Upper Cervical's Big Idea

The Big Idea

by Michael Thomas, D.C.

What I wanted to write about today is an idea.  In Upper Cervical Care we have called it “The Big Idea”!  This big idea is present not only in  Upper Cervical, but we have certainly based our work upon it.  The idea is that life is sufficient unto itself.  Most often, it does not need any help.  What it needs is the freedom to express itself.  The life inside of us is connected to all of Life.  While this has always been a spiritual concept, it is now also becoming a scientific one.  We are not separate little clots moving about on a dot of dirt in an empty universe.  The picture of us, the Earth and the whole Universe is looking much more like aspects of one immense integrated whole.

The same mathematical equations that can chart fluctuations in the stock market, map out the path of blood vessels in our tissues, and describe the shape of snowflakes, can also chart the distribution of stars in the galaxy.   We are learning that there is communication between molecules, cells, tissues, and within the whole person we had never dreamed existed.  It extends out beyond us to others and perhaps to the farthest reaches of the universe.  Electromagnetic fields extend to infinity.  The matter of this reality seem to be composed of standing waveforms of immense numbers of frequencies all coordinated together.  The better we can look at matter as our microscopes and methods become more sophisticated show that what we thought was solid is not.  It is vibrations that maintain themselves!  Immense amounts of information can be (and are!) contained within the frequencies that create the matter of our interconnected universe.  There are possibilities for our lives and for all of us that we haven’t even begun to dream about yet.

Within this new understanding is Upper Cervical Care which has claimed for more than a hundred years that this is true.  How we take care of our infirmities is dependent upon how we see ourselves.  In medicine we have based our understanding from a study of what goes wrong.  To use a big word, it is a pathogenic orientation.  Upper Cervical Care is based in the opposite approach.  To use another big word, it is a salutogenic approach.  By this we mean what creates health?  How can we support Life?  What sustains and improves our health?  In Upper Cervical Care we find that removing the interference to the power of Life will allow optimal health to return.  We really can trust Life.  One approach chooses to stifle, to palliate, to suppress symptoms.  The other removes interference and trusts life to find its own way, to unfold as it has for untold millennia.

At this point I want to note that when events occur that cause significant disruption of our health, medicine can be an incredible lifesaver.  When symptoms are going to kill us, suppression or palliation of symptoms is welcomed by everyone.  This is where medicine shines, in the acute care of critically ill people.  This suppressive treatment can save lives and give the innate power of life within each of us the time to rally.  However, as a lifestyle, it leaves much to be desired.  Turning off the symptoms with drugs simply leaves the body with fewer possibilities.  Killing the ‘messenger’ (the symptoms) doesn’t change the reality it just means you are now unaware of it.  Most cardiac medications are suppressive and palliative.  They actually do very little to help any of us regain health.  They just shut the message off.  This isn’t a hopeless statement.  It is a statement that this path does not lead where most people would choose to go if they had a choice.  What choices do we have?

First, we have to choose to be the driver of our own lives.  How many of us ask questions?  How many of us do the due diligence to investigate the possibilities for ourselves?  Do you really think that a five minute visit with a doctor is enough for him/her to understand the complexities of how life is breaking down for you?  If we take on the responsibility for our own lives and have sought out answers on our own, then we are in a vastly better position to ask the right questions and make informed choices about our lives and our healthcare.  We have to make the choice to be present in our own lives.  What is more important?

Yes, this means you must make efforts.  It means you must be willing to make changes in the way you live your life.  It means you must be patient as the changes you make remake you.  It means you must pay attention to your own life.  Your healthcare should be a partnership between you and your doctors.  I will reiterate, you are the one in charge.  If you are asleep at the wheel then no one is driving the bus.  If you don’t take on this primary responsibility then you can’t complain when life leaves you broken down on the side of the road.

What is the goal of your healthcare?  Do you just want the symptoms to go away?  That is one choice.  It does lead to certain consequences.  In the example of cardiac (heart ) problems, lifestyle, nutritional and stress management can completely turn your health around.  You can regain your health.  Turning life off is not the answer to turning life on.

Upper cervical care is based on removing interference at the base of the brain.  This area is filled with centers that control every aspect of your life.  Restoring normal, balanced function to your brain and nervous system is one magnificent and powerful way to restore health and the life you live.  This is much more than just turning off the pain of sciatica or headaches.  Relief is great but there is more to life than being numb.  This world needs every one of us operating at full capacity.  If you have chosen upper cervical care you have chosen a road less traveled for sure and hopefully one that will be traveled by many more in the future.  I believe that the balance created through upper cervical care we can all reach closer to our potential not only in health but in all aspects of our lives.  This is the Big Idea.

Want To Enjoy Life More? Try Upper Cervical Care

13 Benefits Of Upper Cervical Care: Part 13

The primary reason for upper cervical care is so that you can get more out of life. Feeling good is an important aspect of enjoying life. While there are many people who seem to enjoy life despite physical pain and discomfort, there is no doubt that it is easier to enjoy life when you are feeling good. Being healthy is also an important aspect of enjoying life. While most people think that being healthy and feeling good are synonymous, being healthy is a great deal more than merely the absence of symptoms. There are many people who feel perfectly fine today who next week or next month will be dead or told they are dying from some disease. Feeling good is not health and health is more important than just feeling good.

There is a third level to enjoying life. It can be described as being all you can be, reaching your potential in life, functioning at your best. It is more than just feeling good and even more than just being given a “clean bill of health.” It is the difference between being competent at your work and being a success. It is the difference between muddling along in life and squeezing every ounce of joy from it. It is enjoying the reality of life rather than watching reality shows on television.

