I have been a Chiropractor for 28 years and I have missed the big picture most of that time. I had it for a couple years back in 1990 and 91 but lost it somehow. I have been living and working under the false perspective that correcting problems will produce health. Never mind that my head was filled with wellness philosophy, my day-to-day actions were about balancing the unbalanced and correcting whatever was not working. Health and wellness is about a lot more than just that. Health is about zest and gusto for living. Health values feeling good, not just avoiding pain. Health wants to engage the challenges of life and build something better.I see now that I have been running a pain-centered practice for 26 of my 28 years. My motto has been “seek just enough care to decrease your pain to acceptable levels.” I have been studying what creates health forever, but only recommending the least care necessary to get by. We need to do more than just get by. Somewhere I missed that since life is about joyfully engaging and playing with possibilities, that it was my job to support that larger process in my patients. I pursue it in my own life, but have not been promoting it in my practice. I wish to change that.
In retrospect I see that my desire to create this newsletter was my heart pulling me forward to make this shift…but it needs to go further…I need to go further. I am not sure just what that should look like, so I will be trying different things to bring about this shift. One big piece I am engaging in my own life is to upgrade my own health. Even though my body is not showing significant signs of degeneration, I know enough now to know the many silent processes going on in my body that will soon limit my capacity for enjoying life if I don’t turn them around now. Proactive preventative care is my personal goal right now. I will be suggesting a lot more of that to you in issues to come and in the office. Too many of these silent processes can not be reversed once they start showing symptoms. The Health Challenges start to address some of these generally, but we have the tools to get a lot more specific.
Even more importantly is developing the support systems for helping people to reach for their joy in life. I firmly believe that our body is a reflection of our spirit. When we are joyful our body functions better. Stress is out of hand in this culture. We must step beyond the lifestyle of stress and engage life from a healthier and firmer footing. Life is not going to slow down for us, so we will have to make the choices necessary to improve our quality of life. We have to dig much deeper to find where our happiness really comes from choose to engage that. It is not enough to just try to survive. We need quality of life.
Most of our energy is not spent on survival anyway. That is a lie we have created to hide the fact that most of our energy really goes toward pursuing acquisition and control of our environment in the false belief that if we could make our outside world be the way we want, then we would be happy. That is not how it works. The most stressed out and unhappy man in the kingdom is the king. Life is slippery, and the more you try to control it the more miserable your life becomes.
So what is the alternative? I say time for us to get back to basics. What really fills our hearts. What inspires us, motivates us, draws us forward? Am I willing to do whatever it takes to improve my life experience, or am I just going to watch the evening news…again. Depth and richness of life surround us. All that we need to improve our life is within our grasp now. It means approaching life from a different perspective, trying some new things, creating change a little bit at a time. I am talking about change in our bodies, our minds, our hearts, and our lives. I am talking about changing what is important to us…what we pay attention to in our lives.
Our ability to control our attention is the most powerful tool we posses.
This may sound like a tall order, but so what. We don’t get points for staying small. We are here to unfold and expand our potentials, not to get comfortable. What kind of epitaph is comfortable…here lies John Smith – he was comfortable. We are here to contribute our uniqueness to the expansion and expression of life…to share our light, not hide it.
I will be encouraging each of you to engage different aspects of your physical, psychological, and spiritual health as this path unfolds before me. I welcome your participation.