Dan Mutter 12/31/23 Dan Mutter 12/31/23

Diminishing Light

The word luxation refers to a joint that has been displaced. The Latin lūxus (“dislocated”) and the Greek loxós (“slanting”) both refer to something that is obviously and painfully not where it is supposed to be.

In chiropractic, our central focus is on something we call the subluxation. The misalignments that indicate biomechanic, neurologic, and energetic compromise to an area of the spine are, by definition, less than a luxation. Subluxations are an intelligent response of the nervous system experiencing stress beyond its capacity to integrate in the moment. This stress can be physical, chemical, mental, emotional, and/or environmental. Since the spine houses the central channel of communication between the brain and the body, the presence of subluxation indicates the brain and body are not effectively coordinating. The effect, which advances with time, is a diminishment of function, especially in the parts of the body that are directly and anatomically linked through the nerves that serve them.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with the shortest day of the year?* Simply this - in Latin lux also means “light.” Subluxation, more specifically (but less technically), represents where and how the central nervous system has dampened its light. Less light means less life. The purpose of the chiropractic adjustment, therefore, is to clear the neurologic interference to the expression of the light within.

May you find the space and time on this winter solstice to connect to your inner light, that wisdom within, for inner light warms night.

*This post was originally published on the winter solstice in the Mutter Chiropractic Newsletter.

Dan Mutter 2/22/18 Dan Mutter 2/22/18

(re)Framing Causation

Some time ago, a Scottish philosopher inquired into the nature of human understanding. He saw that perceptions of sense and memory, as they present to the mind, do so in space or in time, but most importantly, in a necessary connection with each other. He reasoned that space, time, and causation are ideas. They do not actually represent the perceptions themselves. Rather, they reflect the manner in which the mind takes perceptions in, processes them, and “understands” them.

Consider the notion that what we perceive as matter - you know, “the hard stuff” of reality - is ultimately a quantum entanglement of light. All of the flavor and the scent, the gift of sound and vision, and the felt sense of perception comes from your body swimming in a sea of electromagnetic radiation.

From and within this sea of light, the mind uses the information from perception to generate ideas and does so in language. How we frame perception and how we (choose to) use language is a creative act.

Each moment in life is a creative unfolding of how we interact with this light. Tuning and turning the mind with intention and attention is a conscious choice that transforms the lens through which we perceive. We can perceive because we are embodied and this embodiment allows us to sense the relationships within and between space, time, and motion.

What if we (re)framed how we think about causation? That instead of being subject to, powerless against, or separate from the process of causation - we are the sequence of time. That essentially causation is thought and action creatively interwoven through the fabric of our reality causing, effecting, and affecting our experience in this life.