A Center for Health

Mindfulness programs and practices frequently describe a process of locating your "center." One's center may be conceived as a focus of energy, both spiritual and physical, by which all activities may be grounded and from which all activities flow. Similarly, ballet teachers and gymnastics instructors enjoin their pupils to "work from your center," meaning that the student's spins, leaps, kicks, and other choreographed movements should emanate from a central region of power. As well, coaches of many sports disciplines, including baseball, football, and basketball, encourage their athletes to "stay focused" and "see the ball going through the net." All of these injunctions are designed to remind players to reconnect to their center -- their focus of disciplined strength, quickness, and coordinated activity.

But you don't have to be a highly trained athlete or a master of meditation to be able to derive power, strength, and grace from your personal center. Each one of us has these capabilities. The first requirement for demonstrating and enhancing these qualities is having awareness and focusing attention on your center itself. One person may locate his center in his heart. Others may locate their centers in their spine or in their solar plexus, that is, the lower abdominal region. One's core musculature may also be identified as one's center. The key is not so much the perceived anatomical location of one's center, but rather maintaining the concept of, the focus on, the center.

The metaphor of a center may be extended to include a center for health. From a chiropractic perspective, your center for health is your nerve system and spinal column. The nerve system, the body's master system, transits information regarding healthy functioning from the brain to all the cells of the entire rest of the body. This information coordinates activities of the body's tissues and organ systems, and the free flow of information from the brain to the body and back again results in good health. The spinal column houses and protects the spinal cord and the roots of the spinal nerves, the main nerve trunks that send nerve branches to your arms, legs, hands, feet, and every other physical location.

Regular chiropractic care helps support your body's center for health by detecting and correcting sources of nerve irritation and by helping to maintain the durability and flexibility of your spinal column. In this way, regular chiropractic care helps ensure the ongoing health and well-being of everyone, including individuals, families, and communities.

1. Demarzo MM, et al: The Efficacy of Mindfulness-Based Interventions in Primary Care: A Meta-Analytic Review. Ann Fam Med 13(6):573-582, 2015
2. Marusak HA, et al: Mindfulness and dynamic functional neural connectivity in children and adolescents. Behav Brain Res 336:211-218, 2018 doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2017.09.010. Epub 2017 Sep 5
3. Christensen JF, et al: I can feel my heartbeat: Dancers have increased interoceptive accuracy. Psychophysiology. 2017 Sep 21. doi: 10.1111/psyp.13008. [Epub ahead of print]