Chiropractic is Alchemy
What is alchemy? Alchemy is “a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation or combination” (thanks, Google) or “a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). I love these definitions because they evoke the feeling of power and awe that alchemy encapsulates.
So how do we apply this seemingly magical process of transformation to our everyday lives? For starters, our bodies are constantly alchemizing. Take eating for example. We introduce food into our bodies, then our bodies break down that food into parts and decide which parts are useful, then take those useful parts further into our system and literally integrate them into our tissues. What we eat is transformed from a food item into a piece of our body. How wild is that?!
Alchemy is natural and life-giving. It is a necessary part of evolution. Without it, everything would stay the same.
Let’s apply this to our own personal evolution. Alchemy happens when you process an intense emotion. Emotions are energy in motion, meaning that they are meant to move and be released. Oftentimes, processing difficult emotions requires additional ingredients such as crying, yelling, moving your body, breathing it out or getting support from a mentor or loved one. Alchemy is when you take all of the necessary ingredients and combine them to create a new, beautiful outcome.
In this way, chiropractic is alchemy. Chiropractic uses the ingredients of attention, awareness, breath and movement to change the body’s expression.
The process of transformation begins when you schedule your appointment, setting the intention for a change to occur. The chiropractors attention on you helps bring awareness to what is happening within. Your body’s own breath helps to aliven and awaken your life force energy and healing potential.
The movement of your spine is what realigns the vertebrae and frees your body from interferences. The chiropractic adjustment is actually a disruption to your system. This disruption gives your body a chance to reorganize into a more intelligent expression.
The movement created by the adjustment has a ripple effect on not just the spine but the spinal cord, your muscles and ligaments, the connective tissue, the nerves and all of the signals being sent throughout your body. It allows for more clarity within the nervous system, and with that clarity comes healthier functioning. That is why chiropractic can help you sleep better, move better, digest your food better, focus better and generally just respond to life better.
The alchemy of chiropractic is what happens within you, when your own system is able to reconnect to itself. Every single chiropractic adjustment is, by definition, life changing because it effects the way your system relates to your inner and outer worlds.
Something that I find so intriguing (and sometimes frustrating) about chiropractic is that there is no way to possibly measure the subtle and profound impact that it has on our life expression. All I know is that this work is deeply meaningful and has been a great source of healing for me along my journey, and I hope it is the same for you.