For all the advances in science and medicine in the fight against disease, for all the efforts people put into being healthy with exercise and nutrition, not too many people seem to be really enjoying life. With all the labor saving devices of modern technology, we should be doing more with our lives than increasing the time we can watch television. We should be enjoying more life and enjoy life more.

Upper cervical care enables you to enjoy more life. The mental energy traveling through your body over the nerve system is the life that not only makes you healthy but gives you the ability to function at your best. When the head and neck misalign, you can be deprived of a little bit of life and your ability to enjoy life more can be decreased. So in a way upper cervical care can many times restore life to your body so that it can heal itself, increase its level of health and function at its best.

There are a number of important areas involved in enjoying life more including spiritual, physical and mental. Upper cervical care does not have the answers to all of these areas, but having a good nerve supply touches upon so many that it can hardly be classified as just a health profession. It affects so many aspects of your life in a positive way that to be under periodic upper cervical care in order to keep the life energy flowing to all parts seems like a common sense action that no one could or would overlook. Yet so many people miss this simple but vital part of life and never enjoy life to the fullest. Have your nerve system checked regularly and enjoy life more!

Communication And Upper Cervical Care

Have you ever wondered what keeps some married couples together for decades? Surely, mutual love, respect and shared spiritual beliefs are important to a lasting relationship, but possibly the most important factor is communication. Without communication neither person can learn about the other nor can they share their hopes and dreams for the future.

If communication is not the most important factor, then it is at least the most popular. Browse through any large bookstore and you will see titles promising to help improve your relationships by teaching you and your spouse to better communicate with each other. Regardless of whether you are from Mars and your spouse is from Venus or vice versa, if the two of you don’t communicate well, your life and your relationship are going to be challenging. If you do not believe me, try going a few days without communicating with your spouse. Can you think of all the disorder this could cause in your life? Who is going to pick up the kids? What time will dinner be ready? What ballgame does little Johnny have this week and where? Did anyone call and leave an important phone message? And these are just a few of the potential challenges you may incur.

The success or failure of any sports team is largely due to its ability to communicate. In baseball for example, teams have developed their own type of sign language for communicating the managers’ instructions to the players. All that flailing of the third base coach’s arms and brushing the bill of his cap is his way of communicating to the batter to take the pitch, lay down a bunt or swing away. While that is going on, the pitcher and the catcher on the other team are communicating in their own sign language deciding which pitch to throw. If the batter misses the signal from the third base coach and takes the pitch when he was supposed to bunt, he could cost his team the game. On the other team, if the pitcher mis-communicates with the catcher, the results could be equally costly.

Imagine if the quarterback for your favorite football team were to give his teammates the silent treatment in the huddle. How would any of the players know where to lineup, which routes to run, which direction to block, who the ball was going to go to or even what the snap count would be? This lack of communication would obviously reduce the chances of this team winning or even performing at its best. Obviously, communication is important in our relationships with others, both on the field and off. But there is more, communication is also an important factor in the quality of our internal relationships as well.

For your body to reach optimal physical and mental harmony (what some refer to as “health”), you must have good communication throughout your nerve system. For your internal environment to function properly, your brain and body need to “talk” to each other via signals sent over the nerves in your body. Much like a failure to communicate with a friend or your spouse can cause disorder in your relationship, failure to communicate the signals between your brain and body leads to disorder in your body. Interference to the communication lines of the nerve system leads to this “failure to communicate.” One such type of interference is head/neck misalignment. Upper cervical care assists your body in correcting head/neck misalignment, thus restoring more ideal communication between your brain and your body. While upper cervical care cannot help you with your communication with others, it can improve the communication that takes place within you.

If It’s Not Broke Don’t Fix It

Most of us rarely think we have the expertise to fool around with a complicated piece of machinery especially if it is already working well. We would be afraid to try to improve upon the inner workings of an electric dishwasher for example. Yet that very situation happens all the time relative to the human body.

Our body has a built-in mechanism to heal itself, factory installed, if you will. The human body is more complex, more intricately and more perfectly designed than anything built by Hoover, Panasonic or General Electric. Despite knowing that, we are constantly trying to improve upon it. We believe that a drug can make it work better, heal faster or function properly. The Upper Cervical Care idea is not to do any of the above but simply to remove an interference to the body performing its function in a perfect and timely manner.

The sad part is that we are often able to make the body work faster or perform functions better by the use of drugs, but we also suffer the consequences of that approach. We have all seen and read of the damage that the “bigger, faster, better” drugs can have on people, sometimes even death. For example, athletes take steroids to build muscles faster and bigger to increase their performance but suffer complications with their hearts because it too is a muscle. Our bodies build muscle at their own pace. We are all different; some have the natural ability to build muscle faster and some slower. If we try to exceed that ability, harmful effects will be the result.

There is another aspect to this “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it” philosophy. Often people will use this as an excuse for getting checked by and upper cervical doctor on a periodic basis. This is another way of saying, “There is nothing wrong with me, I feel fine.” The fact is that if there is interference in your spine, due to head/neck misalignment, you are not fine. There is something “broke.” In fact, the most important system in the body, the nerve system, is “broken.” The inborn wisdom of your body, which controls and coordinates the function of every cell in the body, is not free to do its job. Your body is simply not working as it should. The results of that will eventually be disastrous.

Just because it is not noticeable at first does not mean that dysfunction is not occurring or that the damage is not accumulating within the body. When your car just begins to burn or leak oil, you do not notice it. Further, if the warning system is not working properly, you may continue driving the car, completely unaware, until your car is permanently damaged. That is why it is smart to have the oil level in your car checked regularly. For that same reason, it is idea to have your spine checked periodically for head/neck misalignment and the resulting interference even if it does not appear to be “broke!”