Our modern perspectives of health and parenting usually begin with culturally standardized ideas such as vaccinating the body to achieve “immunity,” administering antibiotics to “kill infections,” and performing surgery to cut out “dangerous” tissues.
Within much of modern medicine there’s an established perspective of opposition existing between us and biology. Either we must achieve immunity from invading entities before they “breech” our body, or we must kill the invaders once they’re “inside” our walls. In other instances, we must “identify and destroy” our own DNA, under the premise that it has launched a mutiny against us in the form of “malignant” cells.
Such ideas originate from the minds of men who for too long have been invested in concepts and ways of thinking which they derived from political fighting and warring after power and control. Thinking that the whole of Nature should bend to their narrow bandwidth perspectives, they ignore the truth that these ideas of “immunity” “invasion” and “cellular mutiny” are limited—in fact utterly irrational—to explain the natural biological phenomena of health.
And now I’ve come to understand that such perspectives are also far too serious. They submerge the conscience of both the individual and doctor under the heavy weight of panic, restriction (enforced by law), and fear.
When we look to nature, not with a mindset of war but with the aim of alignment and understanding, we find much else that can better shape our perspectives. We find symbiosis, cooperation, and intelligent adaptation. Perhaps most importantly, we find the creative growth of life, sustained through a biological design that elicits an innate desire for love and play.
In play, especially, we find not only the heart of growth and learning, but also the heart of resilience.
One of my favorite parenting lessons comes when we observe children playing through conflict. When a child scrapes his knee, for instance, and decides that the desire to play is greater than the seriousness of the injury, we see him expressing the heart of resilience, brushing off the pain with a small bout of frustration, only to jump back into the fun and games.
I can’t think of a better framework for modeling resilience in life and in health. Whether we are burdened with work, with conflict, or with a process of biological healing, we are to be driven forward not out of fear, but out of a love for life.
As adults, we have struggled to keep the guiding spirit of play alive within ourselves. In the practical matters of life, work, parenting, and health, play can often appear to be non-existent. We become so bogged down in the seriousness of outdated, limited, and irrational frameworks that misalign our perspective, causing further conflict and despair, crushing ever more the spirit of love and play.
Our culture is only deviated in this way when we lose touch with the deeper intelligence that drives us to love and play. We forget, therefore, that an entire dimension exists that has the power to resolve life’s conflicts and challenges.
Without such an awareness, we are easily groomed during our early years of maturation to see challenges as hopeless, to appeal to external authority for salvation, and to believe that conflict in general is too big for our childlike spirit to ever resolve. When in truth, it is the only thing that can.
When an inspired way of life emerges from childhood into adulthood, this is where we find the magnetic characteristics of great men and women. They are the ones who decide to celebrate life, rather than unload the weight of hardship onto others. Those who never forget that life is a gift. In their intelligent choice to perceive the power of the childlike spirit, they are the ones who have thus become aligned with a larger animating power which guides existence.
In such men and women, we find the continuation of a living legacy, carried forward by others out of respect and love. Their legacy spans beyond the confines of self, social status, culture or religion.
In my life, I am fortunate to have those who modeled this legacy. Those who chose to live a life that was frequently maligned by the culture around as “anti” whatever, but which was in truth, and always will be, an unconquerable allegiance to a more beautiful world that is possible.
In my mother, her allegiance would come alive in her daily actions, where she showed us that the greatest way to stand up amid adversity is to dance with the spirit that animates what we love.
In my father, it would be safeguarded by his daily decision to hold freedom above fear—to allow his children the gift of discovering their own path.
Such an allegiance to life has the power to elevate us far above the conflicts we may experience in life. And more than anything else, it keeps a family close together forever.
And even more than this, it allows for a living intelligence to actualize within the story of our life…an intelligence that envelopes the human being—his or her education and wellness—in resilience, wonder and awe.
Freedom, celebration, and the alignment with Life’s innate intelligence are the principles which shape a new paradigm of health and well-being. And they reveal the real source of power, which has little to do with war, force, or secretive control.
It is a privilege and a source of continual inspiration to know that with my family, and with so many families today, there is together with us an entire healing profession rooted in this living legacy: Chiropractic and its science, art and philosophy.
For chiropractors are perhaps the only practitioners in the field who abstain from claiming to “treat” disease, but who understand the inner intelligence that heals, grows, and empowers the world.
With great love for who you are and what you do,
John Ohm
Pathways to Family Wellness Magazine Issue #86