In Penns Valley, evolution was not taught until a few years ago when the State of Pennsylvania made it a statewide requirement… and we wonder why our national science scores are embarrassing.

There are many different aspects to health; physical health, mental and emotional health, spiritual health, social and occupational health, to name a few of the most commonly addressed. But there is also much to be said for cultural and educational health, and there is a continuing battle going on in the debate between creationists and evolutionists, which includes creationists who now address their agenda in terms of “intelligent design.”

This debate bears on our ability to maintain economic viability as a country with much revenue flowing through educational and research institutions. As a former Intelligent Design proponent, I have done a fair amount of reading on this topic, and have read compelling books and articles on both sides (all three sides?) of the discussion. The fact is, however, that a compelling argument is not the same thing as science, and not the same as employing the scientific method.

My most recent read is Finding Darwin’s God, by Dr. Kenneth Miller. This is the best organized, most compelling and comprehensive book on the debate that I have read. Miller, a devout Catholic, not only addresses and defeats each and every argument put forward by creationists and intelligent design theorists in a way that any layman can understand, he also addresses the irrational idea that Religion and Science (specifically religion and evolution) are incompatible.

He criticizes both the militantly religious and the militant atheists who try to claim that evolution has proven the nonexistence of God, and presents a thorough assessment of why both sides abuse science and fear the other.

Most importantly, he is compassionate to people’s desire to feel safe in their dogma – whether religious or scientific zealots – and works to describe the common ground that everyone will benefit from working toward.

I hope you enjoy the read, and encourage you to share your thoughts.

With blessings,

Dr. Matthew

Centre Chiropractic, Boalsburg/State College

While this is a provocative statement, and while there are a few of us who escape this or intentionally train ourselves out of this pattern, it is true both habitually and physiologically.

In addition to the ego liking what is comfortable – even if you’re miserable in a job or a relationship, the ego knows what to expect in the situation so concocts reasons to stay in it because it’s “safe” – negative thoughts and even pain trigger the reward pathways in the brain and release neurochemicals that make us feel good and unconsciously drive us to repeat, even seek, the thing that hurts us or makes us crazy.

Suddenly this suggestion that humans are self-destructive, that we get addicted to ugliness, doesn’t sound so “new-agey.” This idea has been around for centuries, particularly among the monastics of the world’s major religions, as an observation of our nature. Our brains make chemicals that make us feel good, and now our modern medical resources have made it clear that they are also released by misery.

Suddenly our politics, our seemingly intractible positions on issues, people seeming more interested in being right than in cooperation, our challenging global, national and individual circumstances seem a little more comprehensible.

We have all known someone who stayed in a miserable relationship even without bonds of finances or children, people who returned repeatedly to a physically abusive “partner,” people who are in and out of rehab. These are the easy ones to see, and with the information we are gaining about brain physiology they are the ones who are easier to have compassion for.

It is less easy to have compassion for the co-worker who is addicted to the latest office gossip, our friend who dates the same jerk – with a different face – over and over, the cousin who just will not shut up about their extreme political views.

It is even less easy to have compassion for ourselves when we uncover our personal addictions to negativity. For me, for a long time, the news has triggered negative feelings. Justified, righteous, indignant, irritated, resentful negativity. Who do they think they are to try and legislate my life? How can they be so uncaring and mean to those who have less and are obviously struggling? How could someone do that to an innocent? Man, if only they weren’t so selfish and small-minded the world would be a much happier place….

So there, I owned it. I am sure some of you will relate, if only a little.

As I’ve said numbers of times, I am focused on inner freedom and self-mastery. When I began to realize, about a year ago, that I had started to become addicted to these feelings, that on brief breaks during the day I’d feel almost compelled to log onto a news site and get upset, that I was spending my lunch break watching the (smart, well-informed, savvy) talking heads, I decided it was time to make a change.

As always, this was an uncomfortable realization. Realizing you have a problem, that something else is “running you,” always is.

But I have a lot of practice being compassionate with myself. So I moved into this space and asked myself what the most freeing, self-honoring thing I could do was. The answer was pretty simple.

