I grew up a very picky
eater. I mean really picky. This wasn’t
because I had food allergies or some religious restrictions, I just had these
incredibly peculiar taste buds. I
probably limited my life to fifteen or so foods, and every food had rules
attached. For example, I loved tuna fish
but it had to be eaten on an English muffin…ONLY a Thomas’s English
muffin! Not toast and eeeeewww
definitely not plain…if it fell off the English muffin onto the plate I probably
wouldn’t touch it. Another rule, two
different foods could not touch each other on the same plate…If one pea rolled
over and touched the chicken cutlet then that pea was not to be eaten. I guess I forced my Mom to do more dishes
because I preferred everything in their own separate environments. Ice cream had
to be chocolate. Plain chocolate. No chips. Only chocolate. The list went on
and on. These were the first “rules” of
life that I created and for what reason?
I have no idea.
Eventually my eating
habits changed. One of the few blessings
that came out of my College fraternity’s hazing was that I was forced to eat
all sorts of disgusting foods that broke my rules. I figured that if I could eat a mixture of
sardines/baked beans/spoonful’s of mustard/and a gigantic industrial sized can
of Chef Boyardee meat ravioli…all mixed together…none of which I on their
own...then I could begin to try some foods that were outside my rules for pure
enjoyment. This did not necessarily make
me a healthier eater, but it did expand my palate a bit. My
life was filled with McDonald’s hamburger eating contests (I think I remember 5
being my max), pizza, General Tso’s chicken, KFC, and bagels, with the occasional
head of broccoli thrown in.
I had no reason
to stop eating all the fast food and snacks though, I just had a wider range of
crap that I ate. I thought there were no
consequences. I could eat whatever I
wanted and I still remained a skinny kid. I felt physically OK, so …why
change? My rules were working for me and
I thought they were delicious.
Things eventually changed. I turned 26 and suddenly everything was in
question when I developed “Acid Reflux”. It became clear that even though I learned a
lot about nutrition in Chiropractic College… I learned the proper amounts of
proteins, carbs and fats, I never followed any
of the rules about the quality of my food.
For the first time I realized that my body was speaking to me. It was giving me a signal. This signal was a
symptom called “Acid Reflux”. And that “Acid Reflux” was telling me that my
rules weren’t actually working so great. And, luckily, instead of looking for a pill
or quick fix to get rid of the symptom (or just dealing with it because it “wasn’t
so bad”), I actually stopped for a moment and asked myself, “Why?” Why
was I getting this symptom?
Asking the question, “Why?” …was the first step to
revising the rules of my life. It is a
question that can apply to anyone and to any symptom, be it acid reflux, anger,
guilt, anxiety, constipation, high blood pressure, “Why?” should always be the
question.
In fact, the
main lesson that I learned from becoming a chiropractor is that we all are born
with an innate intelligence. The Innate Intelligence is the wisdom that
our body was born with. It is the wisdom
that knows how to grow hair, heal a cut, digest our foods, and deal with toxins. This is the intelligence that keeps
the body healthy and alive. Think of all
the things that your body does every second just to keep you from falling down
when you stand! There are so many
processes that go on that we are unaware of.
That’s Innate Intelligence at work.
If we are in touch with that innate intelligence, that inner wisdom and
truly listen to it…you can! It will always
guide us to making the right decisions.
It will guide us to our very own perfect rules.
We all have rules. Whether or not they are working out well for
us is a different question. Sometimes we have set up rules for ourselves that
don’t actually support our health or what we really need, they keep us stuck in
a certain lifestyle and prevent us from truly being happy. This happens because we haven’t spent all our
lives making every decision based upon the question; is this the healthiest
choice I can make? Give me a break…the
first couple decades we are brainwashed into thinking whatever our parents and
the advertising companies exposed us to.
It is as we get older and begin making decisions to set us up for a
lifetime that we should ask… is this the healthiest choice I can make?
The reason that I live my
life the way I do right now is not because my parents brought me up this
way. It’s not because of my religious
beliefs, or the people around me. No,
it’s because I know what I want. I want to live an abundant life! I want to be
able to play on the floor with my great grandchildren. I want to play golf. I still want to see patients at my
office. I want to cut my own toenails
when I’m 96! And, most importantly I want an amazing relationship with my
family forever! It’s because of this I created
a new set of rules; rules tailored to me that are based off of a knowledge of
my body and understanding of how it communicates with me.
In the coming posts I will be teaching you
some rules that I have learned about the body, most of them through personal
experience, and other rules that I have learned through the experience of my
family or my patients. This blog will
give the reader a practical approach to life and hopefully offer some “rules”
for you to follow that will make your life better. If you don’t like MY rules then change them a
bit…make them fit your life but don’t make the mistake of not pushing yourself
to make big changes if those changes will get you closer to your goals. I know it because I live it! Let’s Begin!
Dr. Jason Piken, a 1996 graduate of New York
Chiropractic College. During Chiropractic College he became proficient in
Gonstead (a system of analyzing the spine) and has since spent hundreds of
seminar-hours broadening his technique skills to include, Chiropractic
Biophysics and Applied Kinesiology. For more information about Dr.
Piken, please visit his website at www.innatechiro.com.
