5 Gifts of the Spine

In this post, I offer a look at 5 gifts of the spine as seen through my chiropractic lens. They are protection and support, proprioception, emotional access, mental mapping, and channel to Source.

I.

The first and perhaps most obvious gift of the spine is protection and support. The 24 movable segments, call vertebrae, connect the back of the skull to the pelvis through the triangular bone at the base called the sacrum. The only thing in the body harder than bone is teeth (which are technically not bones). The delicate tissues of the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) are encased in the protection of bone. Life, however, is characterized by movement and the way these bones move in relationship to each other allows force to travel in waves and spirals along this central axis. The architecture of the skeletal system naturally provides support in the form of compression structures to create and maintain space for the softer organs of the body. The spine, although referred to as a column, does not actually behave like one. Columns are straight, relatively unbendable, and lose their ability to support when tipped. Our spines continue to be able to support us regardless of what position we put them in.

II.

The five “special” senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell) provide us with information about the outside world. The sixth sense, known as proprioception, tells about our inner world, specifically our body’s position and movements. All muscles, ligaments, and joints contain sensors that respond to stretch and/or pressure. These sensors constantly relay this information up the spine to the brain, where the brain then “maps” the relative positions and tension of these muscles, ligaments, and joints. The brain includes the spine as part of the conversation to integrate sensory information with an appropriate motor (movement) response. When the muscles, ligaments, and joints of the spine do not move freely within a coordinated range, it creates interference in the channel between the body and the brain. The fundamental aim of chiropractic is to locate these areas of interference and to adjust the spine to allow the nervous system to “get back” both on line and in line.

III.

A third gift of the spine is what I will call emotional access. In her book, The Molecules of Emotion, Candace Pert outlines the discoveries she made about how certain molecules (neurotransmitters) have a special relationship with our nervous system. These molecules play a role in both our experience of emotional states as well as immune system function. What she found was that these molecules were most concentrated in the nerves at the place where they meet the spine.

Emotion is sometimes referred to as “energy in motion.” The function of our emotions is to move our awareness and perhaps our behavior in a different direction. Because of the relationship between our spine and the chemistry that signals emotion, the tone and tension of the spine is an integral component to emotional health.

If we consider emotions as a color palette, the more emotional access we have means the more colors we can paint with in the experience of life. In Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown maps 87 different emotions, while also reporting that on average, most people can only label three emotions (happy, sad, angry) as they are experiencing them.

The spine is the channel where the information we receive through our body makes its way to our brain. Along the way, this information interfaces with the chemistry that mediates emotion. Before our brain can perceive and process what we are feeling, the degree of freedom, connection, and coordination of the spine influences the resolution of our experience.

Chiropractic facilitates our ability to open, move, and adapt to the physical, emotional, and environmental worlds we inhabit, all of which are more beautiful in color.

IV.

“There is but one cause in disease: the body’s inability to comprehend itself and/or it’s environment.”
— Fred Barge, D.C.

Our ability to create a representation of the world within us and the world around us depends on the clear function of the nervous system. The quantity and quality of the information our brains receive about our internal state and the external environment determines how accurate and clear a map the brain will form.

In her book The Reality Check, neuroscientist and chiropractic researcher Heidi Haavik, D.C., Ph.D. observes, “spinal function seems to be one factor the brain uses as part of its processing and integration of all information…to create your inner virtual reality.”

Interference in spinal function means interference with nervous system function. When our ability to receive information is compromised, our ability to perceive is compromised. The central nervous system is the structure in which we perceive and through which we adapt to life. This means that what we see, how we see it, and what we can do with it are all directly impacted by spinal integrity.

The role of the chiropractor is to find where interference exists in the nervous system and to deliver adjustments to both restore normal material function and support energetic reorganization. This is how the brain uses the spine in processing and integrating information. Ultimately, it’s hard to know where you are or where you’re going without a good map. And with a great map, it’s a different journey altogether.

