The Christmas Request

Another Unreasonable Request for Christmas

Michael D. Thomas, D.C.

It is the Holiday time of year.  The weather is cooling off and there is an air of festivities and perhaps a hint of goodwill in the air.  Challenging times demand more of us just to stay where we are.  It is perhaps, more important than ever to find the spirit of this time of year and examine the past year in anticipation of the coming one.  To begin, we might examine what we are thankful for.  If this last year was as tough for you as it was for me, you might think there is little to be grateful for, but you would be wrong.

A bit of perspective goes a long way.  There are now seven billion of us on our planet Earth.  80% of us live in poverty.  That means most of us can’t take care of our basic needs.  70% are illiterate.  That means that the vast databases and the accumulated knowledge that lives in the written word is unavailable to us and our lives.  Half of us suffer from hunger and malnutrition every day.  500 million of us are in prison, being tortured or close to dying from starvation.  3 billion of us cannot go to our house of worship without risking assault or death.  If you have a full refrigerator, clothes to wear, a roof over your head and a place to sleep you are wealthier than 75% of us on this planet.  If you have money in the bank and also some in your wallet, you are among the 8% of people who do.  One percent of people on the Earth own a computer.  One percent has a college degree.  6% of us own 59% of the wealth and statistically they all come from the USA.  If you fall on the fortunate side of these numbers you can certainly be grateful.  If not, you don’t need me to tell you about it.

Gratitude isn’t about how much you have, it’s about your perspective.  Being grateful connects you to something much bigger than yourself.  It changes the way you see everything that unfolds in front of you.  We are all interconnected.  What we do, the choices we make, the things we buy, the food we eat, the people we associate with, all make a difference in the world.  Being grateful is a willful act of perspective.  We can be irritated that things aren’t going the way we planned or we can be grateful that we simply woke up this morning.  Our arms and legs worked (If they did.  If not, we are grateful for the ones that do!)  Our brains work.  We can see and hear.  We can move about.  We may have others who care about us.  We may have family that pulls together every day.  We may have a job that allows us to pay our bills and to live the life we choose.  We may have love in our life.  We certainly have the love that we can give.  Love’s origin is inside each of us.  And given the reciprocal nature of love, if you give love out daily it returns in spades.  This is one time that the more you give the more you receive.  This is Love’s secret.

I know from my own journey that living in fear, constantly worrying about survival, struggling to take and hold onto what you want is a lonely and unsatisfying life.  Fear and creativity are mutually incompatible.  Even if you have others around you, survival consciousness is a lonely prison.  Everything that occurs is registered as either more or less for and about you.  “What’s in it for me” is the mantra of greed that has made this planet so inequitable.  On the other hand, there is another perspective.  This perspective comes from an appreciation of the ‘pattern that connects’.  You may be religious, you may not.  This isn’t about theology but it does have a central spiritual component.  We are not just ‘meat machines’.  We are not just selfish clots of desires.  We are not actually independent at all.  We may imagine that we are self-sufficient, but no one is.  We are part of an unimaginable pattern bigger than anything our brains can come up with.  Our lives are connected to everything around us from the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat to the people we interact with.  More than this realization of connection is the realization that we can trust Life.  In the upper cervical work I do it is called the ‘non-interference paradigm’.  It means that we can trust the life inside of us and that our best medicine is removing any interference to it and trusting that the life that created you, that made what would one day become you grow into a cell and from there into trillions of cells (that you are now!).  The life that built and grew your tissues and bones and the nervous system that connects you to all of life will manifest in the optimal way, if it can.  There is always enough.  There is even abundance.

You won’t read this much in the medical literature.  It doesn’t get airplay on the news.  There is no profit in self-sustainability.  There is nothing to buy.   Our health is our greatest treasure.  Without it, nothing much matters.  With it, everything is possible.  The real true and only healer is inside each one of us.  We are not here by accident.  In fact incredible things had to occur for you to be walking the planet at this time.  We have somehow come to see the world as cold and cruel and indifferent but it is us who have those qualities, not life.

Once gratitude has washed its way through our hearts and lives, we find the end of the year to be a moment when we ponder what comes next?  We generally move in the direction we are headed.  What is our direction?  How can we be better people?  As we serve our communities, we ourselves are served in a manifold of ways that we could never predict.  As we are generous with others, generosity is unleashed in our own lives.  As we reject fear and worry, it is replaced by the peace of a kind word, a selfless act, an unlikely courtesy.  And with these sweet moments comes the health we have despaired over.  The friends we wished we had, perhaps even the money we desperately need to keep afloat.  Not because we took it from others who don’t have enough for themselves, but because we allowed it to occur.  We can’t see the big picture.  This is what faith means.

