The chiropractic care adjustment is far from a treatment. What we are getting when we receive an adjustment is improved nervous system function. When allopathic doctors employ a medical “treatment” they look for a specific functional or chemical change to the human body. Chiropractors are not looking for something so specific because they know they are involved with something vast and beyond the issue of illness management. The nervous system, which connects a person to the environment through his or her perceptual faculties, is also the basis of a person’s mind. In working with such a vast system, the word ‘treatment’ is not only limiting, it’s basically incorrect. When working with the nervous system, chiropractors are not working with mere machinery, they’re working with an agency or life force. And this force is not lying sick in bed waiting to be ‘treated,’ because it really can’t be treated. It can only be set free.
I used to think that the chiropractic profession just wanted to separate themselves from the allopathic model of healthcare, and for this reason, decided to drop the word ‘treatment’ to describe the adjustment. While I have found that chiropractic truly is a unique profession, their ability to stand out is not due to some special terminology. Chiropractors are unique because they work with the animating force of life. They don’t address diseases. They live for well-being and they honor the source of it, which I believe, is the perceptual faculties of the body and the coordinating system called the nervous system.
The chiropractic philosophy really has us question the way things have been done in traditional settings.
When a doctor employs a ‘treatment’ he or she overrides the body’s intelligence in favor of his own; when remediation comes in the form of pain relief or symptom removal, we deem it a sign of success. But this success exists in a dark place of not knowing the effect the treatment had on the whole. Is it possible that an intelligence exists in the body that has a full understanding of the systems at play and can do what needs to be done with marvelous precision and thoroughness? Answering yes to this question is the premise of chiropractic, and the great blessing to humanity is the ability in chiropractic to free up this intelligence in times of illness, and to keep it free in times of health. Once a person experiences the animating and healing force of life active within themselves, it is difficult to let it go from their memory. Chiropractors simply trust in this recurrent experience, and they maintain a strong remembrance of the body’s self-healing potential, never attempting to over-rule it.
There really is an impact on your health once you reconnect to your body’s intelligence. Most medical research is reluctant to explore this topic, giving it the name “placebo” and going no further than this, lest they find something that makes their current treatment model obsolete.
I believe a new understanding of the body’s ability to be well is on our doorstep and it’s going to be based on human perception and the body’s nervous system. The nervous system, as we mentioned, is the basis of our perceptual faculties and it is the seat of the mind. Amazingly, chiropractors have been in humble communication with the nervous system for over a century, and they have grown quite keen in what they can do.
by John Marc Pathways magazine Editor
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