine, body, thoughts, and emotions.
Certainly the world of yoga, many body-centered forms of psychotherapy, meditation, and many more teach us that we NEED to focus internally. Even if it means massive amounts of effort and overcoming resistance 😅
Here’s what I want you to consider about an External focus that might help free you up to benefit from using it ✨
YOU aren’t just your body 💥
Thanks to your energy field, which is created by the coherence of the energy available in your nervous system (brain, spine, nerves) (and helped through Network Spinal care), you are actually outside your body in some ways as well.
That’s right! The “cloud” isn’t just for computers, y’all! ✨✨✨
This means that the “observer” part of your nervous system that I referenced above might just be located outside of you 🔭☀️🌍💕
So now you hopefully have a sense that focusing External is at least a potentially legitimate way to go about things. But how do you know if you “are External”? 🤷♀️
Donny talks ALLLLLLLL about this in his 2023 book
“The Seeker’s Code”
According to Donny Epstein’s recent book, “The Seeker’s Code,” there is a criteria that you can use to determine if you “are” “Internal” or “External.”
He has two big chapters of this book that describe what it is to “be Internal”🔍 or External 🔭
OK. This that I am about to write is one of the precise reasons why I have been delaying writing this message to you. Here it comes.
It might be right about now that you Bright Souls reading this message are thinking, “Wait a minute, Donny has a new book? Why haven’t I heard about this? Why don’t I own it yet?? Why hasn’t Dr. Katie blogged about this?!”😮😮😂
Look. I’ve been “doing this”– as in actively learning and practicing this form of care for more than 15 years.
Which is long enough for me to be able to be honest with myself, and honest with you, about the fact that I am not a mini-Donny.
As much as the powers that be might want Network Spinal (oops, I mean NetworkSpinal™, as I was recently called out for not using the correct capitalization and spacing which is sooo important because, um, marketing 😂) to be a company where we practitioners are some kind of franchisees or something, doing and saying everything exactly according to Donny, that effort is not likely to succeed.
The fact that I’m not a mini-Donny, or a mini-anyone for that matter, is actually a GOOD thing. I translate concepts from Donny, as well as other people and places, that make sense to me and resonate as something I can use to help affect change for this New Day community ☀️💖🌍
There’s a reason why you haven’t heard me talk to you about Donny’s new book or reccomend you buy it.
Even though there’s some great stuff in there (the chapters on the Energy states are AWESOME), I’m not on board with the what, how, and why of “being External” or “Internal.”
You’re welcome and encouraged to read Donny’s new book, but please understand that to keep coherence in this New Day practice, I only want to introduce you to things that are consistent with the work I intend to do with you ***** (go to my blog for a huge side-bar written especially to all of you who participated in last December’s Reassessment Palooza)
But before you might be tempted to think that I’m just sitting here bagging on Donny and his book, let me remind you that the premise of this blog is that focusing Externally has been HUGELY beneficial for myself and for those of you who I have encouraged to use it 🔭💥💗💥🌍
I myself have had tremendous, instantaneous breakthroughs using an External focus (including at the last Gate when Donny worked with me!) For me personally, using an External focus is a very important aspect of staying energy-rich. So I want to make sure you have access to this!
If it’s such a helpful way of focusing, does it really matter “why” it works?
I think it does matter, because Donny’s theory is that only some people “are External,” and hence that not everyone will benefit from this. Based on what I see so far, I disagree with this.
The difference, in my experience, comes back to the “being External” versus simply “using” it as a focus ✨🔭💕
First of all, I’m just not convinced that people aren’t energized and benefitting from both Internal or External ways focusing, depending on the situation, depending relationally on the people around them, as well as the different seasons of life they might be in 💥
Having a simplistic, black-and-white concept around “being” External vs Internal (or excuse me, having an Internal or External EpiWay™ (marketing 😂)) might be great for marketing. But is it realistic? And is it even helpful?
When I see an External focus help me, or you, I don’t necessarily think that it’s because it’s some central, unchanging part of you that IS a certain way (and not another way).