It is in the present moment that this gift comes, and only in the present moment.  If we are lost lamenting the past or agonizing over an imagined future, we miss the possibility that is engendered in the moment.  Each moment that we miss is lost forever.  But the good news is that a new one occurs in the present that is equally pregnant with possibilities and hope and power and satisfaction.  This universe appears to be a well of ever-new creativity.  To drink from this well we must be present now.  We can’t drink the water of yesterday or tomorrow.

Roughly two thousand years ago, a man named Jesus of Nazareth postulated a doctrine of love.  In a most unreasonable fashion, he told those who listened to him that they had no need to fear the future or be tortured by the past.  He said that if one is met with violence that one should return love.  All these centuries later we still can’t quite get our heads around that one.  We come from many millennia of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’.  Gandhi, who many centuries after Jesus, noted that this idea, carried out to the logical conclusion would leave the world blind and edentulous.  He met violence with non-violence as did King and many others who have talked of returning love for hate, but the idea didn’t die with them.  It never dies because it springs full formed over and over in each of our hearts.  What we do with this gift is up to each one of us.  We make this choice every moment of our lives.

As useful as our rational mind is, it cannot conceive of the infinite possibilities that await us each moment.  This mind can only compare our memories of what happened in the past and then give us a ‘best guess’.  This guess is laden with our neuroses and our feelings and of course our ‘rationalizations’.  Our memories are often inaccurate and substantially incomplete.  In this way we are blind to our present because of the baggage from the past.  Healing is always about changing our consciousness.  In upper cervical care we remove neurological interference at the junction between the head and neck and find that when this Life within us can flow without impediment it sings a much happier song!  In the same way that this work can transform our physical lives, gratitude and love can transform our inner and outer lives.  We are not made to be victims of our mind.  Our minds are instruments we use in this life.  We must be present in the moment to use and not be used by our minds.  Our choices make our lives, one moment at a time.

Merry Christmas!

Want Better Relationships? Try Upper Cervical Care

13 Benefits Of Upper Cervical Care: Part 10

Getting along with people is one of the greatest challenges in life. Marriage, family, “neighbor,” and national problems account for most of the conflicts and stresses in life. One of the reasons why conflict in personal relationships is difficult to resolve is because often the problem lies with us. Sure, there are miserable people in this world who probably cannot get along with anybody, but almost everybody seems to be able to get along with somebody. Why is it that some marriages are unsuccessful and when both parties remarry they are happy? There are probably many reasons but one has to be within the people themselves. In describing difficult relationships we sometimes say there is “poor chemistry” between two people. While that usually is used in an idiomatic way, it may be closer to the truth than we want to admit.

Our chemistry does affect how we relate to people. Change peoples’ chemistry with alcohol and those who are normally meek and mild may become aggressive and belligerent. Often people need a couple of drinks at the end of the day to “wind down.” While the causes of ADD in children have not yet been determined, chemical factors are clearly involved. There are dozens of other examples of how our chemistry affects our ability to get along with people. Some people need a couple of martinis at lunch to get through the day. Even the expression “take a pill” implies that changing our chemistry would make people easier to get along with. Yet, we wonder why the drug problem is so great especially among our young people. We seem to be teaching them that to improve relationships or be able to handle relationships, we must alter our body chemistry. Perhaps if our body chemistry was right in the first place, we could handle some of the adversity that comes our way in the form of people with whom we have everyday contact.

There is also the fact that people who just do not feel well, whose bodies are not working as they should, are not usually the happiest of people and not the easiest people to get along with. It could be that interference in their nerve system due to head/neck misalignment is contributing to their bad disposition. Given that the nerve system controls the glands that produce all of the chemicals in the body, head/neck misalignment could directly affect body chemistry and consequently indirectly affects our moods. Here’s another thought, suppose the people that irritate us were under upper cervical care? If we maintain that the problem is not us but is them, then perhaps getting them under care, improving their body chemistry and enabling them to function better will make them kinder, nicer and easier to get along with. Sure that may appear to be a selfish reason to refer your boss or your neighbor or you fellow worker for upper cervical care, but remember it benefits them also. They will be healthier, happier, and let’s face it, improved relationships work both ways. Of course, upper cervical care will not solve all the world’s problems or even all of yours but if we can solve even a few that would be a good start.

