I’d like to tell you about a young man I saw over the last several weeks. His reason for seeing me was a common one – lower back pain. Once I had talked with him it became apparent to me there were several lifestyle choices he was making that were contributing to his problem. Like many lifestyle choices, sometimes they don’t seem like choices.
Circumstances can seem difficult to change sometimes don’t they? And yet if you look at it objectively there are choices: you can choose to continue on as you have or you can choose to do something different.
He had seen several other chiropractors, some of which had given him great relief, some of which he felt were seeing him too often and, shall we say, he felt they may have been more interested in the dollars than in his health. From his experiences he was tentative about my suggestion that he approach his health from a wellness perspective rather than patch and fix. For one thing in his past experiences with some other chiropractors he had been advised in a similar way. Once bitten….
Something I said must have struck a chord with him, as we started care. Maybe it was that I suggested he try something different as he had been getting the same results from what he had been choosing to do so far. I mainly used a very light tap-tap approach with him with very little “manual” adjusting. His experience was that you needed to hear clicks and pops, if anything was to work, however he chose to experience something differently. Choices.
So his back pain has gone and we are having a conversation about what wellness care entails and suggesting goals and strategies that will enable him to spend more time on exercise and most importantly, rest. How he can make more time and prioritise this and not work an 80-hour week in a physically demanding job. He can’t at this point be adjusted on a weekly basis which is what I believe will give him the best results at the moment, but he is going to commit to a fortnightly check-up and some massage and to start organizing his time so he has more “time” dedicated to his health rather than work. That includes leisure time.
The interesting feedback he gave me was he had never had so little adjusting and got such great results in all the different times he had seen a chiropractor.
Dr Steve Hawkins (Chiropractor)
He had seen several other chiropractors, some of which had given him great relief, some of which he felt were seeing him too often and, shall we say, he felt they may have been more interested in the dollars than in his health. From his experiences he was tentative about my suggestion that he approach his health from a wellness perspective rather than patch and fix. For one thing in his past experiences with some other chiropractors he had been advised in a similar way. Once bitten….
Something I said must have struck a chord with him, as we started care. Maybe it was that I suggested he try something different as he had been getting the same results from what he had been choosing to do so far. I mainly used a very light tap-tap approach with him with very little “manual” adjusting. His experience was that you needed to hear clicks and pops, if anything was to work, however he chose to experience something differently. Choices.
So his back pain has gone and we are having a conversation about what wellness care entails and suggesting goals and strategies that will enable him to spend more time on exercise and most importantly, rest. How he can make more time and prioritise this and not work an 80-hour week in a physically demanding job. He can’t at this point be adjusted on a weekly basis which is what I believe will give him the best results at the moment, but he is going to commit to a fortnightly check-up and some massage and to start organizing his time so he has more “time” dedicated to his health rather than work. That includes leisure time.
The interesting feedback he gave me was he had never had so little adjusting and got such great results in all the different times he had seen a chiropractor.
Dr Steve Hawkins (Chiropractor)
RSS Feed