Your Healing Journey

The question on everyone’s mind is how long it takes to get better. This simple question can be met with, ‘how long is a piece of string’. One thing that you need to understand is that healing is a journey, not a destination. And why is that I hear you ask? Health and healing are affected by different variables, which are emotions, chemicals and the physical. If your spine has gone out of alignment causing you your symptoms, then the cause is any one of those variables or even all of them. You could have fallen over at a time you were stressed and angry at something. Therefore 2 of the variables have affected you going out of alignment, the physical and the emotional. Another example could be very stressed at work, sitting all day in your chair doing ridiculous hours from 8am to 9pm, and you are grabbing anything to eat that is full of preservatives and additives, maybe even a bar a chocolate. Your spine is going to be greatly affected by all those stresses, which are physical (sitting all day), emotional (stressed high pressured job) and chemical (eating food that is quick and easy and not necessarily good for you). Hence much more likely to go out of alignment.

That is why healing is a journey, health is affected by all those stresses. Those stressors need to be alimented if possible or at least reduced. And when one of those stressors pops its little head up again, you’re more likely to relapse. Healing does not occur in a straight line, it has ups and downs, twists and turns, symptoms come and go and change. That is because you are not a static being, you are not a robot, you change all the time. Sometimes there are stressors, sometimes there aren’t. The body does not get better and stay that way forever, it has an ability to revert. However, the more you reduce your stressors and support your body to be healthy, then the less likely you are to go back to the old patterns. For example, you might have a fall, but you have been eating well and your stress is under control, you are not going to be as affected by that fall.

For the initial phase of care when your spine has gone out of alignment takes on average around 2.5 months (sometimes shorter sometimes longer), but healing is up and down dependant on the stressors around. After that initial 2.5 months (give or take) your body then goes into the rehabilitative phase, this phase is when you don’t have your symptoms, you’re feeling pretty good, but the body is still healing and repairing from the stress and strain it has been under. This phase can take anywhere between 2 months to 6 months. Then you move into the preventative phase where your healed, you are stable. It’s in this phase the spine is maintained in the correct position to prevent any issues and keep the nervous system working at its optimal level. Due to the fact these variables can’t always be eliminated problems can rise again. However, if you do all the right things such as eat well, reduce emotional stress, and keep your spine in alignment, the less likely you are going to have setbacks again. But once you fall off that wagon as we all can easily do then be prepared for issues to return.

Therefore, healing and health are a journey, they are always constantly being tweaked, changed, and adapted depending on your life. To me it is fun, the game of life. I’m happy to be on this healing journey with you.