The Pain of Life

Adapted from the mama birth blog titled Painful Birth-Loving it, Embracing It, Accepting It

I live at the top of a hill.  I try to stay in shape by running.  The easy part is getting DOWN the hill.  But, inevitably I must come home at some point and that includes going UP hill.

Sometimes, since I am tired and at the end of my run, I try to avoid the hills.  I see one coming up and so I turn before I get there.  But then I find something awful.  ANOTHER hill.  Then I try to turn again.  Surely, I can get home without going up a hill, right?

As it turns out, NO.  I live on the top of a hill and to get back home I must go up a hill.  Trying to avoid the hill is simply going to drag out the inevitable and possibly get me lost.

When it comes to life, I think all of us have done ourselves a disservice.  We have told ourselves over and over that life doesn't have to be painful.  It can be painless and easy.  You don't have to sweat!  You don't have to suffer!

Different groups go about this in different ways.  Medical doctors give you drugs and Chiropractors often feel adjustments should solve your pain.

I am not advocating that we all should expect life to be excruciating and scared to death about the prospect. 

But over and over again I see people who are actually ashamed to admit that they feel pain of all types in life.  It is like it is some kind of badge of honor to have a pain free life.

Guess what.  I think that is lame.  I think we have sold people a bill of goods and we are not adequately preparing them for the realities of life when we act like they can have a life without pain if they just "do everything right" and "have their mind free of fear", etc.

There.  I just said it.  I think the idea of pain free life is a little lame.

Let me explain. 

The most beautiful thing about life to me is what it can teach us about real life.  I think that is why the journey of life is so intense and beautiful and multifaceted- it is teaching us lessons that will serve us for the rest of our life if we listen and learn from them.

That lesson is this-  Real joy requires some pain.

I don't know how much of my life I have spent avoiding the hard stuff, but I can tell you that it was far to much.

Too many a year was spent waiting for things to get easier and hoping that THEN I could really enjoy life.  I missed out on enjoying the hard times and learning from them.  I dragged out the misery and I didn't appreciate what I could have been learning at the time.  I told the universe to keep trying like mad to teach me the same lesson, over and over again, because I didn't want to learn it.

I don't believe life is supposed to be easy.  I don't believe it is supposed to be pain free.  

What should you love, embrace, and accept about the pain of life?

Embrace that it is teaching you that you are strong and the only way that it can teach you this is by having you go through something that you didn't think you were capable of.

Love that when it is over you will feel joy and satisfaction.

Embrace that life makes you a person that knows they are capable and willing to do what they must.

Accept that it is something you must, no- are BLESSED- to go through.  It isn't a punishment, it is a journey and it is great one.

When we try to avoid the hills of life we short change ourselves, we fight what was meant to be and make longer a journey that, though it includes difficulties, gives us an amazing ride throughout.  When we fight this, avoid this, or are surprised by this it simply makes that hill harder to climb.

We need to stop avoiding the pain of life and we need to love what it teaches us, what it does for us, and what it means to us when we have gone through it.  The pain of life is your teacher, your lover and your friend.  It is not something to be feared.  It is what makes life so magnificent.

Six Big Differences With Upper Cervical Care

Six things upper cervical doctors do differently than other chiropractors

by Anthony Rumsey, DC

Upper cervical doctors are different than other chiropractors. To help you understand the differences, here are the top six ways your upper cervical doctor will be different than any other doctor of chiropractic that you will see.

1. Won’t adjust you without x-rays.

Your upper cervical doctor uses x-rays to create a unique formula to adjust you based on your body’s unique anatomy.

There are many areas of the spine whose motion can help guide a chiropractic adjustment. The low back and the mid-back, for example, have built in motion pathways created by the shape of their joints. But there is a lot more room for movement and error in the upper neck. So it is the perspective of upper cervical doctors that the junction of the head and the neck cannot be accurately adjusted without measuring and noting your unique anatomy on an accurate x-ray.

2. Measure your body’s posture and/or nervous system function every time you come into the office.

As much as possible, upper cervical doctors use objective measures of your body’s function to help guide the clinical decision making process. Your upper cervical doctor may indirectly measure nerve function using paraspinal thermography (heat reading). Or he or she may visualize your in-alignment versus your out-of-alignment posture with a number of different tools that help measure hip height or rotation, shoulder height, and the lean (or list) of the spine.

3. Won’t adjust you at every single visit.

Upper cervical doctors think differently about the purpose of the adjustment than many other chiropractors. In other chiropractic systems, multiple adjustments over many visits are expected, and are helpful. The upper cervical doctor, however, believes that “holding” the adjustment is more important than just receiving it. Healing comes from holding your new alignment. Therefore, the upper cervical doctor will only adjust your upper cervical spine when your body shows objective signs of needing an adjustment.

If your upper cervical doctor is adjusting at every visit for many visits in a row, it is a sign that things are not going as well as they should be.

4. Measure the effectiveness of the adjustment after it is delivered.

Your upper cervical doctor will conduct one or more post-adjustment checks every time you get an upper cervical adjustment according to your adjustment formula. In some cases this may include one or two post-adjustment x-rays. This may be another thermographic scan, a measure of your posture, or some other functional test. Unlike other areas of the spine that snap, twist, and pop when the joint moves, the upper cervical adjustment intends to restore balance to a very delicate area of the body. The upper cervical doctor expects immediate changes in some parts of the body’s functions, and verifies it with a post-adjustment check.

If your upper cervical doctor is adjusting you and just sending you on your way, then he or she might not be an upper cervical doctor.

