A couple of years ago I had a booth at a local town festival. At one point, a girl who looked to be in her mid twenties came up to me and said, “I already know what's wrong with my spine. I have subluxation.” She assumed, of course, that because I was stationed at the booth with a spine model that I was there to find out what was wrong with hers. In fact, I was actually out there to tell people how they could enhance their lives regardless of what, if anything was “wrong” with them. That's when I stopped bringing my spine model out to trade shows and festivals.
I had to chuckle to myself though. Apparently, the chiropractor she had gone to told her she had a condition called subluxation that would be a detriment to her health and wellness. While that was most likely true, the reality was and is that everybody has subluxations. Her chiropractor and every other chiropractor practicing could find the same condition in almost every single person that walked through their doors.
The fact is, that when you seek health practitioners' advice about symptoms you're experiencing, no matter what type of practice they have there's a pretty good chance they'll find what they're looking for within their own practices model for diagnosis and treatment. For example, if you see a medical doctor, s/he will find an imbalance in body chemistry. The acupuncturist will find blocked energy channels and a disturbance of chi, and the chiropractor will find misalignments of the spine altering nerve function and so on. There is nothing inherently wrong with this.
Our Decatur office is located very close to the ever-expanding Dekalb Medical Center. While driving by the other day, I noticed a sign out in front of the new maternity center that read “patients in labor.” Seemed normal enough at first, I guess, but it certainly speaks to a matter of perspective and brings up an interesting point.
By definition, the word “patient” refers to someone who, based on presenting symptoms and perhaps following a battery of tests, has been diagnosed, and is being treated for a disease or ailment. By using the word patient to describe women in labor, the implication is that having a baby is equivalent to having a disease or ailment. (This, by the way, is why I prefer to use the word client instead of patient.) In our culture, even birth and death have been pathologized when in fact they are as natural as natural can be. In fact, most symptoms that the body displays are not about what's “wrong,” rather they are created by the body to serve its own purpose and to convey information. One of the reasons I like offering a wellness approach is that it's not based on eliminating symptoms or having to find something wrong in order for it to be applied.
Most “health” modalities look at a symptom as an enemy that must be controlled and vanquished. Here's what author Donald Epstein has to say about our predisposition to avoid taking responsibility for our own health and listening to our bodies in his book “Healing Myths, Healing Magic”:
"If we have a physical symptom or psychological distress, traditionally our goal is to battle it, cure it, or control it. Unexplainable and uncontrolled expressions of emotion, symptoms, breath, or body are considered problematic and require intervention by a specialist. Once the specialist applies her magical treatment to assist us in achieving comfort, this allows us to continue living our life as we normally do, without making changes to our story: attitudes, beliefs, or lifestyles that may have contributed to the problem in the first place.”
The application of both Network Spinal Analysis and Somato-Respiratory Integration is based on enhancing the parts of the body that are working well. Most times, people in this type of care find resolution of their symptoms and the insight and strength to help them create the change that their body so desperately needs.