After two months I didn’t have to consciously fight myself to not click my bookmarks. After about four months I didn’t even think about checking the news any more. Last month I logged on to one of my old favorites to look for something specific, having forgotten about the pull. As soon as the page loaded and I saw that familiar graphic across the top of the page, and remembered.

As I scrolled down looking for my target, I began to realize that I was skimming article headings without any upset, energy, buzz, irritation, indignation… I was just seeing the information about what had happened, not all the judgments and meanings I had been attaching to it before.

Don’t get me wrong – I am not checking in anymore. I have beat that monkey, and am done.

I lovingly encourage you to take time this week to look for the negative feeling, thought, emotion, pattern, Rule, idea, whatever it is for you, that sucks your energy and controls you from within your own beautiful brain. You deserve the Peace.

With blessings,

Dr. Matthew

Centre Chiropractic, Boalsburg/State College

Whatever the resolution, it was something important to you but challenging – and not the fun kind of challenging. If it wasn’t important to you, you wouldn’t have bothered setting a resolution; you’d either forget it or simply do it. By the same token, if it wasn’t something challenging to you then you’d have already done it. No big fanfare, no planning, no mental space taken up, you’d have just done it and moved on.

Pretty much anywhere you turn in the new thought section of the bookstore, you see emphasis on the power of intentions. At the same time, I can’t think of a single “self-help,” “new thought,” “new age” book I’ve read that talks about resolutions. This isn’t just because they have an unpleasant connotation of failure, usually failure within a few months. In my mind the other really important advantage that intention has over resolution is that resolution is inflexible. To be resolved means to be set, determined, hell-bent… there isn’t any room for compromise, changing focus or renegotiating. In any situation where you’re facing a challenging desire, not begin able to renegotiate is a recipe for disaster – and failure.

Let me present a simple example, one that most of us can relate to. Let’s say you’ve decided as your New Year’s Resolution to deepen your commitment to exercise. Let’s say you decided to work out five days a week when you get home from work. So now some part of your consciousness (you know it well), the one who starts talking to you about how you never do anything you say you’re going to do so why try anyway, the one who prefers you relax on the couch, this part of you is watching carefully for your first sign of weakness so it can get you to stop. This is the part that has made this goal a challenge up until now….

So let’s say in the first week of February your kid has a special project at school which throws your schedule off, and you don’t get home until 8 pm. Or let’s say on Wednesday you finally give in to that virus that’s been going around the office. Whatever the cause, life happens, and because you overcommitted, and because you have set yourself up in a totally rigorous, unforgiving construct, you have no wiggle room. You tell yourself you failed, you lose your momentum, game over.

This is one of the huge advantages of working with intention instead. It rallies your enthusiasm, it declares clearly to God and the Universe what your plan is while asking for partnership and Divine support, it gives your conscious and unconscious minds something to work with – and most importantly it allows you flexibility to alter your course without giving up your goal. It allows you to renegotiate, which allows you to respond to the inevitable events that life brings us without feeding that part of yourself that doesn’t trust you because you don’t keep your promises to yourself, without feeding the part that tells you there’s no point in even trying, without feeding the part of you that tells you you’re a failure.

Not to mention, you don’t feed the part of your consciousness that expects you to peter out in March.

Intention is a powerful tool to work with any time of the year, and I’ve seen people make major, dramatic, profoundly life-altering changes by doing nothing other than setting a clear intention and asking for Spirit’s help.

So at this time of year, when most of us are losing steam on resolutions, you have the opportunity to sit down with yourself, in a quiet place with tea or coffee and nurturing music, and ask yourself where you are with your goal, and how you can construct a more supportive framework for yourself. Use intention, and be scientific about it – track your results. Track how differently you feel inside working with self-honoring, forgiving intention versus disciplinarian, stern resolutions.

With blessings,

Dr. Matthew

Centre Chiropractic, Boalsburg/State College

What it boils down to is that many of the healing challenges we face as complex, thinking organisms are not challenges on one level. In fact, if you’re facing a health circumstance on only one level, it probably won’t be a challenge. Since we are thinking, feeling beings, something like releasing weight or smoking or drinking needs to be addressed on both the symptom level – the physical, where you hold the weight, for example – and also on the causal level.

