What Is Chiropractic Anyway?

In the context of Mind and Matter, the problem many people have with the mystery of consciousness and the grand organization of the universe is that, A. It's undeniable, and B. How do we relate it - this metaphysical stuff - to our physical selves? This physical world of which we appear to belong?

We can think of this problem as trying to relate a puzzling or exotic fact to a relatively domestic, or familiar class of facts. A class of facts that we feel comfortable with; at home with.

I think it's important to evaluate every sign presented on your path before completely refuting it. Sometimes a fact too exotic for our framework of familiarity will lend itself to instant elimination. Implying that the suggestion is altogether not possible and abandoned completely. Such as an atheist would abandon the idea of God, or a pharmaceutical fundamentalist would abandon the idea of vitalistic chiropractic. Though from our knowledge of the general public's perception, we know that the task at hand is to move the concept of chiropractic from exotic... to familiar. To make it a household name. So that when mummy says to child, "It's time to take you to the doctor, sweetie," we know she means the Doctor of Chiropractic.

This class of familiar facts we've created for ourselves is a framework developed by our own biases and perceptions. But what are our biases and perceptions based on? Faith? Belief? What about education? Let's explore this a little.

What is faith? We turn to the dictionary:

faith

n.

1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.
4. often Faith Christianity. The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
5. The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.
6. A set of principles or beliefs.

At number six we see that faith is a set of principles or beliefs. So we turn the page to belief:

be·lief

n.

1. The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another: My belief in you is as strong as ever.
2. Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something: His explanation of what happened defies belief.
3. Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons.

In the number one spot, belief is the mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another. Focus on these four words if you will for just a second: Mental act; condition; and habit. To me those words sound like something you'd train yourself to do - something like being educated. Therefore 'belief' suddenly doesn't sound so holy, anointed and celestial anymore, does it?

Our beliefs are based on references. Our references based on what we know. And what we know is derived from education, or the process of education, or the process of acquiring information. So what happens when your process of information acquisition is somewhat altered? The parameters for what you believe in begin to shake a little and abruptly what you believe is no longer a fundamental law, but merely another step in growth - your evolution. If what I'm saying is not entirely true, please raise your hand if you still believe in Santa Claus... or the Tooth Fairy... Easter Bunny? How often is a belief not even your own, but a product of hearsay, or model entrained by your parents, culture or society?

Let's plot what we've deduced thus far:

Information acquisition, i.e. education, whether it be conscious or subconscious, gives rise to faith, which we've worked out already is a principle set of beliefs: The habitual mental act of conditioning leading to one's perception or bias - this being what you understand. And what you understand pilots your mental, physical and spiritual evolution, in other words... your growth. What this all means, essentially, is that any input entered into the system whatsoever, will ultimately lead two one of two results: growth or recession.

Perception creates awareness. Some things you're aware of and some things you're not, based on your bias. So if your nervous system is only aware of certain things, due to the limitations of your perception, then it's not receiving all the input it may need to reach a higher potential. The system wouldn't be functioning properly. A change in input changes the way you function, and ultimately... changes who you are.

posted by Neil Bossenger  # 4:13 pm

Since I've done so much reading on the topic of late, I may as well tell you something interesting about the little hunk of meat in the middle of your chest, pumping lumpy custard at a rate of five litres per minute when resting, which is about 90% of all the blood you actually have, and up to thirty litres per minute during intense exercise. The heart's already got its work cut out for it by having to beat about 35 million times a year, and then we go and stress it out further. And it works quite simply like this:

There's this thing called your autonomic nervous system. Autonomic, because it takes care of itself without you having to pay much mind to it. Then there are two parts to the autonomic nervous system: the sympathetic and parasympathetic (that lying next to the sympathetic). Now the only reason there are two parts, is because some guy named it such. One neuron does not say to the next neuron, Hello Sympathetic, I'm Parasympathetic, pleased to meet you . That's ridiculous. It's all one nerve system from the body's point of view. Man, I'm really harping on this Oneness thing, aren't I? Welcome to the New Dogma: We are all one consciousness, the earth is self-projected, there's no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we're just an imagination of ourselves. Now for the weather...

The rhyme goes resting and digesting for the parasympathetic and fight or flight for the sympathetic. I'm sure you remember that? I've always remembered sympathetic insomuch that it feels sorry for you, so opens that extra can of whipass when you need it. It used to be quite relevant when we wore loin cloths, hunted lions, ran from tigers and clubbed our women. Boy, those were the days. But in the new sedentary Information Age, there ain't much running, and much less clubbing. What's worse though is that the stress is no longer overt. It's covert. We don't see and hear it in the conventional way. Yet we sense it. We experience. Every. Single. Day. It's insidious - much worse than a lion bite. It's on the news. It's on the streets. It's at home. It's in the office. It's on the phone. It's in our relationships. It's in what we read; what we write; what we say; what we hear.

Warning: Uncontrolled, this type of stress can cause cancer (amongst other things).

