No Practice is An Island
Gault Family Chiropractic used to essentially function as an island. While I did refer patients to other health practitioners and even chiropractors and received some referrals from them, that was the extent of my interactions with other professionals. They did their thing and I did mine.
This has all changed recently. I work with trainers, a physiotherapist and a nurse practitioner as a part of Project Strong. A group of health practitioners in Cornwall has been started where we can regularly communicate with each other. I recently had a great lunch with one of our newer chiropractors. I also recently began to meet with a group of “regular” chiropractors twice a month for conference calls. Finally, as I have become more involved in Olympic weightlifting I have been exposed to many injury and mobility interventions. Yes, I have stepped out of my shell!
WHY?
Being exposed to the often great work that inspires some great people has really forced me to examine why it is I do what I do. And that is a very good thing! Why do I choose to provide NSA and SRI? Why not do any of the other interventions that get some great results?
Last week I was watching a video with one of the trainers I lift weights with. In it, the practitioner was using a strange little device on a top level lifter and within seconds had drastically increased both his range of motion and strength. Very cool! This was a great service to that man at that time. I had to question myself, “Why don’t I do that?”
Cool…But!
The fact is that while I did find it cool, it just did not inspire me that much. I found myself thinking, “Who cares? What difference will this make tomorrow or next week? What difference will this really make in his life?” Understand that this is not a criticism for what was done; it just did not inspire ME to want to do it.
Inspiration
This brought me to the next question. What DOES inspire me? What is it about NSA and SRI that motivates me to travel the world attending seminars, stay up late writing articles, donate hours of my time giving workshops and exclusively provide this care in my office? Here is what I came up with.
Got Awareness?
The first quality that inspires me is increased awareness. If an intervention does not include greater awareness I am simply not interested. In any area of life, if I have a challenge I want to learn from it. Same goes for health. When we become more aware it allows us to learn which means that we take something into our future that will be of benefit to us. Unfortunately, most health interventions either do nothing to support greater awareness or even worse actively decrease it. A pain killer essentially dumbs you to what is actually happening and in this case ignorance can be bliss. NSA and SRI only work with an increase in awareness first.
Sustainability
Next, I am inspired by sustainability. The reason I first sought out NSA as a chiropractic practice was that the way I was previously applying chiropractic was not creating sustainable changes. If you have to keep doing the same thing to get the same result (or worse) the care is not sustainable. The whole idea of getting fixed until you get messed up again is based on a non-sustainable model. NSA and SRI create sustainable results because with each level of care there is a new and refined learning that occurs. This is also why a person who has achieved intermediate or advanced care strategies can come back into care after years away and very quickly take over from where they left off.
The Wholism Shebang!
Finally, I am inspired by wholism. What I mean by this is that the impact is not only physical, but also benefits the mind, emotions and spirit. Often people will sacrifice one for the other. While NSA and SRI are applied purely through the physical body they are done so in a way that produces a myriad of mental, emotional, stress, and quality of life benefits.
Your Turn
Having gone through this exercise after practicing NSA for over 10 years I highly encourage that you do the same for the different areas of your life. Why do you do what you do? In my experience people who do the things that excite and inspire them are not only very happy, but are usually the best in their respective fields. This is certainly true of chiropractors and other health professionals.
Choose Your Tools Wisely
The other thing I realized is that what I do is not really about NSA and SRI. They are merely the tools I use to achieve the results that inspire me. If I ever find another tool that is more effective at doing so I would be happy to change WHAT I do. As far as I can tell right now though, there is nothing even close to NSA and Dr. Epstein’s reorganizational healing modalities at creating the changes that get me up in the morning and keep me awake at night.
Click here for free access to the JACM paper outlining Dr. Epstein’s latest models on health and healing.
Click HERE to view a video of Dr. Epstein demonstrating a Level 1 NSA entrainment.
“To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”
– Roger Ebert