My boyfriend is a chiropractor, and I’ve been under his care for four years. Before I met him, I really didn’t know much about chiropractic. I’d heard people say some nasty and ignorant things. I’d heard other people rave about it. I figured it wasn’t for me because hey, I’m already pretty fit and healthy and I don’t have any pain.
Four years worth of adjustments later, I’ve learned a lot about my body I didn’t know I needed to know.
It’s not about pain.
If our bodies are good at one thing, it’s adapting and compensating when certain things aren’t working right. I wasn’t in pain, but after years of sports (particularly triple jumping), my low back had locked up to protect itself. It wasn’t moving the way it was designed to move, and I had no idea, because that was “normal” for me. So even though I had no pain or discomfort–my brilliant body had compensated–I wasn’t moving at my greatest potential. Thanks to chiropractic, that is changing and I’m regaining that movement.
A lot of things can cause a subluxation.
Birth, first of all–that’s a lot of trauma to the spine right off the bat. So just because you’ve never been in an accident or had an injury doesn’t mean your spine is blockage-free. Your posture, your habit of carrying a bag over the same shoulder or shifting your weight to one leg (guilty), and even toxins in your body can cause a subluxation in your spine.
The body works best when the energy can flow.
The trouble with a subluxation is that it blocks the flow of energy. Your brain can’t communicate with your body if things are closed off. Chiropractic is as much about the nervous system as it is about bones. I’ve known a lot of my boyfriend’s clients over the years, and I’ve seen everything from migraines to infertility disappear after the body has reestablished that energetic connection and communication channel via regular adjustments.
“The more adjustments you get, the more you need” myth.
I’ve found this to be totally untrue. It’s not that you need the adjustments any more than you ever did; it’s that you learn to NOTICE when your body isn’t working at its optimum level. I can feel when I need to be adjusted. It’s not because I’m in pain, it’s just that something feels “off”. I get adjusted, and it’s back on. It’s like brushing your teeth: you don’t do that once and expect it to carry you through the rest of your life. Same with getting adjusted: you do it regularly to maintain your health.
Chiropractic is no miracle.
It’s miraculous for the people whose extreme conditions clear up, but all good chiropractors will tell you that they don’t cure anything. All they do is enable the body to perform at its full potential. That potential is different for all of us and it can vary from day to day, year to year.
Chiropractic care changed my body and my understanding of my body–which, via sports, years of working out, and yoga I though I already understood pretty well. I fully intend to get adjusted for the rest of my life to keep my body operating at its highest potential.
Do you visit a chiropractor? Why or why not?