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I recently heard a phrase on a podcast referring to human civilization, but thought it was exceptionally important in terms of human health and wellbeing as well:
Energy is life
Whether we are referring to youthfulness or cellular metabolism or the energy communication through your nervous system, which breathes life into every single cell in your body, energy truly is everything. Unfortunately, we often take it for granted. And it isn’t until we lose our youthfulness, our vitality, or our health that we come to appreciate what should come to us simply by virtue of being alive.
Alas, when we may lose our health, we often go about trying to restore it the completely wrong way. We look for it in a pill or prescription, as if we suddenly need that drug to be well. We look for it in sedation, whether chemically or emotionally that only stagnates our self-expression and manifests in strange physical symptoms in other areas of life. In short, we are looking for an outside-in solution when in reality all healing comes from the inside out.
So, why should it be then that our life energy does not express itself as it should? In these cases, we must recognise that there is something interfering with that normal life expression, that normal life energy. Again, this may occur for a variety of reasons including shutting ourselves off mentally or emotionally from traumatic events, which ultimately causes things to a backlog in our bodies. It may also occur via the accumulation of stress or chemicals in our bodies which add up over a long period of time and may ultimately cause us to become sick. But it may also come about through physical injury.
Atlas Misalignment - Small Things can Create Big Problems
We are all familiar with major types of physical injuries like broken bones, bleeding, bruising, and like. When things are obvious, we do the right thing: go to the medical doctor or the hospital to make sure that everything is okay. Unfortunately, we also experience many much smaller injuries that we frequently don’t even realise have created a problem.
Specifically, we are referring to a certain type of sprain/strain injury that may involve the alignment, motion, and stability of the bones in your upper neck called the atlas (C1) and axis (C2). Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with the expression of life energy. Well, here is the story and the sequence of events. First, your brain (specifically your brainstem) is the master control centre for your entire body, which supplies every impulse through your nerve system so that your muscles, brain, body, and organs all are able to work the way that they are designed. We may thus think of your brain as the dynamo that supplies 100% nerve energy to your entire body so that it can function the way that it is supposed to.
Second, we may appreciate then that if something should ever happen that affects the transmission of this energy and communication less than 100% that something will happen to the parts of your body that are receiving less supply than they are designed. While human beings have the tendency to think in terms of big this like 50% off of energy supply, what we are actually talking about is something that may only reduce that energy supply by 1-2%. Not very big numbers on their own.
Nevertheless, when we may think of those numbers in terms of compounding interest - i.e., the accumulation of 1-2% every single day for months, years, or even decades - then those very small bits can actually accumulate and indeed accelerate the longer that they are there. Thus, it may be that so many of the health problems that people experience and are commonly believed to be a factor of aging may actually not have much of anything to do with their chronological age at all, but may instead be a reflection of a decrease of energy flow and gradual loss of health that simply accumulates over a long period of time that they never even realised was there.
So, this brings us now back to the atlas and axis. These particular vertebrae anchor onto your nervous system in ways that are unique in your entire body. While they are normally designed to protect your spinal cord and brainstem, should you ever have an injury where their alignment shifts, they may actually exert physical tension on your nerves that decreases the conductive capacity over a long period of time? Again, it may not be much - only 1-2% - but accumulated over a long period of time can lead to a host of problems in the body. And because your brainstem supplies the energy to all parts of your body, the types of symptoms you may experience can occur potentially anywhere.
Indeed, some of the more common ones include headaches, migraines, dizziness, vertigo, should pain, neck pain, low back pain, or sciatica; but other symptoms may involve chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, or even disorders associated with vasovagal function. From the traditional medical standpoint, because they are looking for overt signs of pathology, they seldom realise that many of these conditions are instead the consequence of a subtle yet long-standing condition in the neck that may be the underlying cause. And if that underlying cause can finally be addressed, by restoring the normal flow of that life energy, communication, and function between the brain and body, it means that your body then has the opportunity to do what it is designed to do: heal itself naturally from inside out.
Atlas Treatment - A Unique Approach to Healthcare
If you brush your teeth, try to eat a healthy diet, and make the effort to do physical exercises, doesn’t it just make sense that you should also take care of your spine? Specifically, your neck because it protects such a vital structure. Yet how many people simply put up with neck pain, headaches, dizziness, TMJ disorders, and other neck-related problems? Moreover, how many people continuously beat up their necks in front of computer screens, tablets, and mobile devices? Even though these repetitive strains may not be enough to create problems, they are certainly enough to make them much worse. So, when it comes to taking care of your neck, there are a few important considerations:
- Sleeping position - Having the right pillow (ideally thin) and in the right position (i.e., not leaning too far forwards) are key
- Physical exercise and movement - having a strong frame reduces stress to all parts of your body, including your neck
- Physical movement - Namely, it is essential for the joints of your neck to be moving properly.
In the same way that you need all mechanical parts in your car to move properly in order for your car to go anywhere, similarly, the individual spaces between the vertebrae in your neck need to move smoothly lest they exert abnormal tension on your muscles, ligaments or even nerves, which can then go on to affect that life energy between your brain and body. Here is where a unique approach to healthcare known as the Blair method may be able to help you. The Blair technique belongs to a special division of general chiropractic known as upper cervical care, which focuses on the alignment, motion, and stability of the vertebrae in your upper neck because of their influence on brain-body-balance-and-wellbeing.
Unlike general spinal manipulation, the Blair technique is a precise and gentle approach that does not use any twisting, stretching or packing of the neck. Instead, the Blair technique utilises a series of precise diagnostic tests in order to identify the exact location, direction, and degree of any alignment problems in your neck so that any correction can be performed with as little force as possible. By addressing these underlying issues at the source, the purpose of the Blair technique is to restore normal function and normal 100% energy flow so that the innate wisdom of your body is able to do what it is designed to do: heal itself.
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