V.

In chiropractic philosophy, the meaning of life is defined as the expression of intelligence (adaptive, coordinated energy) through matter.

Through an evolutionary lens, we see that the structures of the human brain and the development of the nervous system are ordered. Each of the “gifts” we have considered reflect the development of the brain and our ability to experience conscious life. I view these structures and their correlative gifts as a widening circle more than a hierarchy - the emotional includes the physical, the mental includes the emotional (and physical), and subtle and causal energies include the information and influence of the denser expressions of matter.

Subtle energy is sometimes referred to as qi or prana, and refers to a vital force that animates matter, moves through the body, and when balanced corresponds to bodily health and when imbalanced is reflected in dis-ease and/or disease processes. Causal energy is Source. It is referred to as the Tao, Brahman, God, Universal Intelligence, and many other names. This intelligence enfolds us and as we experience life. Our experience is mediated through our senses, both opened and limited by our physical, emotional, and mental vehicle.

In all instances, we see that things are happening in and through the central channel of the spine. By now, I hope you have gathered that by “spine” I mean much more than a set of bones. It is through this channel that we connect from above-down and inside-out.

Process and Return

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

— Viktor Frankl

The total lunar eclipse last night was a reminder that the alignment of bodies is always a temporary phenomenon. The silence of the still point, the momentary pause in which everything is just so connects us to limitless (re)Source. In our human bodies, this is analogous to a return to a regenerative parasympathetic state, in which we “rest and digest.”

Far from a fixed point or a straight line, we express health and wellness in a dynamic process, characterized by motion and change. Our objective in chiropractic, therefore, is to promote our adaptive ability to move and change. We find balance by returning to center after we’ve been away.

Just as the flow of blood in the body moves in a circle (“circulation”) throughout the body, it returns to and emanates from the heart. There is a pause between stimulus and response, between beats, between moments. It rarely lasts long and doesn’t need to. It is the gift of the present.

The Vital Principle

“Life possesses an intelligence which pervades the universe and is expressed with accordance to the environment and the quality of the material in which it manifests itself.”

— D.D. Palmer

At the beginning of the last century, the founder of chiropractic, D.D. Palmer, outlined the foundation of chiropractic philosophy. To this day, chiropractic maintains a vitalistic perspective on health and healing. Vitalism recognizes that life is characterized by an organizing energy or principle. We can use a reductionist approach to break the whole into its parts, which can facilitate understanding. However, just as flipping through the pages of an anatomy book will not reveal the complexity of a moving, feeling, breathing animal, life and health is something more than the sum of parts. When D.D. writes of “an intelligence which pervades the universe” he is acknowledging the presence of an essential organizing energy. He deliberately describes this as intelligence, not simply energy or force. The historic and critical contribution he made to the development of healing arts was precisely this - the animating principle that pervades the universe is also what organizes function in people. Health and dis-ease represent a spectrum on which this energy is able to clearly express in a physical body. And the spine is the interface where this life principle can flow or be obstructed. 

His insight includes the direct impact of the environment and the limitations of matter on the expression of life. Far from a materialist or reductionist perspective, his vision and his writing prefigure what we accept as common understanding today. Of course environmental factors influence health and disease. If there are toxic chemicals introduced into the water of the earth or the water of the body, if the air is unfit to breathe, if the quality of food is weakened by devastated soils, if we are constantly immersed in a narrative of fear, then of course this will affect the expression of health. 

Finally, let us also acknowledge the idea that “life…manifests itself.” One of the most important distinctions that vitalistic chiropractic makes is that health flows from the inside-out. Adjustments are offered to help clear the spine of interference that reduces communication to and from the brain. The free and robust expression of information along the nervous system is the necessary condition for our ability to coordinate adaptive function (i.e. health) in ourselves. As D.D.’s son B.J. would later go on to say, “Nature needs no help, just no interference.”