Chiropractic Seminars and Junk Science

I love chiropractic. I mean I really LOVE chiropractic. Even before I knew what it was when I used to crack my own knuckles or when Paul Swain first taught me how to adjust my midback in my high school water polo days, by grabbing my foot and sticking it out to the side, (I do not recommend this move however), I got the fact that releasing stuck bones was good.

Chiropractic was invented about a hundred years ago. Other cultures have used it on every continent. It is simply finding bones that are stuck and releasing them. This frees up nerves and allows the brain to communicate with the body.

I spent the past weekend at a chiropractic seminar in San Diego. Most of what is being taught there, unfortunately was not chiropractic, and in fact not even close. The most ridiculous moment was when I sat in a room of 50 or so chiropractors and the instructor had them all tapping acupuncture points, which I am sure were not even close to being located properly by the chiropractors, and chanting something close to “I will not be afraid of public speaking, and I accept myself as I am”. This was not twisted chiropractic, it was not even twisted acupuncture, if anything it was some strange weird bastardization of psychology.

The saddest part about this was that from the responses of the attendees I got the feeling that most of them were not part of thriving chiropractic practices. The world needs seminars that teach chiropractic to chiropractors. If every one of them were a technical expert I predict that more people would have the miraculous results that most of our patients have, and that chiropractic would be spreading like wildfire.

Acupuncture is a thousands of years old method of improving the body through the use of needles to draw energy or blood flow to an area depending on whose translation of the ancient texts you want to use. There is definitely some truth to it that I have experienced first hand. It was worked out over thousands of years. It is not something that deserves to be altered and twisted. Perhaps a master after decades of practice could evolve some small nuance of an improvement, but to mix it together with other disciplines and be taught in an early experimental phase to chiropractors is at a minimum confusing, and at an extreme catastrophic for many reasons.

There is a great chiropractor by the name of J.R. Welch. (corrected spelling J.R. Weltch) He is a great chiropractor. He is a master of our craft. He unsticks bones. He teaches a chiropractic re-licensing seminar that is a chiropractic seminar! I highly recommend his seminar called “The Class” There are also great chiropractic seminars by Leander Eckard and others. But most chiropractic relicensing seminars are not about chiropractic!
There exists a great mental healing technology that stands by itself.

There exist great chiropractic techniques that can do more miracles than most people could ever imagine.

There exists a great, honorable and aincent tradition of acupuncture.

Let the students study the original, unadulterated, untwisted methods that have been proven to work. Then if a discovery is made, let it be tested and proven over at a minimum of years, preferably decades, then let it be taught to the masses.

This may sound too conservative, or even as if I am trying to squash technology. No, I am an embracer of technology, but with a few exceptions that you will find in the Emergency Room, and the Surgeons Operating Room the mass of technology of health care has actually created many more dangers than it has fixed. (In my opinion and with exceptions)

So the next seminar I take will be on chiropractic, or the research of chiropractic.

And to my fellow chiropractors, please leave the crystals in the ground, psychology with the psychologists, acupuncture with the acupuncturists, and massage with the massage therapists, and lets stand tall as chiropractors. After all, we have a world to save, so lets get busy!

Update June 20, 2009. JR is still teaching his chiropractic seminar and is as good as ever. Amazing experience.

To schedule for the chiropractic conference, call him at 916-919-5858.