Your nerve system senses everything. Your autonomic nerve system senses everything, and its harmonious yo-yo between resting and fighting will begin to lean more one way than the other if the balance isn't maintained. All signals eventually converge on the heart, whether they originate hormonally or by thought. Really, you're not kidding anyone by saying impure thoughts don't get your heart racing, c'mon. The heart and its surrounding vessels are riddled with receptors that maintain perfect rate, rhythm, pressure and temperature at all times. One of the main receptors is the sinus node. It's the pacemaker: The puppy emergency medical technicians shout, Clear! and shock to kick into gear again. The sinus node responds to all these signals. To everything going on in your life. And the rest of the body does the best it can to keep it in a happy place.

When we get into patterns and repetitive cycles in our lives, which we know need to change but never make the effort, the autonomic balance becomes less yo-yo and more just... yo. And yo. And yo. There is no variability. Even constant thought of any nature has a profound effect on heart rate variability because since we are such gifted beings with the capacity to think, dream and imagine anything, there are connections from the front of the brain that skip all the regular pathways and alter heart rate directly. Studies have shown that even simple mental arithmetic challenges the sympathetic division. When was the last time you didn't reach for the calculator?

This is an exciting time. We're seeing more and more that "alternative health care" only got its name by virtue of people's priority list, and priorities change the more we know, understand and embrace - that all these wellness modalities affect change at a level beneath the conscious, which is quite appropriate considering all the new age stressors we face daily are also at a subconscious level! So how many wellness practitioners does it take to change a light bulb? One, but only if the light bulb really wants to be changed.

posted by Neil Bossenger  # 4:10 pm

A couple years ago I picked up a neuroanatomy textbook in the library. For the students reading, I think it was by Martin. And as I was reading the initial chapters describing all the various parts of the brain, there seemed to be a common thread. Every section outlining that specific part's function mentioned, somewhere, that it was... also associated with emotion... and is also associated with emotion... and is also associated with emotion. Almost every bit and piece of the brain and brainstem.

In the eighteenth century a German physician named Franz Gall attempted to isolate about 35 areas of the brain into different roles. This one for hope. That one for self-esteem. The next for secretiveness and so on. He then tried to correlate each area to a bump on the outside of the head, and this was called phrenology. By providing a quality head massage, one's personality could be deduced. However, this all added up to three-fifths of nothing because we simply don't work like that.

"All perceptions, all volitions occupy the same seat. The faculty of perceiving, of conceiving, of willing, merely constitutes therefore a faculty which is essentially one."

This by a Frenchman called Pierre Flourens, three years after Gall in 1823, telling him to get real by coining the phrase: aggregate field. A nice way of saying everything works as one. All parts are interconnected. So much so that in the event of failure of one area, the others can, and will, pick up the slack - a concept like one side helping the other as I alluded to in issue #6. All parts are interconnected and the mind and body are one. In fact, the body is merely an extension of the mind. But if we were to detach these two for a minute, then we can delineate emotion and feeling.

It's written - in large books well suited to propping up car axles - that emotion is the bodily state and feeling is the conscious sensation. So if we dare to embrace this for the length of this paragraph, then one could appreciate that emotion is not locale specific, but extends throughout the entire body. It is a form of information which communicates between the nervous system and the immune system. Information is intelligence. Intelligence runs all systems creating behaviour. And thus emotion translates information into physical reality - that which you experience. Questions that might be raised could then include: Where does this information come from? How am I perceiving this information?

Casting your mind back to health being a function of multiple variables, when factors in one's life adversely affect the nervous system, this changes the value of the immune system because it is all connected. Unmaintained stressors lead to stress. Stress on the nervous system depresses the immune system. The emotion is within the entire body. It is stored in muscles, joints, vision, blood pressure, body temperature... everything changes. Different feelings that translate into bodily emotions simply make the body function differently. One might be more receptive to sadness than joy. And if, at a cellular level, one type of receptor is open and another is not, that would limit the body to what it can receive. Yes or yes? So in the state of a depressed immune system - because of the overt stress and emotion the body can no longer handle - one becomes sick because, for example, some viruses use the same receptors as certain neuropeptides to enter a cell when it is in that particular state of stress. The neuropeptides don't enter the cell, the virus does! But that's okay, you got your flu shot, right? It's just us versus the virus. Those damn viruses. That's all it is. That's all it's ever been. MAN VERSUS VIRUS. I'll let you in on a little secret... but don't tell anyone, 'kay?

Your immune system has the potential to encode for about a BILLION antigen-antibody complexes.

Wisdom of the body, huh? Who woulda thunk it? But that's alright. I presume the local vet down the road has the exact one you're looking for this winter. Hey, I bet he'll even throw some complimentary mercury and formaldehyde into the formula too. Bargain.

posted by Neil Bossenger  # 4:06 pm

In writing these newsletters, I usually wait to pluck something ripe from the Idea Tree. But with exams of late I've forgotten to water it. So today is more something I want to get off my chest, or send out vibrations of general inquiry, rather than discuss function.