Hard Times But Happy Thoughts

I know it seems like the world is falling apart. To varying degrees we have all had to deal with painful emotions--anger, grief, frustration, and fear nowadays. Add to that the ever present threat of war, collapse of the economy, global warming and peak oil and it can become very challenging to find value and meaning in our existence. If any good is to come from these and similar events, it will be because individual people, like yourself, make a conscientious decision to bring more of what is positive and loving to the world. What follows is a list of some simple things that you might do to make such a difference in your life and in our world.

 Give more attention to your relationships. Don’t let your spouse or your children go to sleep or leave the house without kissing them good-bye. Call your parents and tell them you love them.

 Do good things for your health. You would be amazed what good food, lots of water and plenty of rest will do for your attitude let alone your body.

 Enjoy the simple pleasures of life. The sounds of crickets at night, the smell of freshly laundered linen, the tiny toes on an infant’s foot, all help us feel more connected to the world around us.

 Connect with people. Getting together with current friends or looking up long-lost ones is a great way to relieve stress and renew your faith in mankind.

 Make someone else’s day. Do an unexpected favor or take the time to encourage someone in need.

 Get personal. Anyone can e-mail you (not to mention everyone else on their list at the same time), but a phone call, card or handwritten note shows you’ve really taken the time to acknowledge someone.

 Volunteer your time and talent. Plenty of organizations could use your assistance and as a special bonus you’ll feel good about yourself.

 Stop putting off the things you’d really like to do. Why not write that children’s story that’s been in your head all these years or hike that trail you’ve always wanted to see.

 Enrich your mind. Take a night class in a subject that has nothing to do with your job, read a good book, or learn a new language.

 Make mealtimes mindful. Stop everything when you’re about to eat, including driving, and focus or what you’re about to enjoy and allow it to nourish you.

 Pray or meditate. Estimates suggest that over 85% of Americans believe in a higher power. Now would be an excellent time to open up the communication lines.

 Find an activity you like to do just for fun—not to get your 30 min of exercise or to lower your cholesterol—something just for fun. Ride a bike, fly a kite, dance to your favorite music, or just splash around in some water.

 Grow something. Whether it’s a vegetable garden, some household plants, or a puppy, the miracle of life will astound you.

 Venture out into nature. Look at the stars, get caught in the rain, enjoy the beauty of flowers, watch whatever wild life happens by or just feel the sun shine on your back.

 Find humor in something everyday. Whether its from an e-mail joke-a-day service, a greeting card or a good movie, laughter does wonderful things for people.

 Have upper cervical care check-ups periodically. Not only is it more likely that you will have interference in the nerve system during stressful times, but ensuring that your nerve system is free of interference is the only way your body can achieve optimum function in good times and bad.

 Breathe deeply. Whenever we are angry, frightened, in pain or under stress in general our breath tends to get fast and shallow. There is nothing like a good long deep breath to calm us down and energize us. Take one right now.

Do You Really Want Health?

If Your Answer Is Yes, Upper Cervical Care Can Help You.

There is an old saying, “Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die to get there.” A similar statement could be made concerning health. In almost any survey taken asking people what they wanted most out of life, good health is one of the top three things on the list. Yet how many of us allow other less important things to keep us from attaining maximum health.

Most people who come into an Upper Cervical office desire to be healthy. Unfortunately, they often do not realize that it will take some effort on their part. The average person’s experience with medicine has led them to believe that they will be made healthy by what the doctor does to them or what he gives them. They can just sit back, do nothing or at most, remember to take their medication every four hours. While this approach may be effective treating disease, it has little to do with health.

Disease treatment is largely a passive activity. Health maintenance or health restoration is largely an active endeavor. Therein lies the problem. Sitting back and doing nothing will not promote or maintain health. Hoping or wishing for health will not make it happen. It must be actively pursued. A choice must be made.

Every individual has to establish his or her priorities. Is watching television more important than exercising for your health? Is eating poor quality food more important to you than spending the few extra dollars for good food?

Upper Cervical Care is also an active approach with the benefits of care occurring even after the adjustment, and like exercise and eating, they are far reaching. It is true you may feel good right after an upper cervical correction, but the real benefits are the long-term ones. When the body is working better it can actively promote health and well being and add years to life. Do you really want to be healthy? Sadly, too many people do not want to pay the price, which are time, money, and effort. You cannot expect to have good health unless you do those things necessary to attain it.

Only you can answer the questions put forth here and how you decide on these and other relative questions could very well determine your health, your happiness and your life.