What are the best things to do after your chiropractic adjustment?

 For this reason, we really recommend that you pay close attention and follow these steps for the next several days to assist your healing.

 After an adjustment that re-organizes the nerve system, I highly recommend people don’t do much after. At least for a little while.  It’s a common mistake for people to schedule a chiropractor’s adjustment along with a massage session, a reiki session, or some other healing activity. I highly recommend that the first few chiropractic adjustments be done separately from any other healing activity. I would not recommend utilizing any other healing practice on the same day as having a chiropractic adjustment. That way you can really get the benefit and impact on your nervous system, and your body can utilize the forces that were applied without having to integrate another healing art. You can also save money by not going to so many practitioners on the same day or even in the same week. If you are sore or if you are better, it is easier to know what is affecting the changes. If you are doing 2 or 3 or even 4 different modalities in one week, you may be wasting your money when there is a good chance that chiropractic might be able to help you more than you can imagine.

2. Give it a break

(short break) If you regularly exercise or work out, I recommend scheduling your first few chiropractic adjustments several hours away from your exercise routine. I would not recommend you exercise immediately following a chiropractic adjustment. Try to have at least 2-6 hours break before any heavy workouts in the beginning. That way you get the most out of both activities as well as a better sense of what changes are happening. Going for a walk after having a chiropractic adjustment or other light exercise is welcome.

 This is one of the single most important things you can do. Pay attention to your perception of your body. It is very common for spinal adjustments to affect how you feel. Make note of your muscle sensations, your posture, your respiration, and your mental and emotional states. Pay more attention to your body in the hours and days following an adjustment. It’s very common for a person’s breathing pattern, rhythm, depth, and range to change either on the table or between visits. Try  not to focus singly on any pain that you  may have. Look beyond the pain to really be in touch with how you feel overall. Small posture changes are very common. Pay attention to any posture changes. You may notice you are standing taller, sitting differently in a car, or sitting differently at a table. You are not doing it, but instead, your body is uniquely positioning you differently as it re-organizes. We’ve had people who’ve felt better and people who’ve have felt worse after adjustments. That is why your perception and paying attention  is so important to your healing. It’s common for a person to notice that an area which has bothered them for years will feel better after an adjustment, but that something that’s never bothered them before start to feel stuck or have tension. This new perception could be because that area had been blocked all along, until the nervous system was reorganized for new communication.

The first couple of visits when seeing a chiropractor are focused on the organizational responsiveness of your spine and nerve system. The chiropractor should be checking and comparing how your body is responding to adjustments. In many ways, a person’s first session, or even first couple of sessions, are test signals to the nerve system. Tracking the body’s responses within the nervous system is part of understanding your care and creating a custom plan designed specifically for you. Adjustments are carefully applied to the nervous system to make changes toward a better structure, better structural positioning, and better neurological behavior to alter a person’s perception of him/herself.

Make sure that your second visit is scheduled within 24 or 48 hours of the first if at all possible. A week later is not recommended or optimal in any way, especially in the beginning. Most people, when doing something new for their health and well being, need an immersion period. If you’re going to change your body with exercise, and you really want to create momentum, going to the gym once a week is not going to do it right? The same principle applies when it comes to changing your spine and nerve system. An immersion period is needed to help you gain momentum. This momentum is crucial to the healing process. Without momentum your body will very quickly return to old patterns and behaviors.  If a spinal system is going to rediscover connection, transform its structure, behavior, and perception, and awaken to the capacity to heal from within, momentum is the key.