For most people the causal level is mental and/or emotional. With the weight example, perhaps you have gained excessive weight because you are depressed, or because you’re in a toxic relationship and are trying to protect yourself, or because you’re afraid to go for a heartfelt relationship or job and so try to control your disappointment by causing it for yourself, which you do by putting on weight you know will keep you from reaching the goal. However simple or complex the mechanism, if you simply apply yourself on the physical level by disciplining yourself around exercising regularly and eating less and less often, you might release a lot of weight. If you don’t address the hurt feelings, the fears, the incorrect interpretations of reality, then the weight will return.

So this is how this relates to homeostasis.

Let’s say John decides he has been heavy long enough – it’s affecting his health, his relationship, etc. So he buckles down and disciplines himself. Once. Twice. Three times. The fourth it takes, and he’s able to drop 20 pounds. But let’s also say that John knows – maybe unconsciously, but he knows – that he is heavy because there’s a much younger part of his consciousness that never got attention or caring, was taught that if he “obeyed” he’d be rewarded with food, and now that John is in his 40′s is feeling particularly desirous of control and attention, so drives John to the freezer every night for a full bowl of ice cream (sound familiar?).

If John doesn’t deal with that part, he’s never going to keep the 20 off and is more likely to put even more on as his younger self gives him an “ice cream spanking” to chastise him for trying to alter the comfort process.

This is where the Hulnicks’ brilliance comes in. Because systems like homeostasis, if the other levels of being aren’t addressed with regards to this issue, the organism is going to revert to balance, and drag the physical change back to alignment with the other levels.

To give you the next step in the process here, let’s say John has now not only put the 20 back on, but added another 30 before getting desperate enough to try and wrangle not only with the younger aspect and the physical self-discipline again, but now also the added negative self-talk and feeling of defeat from the last attempt. This time he decides to also work with himself on the mental, unconscious and emotional levels with help from a counselor recommended to him. Now he also changes his mindset, decides to try and find other ways to give that younger aspect what he needs, works with talking to himself nicely about the ground he’s gaining instead of talking discouragingly to himself about how little weight he’s lost, etc.

Now the other levels of John’s consciousness are all moving in a positive direction along with the weight release, so he is maintaining homeostasis, but doing it in a direction more in alignment with his intentions and goals. However you relate to this concept – dealing with the cause, not just the symptom; solving an issue holistically; or as homeostasis – doesn’t really matter. But the brilliant part here is how the Hulnicks were able to relate a powerful and ubiquitous balancing process in biological systems to explain the mechanism for how holistic healing works.

The part that does matter is that you love and respect yourself enough to go for full freedom, effectiveness and healing.

With blessings,

Dr. Matthew

Centre Chiropractic, Boalsburg/State College

This may seem like a dry subject, but stick with me for a minute. It’s interesting and relevant.

One of the most common examples of homeostasis used in teaching the concept is the body’s ability to regulate temperature. Imagine you’re hot, too hot like I am most of the summer; what does your body do? Well, actually a significant cascade of physiologic changes take place to try and vent heat, but the one you are aware of for sure is sweating. Sweating literally creates a medium which makes it easier for your body to release the heat, the same way water-based coolants in your car or a power plant make it easier to vent heat.

There are a half-dozen major system-balancing processes our bodies engage in that are actually named as “homeostasis” in education, but this term accurately describes all the processes of the body, and also in nature. Lightning achieves homeostasis as electrical charges are balanced. Forest fires achieve homeostasis as old biomass is dispensed with. As you rewire the false belief that you are a bad person that drives you to overeat and also release the physical weight, homeostasis is achieved… this last concept is admittedly more complex and we’re going to discuss it next time.

