Strike a Chord

Tuning Your Instrument

When your piano is out of tune you call in the piano tuner. Likewise with your violin, cello, or bass fiddle. If you want to do more than just sing in the shower, you start taking singing lessons to learn how to sing on key. Using your body is exactly the same. You're a fan of "Dancing with the Stars" and think "hey, I want to do that!" So you begin ballroom dance lessons and study the mambo, tango, swing, and fox trot. Your body gains sophisticated knowledge. It learns how to create musical movement. Your body itself needs to be functioning harmoniously for you to be able to create graceful, harmonious movement, whether in ballet, salsa, football, or basketball. Chiropractic care helps ensure harmonious functioning by balancing the interactions of nerves, bones,  muscles, and joints. The access to this physiologic balance is the spinal column, the primary focus of chiropractic care.

Physicians and scientists have often called the human body a beautiful instrument.  The sense in which this metaphor is applied is primarily mechanistic. The human body is a beautiful instrument in that its parts mesh properly and each component performs its function superbly.

The metaphor "beautiful instrument" can be also be interpreted from the perspective of music. Just as playing the piano, the cello, or the saxophone can create wonderful tones, harmonies, and melodies, the workings of the human body may also create beautiful music.

The movements of the planets, stars, and constellations have been termed the "music of the spheres". Patterns of motion of the celestial bodies are precise, regular, and harmonious. These reliable patterns allow sailors to navigate safely and confidently on the open ocean, and allow farmers to determine their planting seasons with high levels of accuracy.

The human body, as awe-inspiring and as beautiful as the Eagle Nebula, the Andromeda Galaxy, or the rings of Saturn, possesses internal mechanisms as precise and complex as those astronomers are able to observe in the deepest regions of space. The music the body creates is similarly as beautiful.

In music, a major chord is a simultaneous combination of three notes - the root, a major third, and a perfect fifth. If you want to play a C major chord you strike (or hold) a C, an E, and a G. If you're playing an F major chord, you play an F, an A, and a C. In a sense, this system describes a musical code. Your body has many such codes.

The genetic code is one example. Every protein in your body is composed of a precise sequence of amino acids. Substitute glycine for valine or glutamine for serine and you've got a completely different protein. Precision in manufacture means your body works the way it is supposed to work, with no errors or failures.

Proteins such as hemoglobin or insulin are built exactly the same way every time. This level of 100% accuracy is made possible by the genetic code. Each amino acid that makes up hemoglobin or insulin has its own corresponding genetic sequence which is composed of three pieces of information - just like a major chord. ¹

We can say that wellness is a state of physiologic harmony. ^2,3 We become unwell when we're "out of tune". At such a time our internal chords aren't being played properly - "notes" aren't being put together properly or are being played out of sequence.
Chiropractic care can help restore musical balance.

By making sure the spine is in alignment, chiropractic care helps restore precision and harmony to all the functions of the body. Proteins are built properly, enzymes function at the right time and in the right proportion, biochemical reactions take place efficiently, and health and wellness is the result.

¹Martinez-Mekler G, et al: Universality of rank-ordering distributions in the arts and sciences. Public Library of Science (PLOS) Mar 19, 2009 (http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004791)
²Heber D: An integrative view of obesity. Am J Clin Nutr Nov 18, 2009 (abstract online - http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajcn.2009.28473Bv1)
³Endler PC, et al: Sense of coherence and physical health. A "Copenhagen interpretation" of Antonovsky's SOC concept. Sci World J 20(8):451-453, 2008