Well Adjusted

Today, I’m incredibly well adjusted. Not in the emotional sense, although I’m doing pretty good there. I am feeling well-adjusted because I just went to my chiropractor for the first time in four or five months.

I can always tell it has been too long when I start feeling my shoulders up around my ears, when I can’t bend forward very far or very well, and when my chest feels tight and my breathing gets difficult.

I didn’t mean to go so long, but I’ve been traveling for work for a month or two at a time which has made it challenging to say the least to try to schedule things like this.

Yes, I’m sure there are chiropractors in the places I’ve traveled. I haven’t exactly been in the jungle somewhere, you know? But I couldn’t bring myself to try someone new. My chiropractor knows me, knows my body and how it works. I couldn’t imagine starting again with someone new..

I have been seeing him for at least ten years, maybe twelve. The first time I went to see him, it was because I bent over while sitting in my chair to get dressed. Something went “snap!”, and I couldn’t sit up. I was home alone and spent several minutes doubled over thinking “what the hell am I going to do?”

Somehow, I managed to crawl out of the chair onto the bed, jeans still around my knees. I could barely breathe it hurt so much. Lucky for me, though, my cell phone was on the nightstand next to the bed. I was able to call my husband, who came home as fast as he could.

My sister recommended I see her chiropractor. Though I’d never been to one, I figured it couldn’t hurt and might even help, so I went. Literally, after the first treatment I was upright again and my back pain was gone.

I was an instant fan. I have been many many times since then, to keep my back, neck and shoulders in shape, to open up my lungs so I can breathe better and stave off asthma attacks,  and to help with allergies and sinus issues. It is amazing how one adjustment releases so much tension in your body that you didn’t even know you were holding onto.

So, now that I’m back home, I realized it was time to get reacquainted with my chiropractor. He has a new satellite office in the city, in a cool building attached to a training gym, and it is less than half the distance I was traveling to his suburban office.

We start with a little catch up. Work. Vacations. Family. Then, I tell him what’s hurting, stiff, sore, uncomfortable. And, he goes to work. He finds points I didn’t even know were sore on my back, neck, shoulders. I feel the muscles release, my shoulders relax back down away from my ears.

I leave feeling refreshed, relaxed. Almost like I’ve had a spa day. Happily well adjusted–that’s me.