What Is Chiropractic Anyway?
This blog is no longer in use. Please refer to www.spinewave.co.nz
March 29, 2007
WICA (24) Drive
This issue is dedicated to Dr Phil McMaster for his endeavours in philosophy at the
WICA (24) Drive
Any inferences made about conscious revolution should always be broached with caution. For one, people look at you as though you've finally dropped your last marble and are blindly padding around on hands and knees for it because that's not what we were taught! That's not how things are! That's not how life works! Oh, neo-Darwinists, bless them. And for two, it would bode well in one's favour to be armed to the teeth with a list as long as one's arm of well-respected references.
And I can’t help but ask myself how much I'll let the fear take the wheel and steer
Where did it all go wrong? Why do I always have to defend what I do so tenaciously in society today when there is so much evidence to support every premise chiropractic embraces? Danah Zohar observed in The Quantum Self that "
It's driven me before; it seems to have a vague haunting mass appeal
Changing the biocultural mindset to embrace an energy framework would require either a giant leap of faith at this point, or a-whole-nother twelve years of schooling, undoing everything that's been done, rewriting text books and returning the focus of belief systems to the pervasive intelligence of the universe. An intelligence that collectively desires to express itself in the best manner possible within all things and, within man, to continually express itself intellectually and physically higher in the scale of evolution. Some have called this life force flowing through the universe 'collective consciousness', while theologians have termed it, the Holy Spirit.
Lately I'm beginning to find that I should be the one behind the wheel
Why science of the twentieth century didn't do chiropractic any favours is because the principles of that time couldn't support what our forefathers understood intuitively. They taught that the ultimate goal of chiropractic was the perfection of the human spirit, because the spirit is eternal and the body is not, and that it tends always to express itself fully, not only through the nervous system, but through the entire organism as a communicative whole. Intuition, innate intelligence and instinct are all inherent products of collective consciousness, and therein lies the practical way forward to embrace the true source of power: Biological decision making.
It's driven me before; it seems to be the way that everyone else gets around
Field + Matter = Structure. The power derived from the field, the source, the spirit, the universal intelligence, integrated with the physical matter of the body, derives structure and function. This is the science of today. And the Palmer science of yesteryear was such that "the chiropractor looks upon the body as more than a machine, a union of consciousness and unconsciousness, Innate's ability to transfer impulses to all parts of the body - the co-ordination of sensation and volition: A personified immaterial spirit and body linked together by the soul - a life directed by intelligence uniting the immaterial with the material". So if a stage of consciousness can be loosely defined as a level of awareness in the world, the science of chiropractic's forefathers was so ahead of its time that it should raise deep, concerning questions within every individual of the profession as to where chiropractic should be right now and why it isn't there.
Lately, I'm beginning to find that when I drive myself, my light is found
The practical way forward is biological decision making. This is learning to understand the communication the body holds with one's own consciousness everyday. For example, one has no conscious control over diarrhoea. If it's time to go, it's time. The body communicates with consciousness. Walking into a room of friends, one might feel uplifted. Being down at work is a communication that something needs to be explored or altered. Your body talks to you. Spirit communicates through matter. But are you listening? Do you mask the signs? Do you ignore them? The brain has the most outstanding ability to funnel stress from the field that it cannot deal with, from the senses, down into the body. There it resides, weakening the audibility of communication from body to consciousness. Over time the signals become so weak they're not even heard any more. A stage of consciousness is a sustainable mode of being in the world, i.e. a worldview. The more that an individual contacts higher states, the more the experiences from those states inform one's everyday level of awareness [3]. Let chiropractic be your vehicle of consciousness.
Hold the wheel and drive [4].
© Neil Bossenger 2007
Notes and references
- Zohar, D., The Quantum Self. 1991,
- McTaggart, L., The Field. 2001,
- Senzon, S., The secret history of chiropractic. 2005,
- Lyrics by Incubus., Drive. 1999,
- Past issues are now available at the WICA homepage.
