Why do you get adjusted? What made you decide to make chiropractic a part of your lifestyle? Most people have some misconceptions regarding chiropractic. Culture as a whole sees chiropractors as “back doctors”. I hope you understand this to be false. If you don’t allow me to explain. You see we are only tied to the back inasmuch as it is the medium we work with to cause change within the nervous system (ie: brain and spinal column).
Most chiropractic offices are symptomatic in nature, this makes sense in that our culture as a whole is symptom based in health care (more like sick care). These offices function much like a medical office, but with a natural twist. They want to adjust you to cover pain symptoms and that’s it. Now, trust me there is great value in symptoms going away. I want that for everyone. However, that was never the original intention of chiropractic and it is not the intention of our offices. Why is that? Because if we only adjust to help you “feel better” we rob you of what you could truly get from chiropractic: full fledged optimal health and fullness of vitality.
See symptom relief is just that. It goes no deeper, concerns itself with nothing else. If you feel well, then heck you must be well. This is a falsehood. This is garbage. Feeling well is great, but it is not an indication of health. For example, you don’t typically feel heart disease until you have a heart attack. Symptom managements goal is to live well enough to just not hurt. Believe me you are better then that and you deserve more then that. You deserve more than to be pain free, you deserve to have all that your potential has locked in you. You deserve to have that released!
So then what is the real big picture of chiropractic? It is this: in everything in the world there is Universal Intelligence (now to me this is God, but some people call it mother nature, or the universe, etc. This is your call.) . Universal Intelligence is that invisible, unknowable thing that gives our world order and organization. Universal Intelligence when expressed in humans is called Innate Intelligence. Innate is the auto pilot system that runs every function of our body (ie: you are not telling your heart to beat, it happens for you). Innate is present at conception and leaves at death. Innate is housed in you master system: the nervous system. It orchestrates all actions and functions of the body. We adjust the spine because subluxations (misalignment) of the spine can alter negatively how the nerves and spinal column function and thus limit Innate. Meaning that when you have a subluxation, your body no longer functions correctly. Now can getting adjusted make symptoms or problems go away? Sort of. What I mean is that when Innate works there is no limits to the healing you can have! We adjust you to remove subluxations, let Innate do its work and then your body takes care of the rest. Can you see why we don’t adjust you for symptoms? If we did that we would be robbing you of the possibilities within your Innate healing! Innate in you is bigger than a backache; lack of Innate flow in the body affects you physically, emotionally, spiritually. Innate functions A.D.I.O…..above-down, inside-out. Meaning from God/Universal Intelligence (above), to man (down), from within the spine (inside), out to the rest of your body and the world (out). Now you are certainly welcome to get adjusted for you headache to go away, but always remember the bigger truth that in doing so you are missing out on the potential of that adjustment: the unimpeded flow of Innate Intelligence perfectly organizing everything within you.
As I sit and prattle on, it occurs to me the best thing I could do is let someone more eloquent tell you what Innate is. B.J. Palmer was the developer of chiropractic and a philosopher. I had a colleague tell me some of his writings were on Harvard’s philosophy curriculum….and he only wrote about chiropractic. Cool, right? So here is what he said:
“The master maker of the human body did not create you and then run off and leave you masterless. He stayed on the job as Innate, as the Fellow Within, as nerve transmission controlling every function of life, as Spirit from Above-Down, Inside-Out, expressing, creating, exploring, directing you in every field and phase of experience so that your home is truly the world and the world is your home.”
Wishing you life from above-down, inside-out, Dr. Graham, chiropractor