Facing Breakdown

Sometimes your internet goes down for 5 days, the washing machine starts to leak, the dryer begins to burn clothes, and your primary electronic device sustains water damage that will take 1-3 weeks to repair. While these examples all reflect non-emergent challenges of modernity, they certainly interrupt the regular pace and flow of what may otherwise be very full days.

What both experience and the second law of thermodynamics tell us is that all (closed/individual) systems break down in the face of reality. Entropy is the tendency for all systems to move toward disorder. The clear exception to this is living systems. For a time, they oppose entropy, intelligently and persistently organizing the way energy is expressed through physical form. The intelligence of life is abundant and the energy available is everywhere. The two things that limit organization (and health) are matter and time.

The aim of chiropractic is to determine whether and where the nervous system is experiencing limitation in its ability to use energy to coordinate normal function in the matter of the body.

Dysfunction, dysregulation, dis-ease all reflect interference to innate coordination. When challenge presents, it’s worth reflecting on what practices, people, and communities we turn to. The extent to which they can contextualize challenge, bridge connection, help alleviate fear, and facilitate right relationship to stress, the better able we are to cultivate trust in our inner adaptive capacity.

The Science of Chiropractic

Chiropractic science recognizes the foundational role the nervous system plays in health. When there is interference in the communication between the brain and the body, we are not able to adapt to stress effectively. Finding, measuring, and helping the nervous system reorganize these areas of interference is the primary goal of chiropractic care.

This begins with movement. Areas of the spine that do not move normally do not move effectively. The energy bound in these areas can show up as muscle tension, stiffness, reduced range of motion, or pain. Movement, especially within the spine, is a vital nutrient for the brain.

Without free and integrated movement, the quantity and quality of information from the body to the brain is reduced. The picture the brain has to work with becomes less rich and detailed. Its ability to regulate normal baseline function in the organs is affected.

What follows is a change in tone. Tone is the energetic signature that all cells, tissues, and organs have. All muscles in the body must maintain tone in order for the body to work properly.

Beyond the “musculoskeletal” system, when we recognize that muscle tone determines the flow of blood and the release of hormones from every gland in the body, we can appreciate the physiological fact that the health of any part of the body is intimately connected to the state and tone of the nervous system.

Dysfunction, dis-ease, and disease are downstream effects of the insult and interference within and through the nervous system. Chiropractic calls this interference subluxation. The chiropractic adjustment is an invitation to help the nervous system re-member, and in so doing liberate the self-healing and self-organizing power of the body.

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.