Chiropractor

I used to go to a chiropractor in Arizona, several times a week. I started due to back aches I'd had since jumping off too high a cliff into a lake a decade earlier. And it was amazingly helpful. And now that I've been suffering from bad ankles for a year now, I really wanted to go again. Unfortunately, my stupid United Healthcare won't cover one.

So one day, when I was turning around in a driveway in Kahului, I spotted a chiropractor's car license. How did I know it was a chiropractor? Maybe it was just a lucky guess.

But I looked him up on his Maui Health Network page:

Dr. Greg Owens, or "Dr. Hugs" as he is affectionately called, is a licensed Maui chiropractor who treats patients on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in Lahaina town and on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Kahului.

Dr. Greg's style of chiropractic includes physical manipulations to all parts of the body. He has also received some training from a prominent Hawaiian Kahuna and is able to sense exactly where you are misaligned by hugging you…hence, Dr. Hugs.

In Hawaii, a kahuna is a shaman, a practitioner of Hawaiian traditional (pre-Christian invasion) medicine and spirituality. Hawaiian traditional medicine also includes Lomi lomi, an energetic message style not unlike Reiki in its energy manipulation. So I was totally ready to meet Dr. Greg.

They do not take appointments; it's walk-in only. But there was only one person ahead of me and I didn't have to wait long. Greg was very personable, and a chatter. He didn't greet me with a hug; he didn't have to, as he could see me hobble into his treatment room. To the eye of a trained chiropractor, a person's walk is more revealing than an X-ray. As I was on his table and he was crunching various parts of my spine and hip joints, I mentioned my husband had driven me there. He became very enthusiastic, as he has been an LGBTQ ally since before there were so many letters to ally with. He told me he had a patient who had literally been asked to leave a different chiropractor's office when he came out to that doc.

People often leave a chiropractic appointment more sore than when they arrived; it isn't until the next day that they feel the improvement. But that wasn't the case this time; I felt much better immediately. And this improvement has extended to this evening, so…so far, so good!