What 20 years as a Chiropractor has taught me about Health
In 1994 I graduated from chiropractic school. It was what I like to refer to as a false summit. Before chiropractic school I was a park ranger, a naturalist. I spent a lot of my 20’s in nature, hiking steep trails in the Sierras wearing a back pack, sitting on an exposed granite rock on the central California coast watching pelicans glide over breaking waves and talking to people about the wonders of nature.
False summits are familiar to anyone who has hiked or back-packed. It is that peak you see in the distance as you hike, it’s your goal; it motivates each step you take. Problem is that when you get there, you realize it’s not the end of the trail; there is still another peak to climb beyond it. You have not reached the summit.
Graduating chiropractic school was a false summit. I wanted to believe that I had finally made it. I had the degree, now I could get on with my life. Unfortunately, that’s not true. That was a false summit, I had not reached my goal, because now I had to pass the national and state board tests and after that start a practice.
There are many false summits in life. I thought that when I graduated college I knew what chiropractic was, that I understood how our bodies work and that I could make a difference in my patient’s lives. Twenty years later I realize just how little I knew then and how much more I still have to learn. There is no summit when it comes to understanding how our bodies work, how they heal and how to improve our health and the quality of our life, but there is progress and knowledge.
Even though I now recognize that I don’t know it all, that there is a lot I still don’t understand, 20 years of caring for people, both healthy and extremely sick, has taught me some things about how our bodies work and heal; Aspects of health that most people don’t know. With that understanding, my appreciation for chiropractic and its impact on a person’s health has grown a hundred fold.
In this new blog series, I want to share as much of that knowledge with you as I can, because, if you are like me, you want to live a vibrant, vital life. You want to avoid the degeneration that age and time brings. You want your body and your brain to function at its highest level right up until the moment that your heart stops and you keel over and die.
You and I ultimately want the same thing . . . .
To live life as Fully
As we possibly can,
To be a blessing in the lives
Of those who care for us,
Not a burden.
To be a candle
That lights up a room,
That burns brightly
Then flickers and dies.
My twenty years of chiropractic has taught me many things,
However, I find the one that counts most
Is that each of us is in control
Of our destiny-
We direct the future of our physical bodies
We decide whether
We live vibrantly,
Or die slowly.
In this series, I will share the benefits of
What I’ll call
“A Chiropractic Lifestyle”
And how to build a body that
Will last a life time.
Next Blog: Scar tissue, stiffness, and growing old