- If you received this letter as a forward and would like to be added to the mailing list directly, please send an e-mail to neil.nzchiro@gmail.com with 'add me' in the subject line.
March 14, 2007
WICA (23) Quack
It's beyond comprehension why practitioners need to place all their eggs in the basket of well, chiropractic just works, okay? when the evidence for why it works is overwhelming, and bearing the burden of quack is needless. But then perhaps it's not the young people who are not doing their reading homework these days?
Hippocrates said to look to the spine for the cause of disease, so enter the chicken from the medical journal, Spine [3]. Laying on its side, the four week old pecker is anaesthetised. It has the side of its lower neck cut open, exposing a small ligament that runs between two vertebrae. The scientist tugs on it repeatedly with a tiny weight and then tracks the production of Fos-positive particles within the nervous system by fluorescing them. Fos production in nerve cells is a response to the activation of c-Fos; c-Fos being a highly regulated gene in the nuclei of neurons whose transcription is elevated for a short time after mechanical stimulation. In other words: Tugging on the ligament changed gene expression - gene expression being a signal. This signal affected both sides of the spinal cord, went all the way up it, altered gene expression within the brainstem, changed signals in the cerebellum, and then went on to higher brain centres. The entire central nervous system was a Christmas tree of light with gene expression changing everywhere. The results of the study showed that the stretching of a spinal ligament resulted in a massive and widespread input of neurologic information from several levels of the spinal cord [3].
In 1897 the founder of chiropractic, D.D. Palmer, was almost killed in a train accident. Fearing chiropractic would be lost to history if he died, he decided he must teach his new discovery as quickly as possible. He taught that tone is the basic principle, the one from which all other principles that compose the science have sprung. He went on to say that he believes the universe consists of intelligence and matter. This intelligence is known to the Christian world as God. As a spiritual intelligence, it finds its expression through creation. In all animated nature this intelligence is expressed through the nervous system, which is communication to and from individualized spirit, and that the condition known as tone is the tension, firmness and elasticity of tissue in a state of healthy, normal existence; that the mental and physical condition known as disease is a disordered state because of an unusual amount of tension above or below that of tone [4].
Man is a sensorial organism, which means he operates by virtue of all the information and signals he receives from his environment on a moment to moment basis. The reactions within the body to this information are subtle. Man is not an android - he is a highly sensitive being made up of trillions of cells, all operating on a score of different levels, singly and in unison. Man and spirit, as an entire organism, has an oscillatory tone which reflects the state of the nervous system. This is dynamic and changes continually. Sometimes one can feel how it changes depending how attune one is, highlighting the point of subtle information exchange, subtle signals, subtle stress, and subtle gene expression from tip to toe. The trick is being attune though. A state many never reach because only after six-point-five insurance reimbursed adjustments, chiropractic doesn't work for me.
Understanding function and the ubiquity of the nervous system brings about the cosmic joke of illusion and reality. When the measured effects of an adjustment begin to blur the differentiation between sympathetic and parasympathetic innervation and slowly we start to realise that possibly everything is connected, ego fuelled debates over technique and rationale for chiropractic care present themselves as futile and unintellectual.
New Zealand
Notes and references
- Lurhman, B. 1999, "Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen".
- Hawkins, D. R., Power vs. Force. 1995, USA: Veritas Publishing.
- Jiang, H., et al., Identification of the location, extent, and pathway of sensory neurologic feedback after mechanical stimulation of a lateral spinal ligament in chickens. Spine, 1997. 22(1): p. 17-25.
- Senzon, S., The secret history of chiropractic. 2005, USA: Instant Publisher.
- Past issues are now available at the WICA homepage.
- If you received this letter as a forward and would like to be added to the mailing list directly, please send an e-mail to neil.nzchiro@gmail.com with 'add me' in the subject line.
Archives
July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007