There are a few reasons I think homeostasis is cool and useful to understand. The first is that it accounts for pretty much everything the body does, and for our very survival. If our body as an organism wasn’t adaptable, we could only live in one kind of environment – and the Tigris Euphrates Valley would be crowded! Homeostasis allows people to live in the Sudan, in the North Pole, and in Hawaii. I’m not suggesting that we could survive all three places without some different clothing, but our general ability to survive even on the trip from one of these places to another, as temperature, wind and humidity change, is homeostasis. Long-term adaptations like changes in skin pigmentation are also arguably homeostatic, but more for the species-organism versus the individual-organism.

Another reason I think this is so cool is it really shows how complex we are as a being, and how Innately Intelligent our bodies are. There are something like 13 milion parts in a single cell, and depending on your height and weight (and which physiology textbook you reference), there are around 40 to 80 trillion cells in your body. Each one works with its environment via homeostatic changes, and interacts with the other 40-to-80-trillion-minus-one cells the same way. Our body is just an absolute masterpiece, beyond our understanding in its totality.

This discussion leads me to a health care observation. As adaptable as the human body is, and with all these mechanisms in place, it is still a challenge for it to work in the rapidly changing, commerce-and-science driven environment. This is a source for the continuously escalating amount of chronic illness we see in our world because it is a huge and new stress for our machine to have to adapt to.

A 2007 EPA report stated there are over 80,000 chemicals in daily use in the United States. I am sure some of these are specific to certain industries, perhaps a thinner only used by welders to clean steel before welding, but most of us are exposed to most of these chemicals every day. In our food. On our clothes and furniture. Offgassing from the world of plastics around us. In the air and water table. This can seem overwhelming, but it can also be easy to change – like reducing the number of cleaners under your kitchen and bathroom sinks. I don’t know about you, but my Grandmother cleaned her house with vinegar and bleach water, and it was cleaner than mine has ever been!

Another significant area of impact here is medication. Those of you who know me know that I am not anti-medicine. I’d have been dead 37 years ago if not for pharmaceuticals and blind in at least one eye if not for surgery – but we do use drugs and surgery too casually as a culture while assuming they are without consequence. I recently saw an antihistamine drug fact label which, under the warnings, gave several cautions, the first of which was “Do not use this to make a child go to sleep.” That horrified me, even though I sometimes have a dark sense of humor. When we need to put warnings like that on labels, we are way past “off course.”

The idea that we could take a drug to address a symptom and not have some side effects is ridiculous. I often use the analogy that introducing a drug into a ballet of millions of micronutrients, hormones and neurotransmitters and expecting it to work as well is like thinkiing you can drop a grand piano through a roof into the middle of an orchestra and expecting the sound not to change.

Homeostasis is an impeccable system, but external drugs are not a part of that system. They are a foreign input our body does not handle as miraculously, at least not yet – maybe in a few hundred years we will evolve to manage this input more successfully. One study actually showed that taking Tylenol for a cold could prolong the cold by 3.5 days! This is no doubt because it interferes with your body’s long-perfected ability to manage changes, including bacteria and viruses.

I guarantee you that you weren’t born with an Advil deficiency. Trust your body to do what it knows how to do.

With blessings,

Dr. Matthew

Centre Chiropractic, Boalsburg/State College

There are a few common experiences that we have as humans which cause a lot of misery. Guilt, suffering, stress – these three emotional states account for a huge share of the toxicity we encounter in our lifetimes and probably contribute to a significant number of the problems that we encounter (or cause for ourselves) at home, at work and with our extended family.

I am not saying it’s drama, and I’m not saying that these emotions are bad, wrong, or are abnormal as an emotional response to circumstances. These are normal, healthy immediate reactions to life events. What I am saying is that we can participate actively in life by choosing our interpretations of the world and our life.

In my life I have experienced suffering several times, over the passing of loved ones, over decisions I made that hurt others or myself or ended relationships, over physical and health circumstances. I get what suffering is about. Yet in every single one of these situations that I can remember, I interpreted the circumstances in such a way as increased my suffering. I made up a story, and it was a story that hurt my feelings more.

When my Grandmother died, I decided somewhere inside myself that she was gone. I decided that I would never see her again. I decided that she was no longer with me, watching over me, that I was no longer able to contact her.

