Popcorn.

It’s tasty, isn’t it? In fact, I would probably have to say that no movie experience is complete without it. That strange salty-sweet smell sends messages jumping and hustling right along the first cranial nerve to hit the olfactory bulb with a thump, and in less than a heartbeat you find yourself back in that Art Deco cinema of slightly-musty red velvet seats, crackling film reels and the tap tap tapping of the floorboards from the usher and his torch, as he shows latecomers to their seats.

Popcorn.

At our house we don’t buy it from the cinema any more, for even though the smell of it is still able to connect us with memories of stolen jaffa-flavoured kisses, and the magical worlds other than our familiar suburban streets, popcorn just ain’t what it used to be. So these days, we pop at home.  And we find it embarrassingly thrilling. I’m not sure if it’s the slight danger of that hot, smoking oil, or the anticipation as we watch and wait for that first spinning kernel to build up steam (it’s the moisture content inside that causes internal steam to build and build, causing that little seed embryo to bust out of the pericarp) getting so hot and bothered, and uncomfortable, until it bursts forth in a rush of heat and transformation. Or maybe it’s a bit of both. Then of course we have the satisfying ting ting ting on the lid of the saucepan, as the rest of the kernels follow the leader and join the wave of change. For those hard, virtually impenetrable seeds, times really are a changin’.

A bit like life, and music, really.

You knew I couldn’t let an opportunity go by without Bob having a say, didn’t you?

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
Your old road is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

What kind of response do those words elicit in you? Do you rub your hands together, thinking of the opportunities that change could bring, or do you shift to a more protective posture: cervical flexion, sacrum in counternutation, waiting for the onslaught? Do you relish or perish?

I would venture to say that at this very moment in time there is more change in the world and in our profession than I have seen in my twenty years of practice. Changes to legislation and leadership, to terminology and techniques. We can see these changes from an outside-in perspective, as stressors if you will, and attempt to thicken our collective epidermes in an effort to stave off the storm unscathed and most likely unchanged, safe within our kernels, or we can see the turning up of the heat as an opportunity to jiggle around with energy and verve, and…transform.

Psychologists McEwan et al tell us that stress is often labelled as either “good” or “bad” as a result of prior programming, and perhaps that might be true of us in chiropractic. Our chiropractic history books are lousy with examples of Chiropractors vilified and even gaoled for their practicing of their craft, so it may be that we as a profession have been inculcated to view stress negatively.

When in fact the opposite can be true. In her book The Upside Of Stress health psychologist Kathy McGonnigal tells us that is the very perception of stress that determines what the effect will be. She tells us that it is how we think about the stress, that is of paramount importance. It turns out, that if we decide that the increased heart and respiratory rate that we may experience when we are anxious as deleterious, then it will be likely to cause us damage. However, if we choose to view the stress response as helpful or even necessary in order to face a new challenge, then although we still may notice precisely the same increases, they will occur without the same blood vessel constriction, producing a response that is not only not at all harmful, but one that physiologically, looks just like courage.

And then we find that our Innate Intelligence just keeps on giving. For not only does this type of positively interpreted stress make us more courageous, it stimulates our pituitary gland to secrete oxytocin. You’ve gotta love that. Literally. As of course this huggy hormone is our cuddle chemical, the neuropeptide that creates trust, empathy, compassion and caring. It motivates us to seek support and surround ourselves with people who care about us.

In fact, I like to think of oxytocin as the little chemical that orchestrated the building of communities, as I imagine that our Neolithic ancestors, returning from a long day of chasing down protein would settle down by the fire, positively surging with oxy, (and possibly other chemicals that might not bear mentioning in this forum) with a desire to make joyous and meaningful connections with other humans.

In the context of our profession, it would seem that this type of favourable stress may well be the very thing we require to do as Joseph Strauss once proposed: to be refined by fire. To utilise the effects of stressors to enable us to act with the knowledge that we can trust ourselves to handle challenges, whilst realising that we don’t have to face them alone. To define and refine the rules of who we are right now, and how we want to play this game in the future.

In the practice setting, we may find that positively interpreted stress gives us greater access to our hearts, and hence allows us to be more compassionate, and caring, and able to find meaning in our connections with others. In the words of social researcher Brene Brown, the ability to establish human connections may very well be “the reason we are here”.

Irrespective of this, we do know that challenge aimed at a level significant enough to induce stress results in increased strength and resilience. Of our ideas, our values and beliefs, our communities, our level of protection, and ultimately, our politics.

So just as the parents who come to us report that their children reach new levels of development following the apparent stress of a fever, and just as the pupa requires the struggle of emergence from the chrysalis to give those delicate wings the strength to take flight, so too must we absorb the heat and the energy and the seeming adversity to allow us to transform our experience and pop to the next level. Delicious. Just like popcorn.