Secondly, I think the reason this works is the reason it seems to work for MOST people; it’s likely that using an External focus is a “pattern-interruption.” The sheer novelty of it frees up energy for most people. 💥
Our world and culture, including the culture of healing and personal growth, revolve around an Internal focus. So it makes sense that simply switching it up and giving your nervous system that fresh perspective could benefit a lot of you.
For example, I have a client here at New Day who has been using an External focus during her adjustments lately to great success. She said that she feels instantly “freed from the burden” of focusing in her body when she does this 💥
I have another practice member here who says that she has started using an External focus outside of New Day whenever she feels energy-poor or energy-neutral in trying to “fix” her body or get out of pain, and as soon as she does she instantly feels an improvement 💥💥💥
The third reason I think External focus works for most people, and outside of how Donny thinks it works, is that it encourages us to get out of our small, limited frame of reference and to get into a more spiritual awareness ✨🌍💗
I think it’s highly likely that when we focus Externally– and speaking the language of those who are at all spiritual (NOT religious, don’t freak out!)– this helps us see ourselves as part of the interconnected whole. We may suddenly have access to seeing ourselves perhaps as God/The Universe/Your higher mind sees us, helping free you from the past-based, stress-based, ego-based, limited (and inherently energy-poor), concept of ourselves and our lives.
Maybe it brings us out of our brains, and into our hearts? 💗 It’s a possibility ✨
What I do know is that focusing Externally WORKS and I want you to help you play with this at your upcoming adjustments. This is the case whether or not you care about or can follow my lengthy train of thought above 😂
The upcoming Focused Breath workshop is another place you can go to play with this more in-depth with me 💥💥💥 (We had to move it to Saturday, August 17th register HERE)
And, if you’re still not sure if playing with an External focus is for you, here are some thoughts I have about how you can know that you should try this 🔭💥💗✨🌍
- 🔭 You know your nervous system well enough to know how you best respond to care (your breath, awareness, spontaneous movements, etc), but sometimes you feel like it takes “work” to “get there”
- 🔭 You sometimes feel “lost” during the adjustments I do with you
- 🔭 You sometimes feel that the pace or the tempo of your time of the table is plodding and incremental, rather than instantaneously refreshing and transformative
- 🔭You know yourself to be someone who benefits from new experiences that get you out of your habitual ways and out of your head
If any of these ⬆️⬆️⬆️ can be true for you, External is worth exploring ✨🔭🌍
Thank you so much for your engagement and all your help in shaping my ideas about this, New Day! I look forward to hearing from you, and seeing you this week 💖☀️🌍
***** Note especially for those who participated in last December’s Reassessment Palooza.
You may remember that as part of your Reassessment, I had you fill out an Internal/External questionnaire. This questionnaire was created by me, not by Donny and the powers that be, but I used the criteria in “The Seeker’s Code” to create it:
(⬆️⬆️If you remember taking an online assessment last December where I seemed to be asking somewhat off-the-wall questions, THIS was the Internal/External Quiz ⬆️⬆️)
What ended up happening with the quiz was that the results were basically unusable 😂😂😂
Nearly everyone scored as Internal! Which either invalidates the quiz I created, or the concept as Donny currently would have us understand it.
Here’s why. First, according to everything I’ve seen, the VAST MAJORITY of clients receiving Network Spinal care “are” actually External.
According to Donny’s theories, people who “are External” tend to be a bit more. . . out of the box. A bit more. . . outré? Adventuresome? Aka the exact type of person who is more likely to seek out and instantly like this form of care?
So why weren’t New Day clients, including the ones of you that i KNOW could benefit from using an External focus, scoring that way?
The first problem is that there is nothing to prevent the person taking the quiz from using a habitual, energy-poor (Internal) focus when they were filling in their answers. Maybe I would have needed to have you take the quiz immediately after being adjusted 🤷♀️
The second problem, as I foreshadowed above, is that our society, culture, and even the world of healing and personal growth encourage us to use an Internal reference point.
So even if you “are External,” you might not relate that way unless specifically challenged to try it out.
The third issue, I think, comes back to the “being” Internal or External potentially just being a flawed or underdevloped concept at this time. Which I discuss in greater detail above based on my understanding of the concept versus what I’ve seen in practice.