When I ran away from my Father one day under highly emotional circumstances stemming from my parent’s divorce, he broke down a door to try and get to me and when he saw how scared I was of him he crumpled against the door jamb, crying. I decided I was a bad son, that I was a terrible person, and that there was something wrong with me for being afraid of my Dad.

When my relationship with my first long-term partner ended – mostly due to me being foolish – I decided that she was the last person who would ever love me, that she never loved me in the first place, and that I would be alone forever. I decided somewhere inside myself that I was unloveable.

The first time I had an inkling of what was possible with making decisions about whether to suffer or not was when I was 25 years old. I had only been working with myself in consciousness for a few years at that time, not much practice at all, and was mostly trying to rewire my brain to be a positive thinker. I went to my opthamologist after noticing some floaters, and after looking in my eyes he looked at me and said that based on the amount of damage he saw in my eyes, he thought I might be blind by Christmas, even if I took dramatic action. My first thought, believe it or not (it certainly surprised me), was, “At least I’ll still be able to play drums.”

Now this isn’t a story I am sharing to prove anything about how elevated or evolved I am – it makes a very important point.

If you try to imagine yourself in that same situation I was in and what your first thought would have been, I can almost guarantee you it would have been something different than my thought. Maybe your thought would have been positive or optimistic or hopeful too. The point is that experience is subjective, and the fact that most people would have distinct and unique responses in these life situations tells us first, that there is no objective or “right” way to react or evaluation of any circumstance, and second that choice is a factor.

Some cultures and individuals tell us even things we think are unavoidable reactions are avoidable. G. Gordon Liddy burned his palm on TV on a regular basis, some religious sects handle poisonous snakes, and some yogis can stay underwater or underground for unfathomable time periods without gasping for breath. Some of these may seem like dumb choices – but they are choices nonetheless, and there is power in acknowledging this.

My first year in practice a client of mine came to the clinic thrilled to tell me she had multiple sclerosis. She had been seeking a diagnosis for so long and finally she had something she could work with, read about, learn how to live with. I’ve had two other clients who were understandably devastated and fearful over the same diagnosis.

It is a practice, for most of us a lifelong one, to choose our reactions to circumstances. Acknowledging that you do have a choice is a powerful awareness point from which to start shifting your life. If you are suffering, look at what beliefs or interpretations you might be working with that are causing you to suffer.

With blessings,

Matthew

Centre Chiropractic, Boalsburg/State College

It is a regular event to discover health problems that are asymptomatic (without symptoms), after all this is why we go for regular checkups with family physicians, gynecologists, dentists, and chiropractors. The idea is to try and catch problems before they advance to a state where treatment is more difficult, more expensive, more invasive, less effective, and a state where there’s likely to be in pain. Cancer cells are typically present for months or years before they are even detectable by most testing, arthritis has usually progressed significantly before pain starts, and many of us have learned we need a root canal not long after tooth pain sets in.

So one point to be made is that just because you don’t have symptoms doesn’t mean you are healthy – a harder concept to integrate for many of us, and one that deserves it’s own post.

The other point is if you have pain, it is important to pay attention to this feedback from your body. Bodies are like babies and really only have one way to try and communicate that there’s something wrong. Pain. Which is why I say that it’s your friend.

In general, natural caregivers have a bad reputation for being anti-drugs and anti-pharmaceutical. This is often the case, and even though I think I have a very moderate stance on these modalities, some conventional doctors would probably say I am in left field as well. I think we overuse these as a culture, and I also think the way we have been trained by the medical establishment – and more significantly medical marketing – has led us to turn off our brains.

In other words, whenever we have an ache or pain we pop a pill without thinking. This is dangerous.

