The Butterfly

A man found the cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and could go no farther.


So, the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But, it had a swollen body, and small shriveled wings. He continued to watch the butterfly. He expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It was never able to fly.

What he had done in his well intentioned kindness and haste, what he did not understand, was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required to get through the tiny opening were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly to its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Sometime struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as we could have been...And we could never fly…

Have a great day, a great life, struggle a

little….Then Fly!!!!!


There are many ways in our life that we’re like the man with the butterfly. We want to help, and think we know a better way to get the end result we want. Yet, by assisting nature, the results often are disastrous.

Nowhere is this attitude more apparent than in children. First, we intervene with the birth process, thinking that it won’t have a negative long term affect.

However, it often does. Birth trauma, resulting from forced births due to doctors on a tight schedule, hospitals’ arbitrary time lines and the myriad of interventions most mothers face is a major cause of subluxation and other problems.

Another area where we sometimes hurt more that help is with “germs”. The recent explosion of anti-bacterial products, over-use of antibiotics in the general population and the wide spread use of antibiotics in the meat and poultry industries has sped bacterial evolution to a point that many bacteria are no longer resistant to common antibiotics. Many more are becoming resistant to the strongest antibiotics science has to offer. When we take antibiotics, we are setting ourselves up to become more and more resistant. Antibiotics also destroy the “normal flora” or good bacteria in our system. These are responsible for helping us digest our food properly. Each time we take a course of antibiotics, it takes 3 months or longer to re-establish normal levels of good bacteria when we actively work to repopulate them (with products like yogurt and acidophilus).

Taking pain pills or muscle relaxers when there is an injury can also backfire.

The body produces spasms as a protective mechanism. When we relax the muscle or cover up the pain response, we may temporarily feel better, but we’re interfering with the protection. We slow or stop healing and then often go out and do more than we would have otherwise. Now, we’re doing things with an injury we can’t feel and less protection than our body wants to give us. This is a recipe for disaster. Plus, remember that when you take any medications, they don’t just affect the injured area. They work throughout any similar tissues in the entire body.

The examples could go on and on. The point is You can’t fool mother nature.

We possess a limited understanding of how the body really works. So, when we try to jury rig a solution or try to hurry along a remedy, we’re inviting trouble.

We may win the battle but lose the war, as nature has her eye on the big picture and we can’t always see it. Our best bet is to do all we can to nurture and protect what we have.

We’ve long had a saying in Chiropractic that Nature needs no help, just no interference. By keeping our spine free of subluxations and thus our nerve system free of interference, our body will be able to best adapt, respond and heal.

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