I'm not sure whether we were raised to retort this statement reflexively, or whether it's because it's supposed to be said reflexively as a universal truth and we just choose not believe it... but I've lost count of the times people say HEALTH when I ask them what is most important to them. Why I find this so peculiar is because when one has a scan of their priority list, invariably health features somewhere at the bottom - so why tell me it's thee most important thing?

Why do you say this, Neil? Well, let's consider what health actually is. Health is a function of a number of factors. Hah, I lied: just can't get away from that word function. Function is a correspondence in which values of one variable determines the value of another. Health is a function of physical, structural, mental, emotional, spiritual, electromagnetic, psychosocial, psychoenvironmental and socioeconomic factors.

The value of one variable... determines the value of another.

A shift in any one of these factors changes your health. That's just the way it is. Because your health is that intangible, vital force, which allows you to go about your everyday business without you realising it, yet quietly grateful I'm sure you are. But since we don't see it, no ones pays any mind. Until the force falters. It's an animate force, not unlike a tree in the sunshine, in the wind, in the storms, in the rain - requiring all the best opportunities to flourish. But I don't see many forests because today's value systems are completely distorted.

What is the one major measurement of value used in society today?

Money.

Money is not the root of all evil (I know I have a lot of biblical references in my work but it was how I was raised, 'kay?). It's just an easier method of exchange than cows and chickens. But like cows and chickens, money has value. Yet is this value directed at the aforementioned mental, physical, spiritual and emotional variables - the things of which health is a function - or is it directed elsewhere? I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, folks: Health costs money! It also requires effort. It costs more to eat organic. It costs money to visit practitioners of the preventative healing arts. It takes effort to exercise every other day. It takes discipline to meditate when you're stressed.

Alright, I realise money isn't the keystone to enlightenment, but it illustrates my point on modern day society's value system. As a flow process, one can literally see where value is directed. The distortion comes in, I find, where money is misdirected into the Rainy Day Account: insurance. So now because I am insured, I can treat my animate vital force how I please because I live in an age of instant gratification, where healing does not require time, nor patience, nor love, nor understanding, but merely a pill or the removal of an organ which I never really fancied anyway.

Now don't you find the expression, health is wealth, strangely ironic?

posted by Neil Bossenger  # 4:04 pm

I had this idea last year that the body uses itself as its own point of reference. I didn't quite know how to word it, and I still don't, actually, but we press on.

As a consistent and contained organism that self regulates, self heals, self creates and self recreates, the body must have some point of reference to work from. In other words, to draw a straight line with specific purpose and direction, one needs two locations - two points of reference - not just one. Otherwise the line can be drawn anywhere and probably won't be straight.

Now it just so happens, like all the animals that boarded the ark two-by-two, our bodies are kind of symmetrical: two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, two arms, two legs, two cerebral hemispheres, two cerebellar hemispheres, and spinal cord, which if you were to cut through the middle and fold in half, would look like... a butterfly.

In karate we used the expression, iron sharpens iron. Referring to the fact that in order to get better and progress, one would need another to train with and improve skill and stamina. Each man was the other's point of reference for support. Two points. And the phrase came back to mind when I began noticing the symmetry of the nerve system. Each half works synchronously with the other. Globally it would appear as a single unit, but in its harmony - as an example - one side of the brain would halt firing of certain nerve cells on that side of the body so information might readily be transmitted to the opposite half of the brain. Thus each side labours with the other. A decrease in optimum function on one side therefore lowers the function of the other. Conversely, when new, growth-promoting information is received on one side, this will improve the function of the other. Iron sharpens iron. This is also a good reason to hang out with the right people.

To coin one of my favourite quotes by Baz Luhrmann: Sometimes you're ahead. Sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself. You are your own point of reference. The only comparisons which need ever be drawn are between the you of yesterday, the you of today, and the you of tomorrow.

posted by Neil Bossenger  # 3:59 pm

If you look at the picture above, you'll see that there are three canals, almost precisley perpendicular to each other: one for each plane - each detecting angular acceleration in that plane. The body didn't create these haphazardly and just place them at random angles, hoping for the best, so you don't fall over everytime you go for a walk. There was intent in the creation. Perfect organisation.

Okay. So what? I learnt that at school and everybody knows it, you say. But as I was reading more and more about how all this stuff works, I was staring at a picture, a "bird's-eye" cross section view of the head, which depicted both sets of canals on either side of the head. To add further to the perfection, each side works exactly and purposefully with its partner on the opposite side of the head!

Maybe it's just me being weird, but so often I think we take for granted how intricately, and perfectly designed we are. And how much more respect this body my being dwells in deserves. And what I must do to reach a higher state of function; a higher state of being, awareness, health, consciousness. You're perfect in every way, so it all it has to take is the removal of interference. What's holding you back?

posted by Neil Bossenger  # 3:47 pm