The Second Week

Today was the second week of chiropractic school. To be honest there was one class that I was really looking forward to. There are three aspects to Chiropractic, art, science and philosophy. Today was my first class of philosophy. It was done by a man named Dr. Shawn Dill who has an interesting story that I am sure you could see his blog about, but he talked about what patients really need and want. When they come into a chiropractor's office, they are already expecting something. Do they want to be cured of pain? Do they want to be more healthy? Do they want to be well again?
If they want to be cured, chiropractics is the wrong answer altogether. We don't cure anything. All we do is take out the interferences in the spine and allow the body to heal it's self. What about taking away the pain? Dr. Dill answered it best, "... if you want the pain to go away, I know of a bar around the corner that we could go to and I'll buy you a drink and I'll guarantee you that your pain will go away. Or if you don't want to drink, I know of over the counter medication that will drug you up and take away the pain. Yet I am sure that is not the reason you came here."
Once you get to the real reason and which is that their pain is causing emotional issues. They can work through the pain, but there are emotional problems that are very real for these people. They can't hold their children, sing in the choir, or play sports anymore. This means that once you identify why they are here, you ask them how would it make them feel if they didn't have that pain anymore and what would that mean for them. They'll cry. That is what you base your success each session with them. It's not, what's your pain level? but instead, were you able to hold your grandchild? Not only do you make a deeper connection with them, but they won't just keep telling you that their pain is a level 6 when they don't know what a level 6 pain is.
I loved this idea since I really want to help people feel better. I would love to take away their pain, but I know that there is so much more than that. People all around me are having miracles because of chiropractic care. I actually told Dr. Dill that even though my family believes in chiropractic, they can't afford it so they can't go as often as they want. He kindly pointed out that if they had a choice between going to the movies or getting adjusted by the chiropractor, which would they choose? It's pretty obvious if they choose the movies that they don't understand the value of chiropractic care. It made me sad to understand that. I know that there are people who should get care at a discounted price if they don't have money, but I also know that can be relative. Even though my family loves chiropractors, they don't truly understand the value of it. I now need to find out how to reeducate myself to take that doctrine out of my mind and find out how to do the same for them.
Before I go on to the other classes, I did want to write down three websites that Dr. Dill wrote down: thatsomething.net, kaizenwell.com, and worksitewellness.net. These are three of his businesses dealing with wellness and chiropractic.
The other classes weren't as exciting. It was PNS Neuroanatomy and System Histology. While we learned about connective tissues, it was mainly a review and took awhile to get through. I did learn some interesting things though that might actually get me to go more organic. I won't rehash old information that anyone can just do a quick research on nutrition on processed food and learn about, but I will write down a few ideas.
One main one was an idea about diets. "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants," (In Defense of Food, Michael Pollen). That is plain and simple which I like. Food however is subjective, so what is food? Anything that your grandmother would see and easily tell that it's food. Anything processed, has more than 5 ingredients in it, and has anything that has a funny looking name in it, is not food. As my dad always said, "Eat live food." Course he also said, "Eat every bean and pea (pee) on your plate.”
My problem has always been money and quantity. I love food and I am poor. That typically means that I can't control myself when I get free food. It also means that I am a cheap skate and will get the cheapest food I can get. Today I realized that if I bought the right foods, then I would not only eat less because I would get fuller quicker, but I would also enjoy the food more! Real food just tastes amazing! Not only that, but since I would be eating less, I would be able to buy less (even though more expensive) whole food. The idea would be that it would cost the same.