5. Always deliver a gentle adjustment.

The upper neck is a delicate area of the body. It’s natural for the body to lock up when you sense that someone is going to push, pull, poke or prod this area of neck. Because your body will resist an adjustment that is too strong, upper cervical doctors use gentle re-alignment procedures to bring the head and neck into better balance. Your upper cervical doctor will always deliver a gentle adjustment.

6. Almost always concentrates on head-to-neck balance.

There are many reasons upper cervical doctors started calling themselves upper cervical doctors, in addition to using the word “chiropractor.” One major reason is how few chiropractors there really are using a specific adjusting protocol to re-align the head-to-neck area of the spine. Another reason is because the name fits: upper cervical doctors will spend 99% of their time helping your head-to-neck alignment because of how important it is to your body’s expression of life, health, and longevity…and because of how vulnerable the area is to injury.

Unlike the stronger areas of the spine which have an inter-vertebral disc, there are weaker interlocking joints at the top of the neck. The whole thing mostly stays in balance from strong muscles and ligaments. Like any other muscles and ligaments, these upper cervical muscles and ligaments are subject to accidents and injuries which can threaten the normal balance of the head-to-neck area, and disrupt the body’s normal functions.

Sickness, Health and Amazon.com

"Sickness 2 Health" is now available on Amazon.com!  Please check it out and browse through some of the pages.  Let me know what you think and maybe even get your copy today!

The book is also still available on lulu.com.  Click here to check it out! 

"Sickness 2 Health: From The Inside Out" synopsis:

Regaining and maintaining your health by turning common health knowledge upside down and inside out. There is a paradigm shift happening and people are looking to “do it yourself” health care more all the time for better health and, especially in today’s current economy, to save money. There are many books out there of course that address this and try to provide ideas and suggestions about what one should do to regain and maintain their health. This is not what Sickness 2 Health is about. Sickness 2 Health, while giving some action steps, has the primary intention of rattling and shattering your current world view in regards to health. From the smoldering ashes of these old outdated views we lift up a new perspective and premise to make health decisions from, like a phoenix rising from its own ashes. 

Upper Cervical Care And The Sum Of The Parts

Adapted from "The Whole Is Equal to the Sum of Its Parts"
by Dr. Joseph Strauss

"The whole is equal to the sum of its parts", that is an axiom, a true statement. The problem is that it can only be easily understood with regard to mathematics and the hard sciences. When it comes to, say, something like the human body, it is a little more difficult to understand, primarily because we can only know some of the parts through our senses. There are parts of the body that are outside the realm of our knowledge, parts of the body that defy understanding in the empirical realm, that is, parts of the body that are not physical. How do you measure love? How do you quantify the will? How much does desire weigh? These are parts of a human being that we cannot measure, yet we know they exist. We know how much the “human” part of you weighs. You can step on a scale and we can measure it. But what about the “being” part of you? Can you measure that?

In upper cervical care we acknowledge an unseen, immeasurable, immaterial part of living things. We call it the innate intelligence. It is the principle of life… whether that life is in the form of a plant, an animal or a living person. While there are differences between plants, animals and human beings, the innate intelligence is the one thing that all living organisms have in common. With it, the organism grows, reproduces, assimilates food and most important, adapts.

How can we prove that if it cannot be measured? Well, we can use the most unscientific means of proving something. It’s called “common sense.” A dead animal or plant does not adapt. A live one does. You can call it whatever you want but innate intelligence is as good a name as any. It is the principle of life that when interfered with causes a degree of loss of life, somewhere between 1% and 100%.

The objective of the upper cervical doctor is to reduce, as completely as possible, the interference that is due to head/neck misalignment. We cannot do anything when that interference is 100%. But with anything less than that, the person would benefit from being under upper cervical care, regardless of what the manifestation of that lack of life is called or even if there is no physical manifestation of that absence. They may also need some other type of care. However, nothing but upper cervical care will reduce the interference in a systematic and repeatable way.

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!

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.

Can Upper Cervical Care Stop The Endless River?

Adapted from: The Endless River
Author Unknown

From its inception, our "health" care system has been an allopathic philosophy. Allopathy can be described as the practice of treating diseases and/or conditions. The bottom line is, you don't seek care if nothing is wrong. And if you do go when nothing is wrong, the purpose is to find something that is wrong so it may be treated. This is the limitation of allopathy--it does not serve people until they are in crisis.

Consider this analogy. If you had spent your whole life in a rescue squad pulling thousands of drowning people out of a river, would you not eventually wonder why they were in the river to begin with? Our system has spent centuries attempting to save the lives of millions who are sick and dying, but has never gone to the head of the river to discover how the people were falling in. This is why treating conditions, while necessary at times, is not the only answer. Treating anything is reactive. Pathologists have proven that symptoms are the last stage of the disease process. By the time you are getting stomach pains, neck pain, dizziness or any symptom, your body has existed at a sub-par level for some time already.

Upper Cervical Care exists as one of the only non-allopathic licensed health care professions in the world today. We don't go to the Upper Cervical Doctor when we have a bad back, sore throat or broken toe nail. We go to the Upper Cervical Doctor for one reason, to keep the nervous system un-interfered with because a properly functioning body keeps us out of the river and delivers an exceptional experience of life and health. If you really feel that your body is important to your existence, you will find that Upper Cervical Care is a refreshing and necessary addition to your health regimen. Upper Cervical Care is a life-supporting measure that is proactive and can be utilized for as long as life itself exists.

So what do you think? Can Upper Cervical Care, by helping the body function at its best, stop, or at least decrease, the number of individuals falling into the endless river of a health crisis? I think it is safe to say that it would be a drastic improvement to a system that is, itself, in a health crisis.

Some pics explaining Upper Cervical