Be Glad You Made It

by Lake Erie Spine & Injury Center

Embrace Your Inner Wisdom

Finding the right solution to any problem is key in life.  A chiropractic principle famous in the profession for many decades is the virtue of specificity in chiropractic adjusting.  That is the real value of having an expert helping you with your problems – they have the skill sets to find the specific solution to your specific problem.

The same applies to our everyday life.  Chiropractors often do this, figure out what works in principle in one setting and find how to make use of that principle elsewhere.  When we know that the answer to any problem that we face is a specific solution, it makes it easy find what works, and keep refining towards more and more effective solutions.

Just like every spine is a unique variation of a common pattern, we are the same in our lives.  We all have similar issues.  Know that there is a unique solution for your life’s difficulties, and since we are all human, it’s probably a variation on what has worked for someone else in the past.  Just like your body, the more specific the solution is to you, the better it works!  And chiropractors are experts in finding the changing pattern that leads to the right specific solution.

“Don’t Make Your Chiropractor Say ‘Yikes!’”

There is a fascinating book that tells a vital lesson about our most common posture.  It’s a book only a chiropractor would fall in love with at first site – it’s called The Chair, by Galen Cranz, Ph. D. The Chair is one that goes straight to a chiropractors heart.  What’s so meaningful inside it?  The book reveals the full history of the chair, and shows that it is in fact an unnatural human posture – and actually a recent invention historically.

It turns out that most societies, and most humans that have lived, didn’t have chairs the way we think of them, and that people sat comfortably on the floor or mats in dozens of other options.  The book details clearly how there is no way to make sitting in chairs work for a healthy posture, as sitting is simply a series of slowly sliding down a chair’s surface, to re-adjust back into a less slouched position.  In other words, it’s a temporary solution.

And like we’ve seen for many of our inventions, they make us as much as we make them.  So realize that, yes, we are all going to do some unavoidable sitting, but that it is an unnatural process for your body.  What’s happened is that we’ve gotten confused as to what is “normal,” and a new thought process about what sitting in chairs is will go a long way to help change behaviors.

For a great example, check out what Standupkids.org has done.  Recognizing that the common isn’t normal, they helped get sitting desks out of schools, and got great results replacing them with ‘stand-up’ desks!  As could be expected, grades, enjoyment, and behavior all went up when the kids were moved to movement-oriented school days.  It turns out moving towards better, more natural movement is a simple solution that everyone, kids and adults, can pattern themselves after.  Something else chiropractors love.