Original Article by Dr. Lloyd Fielder from the Dr. Joseph Mercola Website
©Copyright 2004 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
The most frequent response to my answer of what I do for a living is after I respond, “I am a chiropractor!” that person then grabs his or her neck or back and says, “Oh Doc, I need ya!” If I have your permission I would like to tell you about the truth of chiropractic and how as a society we have not understood what a true gift it is.
There was a great philosopher named Hippocrates who once stated, “We are either growing or dying.” Not to be outdone Confucius stated, “Our lives are like that of an egg, we are either growing or decaying.” See, everyday we are exposed to chemical, physical and mental stressors in our environment that continually bombard our system. It is the job of our nerve system to detect these stressors, interpret them, and either adapt to them and continue our growth or shrink from them and stop growing while in a survival or protective mode.
See, in essence we are both growing and dying each day and it is simply that one will predominate over the other. One is an upward spiral of growth leading to fulfillment and ease; the other is a downward spiral of decay leading to death.
Our Bodies’ Innate Intelligence
Our bodies have an inborn intelligence that is called innate intelligence. This intelligence runs, regulates, heals and grows the body to our fullest potential, allowing us to reach our god-given purpose in life. There are many things you must have to accept in understanding the full breadth of chiropractic: either we are on this earth from the grace of a higher consciousness, or we are simply the random assimilation of organic substance that has evolved over many years making us nothing more than a higher order of mud.
If you have a live person and a dead person side by side, what is the difference? They both have all the same stuff, the same potential for life, however in chiropractic understanding it is the live one that possesses an innate intelligence or life force. See, most people look at the body as being run and regulated by the brain, but let me ask you, “What runs the brain?” There are those who think genes dictate life, but we know that they turn off and on regularly even mutating and adapting, so I ask, “What turns genes on or off?”
For a hundred years chiropractors have been saying that there is an inborn intelligence that is perfect inside of us that continually gives 100 percent of the information we need to run, regulate, grow, heal and flourish. They have been saying that ill health, disease, and lack of potential does not arise from any other cause than that of a lack of expression of this intelligence.
The Expression of Light or Darkness
This lack of expression leads to dis-coordination of the body or a lack of a body’s ability to comprehend itself in its own environment. That leads to a lack of the body being able to adapt to outside stressors and this causes a loss of function, breakdown of tissue and is a downward spiral of decay and ultimately death.
If we look at the full expression of this inborn innate intelligence being the fullest expression of life as light we can look at the lack of this expression of intelligence as decay or disease and as darkness. So, how do you remedy darkness? You can study darkness, examine it, qualify it, be aware of it and focus on it, but the only solution to removal of it is to add light.
Chiropractic understands this premise and does not look to cure disease, address disease or diagnose disease. We understand disease for what it truly is, a lack state, one that arises only in the absence of the fullest expression of life.
The Subluxation Process
Chiropractic is the detection and correction of interference with the expression of this intelligence in relation to the spine called the subluxation process. The primary system for the expression of this innate intelligence is over our nerve system, and being that our spinal cord is surrounded and protected by spinal bones called vertebrae, this important relationship is how chiropractors became synonymous with backs.
However, in truth chiropractic deals with the innate intelligence and the nerve system, and a chiropractor is not a doctor of the spine, especially not spinal disorders, decay nor disease.
As a chiropractor the only conclusion that I can with any degree of certainty make is that your body is better off with a clear nerve system than one with interference. Chiropractors are trained and are the only practitioners who have the philosophy and the technique to find that interference and to assist in correcting it.
Anything that is beyond the detection and correction of the subluxation process is usually regarded by the allopathic or medical mindset that we are not whole and need something outside ourselves to help us to heal or grow. It is assumed that the first thing we need is an outside intelligence that looks at us to tell us what we need, be it ultrasound, electrical stim, pharmaceuticals, supplements, etc.
See, we need to go back to our original thought process and question, “If there is a practitioner who directs the energy where they think it needs to go, how does that honor an individual’s inborn innate intelligence?” Doesn’t innate intelligence know what is needed, where and how much? How does an application of ultrasound to a mid-back honor that process?
It is that in our society where sitting for five minutes in a drive-through seems like an eternity. It’s a society where commercials bombard you five to seven times in three minutes and that problems are resolved in three eight-minute segments on a television program. To then have someone shift and comprehend that all of life, including healing, is a process and that being under care is also a lifetime process can be a challenge.
You might want to ask yourself, if you start to exercise because it is good for you, when do you get to a point when you can stop? How about brushing your teeth? Eating vegetables and other healthy foods? You can always choose to stop doing those things and that is not a bad thing, it is just not congruent with the fullest expression of your life’s potential.
The Effects of Nerve System Interference
So chiropractic care is a process that gives its greatest rewards over a lifetime and starts with your getting checked to see how much the subluxation process is interfering with your nerve system and your life. We automatically say, “Yeah, but I feel fine,” however, symptoms are the last thing to show up in a process and therefore the worst possible way to judge your life’s expression.
We all know or have heard of someone who has dropped dead from a heart attack and never showed the smallest sign of that process, yet we know that cardiovascular disease is a process that occurs over decades. Diabetes is said to be at epidemic proportions mostly due to there being no obvious signs until the process has gone rampant for years.
Or look at tooth decay, a process that occurs for years by the time you feel any pain or sensitivity. And haven’t you heard of someone getting checked out and to their surprise they had a 99 percent blockage in their coronary arteries only to get immediate and drastic open heart surgery with basically no sign or symptoms before that?
Please understand that these things are just an example of processes that are a function of our fundamental disconnection with the understanding of life, health and being out of touch with our self. These disease processes are all low end on the spectrum and in reality are not what I am talking about when I speak of possibility. It is not enough to live just not to die, to be alive with no symptoms or to never need a surgery. I do not believe that is why god put us here on this planet.
We Are All Meant to Flourish and Grow
I believe we all have a purpose, and we are all meant to flourish, grow and reach our optimum potentials. You see, you cannot be in fear and love at the same time; you cannot be in survival mode and growth at the same time. I know we are meant to live in love and growth and honor the gift of grace always, all of the time.
To me, it is impossible to accomplish this with a nerve system that is compromised–one that disconnects the creator from the creation and allows a little less life in us each and every day that it remains. So, from a person who has searched as a chiropractor for the meaning of our profession for the last 10 years, a person who has seen thousands of patients, read hundreds of books, listened to dozens of tapes and lecturers, please get checked.
Get checked for the subluxation process; get your families checked, your friends, your loved ones or anyone you care about. Even the people you don’t care about, mention it to them, as maybe it is the subluxation process that is preventing them from their fullest expression of love and happiness. You never know, with a clear nerve system anything becomes possible.
Original Article by Dr. Lloyd Fielder from the Dr. Joseph Mercola Website
©Copyright 2004 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.