Morning Interactions - a short story

“You know you don’t want to just adjust backs” came the greeting from next door. I peeked through my neighbor’s screen door as I fumbled with my keys and chuckled. “What’s the other option?” I jested back, a friendly tug lifting the corner of my mouth and a comedic glimmer giving away the playful invite in my response. 

We finished teasing each other, exchanged warm good mornings and "have a nice day"s, then I pushed through my office door to do just that - adjust peoples' backs. Something about the yoga instructor’s statement, probably mixed with the sleep still cradling my brain in the calm, fuzzy ease of nothing quite having happened yet this early in the morning kept me pondering her statement.

As I floated around the words, gently testing the edges and corners, I thought about what happens in this office. 

As chiropractors, we use different levels of force at variable speeds to adjust the joints that make up the spine. Spinal joints are crucial joints that provide the body stability against gravity, the ability to brace and move in a plethora of different ways, bony protection for the spinal cord that connects the brain to the body, and joints that continuously send information to the brain that it uses to process, integrate, and adapt to the things that are happening inside and outside of one’s body. 

There’s so many different ways we adjust these joints depending on what each individual body needs. There’s loud cracks, soft shifts, there’s subtle directional influence asking the body “what would it feel like to return motion to this joint?”

There’s emotions experienced in this office, too. There’s laughter, there’s crying, there’s disbelief, wariness, healing, relief. There’s honesty, there’s encouragement, and a lot of teamwork. There’s hope. 

What we do in this office is we provide a space for people to explore what’s happening with their body. To ask questions, to get answers, to question theories, to learn how to take care of themselves, to have someone guide and be with them as they embark on their healing journey. We are here to educate, to love, to guide, to listen, to explain, to teach, to coach, to encourage, to provide excellent chiropractic care.

By just adjusting backs, we get to be here every single week seeing people heal and recover and learn more about their bodies and how they work. We get to see people get excited about how good their body feels again, to build a healthy relationship with their body. We get to see people return to activities they love to do. We get to see people fully experience what this life has to offer them.

I smile, pull up the schedule for the day, and feel extremely grateful that I get to just adjust backs today.