Part 1 – Principles

Welcome to 2018! It was a great year at Nexus Chiropractic and we would like to express our gratitude to all of our mentors, community partners and especially our patients, who make showing up to work each day both fun and fulfilling.

We have continued to up our game by investing time, financial resources and travel in order to learn new skills and refine current skills so that our services continue to improve year after year.

A book that I read over the holidays was Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio – the famous investor and businessman. One of Dalio’s keys to success is to observe what works and what doesn’t and then come up with principles that allow him to repeat success and avoid failure. He uses principles in all areas of both his business and personal life.

Because I work in healthcare, I realized that healthy people tend to live by one set of principles while unhealthy people live by another. Success clearly leaves clues.

I also realized that most of those people – both healthy and unhealthy – are not at all conscious of the principles they live by. When these principles are unconscious they are not only harder to change to something better, they are also less available to apply successfully to other areas of life.

Finally, I realized that when it comes to health, very FEW people are living by principles that will produce success. Despite our society’s wealth in many other areas, most people are sadly, very unhealthy. An easy way to check where you are is to ask yourself, ‘am I healthier today than last year?’ ‘Do I expect to be healthier in 5 years than I am today?’ Be brutally honest with yourself. If the answer to either of those questions in ‘No’ the good news is that you can develop and live by some new principle that can take you there.

So, as we head into 2018 and strive for it to be the best (healthiest) year of our lives, I will be providing you with a series of articles outlining the principles of health that I see being lived by people who epitomize success. These are people who look good, feel good, perform well physically, mentally and emotionally. They get healthier as they age, have lots of energy and are very resilient. Who doesn’t want some of that?

Regardless of how healthy or unhealthy you are right now, you can start to apply these principles. It is about moving in the right direction.

The added bonus to living these principles regarding your health is that as you start to have success you can begin to apply them in other areas of your life. In fact, you will probably notice that you already DO use similar principles in the areas of your life that you are already successful in.

Before we dive into the first principle in the next article, let’s start with some quick homework. Take out a paper and pen and write down one area of your life you are already successful in. Maybe you have a great relationship? Maybe you are great with finances? Maybe you are successful at a job, sport, hobby or particular skill? Write that down.

Now, write down some principles you utilize in that successful area of your life. Dig deep and make the unconscious, conscious. Keep that piece of paper and keep an eye out for the next article.

Thorin Gault, D.C.

Jan. 9, 2018

Let’s say you wake up one morning, stagger into the bathroom, look in the mirror, and are shocked by what you see. You wonder how you got so fat (whatever that means to you), tired, old and unhealthy looking! This is completely unacceptable to you and you make a decision in that very moment that you are going to do something about it.

Now, what happened on that particular morning? Was there some event that occurred that suddenly made you fat and unhealthy? Of course not – there was a process of behaviours, perceptions and structures over a period of time that led to the current situation. THAT morning a threshold was reached that brought it to your conscious mind. The same thing could be said for a crisis in your finances, relationship or really, any other area of your life.

So, if it was a process that created your undesirable reality, what is the solution? Is there a magic pill that you can take or a magic procedure you can have that will make it all better? Obviously that is ridiculous – you must reverse the process!

When it comes to many health problems people have learned to see them as events instead of processes and therefore search for events to fix their problems.

Take back pain for example. Most people search so hard for the event that ‘caused’ their pain. “I must have slept wrong last night.” “I bent over to tie my shoe and that caused my back to go out.””I gardened yesterday, that’s my problem.” You get the idea. The fact of the matter is that in most cases of injury (with the exception of something like being hit by a truck), there has been a process going on for some time that ultimately led to the straw that broke the camel’s back and led to the end secondary condition of pain or some other symptom.

The ultimate solution, therefore is not some event (and adjustment, pill, massage, surgery) to get rid of the secondary condition (misalignment, inflammation, muscle spasm, scar tissue) but to actually address and remedy the underlying process.

Granted, there are many effective ways of treating muscle spasm, pain and inflammation yet those treatments are not designed to correct the underlying process and thus do not truly correct the problem. The unhealthy and overweight individual in the first paragraph could put on some make-up and wear body enhancing underclothes – but to truly take care of the problem they will have to undergo a process of changing their lifestyle.

At Nexus Chiropractic, we focus on addressing Neural Resistance which is like your car revving it’s engine at 25,000 rpm even when driving casually. Eventually, this will lead to a poor fuel efficiency, parts wearing out quickly, and ultimately – breakdown.

Neural Resistance may lead to a variety of secondary conditions down the line such as back pain, neck pain, headaches, poor posture and because the nervous system coordinates our organ systems even digestive troubles, a weak immune system, and anxiety.

Because we know that the development of NR is a process, addressing it is a process as well which is why we recommend an initial intensive period of care. While nobody is perfect, once the NR is significantly reduced some people choose a reduced plan of protection to make sure that their investment is well taken care of into the future.

Start seeing your current circumstances as the end result of processes in your life. If you see something you would like to change, come up with a process to get it handled.

They say that the joy is in the journey. I agree – and the journey IS the process.