Facing Breakdown

Sometimes your internet goes down for 5 days, the washing machine starts to leak, the dryer begins to burn clothes, and your primary electronic device sustains water damage that will take 1-3 weeks to repair. While these examples all reflect non-emergent challenges of modernity, they certainly interrupt the regular pace and flow of what may otherwise be very full days.

What both experience and the second law of thermodynamics tell us is that all (closed/individual) systems break down in the face of reality. Entropy is the tendency for all systems to move toward disorder. The clear exception to this is living systems. For a time, they oppose entropy, intelligently and persistently organizing the way energy is expressed through physical form. The intelligence of life is abundant and the energy available is everywhere. The two things that limit organization (and health) are matter and time.

The aim of chiropractic is to determine whether and where the nervous system is experiencing limitation in its ability to use energy to coordinate normal function in the matter of the body.

Dysfunction, dysregulation, dis-ease all reflect interference to innate coordination. When challenge presents, it’s worth reflecting on what practices, people, and communities we turn to. The extent to which they can contextualize challenge, bridge connection, help alleviate fear, and facilitate right relationship to stress, the better able we are to cultivate trust in our inner adaptive capacity.