Every once in a while, I'll have someone ask me, "Dr Lou, what do you take when you get sick?" To which I always answer, "I don't take anything because I don't believe in getting sick."
To the unaided ear, that must sound pretty arrogant. But it is, in fact, true. But what I need to explain is that I didn't just come up with that answer to be a smart-ass, and I didn't come to "not believing" it overnight, either. This statement is the result of over 20 years of holistic adjustments that helped illuminate the power of Body/Mind science, art, and philosophy ...earned, not bestowed.
Like most people, when I was younger, I took my health for granted. Well into my 20's, I believed I was invincible. That is until a 400lb desk fell on my head and cracked my 6th cervical vertebra, making my right arm so numb, that sometimes I'd wake up wondering what that thing was that hit my face.
The condition is called a "Clay Shoveler's Fracture" a painful fracture that occurred when my neck went too far back. See it here: http://www.gentili.net/fra
For about two months, I put up with the kind of agony that no painkiller can touch. After two different orthopedic medical geniuses told me I "had to" have surgery, I (reluctantly) went (got dragged) to a Chiropractor (by the woman I was dating), and began my amazing healing journey. If I had listened to those "specialists" I ...well ... WE wouldn't be here now.
...just this moment, I had a really sobering thought of where I would be if that fork in the road had not been taken 20 years ago...
In this parallel universe, I would not have gone to a Chiropractor, having caved into the orthopedist, and succumbed to the neck surgery. Since most othropedists think Chiropractors are a joke, I doubt I would have been referred to one for re-hab after the cutting was done. So I wouldn't have had my interest piqued by this noble healing art.
Which means I would have stayed in the shipping business back east ...which was KILLING me. I was completely stressed out, running a delivery operation 12+ hours a day, six days a week, and had allocated no "re-creational" time for myself. It's doubtful I would have changed from that lifestyle.
Since the poor and uneducated guys who worked for me were mostly motivated by the fear of losing their job, I ran the operation from my impatience and anger. I became a screaming tyrant, getting a sick enjoyment out of threatening them that someone else was "waiting for their job."
It was a terribly negative environment, and it was ugly. I was ugly ...35lbs heavier than I am now, hiding behind pulled-back long hair and a full beard ...puffed up and pretending to be the rough, tough guy I wasn't. My diet was drinking 8-10 cups of rot-gut coffee a day, drinking scotch to go to sleep, and eating the slop off the buzzard-wagons that came around the industrial park.
Since illness is an expression of the dis-ease we generate from dis-honoring ourselves, I'm sure I would be a total wreck by now with multiple systems running badly, or even failing. I can't imagine I would have changed the way I dealt with the stresses of work. Heck, it was working so well that I earned some huge bonuses for running these guys into the ground.
I was a single dad, and my two girls were very young then, and I was often too exhausted to do much with them. With my neck all cut up and fused, my arm probably permanently dysfunctional ....who knows what I would have done. Probably gotten addicted to painkillers --Oxycontin-- which I would have gotten it from one of my warehouse workers, Rush Limbaugh-style. What an example I'd be for my girls in that state.
And, of course, I would not have the feared forehand weapon I have today. The surgery would have made it impossible for me to ever play tennis again, which has brought me so much JOY these last few years. (Okay ...maybe not feared, but respected.)
In all honesty, the guy on that parallel time-line probably didn't make it this far. In the last couple of months before I graduated to this life, I had two guys pull guns on me after firing them. The writing was splattered on the wall, so to speak.
But I made it this far, because I took the road less taken. And that has made all the difference.
Part of the miracle that is this life is that I began to understand what I always knew was true: that our INNATE INTELLIGENCE creates conditions for us to face ourselves, with the aim of furthering our individual evolution. And that includes illness and injury, which comes from the disease ...the "lack-of-ease" we unconsciously carry within our being when we are living the wrong life.
As such, there's never a "sickness" in the usual way it's thought of. Every SYM-tom is a SYM-bol, a metaphor that illuminates a lack of harmony in our being.
Think about it; isn't a "cold" nothing more than an adult "time out" ...where some conflict at work, school, or in a relationship is avoided, the Body/Mind creating the conditions where you can justify being "away" from the problem? After all, who wants to be around a stuffed-up, grumpy, sneezing, coughing mess? What better way to get away from those pesky co-workers than to curl up with a nice cup of tea watching "ELLEN" until the storm subsides? Examine the next time you "catch a cold" and see if it doesn't fit this idea.
With the right knowledge and some practice, all illness can be seen this way.
Do these things happen to me? Of course! I have the same disease generators in me that you have ...all the internal fears, weaknesses, frustrations, lunacy, misunderstandings, blind-spots, and disappointments ...just like everybody else.
But they rarely express themselves externally now because I've learned to recognize them, and relax into their rhythm and see the connections between how I feel, and how I FEEL. Most people just kill the messenger with DRUGS, and miss the message. It took consistent practice, but now each time symptoms occur in me, I experience that they don't "happen" to me at all, but are part of the beautiful process of self-reflection of something unseen in myself. They sort-of pass through me now as I "get" the message.
My wake-up call was my neck injury, which was all about the anger and frustration with my life that I was carrying inside me. Chiropractic adjustments helped me break that pattern, and supply specific, new knowledge where something new could emerge. It's available to you now, and for those of us on the journey of health, each adjustment progressively becomes a deep meditative re-membering moment, as opposed to the dis-membering that occurs in our hectic day-to-day lives.
Many philosophies agree that one of man's greatest illusions is that he can "do" in life, that he decides his fate. The word "decide" comes from the Latin decidere, which means simply to "cut away." So a decision is nothing more than a cutting away of what does not work for us. The universe will then match our vibrations with the right stuff.
BIG SECRET: That's all we ever have to do!
Know anybody at a cross-roads who needs a new beginning? I got some ideas:
http://4pains.com/Fabale/h
Please drop me a reply and let my know your thoughts on this, or any health and wellness idea.
Your "I'm Glad I Took That Fork If Only To Meet You" Believer in Health,
Dr Lou