And so, only one question remains: what flavour of popcorn will you be?

…From The Ashers

Sunrise at Sunrise

We are lucky enough to live right on the beach. That’s if you can keep your eyes high and not look down on the road that bisects Sunrise Beach into “the beach side” and “the other side”. One serpentine line of black, with white dashes like the ‘cut here’ line on a voucher, creating a distinction of around a million bucks

During the day there is a fairly constant stream of tin-machines being propelled along the bitumen, scurrying from one commitment to another, and from my eyrie I can close my eyes and imagine that the swoosh of rubber on road is just the sweet sound of swell picking up.

In the early hours as the sun lifts herself over the horizon, and then again at night when everyone retires under the blanket of evening, the cars stop their scurrying and flurrying, and all we can hear is the repetitive whoosh of the waves, and, if the wind is just right, the distant sound of some neighbour’s wind-chimes as they herald the arrival of the cool air, wet, with dissolved salt and smell of something elusive and free.

From my spot up here I can track the passing of time and seasons, not by the calendar or the clock, but by the way the ocean heaves, the intricate mix of sweet and sour in the air, and the look on the face of the sun as she gives me the first wink of the morning.

From my spot up here, I can watch the tide of people as they flow to all of their places, I can see how busy they all feel by the way their engines rev up the hill, and the blur of red brake-lights as they hit the suburban 60.

From my spot up here, I am detached from all of the concerns of time and endings, of forms to complete and places to be, and all that I know is the eternal rhythm of our place on this planet, a sphere who wakes before us each morning, and outlasts us every night.

…From The Ashers 

Lately I’ve been a bit of a seminar junkie.

See how I managed to make that sound like a good and bad thing all rolled into one? That’s because it kind of is. If you go to too many seminars you can start to think that real actual life is like a seminar, and you can do / be / have anything that you want in this world.

Which is true. You can.

But it comes at a cost.

And that tricky, sticky second part is the bit that sometimes makes it a lie. Where the person you are lying to is your very own self.

What happens to me when I go to seminars, is that I get all crazy-excited about the possibilities that exist in the world, all of the things that I am going to get done the minute I walk in the door, all of the lives that I am going to change with my MASSIVE VISION of working with every chiropractor I know, (and some that I don’t…yet), to ensure that every Woman, Man and Child on this PLANET is able to have lifetime chiropractic care.

Yessiree Bob, that is what I am going to do. And I shall be doing it Right Now. I’ve waited long enough. In fact, far too long.

On the long, dark drive home I trace the white lines and make voice memos about all of the ways I will expand the coaching business I am part of to get more chiros doing their thing efficiently and effectively. I make plans of working with the other coaching businesses so they will do the same. I plan to extend my own practice working hours, so I can see all of the people I turn away every week. I make plans to extend my own workspace so that it can also house some young chiros who want to enrol in my big vision. It might sound tiring, but I get so completely buzzed on the very idea of it all that I don’t give a shit about tired. “Sleep when you’re dead,” I say to my self out loud. “Sleep is for losers,” I whisper into my brain, just in case it is thinking of betraying the fire in my heart.

My headlights reflect on the white of our garage, and for a moment I sit in the quiet and the still. I roll the last moments of clear thoughts around in my mouth and brain, before my Mumbrain takes over, where everything is filtered through the veil of Everyone Else.

And then I open the front door.

I’m greeted by the sounds and smells of our home. Kids giggling over some silly little trifle that has taken their fancy. The comforting scent of garlic, tomato and herbs from the Spag Bol that Nath has cooked up for our dinner. Perhaps even a chocolatey whiff of a nice bottle of red he has breathing on the bench. The grumble of the waves carried to our balcony with the onshore wind that grabs the door from my hand, slamming it open, and announcing my arrival to my people. Silence for a single beat, and then I’m engulfed with cries of “Mummy” as hot little bodies press against me, furry paws trample on my feet and threaten to knock me off my teetering seminar-heels, a rough scratch on my cheek and a trace of manly aroma, heralds that I am home.

And I am truly home. This is the place where I belong, and am loved and supported for my quirks and my squarks.

And yet a tiny part of my heart stays in my seminar world.

And just like the drug to the junkie who devotes his life to getting his next fix, it is a desire that scratches and worries around the edges of my brain, trying to make purchase and get some serious traction. No matter where am I or what I am doing, it’s there. Teasing and cajoling and trying to have it’s greed met.

To satisfy it, I put inspirational signs up around the house, placating it momentarily, even as I feel it building in intensity, whispering: “If not you, then who? If not now, then when?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” I scream back at the inside of my head, the words bouncing from cerebellum to frontal lobe and back again, over and over like a superball. “Leave me alone. I need time, time and well, time.”

