"Chiropractic is full of goodness and love for humanity.
It holds within it the potential to dramatically improve peoples health and wellbeing."
​- Dr Heidi Haavik

In NZ, a Dr of Chiropractic is someone who has studied and practiced for a minimum of 5 years. They make small adjustments to your spine so that messages can travel better from your brain to the rest of your body. By doing that, chiropractic care supports:

• relieving pain
• increasing movement and flexibility
• improving balance
• reducing falls and injuries
• improving the way your brain processes the information taken in by your senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch)
• maximising your body’s ability to function well and heal itself​​
  
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​How does it work?

Bodies are amazing things. They are designed to self-heal and self-regulate. But modern life really gives our bodies a hard time – every day we experience some levels of stress, trauma, and toxins. Just like a car needs maintenance to keep running well, your central nervous system needs regular maintenance, too. That’s what a chiropractor does. When the brain, spinal cord, and nerves are functioning well, your body is optimised to deal with life – from digesting food, to immune responses, to making the right hormones.

Chiropractors focus on helping your brain communicate clearly with the rest of your body.  There are tiny receptors in the muscles and joints along your spine, and they're like your brain's eyes - they're how the brain knows what's going on inside and outside of your body.  The muscles and joints need to move freely so those receptors can send messages between your body and your brain. If the muscles and joints get tight or a bit stuck, those receptors can't send their messages properly, and you get unclear communication.  The brain gets only pieces of the information, not the full picture. That can cause problems.

So chiropractors don’t actually move the bones – they help the muscles and joints around the spine move freely, helping the little receptors do their job properly: relaying information between your body and your brain.  We tell the brain what's going on in the joint, and your brain fixes everything for us!

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What  can   I   expect – how  will   it   feel?

We’ll always use a range of techniques to suit your needs and your comfort. We also use very different techniques for babies than we do for adults. You could expect us to use some of these with you and your children:

• Cranial work – gentle finger pressure applied to the places where the plates of your skull meet
• Activator – a hand-held “clicker” is spring loaded to deliver a low-force thrust
• Thompson Drop – sections of a special chiropractic table (which you lie on) are raised and then dropped using gentle pressure
• Diversified – manual adjustments by hand – you might hear a slight sound during the movements
• Pediatric-specific – imagine how much pressure you might use to press on your own eyeball – that’s how much fingertip pressure a chiropractor uses on a baby or small child

Used with permission from Well Adjusted Babies. Please refer to their website: http://welladjustedbabies.com/12-ways-to-keep-your-kids-in-balance/

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Are  there  any  risks?

The media loves a good story. So you might hear talk about some risks – particularly stroke, or injury to children. This breaks our hearts!

In her book The Reality Check,  Heidi Haavik tells us that every study conducted confirms: Not only is chiropractic care safe, it’s hugely beneficial. But to just give you some reassurance, we have hard evidence that no child has been injured or harmed by chiropractic care in the last 20 years

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