Seneca, Pantanjali, and The Philosophy of Chiropractic
When the Roman philosopher Seneca counselled Lucilius “to cultivate an asset that the passing of time itself improves,” he was not talking about a wine cellar. He was talking about employing the practical philosophy of Stoicism to steady the mind, to see things as they are, and to be deliberate in thought and action.
In a very different culture but in a very similar way, the author Patanjali of the canonical Yoga Sutras described Kriya yoga, known as the yoga of action. Kriya yoga is the practice of moving with a purpose or goal (kriya) to cultivate a calmness of mind (yoga). The active practice of moving through the yoga postures (asana) and the intentional integration of breath (pranayama) promote heat (tapas), which serves to purify the body. The meditative practice of self-inquiry (svadhyaya) encourages us to ask who and what we are and how we relate to others. The third element of kriya yoga is a quality of action (isvarapranidhana), to focus on how and how well we are acting in the moment instead of being wrapped up in the expectation of an outcome.
In yoga, avidya refers to the root obstacles that prevent us from seeing things as they really are. In many respects, this is the main challenge we all face all of the time. This is the illusion and the veil that is projected by the conditioned mind to reinforce a sense of separateness within our own selves, with one another, and with Nature. The beauty and the value of the disciplines like Stoicism and Kriya yoga is that they clearly identify the obstacle and also provide actionable steps for liberation from unconscious conditioning.
In the original chiropractic philosophy, we understand that avidya - the obstacles that prevent us from seeing things as they are - can manifest in the body as clinical expressions of dis-ease. We have traditionally referred to these expressions of dis-ease in the body as subluxations, which in the philosophical sense can be understood as “a reduction in the expression of light.”
Operating from the premise that life is the expression of intelligence through matter, we see that when there is an impediment to how this energy and intelligence is coordinated in the body, it affects how a person can move, sense, feel, and heal. When a person is disconnected from their body and themselves for long enough, they become ill. When people are disconnected from each other because they’re disconnected from their bodies and themselves, the culture becomes ill.
The beauty and the value of chiropractic, when drawing from this philosophical heritage and refined through the science and art of clinical practice, is to provide an adjustment with one goal - to entice the Innate Intelligence that resides in each of us to shine a little brighter. Just as we cannot be in growth and defense at the same time, the derivatives of Fear that currently saturate our culture cannot last when the veil of avidya is lifted.
Seneca and Patanjali were talking about the same thing. The practice of moving deliberately to cultivate a calmness of mind is an asset that the passing of time itself will improve. The disciplines of Stoicism, Kriya yoga, and philosophically-based chiropractic serve to promote and advance this practice.
You Make the Meaning
What is the purpose of pain? In a very broad, but direct sense, it serves as an opportunity to stop what we’re doing, re-evaluate the situation, and make changes to what or how we’ve been living. The rational mind craves an explanation for the how and the why this is happening. This can be a helpful exercise, as long as we don’t get caught up in identifying who we are with the process of pain or spiral into negative thought cycles about it.
I was recently stung by a yellow jacket while hiking near the Oregon coast. It did not feel particularly pleasant, but I felt fine and continued my trek back to the car. Over the next two days, what began as some mild redness at my ankle turned into moderate swelling and the cardinal signs of infection started to present and travel up my leg. There is a time and a place to seek medical attention, and this was one of them. Owing to the swelling in my foot and ankle, it became difficult to stand and walk. This presented a major challenge for many reasons, not the least of which being the requirements of my work. I was forced to slow down, and as frustrating as it was to not be able to do, especially at the pace I was operating, it gave me a chance to evaluate how I was doing.
I was going too fast. The ratio of doing to being was heavily skewed. There is a time to push, but there is also a way to push that won’t lead to burnout. I can’t say whether there was a cosmic conspiracy that organized to have that one wasp sting me where it did, when it did. I do believe that the notions of entropy and randomness reflect a limitation in the perspective of the observer. The patterns of life are always weaving. Depending on the scope and scale of what you’re trying to look at, it will appear infinitely complex - but that doesn’t mean it’s chaotic. This could lead to an epistemological regress - ultimate uncertainty about what can be known. From a practical point of view, what I believe is that we have the ability to ascribe the myth and the meaning to the experiences we have. I am choosing to see the wasp as a reminder to be mindful, to move and think at a natural pace, and to trust and continue to be in awe of the brilliant intelligence of the human body’s ability to heal.
A Conscious Imperative
"Collective human consciousness and life on our planet are intrinsically connected...as the old consciousness dissolves, there are bound to be synchronistic geographic and climatic natural upheavals in many parts of the planet, some of which we are witnessing now." --Eckhart Tolle
It has been snowing ash in Portland. For the past few days, stepping outside to afternoon temperatures near 100 degrees, into a haze thick and grey has been akin to stepping into a sauna that is burning campfire wood with the flue closed. Instead of the cloudless blue of summer, or the cool grey overcast of the rest of the year, the sky has taken on a white density. Folks walk around with bandannas and face masks, there are minimal bikers on the road, and few people are outside. It feels more like fallout than school season. As the West burns, the Gulf of Mexico floods, and the eastern seaboard braces for increasingly strong hurricanes.
We are now in the Anthropocene, the time when humans are aware of and can objectively measure the extent to which their activities have an impact on the planet. The brilliant human intelligence that has led to the technology and development of modernity has also served to amplify the destructive capability that unconsciousness has on life. On an individual level, allowing the ego to drive thought and action leads to fear, greed, and the desire for power. The ego is fueled by attachment to form - because it cannot feel, it must have. At the root of this is the false premise that humans are somehow separate from or even superior to Nature. Humans, like all of the other life on this planet are of Nature. Viewed from this perspective, the health and sanity of our individual thoughts and actions contributes to the health and sanity of our collective thoughts and actions.
The intrinsic connection Mr. Tolle refers to is how the state of collective human consciousness is being reflected in the material world it inhabits. As the quantitative impact of humanity continues to increase, it is more important than ever to look at the quality of this impact. What are our thoughts and actions doing to ourselves, each other, and the environment?
One of my yoga teachers recently shared that the current darkness and perceived chaos happening in the world is not necessarily the darkness of the tomb; that instead it could be the darkness of the womb. An opportunity - and at this stage an imperative - for humanity to birth itself out of the darkness it has created from living unconsciously.
