The Chiropractic Measure of Health

What is the chiropractic measure of health?

Humankind’s concept of health and well-being is always evolving. In the past century up to the present day, the primary emphasis over matters of health were materialistic, such as chemistry, potions, remedies, surgical interventions, nutritional regiments, physical exercises, and others. These material concerns are still important for understanding and promoting health.

Moving forward, the emphasis in health is evolving to focus more on the individual human being, and his or her ability to adapt to stress emotionally and mentally. Here, we are elevating above the chemical or physical focus, to focus more on life experiences and stressful challenges.

Stress

Chiropractors support the individual’s ability to adapt to stress on all levels, by focusing on the structural alignment of the body to free up neurological function in the nervous system. From this, chiropractors can help support the higher-level functioning of the nervous system which is largely responsible for responding and adapting to life’s everyday emotional stresses.

Subluxation in the body reflects the outer experiences of emotional distress in life. Each subluxation, when interpreted correctly, offers a way to approach an individual with personalized care with respect to his or her unique stresses in life, and to guide an approach to overcoming those stresses that is individualized and highly beneficial.

Creating a Sense of Coherence

In the work and research of Aaron Antonovsky, we learn that health has a positive, substantial, measurable origin and genesis. “Salutogenesis,” meaning the “birth of health” arises from our adaptability to stress, namely our ability to manage, comprehend, and derive positive meaning from the stressful experiences we encounter. When we can manage, comprehend, and derive positive meaning from life’s stresses, this creates a “Sense of Coherence” and a strong foundation for biological well-being.

Within this new framework—where health is born from our ability to adapt to stress coherently—we can begin to measure health beyond the purely materialistic dimension. We can learn to measure each individual’s Sense of Coherence and then work to improve this higher capacity throughout life.

Subluxation and Adaptability

Here, we must add in chiropractic subluxation as a key component to this conversation. Subluxation (vertebral and brain-level subluxation) represents an important factor affecting our Sense of Coherence. Subluxation is also an important measure of our overall adaptability—a measure that helps us “see” the presence of emotional stress reflected in the individual’s life.

Pause for a moment to recognize this idea: Subluxation in the body reflects the outer experiences of emotional distress in life. Each subluxation, when interpreted correctly, offers a way to approach an individual with personalized care with respect to his or her unique stresses in life, and to guide an approach to overcoming those stresses that is individualized and highly beneficial.

Greater Than Our Challenges

The aim in chiropractic is to grow each individual’s adaptability and Sense of Coherence, so he or she may become greater than the challenges that exist in life, and to help each individual advance forward with greater freedom and expression of health. “Correcting subluxation” in the body is really about becoming greater than our unique challenges in our experiential life.

Correcting subluxation and enhancing Sense of Coherence (as well as increasing social-vagal tone, heart rate variability and other exciting measures of adaptability) represent the objectives of a new paradigm of health. The goal is not just health over disease, but greater life expression, and the release of that inner spark of creativity which elevates each of us to become coherently attuned to the positive meaning of change within the stories of our lives.

Leading the way in this new pediatric and family well-being model are chiropractors, who offer specific care for the nervous system to lay the foundation for this creative adaptability to unfold. With the principles and discoveries that support the chiropractic family lifestyle, we are now living at an exciting threshold for this beautiful way of life to emerge collectively. It is undoubtedly one of the greatest times to be involved with chiropractic, and to be open to the gifts of the chiropractic paradigm of health.

This article was written by John Ohm and reprinted with permission from Pathways to Family Wellness magazine.