The River of Life | Eden Prairie Chiropractor

Sometimes I use analogies to help individuals further their understanding of chiropractic care. Analogies are great because you can take something that is complicated and break it down into a more understandable comparison. Nothing is more rewarding then when a practice member shares with me an analogy they developed on their own to help describe chiropractic. I’m going to share one of those analogies today.

Life is an experience for each and every one of us. Let’s compare going through life to traveling down a river. We are all tossed into the source of the river when life begins and washed out the mouth of the river when our life ends. Everyone is provided a boat (our bodies) to keep us afloat throughout our life adventure, but if that boat sinks unfortunately we cannot survive the river waters without it. Now some individuals where provided strong and durable boats that float slowly down the river, others have been given light and fragile boats that float fast down the river, others some combination of the two (genetics). Regardless of the boat we are equipped with, improvements to the boat can be made to make it stronger and healthier. When we choose healthy lifestyles we are rewarded with healthy boats/bodies. For example, if you choose to regularly exercise, your boat now has a motor to power you against the current that brings you down the river. Start eating a healthy diet and your boat now has a continued supply of gas for that motor to operate. Suddenly boats that choose this healthy lifestyle, which may have originally been light and flowing fast down the river, are maintaining a slower drifting speed and watching other boats float by that are not practicing healthy behaviors. Not only are they extending their time on the river, life experience, but they are further enjoying the experience at the same time, because who doesn’t like cruising around on a motorboat?  

Floating down a river is tough on our boats and stress is constantly wearing on them. At some point this stress can spring a leak in our boat. Small leaks can be hard to notice until water begins to pool up in our boats (symptoms) at which point we decide to do something about it. Medicine is a good way to remove the sensation of a symptom, much like a bucket is a good way to bail water from a boat. Chiropractors work to stop these leaks at the source. Vertebral Subluxations in our spine compare to the leaks in our boats. When subluxation is present our nervous system cannot function to its full potential limiting our body/boats potential. Chiropractic adjustments restore proper spinal relationships and remove the interference from the nervous system allowing our boats to again float free from leaks. Now if our boat runs into a rock and water starts gushing into our boat, medical care is great at cleaning up the water (symptoms) and replacing damaged boat structures. Rather you run into a rock or not, we need to be maintaining our boats and continually patching up leaks, or our body’s health will always be leaking.

I went deeper into the analogy then what was initially shared with me from my member, but it was fun to chew on it and tie more and more life attributes into it. In the end, remember life is not determined from the boat we are provided, but by the care that is put into our boats. We are all floating down the river of life. One day your boat will reach the rivers end... How are you choosing to ride the river? By simply floating downstream, or by powering your boat upstream against the current?

Zachary Lundbohm, D.C. is the owner and chiropractor at ChiroClub of Eden Prairie; he is committed to providing affordable quality chiropractic care to the local communities. Want to read more about chiropractic? Check out his ChiroBlog for additional posts!