In a world of fake news, sensationalism, politicised reporting and social media we should remember that we are made to recognize truth from falsities. This statement holds true to me whether you approach it scientifically or spiritually. Let’s first look at the mainstream scientific approach to our existence….

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How do I become a spiritual person? It’s unlikely to happen by attending a weekend conference, traveling abroad, doing yoga 7 days a week, and sadly, even attending church. When Dr. David Hawkins (someone I believe to be a highly spiritual person) was asked this question, he said don’t bother. He recommends first trying to be a decent person. Practice common decency. Be helpful, genuine, easy going, safe to be with, grateful, patient. And quick to forgive. The truth of who you are will begin to emerge.

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A certain leader of the free world supposedly suggested we should inject disinfectants to combat COVID 19. What he actually said, if you read the transcripts and not the headlines, was more like a statement suggesting we are looking into using disinfectants as a treatment, but that’s neither here nor there. Injecting disinfectants doesn’t sound like a smart idea. All of our household disinfectants have strongly worded warnings to not let the stuff get inside your body. However, I think it’s worth noting that, as a society, we’ve already accepted injecting disinfectants into our system. Let me explain…

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Thanks for letting me take a break from writing. The quarantine inspired a mini vacation, which led me to take a break from all work related functions. I could have written during that time, but my heart told me a break from the blog and newsletter was a good idea. I’ve been back in Nashville for days now and should have been writing again, but it’s difficult to get back into your normal rhythm sometimes. And sometimes it’s good to have that disruption. It gives you the opportunity to evaluate what’s most important, create new goals and routines, as well as let go of what’s no longer necessary in your life. When working with my clients who have long been suffering with chronic issues like pain, insomnia or depression, I always teach them on day one that we have to create a new normal. The old normal wasn’t optimal, so we need to create a new one, which means creating entirely new life conditions physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Not only does this take effort, but it always seems to be met with resistance and challenge. This is why people typically don’t make big health changes without big wake up calls.

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Could chiropractic care help prevent viral infection as well support the body's ability to overcome an infection? There’s a graph I’ve seen on several of my colleague's social media posts since this most recent epidemic began. The data shown on it is….there’s no other word...incredible.

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I’ve been getting messages and calls from friends asking if they have COVID 19. My best answer, even before hearing their symptoms, is typically (and somewhat playfully)...maybe. First of all, I’m not that kind of doctor, so if they’re seriously worried they should be asking someone else. Second of all, the CDC claims that most of us will get exposed to this virus in the next year, and a currently unknown but probably small percentage of people who get exposed to it will be infected, and if we get infected most of us will have mild symptoms if we even have any symptoms at all. So you may be reading this post, feeling fairly healthy, and already have the virus in your system. However, if you are feeling sick, you are (currently) far more likely to have something else. A health influencer on Instagram I follow shared a story about going to 4 different clinics in an attempt to get a CV diagnosis. She ultimately went home defeated. It’s some other virus, the doctors told her. Funny enough, if she was diagnosed with CV, she would have been sent home to rest and recover anyway. There’s no need for her to be in a clinic. And she unnecessarily exposed herself to countless sick people, all while taking up the precious time and resources of our health care providers. So let’s take a look at what else you might be suffering from in order to take some of the burden off the health care system.

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“You bring about that which you think about.” I couldn’t find a single person who this quote is attributed to, but every great teacher in human history has been quoted saying something with a similar meaning. The idea that quotes like this are trying to convey is that thoughts have energy and they are creative. They have power to unify, inspire and heal as well as isolate, destroy and wound. In fact, a thought can work much like a virus. A virus looks for a weak point from which to infiltrate a potential host. Once inside, it uses the host material to multiply until the host is destroyed. It then moves on to the next cell looking to do the same. Thoughts can creep into weak points, multiply and spread in the same way.

Among many other problems in the world right now, there seems to be a cognitive pandemic. A rapidly spreading epidemic of mental unhealth, driven by fear. Fear itself can create a cascade of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual problems. The emotion of fear was designed to be felt intensely for a short period of time. Chronic or prolonged fear destroys your health. Fear energizes your limbic system (making you more emotionally reactive), makes your heart work harder, tenses your muscles, spikes your blood sugar, and quickens your breathing. All good things if you need to run or fight for your life, but not good if you want to be happy and healthy. Fear suppresses thoughtfulness, healing, digestion and immune function.

