Collaboration
Some of the tallest trees in the world are coastal redwoods. They can reach heights of over 300 feet, yet their root system is comparatively quite shallow. Their stability, especially in the face of wind and floods, comes from their roots. Redwood roots can extend beyond 100 feet from the base and will intertwine with other redwoods, creating a network. This is but one (big) example of how community and collaboration allow living things to grow, expand, and heal.
The style of chiropractic we practice is centered around Network Spinal Analysis. Network chiropractic is the application of gentle spinal contacts that help the body become more self-reflective, reduce spinal tension, and reorganize energy. We find that the neurological and energetic benefits of this style of practice are enhanced in a group environment. This is why Network practitioners have an open format in their offices.
Like the redwoods, we breathe the same air, hear the same wind, feel the same rain, and root in the same soil with one another. We adjust to the frequency and intensity of the light that is around us. The frequency and intensity of our own light is directly related how we experience and express life and health. This is the spirit of the collaborative principle in action: self care is community care. We can provide more light when we take care of ourselves AND recognize we are not doing it alone.
Our practice is arranged the way it is because we recognize that healing happens in community. It has been and continues to be our mission to maintain a welcoming, open, community space in which people can connect to their own healing process, feel their roots, and sempervirens.
Beauty and Silence
When I was young, there was a small sign that hung next to the bay window that overlooked the backyard. It read, “How beautiful the silence of growing things.” Now, nearly three decades and three thousand miles from that place, I see the verdant green of new shoots on plants I put into the ground last year. I see the slow and enduring cycle of the natural world open to the light of summer. I see…a rainbow unicorn jump all over this keyboard as the laptop screen is forcefully closed by the small hands of a clumsy yet determined toddler.
These days are a reminder that silence, while essential in its own right, is not required for or characteristic of growing things. What we might take for silence is actually the fundamental - the lowest and most prominent pitch upon which the harmony of nature unfolds. Our task continues to be finding signal amidst a cacophonic information landscape. Perhaps if we open our ears and eyes to the peace of wild things we can come to rest in something not quite silent, but beautiful.
A World Below
In the dark rich earth there is a world that often gets overlooked, trodden down, and covered up.
On an early Spring weekend in Portland, I had the good fortune of fine weather to begin excavating the backyard on a piece of dirt that will make a fine garden. Covered in leaves, weeds, and crab grass, what was once an ordered and tended plot of land had been turned by the hands of time into a neglected space. Nature was reclaiming that which no longer held human attention, and rightly so.
With trowel, spade, shovel, and rake the work of uncovering began. With machines powered by dinosaur remains, edges were drawn and a patch of earth was tilled. Across this not-so-vast territory it is easy to observe small animals - birds, squirrels, an occasional cat, and the lion/fox/bear/sometimes-dog Mack traverse and explore. But unless you dig down, and pay attention to what comes up, you would never see the entrance to the world below. Spiders, slugs, snails, worms, and ants infuse the soil. They create their own highways and byways, establishing an ancient symbiosis with the roots and the plants that grow out of the earth. Harder to see but just as important are the relationships of fungi with the rhizosphere root networks that inform the ecosystem from the ground up.
It is beautifully simple and wonderfully complex at the same time: everything is connected.
Taking account of how much life exists in some handfuls of dirt was a great reminder about how woven the wellbeing of the water, the soil, and the inhabitants of earth are. Spending time with the soil made it clear to me that it is not possible to spray chemicals of any kind, especially those that kill “weeds” without devastating consequences to the entire chain. One telling example worth mentioning is the decline of the western Monarch butterfly, whose population has been estimated to be 99% reduced since the 1980s.
BJ Palmer, the developer of chiropractic, made note of the potential for impact we can have with our thoughts, words, and actions. I intend to use mine well.