Chiropractic + Baseball = Hope

by: Warren Bruhl, DC, DICCP

Hope is a four-letter word.  But unlike some of the four-letter words, we often regard with disapproval, hope has the seeds of possibility and something magnanimous associated with it.  It may stir thoughts of the triumphant resolve of thousands of civil rights activists who organized and eventually led a social movement to integrate schools, businesses, and the United States we live in today.  Around the world, hope is often prayed for by millions as the single thread that will keep them alive another day.  

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When food, adequate clean drinking water, and survival are all threatened because the resources are unavailable, hope is often the sustenance that keeps men alive another day. Hope offers a reason to live.   As Victor Fankl, a Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, says, “…my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with uncanny acuteness, I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look.  Real or not, her look then was more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.”  As Frankl further wrote, the secret he found to those who survived and many who didn’t was the will to live for SOMETHING! 

Hope of the Future

They had hope they would one day see a loved one again! They had hope they would one day be able to tell the families story and make sure their memory did not die.  They had hope they could tell the story to their children and grandchildren one day of the death camps and make sure it never happened again.  Hope was the source. 

Today, Hope is alive and flourishing around the world and domestically because chiropractic promotes and creates it.  In the Dominican Republic, ChiroMission, a 501(c((3) non-profit, has been actively building relationships while bringing chiropractic to thousands of people who would otherwise never have known of this remarkable healing art.  Children in schools, housebound elderly in small villages, and patients in hospitals all have access to teams of doctors and volunteers who travel two times a year to this tiny island country of 10 million.  

I have personally visited and served four times,  bringing along thousands of dollars in sports equipment donations to further seed the hope of millions of children.  In the Dominican Republic, baseball is as close to being a religion as football is in Texas.  They eat, drink, and breathe the game of baseball in the tiniest and poorest remote villages to the urban cities of Santa Domingo and Santiago.   Children play and practice to someday be the next Miguel Cabrera or Albert Pujols, both Dominican born heroes. 

The opportunity for chiropractic to seed the hope of health through our healing and our gift to give is alive and welcome in the Dominican Republic.  Moreover, it is pivotal to the global change needed around the world today.  Chiropractors are more than just back doctors.  Yes, we are healers and agents of social change.  What do you want to change today?