A Broader Horizon

In The Art of Racing in the Rain, the main (human) character Denny shares a secret he learned when racing cars in Italy: "La macchina va dove vanno gli occhi." Loosely translated, the car goes where the eyes go.

So too with the vehicle of our bodies and the instrument of our minds. Consider the essential behavior of hand-eye coordination. From bowling to baseball, yarning to yoga, our ability to track and translate the movement of our body to effect change on the external world requires we see the action as we perform it. It also highlights the importance of having direct experiences in the physical world. Nature pushes back in a real and meaningful way. The hyper-novelty of the modern era continues to draw us away from direct, physical experiences and toward screen-mediated virtual ones. I contend that the conversation that occurs between the body, the mind, and the environment is diminished when we over-inhabit digital space.

Our brains prioritize keeping our sightline horizontal. Our sense of balance is predominantly influenced by sight. The multi-sensory array of organs that allow us to perceive the real world is concentrated in the head, so our brains want to know where we are in space.

Literally and figuratively, we see where we are going because it is often where we are looking. To the extent that we allow our field of vision to include a broader horizon, we can approach a more expansive experience.

I believe that the art of chiropractic offers a philosophical, evolutionary, and expansive perspective. Beyond bones and muscles, chiropractic interfaces with the neurological, immunological, and psycho-emotional aspects of inhabiting a human body.

When things aren’t working we tend to look down and watch our feet. I invite you to consider what else you might see by looking up and opening the aperture of your perspective.

De Nova Stella

Prior to 1572, the Aristotelian view of a perfect and unchanging heaven was accepted science for two thousand years. Unlike the turbulent terrestrial and meteorological events of the sublunary sphere, which contained Earth, the stars were fixed. Earlier in the century, Copernicus placed the sun in the center and Kepler described the ellipses of orbiting planets. It was an amateur Danish astronomer named Tycho Brahe who reported something that would further revolutionize the way that humans were to understand the cosmos. The appearance of a “new star” in 1572 disrupted the classical and religious view that the heavens (the sky beyond the moon and planets) were immutable. By using parallax, he was able to use measurements from different observatories to determine that the position of the new star did not change relative to other stars, which meant its distance must be well beyond the moon and not within the turbulence of the Earth’s currents.

Parallax can be used to measure the position or relative distance of objects from the observer. While its use in astrometry is obvious, I think it also provides an excellent metaphor for perspective. If 2 people are looking at the same thing and the distance between them is small, what they are looking at will appear similar. If 2 people are looking at the same thing and the distance between them is large, what they are looking at will appear to have to a different background and they will be observing a potentially different side of the same thing.

If we are talking about objects in (outer) space, the mathematics should resolve the perceived differences. But what if we are talking about the perception of events closer to home? The relative distance between people can be influenced by everything from age to ideology, gender to geography, and education to economy. It is essential to recognize that no one of us has access to or could even see the Big Picture. As scientific advances have and will continue to disrupt what we know about our place in the universe, it is my hope that we can together temper the light of new stars to illuminate the path forward.

Saint Patrick

We live in a time in which it has become fashionable to signal our beliefs to others. Sometimes openly, sometimes covertly, sometimes with emojis, and sometimes with literal signs in the yard or window. This is all fine and well, but there is something more enduring and more impactful than broadcasting propositions.

As James Clear outlines, your identity emerges out of your habits. If you want to tell someone who you are, tell them what you practice, not what you believe. Examining how you spend time will reveal what you (actually) consider important.

Even if I am imperfect in so many ways,
nonetheless I want my brothers and my family to know my mettle,
so that they may clearly recognize the set of my soul.
(Confession of St. Patrick, I.6)

Mettle refers to resilience. It is a person’s ability to cope with challenging situations and to do so in a spirited way. We don’t celebrate Ireland’s patron saint because of his beliefs. He explicitly writes that he wants to be known by how he responded to adversity. His beliefs provided a language to express his faith, but his faith was born of experience, and that experience was shaped by his resolve.

I honor Patrick because, as John O’Donohue observes, his destiny was not to remain among what was familiar or complacent. More than once a dream called him to journey toward the next threshold - and he went.

So in the practice and in the spirit of an Irish blessing:
On this and all days, may you arise in a mighty strength.