Is It Just You? Or Is the Whole System Tired?

Emily Horn CMT-P, Kat Harrod L.a.C, Dr. Kirsten West MS DC

Have you ever felt that taking care of yourself would be so much easier if the collective—your community, your culture—also supported your well-being? That your personal health and the health of your surroundings are deeply intertwined?

It’s no wonder so many of us feel overwhelmed. In a world constantly demanding our attention, it’s exhausting to even figure out the next right step. Sometimes we do know what we need. We’re even mindful of what we’re doing. And still—being healthy can feel like a full-time job.

So what does it really take to stay well in a world that often feels toxic?

Dr. Daniel Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine, offers a framework that validates this sense of interconnectedness. He writes:

“Our socially embedded self and our embodied self have overlapping neural circuitry. These findings remind us what the triangle of human experience depicts: The self, as experienced in the 'mind,' is in fact both embodied and relational... The mind emerges from both the bodily and social contexts in which we live.”

In other words, we are not separate. Your well-being is the community’s well-being.

At Mindful Wellness Space, we believe healing is not a solo endeavor. It’s a team sport. That’s why we offer whole-person, integrative care that sees you and the patterns shaping your health.

We’re here to help you reconnect with your body’s wisdom—and to support the web of relationships that sustain you.

Here we specialize in a unique blend of complementary modalities including:

•  Acupuncture 

Our Acupuncturist, Kat Harrod, says that, “from an East Asian/Chinese Medicine perspective, so much of health is about balance. Finding balance between rest and movement, social time and inward/quiet time, work life and home life, responsibilities and fun/recreation, etc. This will look different for different people, and we have to have a certain amount of mindfulness and awareness to find out what this is for each of us. Between the busyness of our lives, and the increased pace at which life and technology seem to be moving, we have to have a fair amount of mindfulness to even begin to find balance in our lives. Taking care of ourselves - body, mind and spirit - is an important step in this process. And with so much noise in our world and in our own lives, finding ways to support our nervous systems and allow them to relax and unwind is a valuable piece of taking care of ourselves and finding balance.”

• Chiropractic

Supporting the nervous system at its core. Anxious? Fear? Anger? These emotions often put our nervous systems in fight or flight mode (sympathetic). Sympathetic dominance is like your body sees a bear and is trying to run from it… except it wont just “shut off”. Chiropractic care helps reset the nervous system and can help flip the switch from sympathetic dominance to “rest and digest” (parasympathetic)

• Applied Kinesiology

Having a hard time figuring out what support you need? Applied Kinesiology, often referred to as “muscle testing” , figures out main stressors, whether it is emotional, chemical, or structural in nature. Need to figure out what foods irritate your system? Dealing with chronic stress and/or illness? Applied Kinesiology helps determine the cause and the remedies all through a layer approach. This alone helps someone feel supported and a part of a healing community, their health is in our hands :) See https://www.mindfulwellness.space/applied-kinesiology for more information 

• Meditation 

When one practices mindfulness meditation there is a strengthening of our nervous system’s capacity to be with our felt experience moment to moment. This helps re-wire the default mode network to be able to move in and out of rest mode without feeling threatened. We can look into what causes us to be able to rest and what keeps us from relaxing. Our meditation teacher, Emily Horn writes more about it here. “Why Can’t I Relax?”

• And more… 

 Functional Medicine, Hormone Testing, Blood Work Analysis, Cold Laser Therapy 

We focus on the health of the whole forest—because when the network is thriving, each tree can flourish as its full, vital self.

Let’s explore what’s possible for your body, mind, and spirit—together.