INTRO FROM DR PARTON: Robert is a patient who has started with our clinic recently and I’ve asked him to share his personal experiences as he undergoes his first months of chiropractic treatment with Mercer Island Chiropractic.
Being Chinese, I grew up in a home where our father had grown up and been educated here while our mother lived the first half of her life in a small village in China before finally joining her husband in Canada in 1950. As we grew up in this Eastern/Western household, our mother would often lecture us about many of the foods we were eating, among other things. She would really nag us when we ate too much candy or other Western foods, while constantly making us a lot of Chinese dishes and soups that sometimes weren’t exactly easy to eat! Lots of herbs and vegetables, often kind of gross and not exactly gourmet! And lots of old-school lectures on ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ foods and keeping our diets balanced. As kids, we never truly had any idea what our Mom was trying to tell us.
Once I moved away in my late teens, I lived through counterculture ’60s and remember more of my friends talking about Yin and Yang and balance. One day, the light bulb went off and suddenly all of Mom’s scolding made sense. In her own simplistic way, she was passing along generations of knowledge that had been handed down to her as she grew up. While Mom had never been formally educated, the thousands of years of health and healing had been passed along to her and it was her duty to raise us in a healthy environment. So for much of my adult life, I’ve also continued to pursue a healthy lifestyle and diet with a focus on balance.
And because of this Eastern influence from my early years, I’ve also embraced a balanced approach to taking care of my body and my brain. (Moderation plays a key role in all of this.) As someone who has been a strong advocate for alternative health care, chiropractic has played an important role in my life for nearly 40 years. I truly feel that it has helped a lot at different stages in my life, especially following some traumatic events.
I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Jeff Parton in April and became a patient after my first visit. There are some of you who – like me – have used alternative medicine for years, while others may have finally tried chiropractic for the first time recently. I’ve been treated by many practitioners over the years and I can honestly say that Dr. Parton is one of the best I’ve met. He takes his time with his patients, often explaining details about the issues he has found in your spine. His adjusting technique is very firm and he’s one of those rare practitioners who has an intuitive touch so he always manages to focus on your problem areas quickly.
As I’ve gotten to know him better over a few weeks of adjustments (and improving results), we both realized that we had mutual philosophies on healthy lifestyles, diet and balance. And it’s this holistic approach that helps each of us maintain a better lifestyle. So when Dr. Parton found that I was a writer and blogger (among other things), he asked if I would consider blogging about my personal experiences with his clinic and his unique approach to his patients’ needs.
We’ve already had some interesting discussions about Yin and Yang, diet, food and water, and exercise. The whole package. I have a feeling we won’t run out of topics to cover in the months to come. I hope you’ll find reading my personal journey helpful in learning more about your own healing.
Robert Lee
a grateful patient