Onion or Parfait?
I love the movie Shrek. The running dialogue between Shrek and Donkey still makes me double over laughing every time I see it. I can almost see Eddie Murphy’s face when he is doing that voice of the donkey.
One of the most poignant exchanges between the two occurs when they are walking through a corn field and Shrek is trying to explain the emotional complexity of an ogre.
“Ogres are like onions. They have layers.”
And… so do people!
This insight, that people have layers, goes a long way in explaining why multiple visits are often necessary in our clinic, and why maintenance care makes a lot of sense.
Most of what we do in our office is to peel back layers. You see, dysfunction, that is, something that isn't working correctly in your health quest, is rarely an isolated event. More often than not, symptoms are an accumulation of small insults. These small insults create layers of dysfunction that get embedded in your nervous system and will become permanent. That is why very often many layers need to be removed, over time, to get to the core.
Here is a simple example.
Let’s say you sprain an ankle. You limp around, take ibuprofen, you use ice, and let it heal. Which it eventually does, usually about 6 weeks. But has it really healed? Rarely. And due to scar tissue, an imperfect healing results in creating a strain on your entire body because the ankle is not working properly. You then create a compensation that will become permanent if not addressed.
Once this new movement pattern, the compensation, is firmly in place, other body parts start to take notice. The hip starts to get angry, maybe, because it has been working improperly from the limp. The other leg perhaps has been working overtime to keep things balanced and moving forward and now it's angry too. The dysfunction/compensation continues until the whole body adapts and creates a new motor program based on bad data coming from the injured ankle.
Eventually, maybe years, maybe decades goes by and something in the above scenario gives way, like a hip or a knee, or even something high up in your neck.
At this point, most people consult a specialist. And the specialist does what specialists do, they look at the thing, maybe the hip or knee that prematurely wore out and give it a shot of cortisone. Or send you to physical therapy. Or maybe they just put a new one in and presto, the problem has been solved. (I’m not certain, but a good portion of clients we work with have more than one joint replaced, usually from the compensations noted above.)
Except…
Humans are like ogres, and ogres are like onions. We have layers. And in the above scenario, all of the layers that have developed in response to an ankle injury have been ignored, by physical therapists and physicians alike. Because, of course, if it isn’t painful how could there possibly be a problem? Pain and problem are the same thing, right? (Can you feel the sarcasm?)
Folks, humans accumulate garbage inputs on their operating software (the nervous system), from old injuries that haven’t healed properly. This garbage data from an injured joint freely mixes into the nervous systems, the operating software, and influences the entire body and how it functions.
Here is how it works: joints send signals to the brain, the brain tells the joint what to do in relation to all the other joints and coordinated movement results. There is a constant flow of information from the joints to the brain and back out. The quality of the information matters for the quality of the movement produced.
With the activator method, we are peeling back layers, many many deep layers, and restoring better information from the joints to the brain. This allows better movement and function. Why does it take so much time? Because cleaning up your software is no small feat. And the longer you let the layers of dysfunction persist, the longer it takes to clean them up.
Let’s peel back some layers and get you working better. Better information to your brain equals better health and wellness. And longevity.
But if you don’t feel like an onion or an ogre, maybe you are a parfait. And everybody likes a parfait! Just ask donkey!
Cheers,
Dr. Swaim
Swaim Chiropractic and Wellness, specializing in layer removal since 2002!
Image by SENNUR KOBAN from Pixabay