Introducing Innate: The Physician Within

[This is the 1st post of a 3 part series, looking at Innate Intelligence – the inborn wisdom and healing potential of the human body. It’s an updated repost from some of my earliest blogging on the old site -enjoy!]

There is a somewhat universal principle in health and healing, that our bodies are programmed and designed to maintain homeostasis. There is an in-born wisdom, working for us to maintain balance. In chiropractic philosophy, it is called Innate Intelligence. This is the ‘internal physician’ that you’ll hear me talk about.

This is a powerful concept. It forces us to examine all we’ve been taught about health and illness. I want to spend the next three blog posts introducing, expanding and implementing this concept.

Why?

Because it is the foundation upon which health is built!

The concept of the body being a self-healing, self-regulating organism is certainly not unique to chiropractic. In Naturopathy, it is called Vis Medicatrix Naturae (Nature’s Inherent Self-Healing Process). In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) it’s called Chi (or Qi). It is a universally understood principle across many healing arts.

Unfortunately, the dominant health paradigm of the past few centuries has largely ignored and even maligned this concept. It has moved away from supporting the inherent healing powers of the body, instead focusing on symptom management via outside intervention (drugs and surgery) under the guise of “evidence based” practices.

The message we’ve been sold is that health comes from the outside → in. (Or, as you’ve been told thousands of times: ASK YOUR DOCTOR IF ____________ IS RIGHT FOR YOU).

However, health is truthfully expressed from the inside → out.

Or, as the famous B.J. Palmer, DC summarized, “Medicine is the study of disease and what causes a person to die. Chiropractic is the study of health and what causes a person to live.” He wasn’t one to mince words.

The importance of this concept is to help reset our belief systems about health. On one hand, if you can be convinced that your body is weak, prone to disease, genetically flawed and that symptoms are most important, then the medical model of drugs and surgery is the ‘solution’.

However, if you believe that your body already contains the best doctor you’ll ever have, and that health starts by engaging in habits to support that innate potential, then lifestyle choices are the solution for many problems.

Let me close with an analogy borrowed from author Dr. James Chestnut. If you had a plant that was wilting, would you blame the plant’s genes, give it an anti-wilting chemical, cut off the wilting leaves, or paint them green? Or would it make more sense to give it the proper amount of sun, water and nutrient rich soil, and check the environment for toxins leeching into the plant’s soil?

Unfortunately, our first instincts about health are to address symptoms, as opposed to engaging in habits that support health. It’s clear when you look at the plant, but clouded when looking in the mirror.

In my next two posts, you will learn how to start “Trusting Innate” and how to “Lend Innate a Helping Hand.”

Yours in Health,

-Dr. Scott

Last modified: February 27, 2018