Conservative doctors would even back me up on this. We had a friend and client last year who was having chronic headaches, and had not been in for regular treatment. After a month of pretty bad headaches he came in for treatment to see if we could help him, and of course part of the conversation was whether there had been major changes in his life that might be to blame – a new desk, new pillow, new chair, new shoes, new stressors, new exercise routine, etc. We had ruled out most of these things, and the adjustments did not do more than “dent” the intensity of his headaches, so I suggested he see his family doctor for evaluation. He decided to wait it out and not see his doctor, but the next week found himself at the gas station not being able to remember how to get home. To the house he’d lived in for over 25 years. A mile away from the gas station. This was when he scheduled his appointment, and it turned out he had a brain tumor behind his right ear, and the surgery was successful but left him with some long-term complications. Regardless of whether taking action sooner would have changed the outcome (I think in his case mot of his doctors agree it would not have), even the most conservative doctor would have said after a month of intense headaches you should seek evaluation.

Tapplies to all of us, though, and not so dramatically. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen clients with frequent, moderate to severe headaches who responded to my questions that they didn’t drink much water, and by their next visit their headaches were largely resolved by adding more drinking to their day (not that kind of drinking).

So this is the thing.

The marketing world has us convinced that if you have even a mild headache it’s a bad thing and you should pop a pill.

Personally, I prefer to try and reevaluate that ‘education’ and see if I even agree with the premise. You don’t have to do that.

But if you’re not interested in looking at your assumptions, if it doesn’t irk you that you are essentially being controlled by X number of years’ worth of Bayer commercials, then at least ask yourself, on the way to the medicine cabinet, why you have the headache.

This is the point, and it’s the step most of us skip. We want the headache gone, so we grab a pill to make it go away, without considering that we could have avoided the headache in the first place, and might be able to avoid one tomorrow, if we look for the cause of the problem.

I guarantee you, none of us was born with an Advil deficiency.

It’s often as simple as, “Gee, the humidity/heat is way up this week and I am drinking less water, maybe I should drink more tomorrow,” or, “I didn’t really eat anything today! No wonder I have a headache,” or, “Interesting, every time I wear these high heels I get a headache.”

Next time you go to pop a pill, try and interrupt the pattern and see if you can find a simple explanation for the problem – and if so, ask yourself what simple things you can do to interrupt it tomorrow.

All these drugs have side effects and only address the symptoms. It’s smarter and healthier to find and fix the issue. Don’t skip the “Why is this hurting?” step.

With blessings,

Matthew

Centre Chiropractic, Boalsburg/State College

In the world of 12-step work, my understanding of how this idea of “acting as if” comes into play is as a sort of self-administered behavioral therapy; somebody hits your car in a parking lot, and instead of screaming at them or drinking over it, you “act as if” you’re emotionally mature and stable and keep your mouth shut. Or you lose your job an instead of gambling over the upset or eating an entire quart of ice cream, you act gracefully, thank your ex-employer for all she’s done for you then call your sponsor. I don’t mean to be flippant with these scenarios or the fabricated reactions, I am relating the way I’ve heard people talk about this.

But this stands to be used in a way that not only retrains your reactionary responses, but actually contributes to the furthering of life, career and dreams.

The reality is that we all have set a goal or embraced chasing a dream at one point or another in our lives. Most of us have also had the experience of having at least one obstacle present itself. The very process of risking the pursuit of a dream usually brings up inner doubts about our ability to succeed, and often times we end up creating obstacles for ourselves in order to “protect” ourselves from the risk of disappointment. We think it will hurt less if we crush our own dream at the time and place of our choosing rather than getting our hopes up about success and then having the world at large crush the dream and our psyche with it.

The revolutionary potential here is to act as if you achieved your dream or completed that task whether or not you did in service to your own momentum and inspiration. Part of the enthusiasm around most dreams grows from our powerful ability to imagine the end result, and to feel the kinds of positive emotions you imagine you’ll feel when you get there. People dream of being rich so they can go sailing, relax by the pool, help the poor, travel to exotic places. In general we’re not fantasizing about the sail rigging, checking the chlorine level, making the soup, packing our bags, right? We’re fantasizing about the emotional experience of freedom, relaxation, joy or freedom that we are going to experience.

So why not choose to feel that way now, whether or not the dream is achieved?

