The human body is a hardwired, electrically operated, masterfully crafted being that is still not fully understood. Emerson Pugh, a neuroscientist and physicist, once said, (to paraphrase) that if the human brain were simple enough to understand then we would be too simple to understand it. We also need to realize that the neocortex (the thinking part) of our brains have 75 different types of cells that have been identified…so far. So far, meaning that we are still learning how the organ, which is vital in producing all of our ‘vital signs’, even works. So much of our world is known, but so much is left unknown and may never be known.
Throughout my years in practice I’ve witnessed countless events that are not fully understood and could be viewed as miraculous, if you choose to view them that way, which I tend to, because it’s the only explanation that makes sense with current scientific understanding of the mind/body connection. It happens often enough that I catch myself expecting them to happen. Things such as the patient who has been in chronic, debilitating sciatic pain for more than a decade who walks out of the office following his first chiropractic adjustment with pain reduced to 1/10 vs the 10/10 he was experiencing 20 minutes earlier. Or, the young lady who has been trying to get pregnant for years. She has tried multiple fertility treatments, but comes into our office for low back pain. After about six weeks under care she tells us her back pain is nearly gone and that her and her husband are expecting their first child. These aren’t one-off stories. Any chiropractor who’s been in practice more than a few years will have multiple stories of miracles occurring.
The point is that something changes. Something in the connection between mind and body wasn’t right, but now it is. Does this happen with every single patient? No. Not every person will experience this level of overtly life changing phenomenon, but who knows what else may have changed with the way their body works that may have prevented a problem in the future, or resolved an underlying, asymptomatic issue. I’m not a leading scientist on the leading edge of researching this topic, but if they can’t yet explain it, I’m not going to attempt to either. The message here is that it happens often enough that we expect the miraculous.
I’ve talked before about the body’s ability to create autonomous operations based on your habits. I referred to them as filters. Your mind creates filters to, in certain common situations, use to make decisions and direct actions so that the brain isn’t directly involved. These processes just seem to occur. It’s like driving to work; you’ve done it so many times that now there’s no need to even think about it. Driving to work for the 300th time is not like differentiating the slope of a curve in calculus class, your mind has programmed the route and movements so well that it switches on autopilot. In this example, you have created, and enacted, your ‘middle management filter’, it is the one that your brain assigns the mundane, repetitive tasks when it deems its involvement no longer necessary.
The more of these we put into place for ourselves the more disconnected and isolated we can begin to feel. The human brain is constantly looking for stimulation and when it no longer senses excitement from an activity it shuts off. It will either stop paying attention and ignore the task altogether, or it will create a filter to catch these sorts of tasks, then intervene by implementing the established (and boring) protocol/procedure it no longer finds stimulating.
Wow, my brain is starting to hurt just trying to explain what happens…
Reenergize your brains’ zest for life by doing something wild mild and crazy, or slightly risky. For example(s); take a different route to work today, go in a different entrance than you usually do, shop at a grocery store across town, something to add variety and spice it up a little.; for your brain’s sake. If left with too little stimulation your brain will begin to act like your first puppy…it will become bored and start gnawing and chewing on the same shoe over and over until it is no longer recognizable as a shoe. But in the brain’s case, the shoe is a thought, or concern, and the chewing is over analyzing things from the past (which leads to depression) or over analyzing things to come in the future (which leads to anxiety).
Do something to kick yourself out of the zombie automation and start living in your life. You are the captain of the ship and you need to take control, reset the program, and work in the moment. Be present in real time and vow to never again be taken hostage by the faux-cerebral, quasi-cyborg, uber-synthetic systems your brain will try to put into place. Start waking up now, you’re missing out on so much!
