There’s a debt I’ve been carrying for three years that the publishing of this post pays. It’s not that I didn’t think about making good on my word to James the Chiropractor of Pardis Chiropractic Clinic in Cebu, Philippines. It’s not that I haven’t felt my unmet promise to him drag these last three years like a loose lace. It’s just been that I didn’t know how to tell a piece of a story that seemed beyond relating.

Whenever my thoughts approached writing this post, they would mix and jumble and the galore of relating something too large would overwhelm the prospect. So I’d put it off.

But a promise is a promise, a deal is a deal, so its time to make good on it. I’m not going to wallow anymore. So I’ll say this as simply as I can.

Three years ago found me in Cebu, Philippines. I was in bad shape from a neck injury. I couldn’t write without my whole left side of my body spazzing out in pain. So I couldn’t earn income. I was down to my last $400.

But I had a plan. I would make travel videos instead of writing. I could use my right arm to move a mouse, and I’d try to earn an income from videos instead of articles. So I sat down and made a video.

But the act of sitting in front of my computer for an hour made the pain I was accustomed to feeling on my left side emerge on the right as well as the left. A familiar despondency raged within. What would I do? I already spent all my savings on doctors and healers in Thailand, all to no avail. That’s it, I thought, I’ll spend my last $400 on an MRI and see what’s really going on in there. MRIs cost about that much in the Philippines.

So I planned to go to the hospital that afternoon. But a synchronistic detour found me in the basement of the Ayala Center Mall in Cebu City looking at James the Chiropractor’s sign for a back to school sale.

$125 for 10 sessions. I was living off credit cards, but as sometimes you need cash money, holding onto a bit of it could keep me going. Going where? I didn’t really know, I was feeling lost then trying to regain some identity that had disintegrated slowly before my eyes.

I’d started my healing journey with a chiropractor in New York and as it was little help had moved onto other modalities (osteopath, neuroscience, PT, Rolfing, massage, yoga, acupuncture, etc.)

It turned out James and I were both from Montana. He had a smiling and quirky demeanor fond of Hawaiian shirts. My X-ray from New York showed significant degenerative disc disease on C6 and C7.

“There’s nothing you can do about that right?” I asked him, “It’s impossible to heal that right?”

James smiled in the deep way of someone who’s lived life and seen some things smirks. He looked up at the ceiling and said, “Well, nothing’s impossible.”

I let James know of my destitute financial situation and we cut a deal. He’d give me a 50% discount on his 10 sessions deal if I published a blog post about him and his practice. This is that blog post, three years later 🙂

So I delayed the MRI. (I did get one three month later when I qualified for Obamacare and was back in the US). I came every day for treatment with James. And in the slightly up sometimes down nature of my chronic injury, I went up over those ten days. I felt a little better. I wasn’t healed, but James gave me something more valuable than that. He gave me hope. He didn’t see me as a dire story and his confidence made me believe that maybe I wasn’t either.

And something happened in that mall in the Philippines after day 3 of the treatment that has irrevocably changed a course I find myself on today. That’s why it’s been so hard to write this post. I never felt up to telling that full story in writing and it never seemed like an option to tell a partial story. So here is that partial story, because aren’t all stories after all just pieces of the bigger puzzle called existence?

I did confide in my friend William Berger (the man, the legend, the scholar) what happened in that mall. He said this.

So I’ll say this. I know one day it will be my task to tell “the full” story of this time in a book. This year is not that year and it still feels years in my future. Now the thought of that seems overwhelming, so I know it’s not time. Not yet. But when that day dawns, the task of telling will shine brighter than anything else in my life. I know that feeling as it has shined like that for the fictional story of Jerry the Hamster over the last three years.

But let’s not get carried away. This is James’ post. If you’re in the Philippines and you need a chiropractor and a Google search has brought you here to this meandering thought process masquerading as a blog, know this: There’s an American Chiropractor at Pardis Chiropractic Clinic as capable as any as I’ve ever encountered (and I’ve worked with quite a few). He knows the art of chiropractory—but his magic lies beyond that.

Dr. James is a miracle worker because of his ability to give you hope despite how dire your situation. And hope is a commodity that when it’s scarce is worth more than anything else. Hope is healing. Hope and where it may lead you can make any hurt worthwhile. If pain is a teacher then healing is her lesson. On your path, you meet with these souls, the guides who get you to where you didn’t know you were going but need to be.

I’ll also say that sometimes life deals you up really tough situations that break your heart and all you want to do is get out. You can feel so broken and trapped. But then time in its eternal patience passes and when years begin to pile upon years, you can look and see with new eyes how necessary those elongated nights were. In my story, two weeks later, fueled by some healing and hope, James help would allow me to keep going and I’d turn up in Cambodia at The Vagabond Temple—another milestone along my healing way.

It makes me think of a Rumi line so let’s end with that (Because who doesn’t love it when Rumi gets the last word!)

“Start walking towards Shams, your legs might get tired and your body weak, but then comes the moment of feeling the wings you’ve grown, lifting.”

***

Thanks for popping by. If you enjoy this land, feel free to give a lil tip to the Integral Heart kids in Guatemala and check out my books on Amazon 🙂