It makes no real difference whether you are designing the dream, or whether you are in the process of pursuing it and need motivation, or whether roadblocks have arisen – even if it has failed altogether, moving into the mental and emotional space of success is your choice. You know, or can figure out, what the experience you were seeking was in that situation, and then you can find other ways to experience or create that state of being for yourself. Our creative imagination is astounding as a species, and it is a tool we usually forget to use in our daily lives.

This is a pragmatic idea. While some could build a convincing argument that this is a way to live in a fantasy world, that is not what I am advocating. I am not suggesting you trick yourself into believing that you already own your own island, or that you have already completed grad school and make a fake degree in Photoshop, or that you pretend you completed the triathlon if you didn’t. I am advocating identifying the experience you were seeking and then either choosing to feel that way inside yourself, or to find a simpler and more accessible goal that can give you that same experience you were looking for. I always find it a little humorous when rationalists argue against the idea of using the mind to direct the emotions.

Another post on another day will likely address visualization, which is essentially what this is. I will take a risk here and make an unequivocal statement, that there are probably very, very few successful businesspeople, athletes or artists who didn’t visualize their success on the way to succeeding. It is such a powerful tool that it is now a standard feature of cancer treatment.

Especially with setbacks (versus “failures,” which I don’t really think exist anyway), going through this “act as if” process rebuilds your inspiration, enthusiasm and drive. It is golden.

With blessings,

Matthew

Centre Chiropractic, Boalsburg/State College

I am sure much of it has to do with the independent and entrepreneurial natures of our country, our history, and our general “small-government-people-should-help-each-other” mindset. There are doubtless dozens of other national, regional, religious and family traditions that all contribute to this tendency. Not to mention that one of our primary glues – television culture – tends to perpetuate this stigma.

But asking for help isn’t a bad thing. Many of us, when we stop to consider the idea of asking for help, immediately jump from that string of words to some variation of a vision of being a lazy slob lying around while others are doing everything, being a bad person, and being incapable and stupid. It can actually be pretty enlightening to watch your inner movie/conversation the next time someone offers you assistance of some sort, and see whose ideas, assumptions, judgments and stories you’ve taken on. I can pretty much assure you it won’t be pretty.

This comes up – in a lot of contexts – in my practice. One simple and fairly common one has to do with office workers who want to release some weight and feel that habitual trips to the vending machine are a part of the problem. See if this picture is familiar: over the weekend Wendy decides to stop eating processed junk and wasting money at the vending machines, and arrives at work on Monday determined. After settling in, she approaches her best friend Carol and tells Carol what’s going on with her commitment. She also decides to ask Carol for help. “So, if you see me headed towards the vending machines I want you to stop me, or trick me, or go lock the door to the break room – also, I want you to take my change jar from my desk and only give me change if I promise you it’s for the parking meter at lunch or the newspaper rack.”

Not a ridiculous scenario, right? I know I have had conversations like this in the past (though usually with girlfriends and not co-workers).

What I am hoping you’ll realize is that there is a whole other way to approach this – and in fact it’s the one you’d be more likely to take despite what your imagination tells you.

For example: over the weekend Wendy decides to stop eating processed junk and wasting money at the vending machines, and arrives at work on Monday determined. After settling in, she approaches her best friend Carol and tells Carol what’s going on with her commitment. She also decides to ask Carol for support. “So, if you see me headed towards the vending machines I would really appreciate it if you gently ask me where I am going, and if I tell you the vending machine, please remind me of my desire to stop this pattern, and remind me of how important it is to me.”

So maybe that’s described using too much “Matthew languaging,” but I think you get the drift. The first example asks the friend to take responsibility from/for Wendy. The second one leaves the personal responsibility to Wendy while asking her Universe for loving support of her intentions.

This is a huge difference.

The important stuff happening beneath the surface here is that in the second example, Wendy is setting up a dynamic in which she is doing the work herself, supported in her goal, supported in practicing personal responsibility, making and re-making healthy choices, practicing healthy patterns, consciously choosing her higher self and her self-caring intentions, and, simply, practicing her ability to choose.

The more you practice, the better you get at something….

Her friend is not doing it for her, she is not lazy, she is not a slacker, she is not a leech – she is a human with human patterns and frailties accepting loving support from her Universe.

