When I first read the paragraph below written by B.J. Palmer it was 1979. Dr. Palmer had written the paragraph in the the early part of the 20th century. In 1979 I was a fledgling chiropractic student at the Palmer College of Chiropractic and I really didn’t know much about chiropractic except that I had been influenced by two young chiropractors during Daryl’s first pregnancy.
This was a time that I needed some life assurances, as I was only 23 and our first baby was was becoming nine months old very quickly. Daryl wanted to have a home birth, which seemed fairly radical, even to me who’s theme song in life up to that point had always been Thunderclap Newman’s, “Something in the air.” I was finally the serious pre-medical student at Lenoir Rhyne College in Hickory, NC with the even more serious goal of becoming a physician. My tendency concerning this pregnancy was to leave everything up to the doctors, because who should know better? Birth was a medical matter, wasn’t it? Well, I found myself in a bit of a quandary, torn between my cultural upbringing and my wife’s new found desire to step outside of the medical sphere of influence and rely on midwives for leadership on such an important medical matter as birthing.
It wasn’t really that much of a big deal for me to get with Daryl on this concept because, as I said, I have always had a rebellious nature. Once I started getting some other opinions and reading some books on the subject I was quick to convert my thinking. It was this first birth event that turned me into a chiropractor.
I didn’t know it immediately but the rudder on my ship had been turned and I was sailing in a new direction. After reading Ina Mae Gaskin’s, Spiritual Midwifery and Robert Bradley’s, Husband Coached Childbirth, I started to have some stirrings about the integrity of modern medicine. There before me, were suddenly some real life issues that I had never pondered before, such as mandatory silver nitrate applications, as if every mother in America might have gonorrhea and not know it. The standard episiotomy procedure was also questionable, as well as the standard application of pitocin and much more. I quickly began to express who I am, which is a person who is not afraid to question authority and challenge authority, if needs challenging. Then we met our first two chiropractors.
We could not find any professional midwifery support in North Carolina. Turns out, the OB/GYN doctors had influenced the Public Health laws and made professional participation in homebirthing an illegality. That didn’t mean that we couldn’t have proceeded on our own, but this being our first baby made for some second guessing when it came to the safety of mother and child. For our entire lives we had heard nothing but horror stories associated with childbirth. It was in the movies, in the news, on the radio and it was talked about around the coffee table, which in my family made it a real issue. Even though I had grown up on a dairy farm and in a dairy farm community and had witnessed hundreds of births of calves, pigs, chickens, dogs, kittens and horses, all in their natural barnyard setting and mostly all without complications, we were still taught that, when it comes to humans having their babies the doctor knows what’s best. Oh, I forgot to mention the deer, squirrels, raccoons, bobcats, chipmunks, bear, cougars and the rest of Mother Nature’s critters that have their mammalian babies without complications. Hmmm?
So, when we met these chiropractors who had this life philosophy about health and healing and first and foremost was respectful and confident in the natural health process, it was like meeting our spiritual guides for the first time. You know, that moment when you know that you know? I’m just assuming that we all have one of those moments in life but I could be wrong. I was suddenly presented with a truth about life and being human. It all made so much sense to me. I had to have more. So the chiropractic journey began for us with Dr. Ron as our birthing coach and our experience and witness of how fearfully and wonderfully we were created. There is no experience in life that I have ever had that brought me closer to life magnificence and loves enfoldment than being present at the birth of a human being.
The next thing I knew I was at the Fountainhead of Chiropractic in Davenport Iowa. Iowa, “A place to grow.” And grow we did. We had our next two babies at home and we went on to assist several other friends who had their babies at home. All were born safely and without any incidence. All of those infants were checked for spinal subluxation to make sure there was no nervous system interference to impede their life process. All of those babies were breastfed and raised on an organic food diet. All of those babies were born to confident and competent parents who have dedicated their lives to helping others have as much life as life can give and all that we are still in contact with have lived very healthy lives and are now having their own home births.
It wasn’t until years later and thousands of patients later that I really got what B.J. Palmer was saying in his excerpt, “The Truth.” He is not saying that medicine has no place. He is also not saying that chiropractic cures appendicitis or the fu. Nor is he saying that chiropractic is the power that animates the living world. He is saying that the human body has such a powerful healing ability that there needs to be a greater trust and respect in that ability and it should never be feared or doubted. He is saying that Mother Nature needs no help in the healing process, just no interference. He is saying that chiropractic removes interferences to our healing ability and with that we have less to fear. Birthing is a really good example of how the natural process, naturally built in, should be trusted and respected. It is only when we place fear of our natural healing ability in front of trust and respect, that we may need medical intervention. Fear is so easy to instill and corporatized modern medicine is master of the art.
Trust is a fragile thing and needs to be nurtured and built upon so that it is always stronger than fear. Being proactive with your individual and family health and wellbeing is the best way to keep the fear of sickness in its place. When it becomes obvious that our body has been overwhelmed by a life circumstance such as an accident or some unusual natural process it is good that we have the ingeniousness of modern medicine. It stops the bleeding and gives us another opportunity. When we get a chiropractic adjustment we restore nerve system performance, which affects physical, social, mental, emotional and spiritual expression. This is the difference between “Illness care” and “Wellness care.”
The Truth by BJ Palmer, DC, Ph
We Chiropractors work with the subtle substance of the soul. We release the prisoned impulse, the tiny rivulet of force, that emanates from the mind and flows over the nerves to the cells, and stirs them into life. We deal with the magic power that transforms common food into living, loving, thinking clay that robes the Earth with beauty, and hues the scents of the flowers with the glory of the air. In the dim, distant long ago, when the sun first bowed to the morning star, this power spoke and there was life. It quickened the slime of the seas and the dust of the Earth drove the cell into union with its fellows in countless living forms. Through eons of time it finned the fish and winged the bird and fanged the beast. Endlessly it worked, evolving its form until it produced the crowning glory of them all. With tireless energy it blows the bubble of each individual life, and then silently, relentlessly it dissolves the form, and absorbs the spirit back into itself again.
And yet you ask, “Can chiropractic cure appendicitis or the flu?” Have you more faith in a knife or a spoonful of medicine than the power that animates the living world?
