What is Your Back Story?

The story of your spine is your “back story”. Many people know that the spine helps to protect the spinal cord, the neurological freeway that connects the brain to nerves in the body. The spinal cord is not a separate organ from the brain, and in many ways it can be considered the “back of the mind”.

We experience our world through our nervous system (brain, spinal cord, nerves, and sense organs). Sometimes, this world can be stressful on our bodies and our minds and this is reflected in the spine. The body will prioritize stability over freedom when it is under duress or if it perceives it is under duress. This means that whether the stress on the body and the spine is material (physical or chemical stress) or psychological (mental/emotional stress), the body and the spine will respond in the same way.

Sometimes it is important and necessary to trade stability for freedom, but more often than not this state is only beneficial when temporary. Life is the expression of motion and motion requires freedom. This is nowhere more apparent than in the spine. If the spine is not allowed to freely express movement through a balanced and coordinated range of motion, the entire communication system of the body becomes challenged. When there is reduced quantity and quality information being communicated within the body, especially when this occurs over long periods of time, we see the consequences of dis-ease manifest.

Dis-ease can take different forms. Dis-ease can look or feel like pain, fatigue, tension, or challenges with how the body functions. No matter what the symptoms, dis-ease in the body indicates a compromise to the body’s internal communication system.

The role of the chiropractor is, therefore, to address the compromise to body's internal communication system. In chiropractic, this compromise when found in the spine is called the vertebral subluxation. The chiropractic adjustment is an information signal delivered to mobilize the innate wisdom of the body, in order to allow the nervous system to reorganize where and how ease and dis-ease are present.

The stories that we write with our lives are the stories that are reflected in our spines. To see the integrated whole, we must acknowledge that nothing exists in isolation, there must be a balance of freedom and stability, and that this process of story writing is ultimately a creative one.