And regardless of what you have been taught or told or trained to believe, there is no lack in the world, and the Universe is unconditionally dedicated to your success and joy, if you are willing to accept that reality.

Pay attention to what goes on in you the next time you are facing a challenge (already in a bad mood or maybe dealing with something emotional for you like releasing weight or smoking) and someone offers to help. There is a really significant hurt or misinterpretation of reality there which is ripe for healing or re-interpreting.

With blessings,

Matthew

Centre Chiropractic, Boalsburg/State College

There are a lot of reasons walking is so good for you, and there are a lot of reasons why it is so important after an adjustment. If you read my post A Simple Answer, then you can probably guess the first reason – it’s what our machine is meant to do. Our bodies are engineered to walk, and in fact that is the foundational explanation for all the other benefits.

The factor I talk about most often with my clients is that ligaments, the soft tissues that actually hold bones in the proper relationship to each other, have little blood supply so shorten and heal slowly. They are not like muscles, which have tremendous blood supply and so are elastic and heal relatively quickly. If you or anyone you know has ever sprained an ankle, you were most likely told it would take six to eight weeks to heal. This isn’t just because ankles have a lot of weight, and therefore stress, on them, but also because ligaments just don’t recover overnight. So if you are up and moving around (walking), then they will get more blood supply and heal faster.

The flip side of this factor is that sitting is stressful. In one biomechanics textbook an in situ study evaluated the psi (pounds per square inch pressure) in the L5/S1 disc (base of your spine, at about the belt line) in different positions. This study found that when an average person is standing with good posture, the disc registers around 80 psi. When sitting in a firm, straight-backed chair with good posture, the psi increases to close to 200. When slouching, or in a soft couch or chair this can get as high as 400 psi. Now of course healthy joints know how manage these stresses (at least in the short term), but not if you are slouching habitually, or have an injured joint in your low back that is trying to heal.

So not only does walking help you heal faster, sitting can undo you.

Less often considered are the intervertebral discs. The discs between the vertebrae have almost no blood supply in a normal adult and yet are dense with water (and strong, gelatinous proteins). The way the water gets into the disc is primarily by the pumping motion of that joint moving through a normal range of motion… yep, you guessed it, walking. This becomes not just an explanation of why walking is healthy and why it is so important after a chiropractic adjustment, but also an argument for adjusting misaligned joints in the first place, especially degenerating joints. If the disc is degenerating – regardless of whether the thinning is secondary to misalignment or not – realigning it will restore normal joint biomechanics and help get fluid back into the disc, improving it’s health and ability to regenerate.

One of the least-mentioned reasons walking is so good has to do with lower extremity circulation. If you think about the fact that the blood stream carries nutrients, oxygen and important healing mediators throughout the body and helps purge the waste, and then think about how far the legs are from the heart pump, you’ll realize circulation in the legs is no small feat. In fact the circulatory system is one big loop, and not only are your feet the farthest point in that system, but the returning blood has to fight gravity, and the heart would have to be really shoving on the fresh blood leaving the heart to get it to push all the blood in front of it back towards the heart. A major factor in the healthy circulation of the veins and lymphatics in the legs is muscle contraction; as you walk the muscles contract and in addition to moving you through the world, this helps squeeze, or “milk,” the waste back up your legs. You can probably also see that while not walking becomes a problem here, sitting on the backs of your legs all day makes this return circulation even harder.

The one exception, of course, is if it causes pain to walk. Pain sucks, but it’s your friend and the only reason it occurs is to tell you that you are doing yourself damage – so listen to the boss.

Of course studies have shown that walking can reduce the risk of stroke, diabetes, some cancers, heart problems, depression, arthritis and even some organic mental disorders. A study even showed that it and can improve interest in, and enjoyment of sex. Not to mention simply enjoying fresh air, listening to birds singing, watching the seasons change, looking for real estate deals, or as my wife likes to do, taking note of whose garden gives her an excuse to make ours bigger next year. Get out and do it.

With blessings,

Dr. Matthew

Centre Chiropractic, Boalsburg / State College