What Is Chiropractic Anyway?

This issue is dedicated to Dr Phil McMaster for his endeavours in philosophy at the New Zealand College of Chiropractic, and for putting up with me and my rambling rhetoric during each lecture. I would also like to acknowledge my quasi-editor and girlfriend, Chanelle Rhodes, for making sure these articles are well engineered. And thanks also goes to Jane Binskin of the New Zealand Chiropractors' Association for putting WICA into print for chiropractors in New Zealand.

WICA (24) Drive
30 March 2007

Sometimes I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear

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 "Newton's vision tore us out of the fabric of the universe" [1]. Along with Rene Descartes, they plucked God and life from the world of matter, and us and our consciousness from the centre of our world. Science of the twentieth century didn't do chiropractic any favours. Even beyond the development of relativity theory, understanding that at our most elemental, we are not a chemical reaction but an energetic charge, is not a familiar framework for the minds of most to accept. That there is no "me" and "not me" duality to our bodies in relation to the universe, but only one underlying energy field. A field that is responsible for our mind's highest functions, guiding every bodily process. A field which is a force, rather than germs and genes, that finally determines whether we are healthy or ill, the force which must be tapped into in order to heal [2].

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

New Zealand

Notes and references

1. Zohar, D., The Quantum Self. 1991, London: Flamingo.
2. McTaggart, L., The Field. 2001, UK: HarperCollins Publishers.
3. Senzon, S., The secret history of chiropractic. 2005, USA: Instant Publisher.
4. Lyrics by Incubus., Drive. 1999, USA: Epic Records.
5. Past issues are now available at the WICA homepage.
6. 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.

posted by Neil Bossenger  # 7:20 pm