You’d have to be living in a cave somewhere far away from civilization to not know that technology is changing our lives. Every day we hear about some new product or development that has been invented or that is being researched. The latest is AI or Artificial Intelligence. I find it a bit curious, a bit self-agrandizing and more than a bit worrisome that the human race is trying to replicate itself, as if what we have is not enough.
Beyond all of these advancements in technology, I’d like to talk a little about the most important, the most advanced piece of technology that we have today: the human body.
Essentially, when we take a closer look at how it is that we become who we are in the physical form, it is basically a process of eating food. The food we eat becomes our bodies. Protein, carbohydrate, fat, vitamins, minerals, it’s all our bodies need to make it through life. And our bodies do this on their own without any intervention on our part. Granted, we can eat better quality food, we can exercise but whether we do that or not, our bodies will grow into adulthood. Whether we are loved or not, whatever ever family we are born into and whether we achieve our dreams or not, all of these things do not factor into our bodies making food into us.
Our bodies have this inborn intelligence that can take food and turn it into us. Along the way we get sick and injured and our bodies heal (to varying degrees) but they heal nonetheless; we adapt. In order for our bodies to turn food into us, they don’t need to go to school, they don’t need to study or meditate or get medical care or even chiropractic care. Our bodies know what to do all on their own.
Take the iphone or its equivalent from any of the other companies that make smart phones. If you could make an iphone out of food, wouldn’t that be miraculous? And I’ll admit, the iphone is a smart phone but it can’t do everything our bodies can do. So how is it that we don’t acknowledge the miracle of the intelligence in our bodies? Why when we get sick or feel unwell do we get upset with our bodies and actually feel anger towards them, as if they are letting us down? Stupid bodies…
So what if, just WHAT IF, the symptoms that you were feeling, the problem that “your body was giving you” were actually messages or information. What if symptoms were clues to help us understand what was happening in our bodies and our lives so that we could reevaluate and make a better choice for ourselves? It’s hard to know what the body is saying when it can’t speak to you. When one of my dogs wants something, I notice it’s a look they’re giving me or a sound they’re making and over time you get to understand and “decode” what they’re needing or wanting. Some signals are more obvious than others. When Mr. Big wants more food, he’ll stand by his food bowl and hit it gently with his paw so that it bounces a bit on the floor. Other signals are harder to understand like when Charlie comes and stands in front of me, tilts his head and just stares at me. I don’t know if he wants attention or food or to go outside to pee, or maybe all three in succession (can’t forget going for a walk too).
Rather than seeing a symptom as a fire alarm to turn off with treatment or medication, part of NeuroStructural care is to help you decode the signals that your body is sending you. If while you were sleeping in the middle of the night, the fire alarm were to go off, would you get up and simply take the batteries out of the smoke detector or even worse, cut the electrical wires to disconnect it? Or would you look around and see if there was a fire and make changes such as calling the fire department or grabbing what you’d need and running out of your home?
One of the reasons we develop symptoms is because we’re busy not listening. Our focused attention is often outside of ourselves. We’re inundated with an ever present flow of information and we forget to check in with our bodies. Or we’re thinking about the past or worried about the future. What we don’t use we lose, we can lose that connection with ourselves. The connection exists neurologically, physiologically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. And if we don’t feed that connection, just as if we don’t feed our bodies, that connection won’t sustain itself and won’t grow.
With NeuroStructural care, we’re not only looking to help correct structural distortion; we’re also strengthening that internal connection so that the intelligence of the body can work it’s miracles of what we call Healing.
It not only would be unethical of us, it just wouldn’t make sense to have you dependent on us for your health. It would fly in the face of everything I’ve just mentioned. It would be like you having millions of dollars in the bank but coming to us for a loan. One of the primary goals of NeuroStructural care is to help you become self-sustaining again, self-reliant and resourceful for your healing and adapting and living. So we can work with you on a continual basis to improve the internal connection to your body’s intelligence, intuition and wisdom. If all you want is to get back on your feet, we can help with that too. We prefer to help you build that internal connection so that you can be even better than you were before.
So the next time you hear about Artificial Intelligence or robots or the next smart phone, ask yourself, are these things smarter and more advanced than my body? Can a robot turn food into more of itself? Maybe if and when they can, then it’ll be time to pay attention. Until then eat well and be good to your body. After all it’s the most advanced piece of high tech you have.