But I don’t need time, not really. I just need to say what I really, really actually want. And figure out what I am willing to do to make it happen.

As we all do.

What do you really want?

And what are you willing to sacrifice to have it?

…From The Ashers

When I was a child I adored Marcel Marceau. He was magical to me. His cracked white face, his pointy red lips, his jaunty hat when he was playing at Bip. He was mesmerising. I always thought he had kind, sad eyes. He seemed to smile with his mouth, but never his eyes.

Marcel as Bip

*****

One cold and wondrous Melbourne evening, I had a steamy bath, and instead of donning my fleecy PJs, I put on my matching quilted brown skirt and vest, with my floral and flowing shirt underneath, and my best brown knee-high boots. (Don’t all the best adventures start with a shit-hot pair of boots?) I brushed and brushed my long hair until it was buffed to a brassy sheen, and Mum let me have a tiny spray of her Arpege. It made me sneeze, but I pretended I liked it, because: adult.

I think I must have been ten years old, going out, after dark, with Peter, my superior Dad. And without my pesky little brothers. I felt like a princess, except better, as I was pretty sure that tiaras would be uncomfortable after a time.

Many of the details of the evening are foggy around the edges these days: I don’t know how I came to know about Marcel Marceau, I don’t know why I was given this gift of tickets to see him. I don’t even know the year, although I assume it was around 1981, when he toured Australia.

My Mum kissed me off, and Peter and I disappeared into the dark night with a roar of the V8 engine: my silver Holden carriage.

I feel like we parked in Market Lane, although that can’t be quite right, but I remember that the shiny cobblestones were slippery under my booted toes, and I had to skip lightly over them to keep up with Peter’s long, languid stride.

Just like in a play, the next scene found us seated in plush red velvet seats, high above the stage, looking down at Marcel’s white lunar face, as he tried to find his way out of what must have been a maze of mirrors. As he felt his way around the walls, I willed and willed him to get out safely, and not remain stuck in the labyrinth forevermore. Just as it seemed that he would gaily trot his way out, he smashed into one final mirror, with a bang that almost made my heart stop.

The most surreal thing about the show was the complete absence of sound. Marcel wore soft black slippers, which made barely a whisper as he flowed over the stage, and he held the entire audience in complete and utter rapt silence.

I was no stranger to quiet, my grandparents were deaf, and it was common to visit their home without a word being uttered, but this was different. There was none of the gentle slapping of winged fingers making shapes in the air, no grunting laughs, no clapping of hands to get your attention. It was as though noise had been cancelled for the evening. It was enchanting.

Cut to the next scene with Marcel performing the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’. The references were mostly lost on me, but I loved watching him hold up an ornate, furled parchment at the beginning of each sin, and I tasted the new words on my tongue: Gluttony, Envy, Sloth, Covetousness, Anger, Pride. They sounded exciting and mischievous. I thought I would use those words in my diary very soon. And then came the last: Lust. Lusssst. I whispered it in my head. Peter shifted almost imperceptibly in his seat, and my child-antennae that was precisely tuned to signs of weakness and discomfort, whirled around to face him.

“What’s Lust?” I whispered, loud enough for ladies three rows behind to titter.

I have no idea what the poor man said, but I know I was fascinated by the word for months afterwards, and would use it as often as possible in the schoolyard, “I lust after Paul Stanley,” I would proclaim to my friends, “Shandi is such a lusty song,” and they would nod along wisely. We were ten. We knew all about lust. (And what we didn’t know we pieced together from surreptitious glances at “Where Did I Come From?” or “Forever” by Judy Blume.

Finally, one night at the dinner table, one of my little brothers let out an astonishingly loud belch, and I said, “Oh, that was an amazing sign of gluttony, you must be very proud. I lust after a burp such as that.”

Mum threw her serviette into her gravy, told me that enough was enough, and I was to stop using the word lust, in fact I was to stop with all of the deadly sins, immediately. They were after all, deadly. And sinful.

I hung my head a little, to show I was suitably shamed, and went off to my room to listen to the latest cassette they had given me. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? It’s called Welcome to my Nightmare by Alice Cooper, and I was intent on learning the lyrics to Cold Ethyl. They seemed quite lusty, in a strange cold, dead necrophiliac kind of way.

Parenting gold, amirite?

https://youtu.be/KOGw0IXFnSQ

…From The Ashers 

So today we went to the Queensland University bookshop.

Don’t ask. But yes, we are booknerds. And Uni bookshops are the best, aren’t they? All that promise. All that brain expanding material. All that DATA. Especially when you are no longer a Uni student, so there is no danger of anyone asking you a question from any of the tomes. There’s a tingly excitement that you can taste like metal on a filling at the back of your mouth. They make you zing.