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There are certain products and services that advertise a solution, but in reality only create a new type of problem...dependency. Chapstick, or lip balm, may be chief among them. They are purchased with the promise of relief from your dry and painful lips, but do they deliver on their promise? In a way, yes. Common lip balm ingredients, like menthol and salicylic acid (aspirin), momentarily ease the pain, but can worsen the original problem, creating a dependency. Lip balms can interfere with the signalling between damaged cells and the mechanisms that produce new cells. This interference slows down your ability to replenish your cells and heal, which makes you want to sooth your lips with more balm. So how can you break the addiction?

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Fundamentally, traumatized people need to feel safe in their bodies, not just their heads. It has to be more than just cognitive, it must be physical and emotional. You need to be able to feel what’s happening in your body to heal, but unresolved trauma keeps you disconnected. It’s a simple survival mechanism. The initial experience of trauma is too much to process in the moment, so you subconsciously sequester the feeling to a part of yourself and cut it off from the whole, so it can’t hurt more than it already has. Healing ignites from the encounter of self back to self. From the acceptance of your story and the integration of your body, mind, heart and spirit.

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I want to thank all the people who have reached out to me personally. Thankfully, no harm was done to me or my family, but my community is still hurting. Despite the pain, the city has come together in beautiful ways. I’ve witnessed dozens of strangers helping strangers quickly move out of their condemned homes, to volunteers clearing debris from the roads, to some of the city’s best artists performing at relief fundraisers. The loving response to the people in need that Nashville has shown me has inspired me to help in any way that I can. One gift that I’d like to share is helping people process and move on from trauma, whether it’s physical or mental/emotional trauma. I’ve decided to offer my services for free to anyone who has been affected by the Nashville tornado.

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Your inflammatory response is vital to your overall health. It’s needed to fight infections and heal injuries. The problem comes into play when inflammation lingers long after it’s needed. You can think of it like a fever. A fever is one of your body’s natural ways of fighting an infection, but a fever that runs too hot or for too long can cause various complications, including death in some cases. Inflammation isn’t much different. The leading causes of death and disability worldwide are chronic degenerative conditions, like cardiovascular disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and type II diabetes. Deaths from these types of conditions currently exceed all the historical causes of death like famine, war and even all the infectious diseases combined. So what changed? There must be a common underlying element. And there seems to be. All of these chronic degenerative diseases are linked to chronic levels of inflammation wreaking havoc on arteries, joints, brain tissue and immune function. If inflammation is at the root of many of our most deadly modern health conditions, it makes sense to take a look at what in our world changed to influence chronic inflammation in the body in such a devastating way….

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I’ve historically shrugged off any type of personality defining system, like the Myers-Briggs. I never wanted to be subconsciously influenced by a narrowly defining “type” described in a book by researchers who have never even met me. However, my attitude has shifted in recent years. Personality typing tools, utilized well, can help teach us who we aren’t, not who we are. They can show us the mechanistic inner workings of our choices, which are programmed into our subconscious from wounds and trauma that separate us from our connection to our true Essence. They essentially teach us where we’re wounded, which then lays the path back towards wholeness.

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I try to approach life as if I chose every experience that’s happening to me. That being said, I regularly fail and fall into a victim mentality. The reason I attempt this attitude towards life is because I know that I will physiologically respond better to whatever stress is affecting me. Allow me to illustrate this using an example of exercising on an Assault Bike…

First of all, Assault Bikes are the worst. I liken them to the machine in The Princess Bride that sucks years off of your life (I think it was actually just called the Machine in that movie). They aren’t like normal bicycles or bikes you use in a spin class. They are a common torture device in Crossfit boxes used to demoralize you, and I’ve spent the last two years subjecting myself to their abuse. Now that the analogy is set up to some degree, let me paint the picture. Imagine these two scenarios in which the stress is technically the same, but the effect on your body will be significantly different….

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