How I Ended Up Being A Network Chiropractor
You know I was kind of an emotional tapped in, emotionally connected, little kid. And I was growing up on a farm in Nebraska. I learned that being an emotionally connected little kid was not so acceptable on a farm in Nebraska. I remember making a decision that I was going to toughen up. I wasn’t going to let myself be so emotional. I suppressed that part of myself and, in the process, disconnected from a really important part of myself when I did that. Like I tell my practice members, disconnecting from parts of yourself is a recipe for future suffering.
There’s a second event that happened in which I had a nasty ATV accident. It kind of messed me up. I started to experience all sorts of strange musculo-skeletal things in my body; pain and numbness and burning. Fortunately my dad took me to his chiropractor.
This chiropractor that my dad took me to see was a conventional chiropractor. He would adjust my spine and such. He started working on me and I remember what could only be described as a light expanding on the inside of me. Along with that, my body started to feel better and work better and the numbness and pain and burning started to go away. But then some other things started to go away too; things that I had thought were normal. I had had lots of headaches and I would also get a nasty bronchial infection that would come back every year. Those things started to go away, too.
So there was this feeling of this light expanding on the inside of me, and meanwhile my body was healing itself. The thought that that was possible was a really cool concept. So I thought, “Wow, maybe I’ll become a chiropractor some day.”
Fast forward and I did end up going to chiropractic school. I was studying under some conventional chiropractors there; some guys who were similar to the chiropractor who my dad had taken me to. Even then I had this chronic low back pain that would keep coming back. They would adjust me and then it would go away, and then I’d get adjusted again and it would come back. This kept going on and on. Not much was changing. I thought that, if I was going to be a chiropractor, I would be somewhat of a fraud if I couldn’t heal myself and I wanted to find the thing that would help people heal themselves.
There were some chiropractor in certain circles at school who were talking about the idea that your body was connected to your life and that healing in your body would create healing in your life and vice versa. In regards to my own chronic back pain, there was some sort of cycle. I noticed the part of the cycle where the pain would flare up. Then I would get adjusted and the pain would start to go away. After that I would always go back to living my life the same way I was before. Then the pain would always come back at some point. It occurred to me that maybe there was something going on in my life between the occurrences of the pain that was leading to the pain; a part of the cycle that I couldn’t, as yet, perceive.
I started to look at some other modalities in the hopes that there was something or someone who could help me with my dilemma. Some friends of mine suggested that I see this woman who did this Network Care, or Network Chiropractic, thing. Coming from a farm in Nebraska, I was really skeptical. But she really connected with some part of me, probably that emotionally connected little boy part that I had suppressed. So I started care with her.
After about seven visits I remember feeling like this light, again, expanding from the inside of me. It was apparent to me that something very interesting was happening to me but, at the time, I wasn’t sure what it was. It was after my fifteenth visit, as I was leaving the office I suddenly noticed that the colors were really vivid. I started to have this amazing feeling in my body. This feeling was prompting me to think about my parents and how great they were, and my girlfriend and how great she was, and this great opportunity that I had at chiropractic school. At the same time, I was also aware of how I was being a jerk and if I was having problems with my teachers and my girlfriend and my parents and my life, it was because of the way in which I was being in the world. So I made some changes.
Looking back I realize that that amazing feeling that was moving through me was gratitude. Apparently I hadn’t felt gratitude for such a long time that I have forgotten what it felt like. This veil had been removed from my eyes. Suddenly I could see how I was being with my life and how I was interacting with it in ways that I couldn’t see before. That was really exciting to me and really fun. I thought life could be an exploration; an adventure. On top of that, the chronic low back pain that I had been experiencing drastically changed.
So I really felt like I was on to something. I felt like this thing I had discovered was something I could really feel good about sharing with other people. In 2002 I started practicing in Boulder, and I’ve been practicing in Louisville for about the last seven years. I’ve been trying to help people in Louisville and the surrounding area remove those veils and feel the same sort of possibility for adventure, and at the same time help them to heal their bodies.