I was slowly falling in love with an anatomy colouring book- adult colouring books are the new black right now, you know- laguidly stroking the pages and imagining soothing long strokes of colour along the Vastus Medialis, or perhaps bright little pops of colour for the eight different carpal bones (Yes I can still name them, but I do need the rude mnemonic to recall if the Triquetrum is actually next to the Lunate or distal to it. Sigh: Some things never change.)

I was awoken from my daydream by the kids who were mucking around with syringes.

WHAT THE?

I turned around to see Evil Genius One prepping to inject EG2 with some kind of red substance. “Here you go, Cokes”, he was saying in his best bedside manner, “just a little blood to top you up.”

I virtually lept over the mini skeleton in my path, screaming “Noooooo” in slow motion, like they do in all the good movies. I  say ‘virtually’ because I didn’t actually leap over the midget skeleton, more like, lept into it.

Oh well. As it turns out, micro-plasi-bones don’t do so well with leaping and crushing from 55kg women. (Osteoporosis?)

I blustered about, recovering some of the fractures, stuffing vertebral arteries back into their foramen, and attempting to put the spine back in line (I am a chiropractor after all, but fuck me if thoracics don’t just all look alike). I regained my composure as best as I could whilst blustering and promising to pay for it all. “No, no, I insist, I’ll buy the skeleton”, I said, all recalcitrant and embarrassed. “No, it’s fine”, said the lovely helper, “this kind of thing happens all the time.” Which of course it does not. Not even once, I’d suggest, by how quickly they tried to reassure me out of the shop sanctuary.

In the melee I had forgotten what had caused the original kerfuffle, and I looked over to see Evil Genius Two proffering the soft flesh of her forearm, and Evil Genius One attempting to administer blood. “What are you doing?” I screamed. “Stop it, stop that now, you don’t even know what blood type that is.”

The Geniuses looked up, their mouths: silent zeroes.

And of course they weren’t holding syringes with blood. Of course they didn’t find such things hanging about in Uni bookstores. They had pens. Red pens. Fashioned to look like needles. With red ink to resemble blood. For a lark. Because: Uni. (Cerebral Comedy.)

“oh”, I said. As small as I could.

“Can we have them?” asked the Geniuses in perfect unison, “they’re ace.”

“Of course, of course you can”, I simpered, “grab them and let’s go.”

They did, and we almost did.

But not before one last question. From Evil Genius One.

“Can we also have Gon-or-he-a?”

I spun on my heel. “What?” Even in my altered state, and even with his pronunciation less than perfect, I knew he was asking if he could contract a sexually transmitted disease… And a crook, thick, weepy one at that. “What did you say?”  I turned to see him holding up a weirdly shaped plush toy.

My brain started to crease and fold in on itself. The sulci tried to become gyri, and vice versa. Nothing was quite right. And then some neurones from study-nights long since past, fired up, and I realised my first-born was holding up a Gonorrhoea soft toy. Nice one, Uni bookshop, nice one. And touche. I imagine there would have been a time in my life that I would have considered fluffy models of diseases de rigeur. But not now. Not today. Not with minors.

“No you can’t have Gonorrhoea,” I said, “at least not yet.” (I might not have said that part out loud)

He replaced the model, bereft. And I can understand. What mother doesn’t allow her pre-teen to cuddle up to a Gonorrhoea molecule at night?

“Well can we at least have this red blood cell?” asked the smallest Evil Genius? “it might give me goodluck next transfusion.” They looked up at me, eyes like ponds, willing me to allow them this faintly macabre teddy.

“Fine,” I said, wanting to appease and exit, “get the blood cell.”

So they did.

“I’m going to call her Cutie Reddy,” said EG2 “because she’s cute, and she’s red.” (As you can see, I don’t call them geniuses for nothing). They both smiled. Apparently Cutie Reddy was a good name.

I remember thinking as we drove off in the car, that all in all, that this wasn’t too bad. Because: science. I mean, a red blood cell toy, it is kinda cute after all. Isn’t it?

Moments later, my reverie was broken by one of the geniuses chanting in a voice that was a cross between Chucky and that creepy REDRUM kid from The Shining: “Two sets of friends must die together.”

I did not look in the rear-view mirror.

I did not ask who said that (for of course I knew it would be blamed on the eryrthrocyte).

I kept my eyes fixed forward. And I drove and I drove, and I tried not to think. For, in the last eleven years I have learned one thing: If you don’t want to know, then Just.Don’t.Ask.

Here she is. Cute? And red.
…And a little evil, it seems…

…From The Ashers