CHECKING IN
TO LIFE By Emmaly Wiederholt
When you wake up in the morning, what’s the first thing you do? For many of us, it’s grumble quickly to work on time. But what if the first thing you did was take a moment to check in with your body: Am I hurting anywhere? Do I feel constricted? How’s my breathing? What’s my posture? Am I stressed?
D
r. Judy Scher believes the simple practice of checking in to one’s body can amount to checking in to life. Amidst our culture that often prioritizes quick fixes and rote routines, Scher and like-minded healthcare practitioners are emphasizing the inherent wisdom of the body, and how tapping into that wisdom can lead to the highest level of sustainable wellbeing. Scher is the founder of the locally based Scher Center for Wellbeing, as well as a chiropractor, international instructor, member of the board of directors for the Association for Reorganizational Healing Practice (ARHP), and member of the nonprofit Voice for H.O.P.E. (Healers of Planet Earth). With a background in several healing and movement modalities—including chiropractic, massage, yoga, dance, physical comedy and pantomime—she came to study under internationally acclaimed healer Donny Epstein, who has been at the forefront of the global wellness movement for the past three decades. “How can we learn to live in a more empowered way through our bodies? How can we learn to listen to the wisdom that our bodies have to offer on a moment-to-moment basis?” Scher poses. “These are not questions our culture typically promotes asking, but these questions are imperative to creating vitality, presence and connection with life.” In order to start a connection with your body, simply check in with yourself: Is my energy strong, or do I feel tired, frustrated or like I can’t get things done? Each of us has a set of experiences, emotions and thoughts we use to guide us through life, and those sets can either physically drain us or give us energy. “People end up living outside of themselves instead of taking responsibility for the information their body is giving them,” Scher explains. “Healing and growth aren’t sustainable for a lot of people,” she continues. “They have little blips of growth or bliss, and then they crash. They don’t have a sustainable culture of wellbeing; it’s an up and down roller coaster. They feel that’s just how life is, but it doesn’t have to be. Our culture prioritizes defaulting to a low energy state and repeating the same habits over and over again. We are unaware that what we do is either checking us in or checking us out.”
Say you give ‘checking in’ a try, and you don’t check out so well? How do you get from where you are to where you want to be? Conventional Western medicine gives you a limited set of options, and most of them treat the problem from the outside in. However, there are many other modalities—from acupuncture and chiropractic to massage and meditation— that harness the body’s power to heal and transform. Unfortunately for most of us, complementary treatments aren’t covered under most health insurance plans. Which is where Voice for H.O.P.E comes in. A national nonprofit, Voice for H.O.P.E. (Healers of Planet Earth) seeks to inform legislators that constituents want to have options when it comes to alternative medicine. “When people have more options and can exercise choice, it actually costs the government less, allows people to feel more empowered, and helps people get well faster,” Scher says. “These are documented statistics, not hypothetical ideas. The way the system currently works is the opposite; people have fewer choices, don’t know their options, and the options they do have are expensive and thus must go through insurance.” Healing professionals like Scher are starting to come together in numbers and let elected officials know the importance of other healing modalities.
But it starts with you, me, and our bodies. It starts with acknowledging what our bodies are telling us. It starts with understanding our bodies have innate power that we can check in to and harness for more energy. It starts with seeking treatments that honor the body instead of punish it. And it starts with demanding access to options from our culture and society at large. “If you want to change and grow, you need to bring energy into the whole system. We call that being energy-rich,” Scher describes. “It’s the same thing whether it is with the body or with the body politic. If we want to impact change, we must take the same concepts of reorganizational healing and apply them to relationships in the corporate and government realms.” And it all begins with the simple process of checking in—to the mind, body and world in which we live.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT SCHERCENTER.COM OR VOICEFORHOPE.ORG.
Dr. Judy Scher