SubLuxes: “Straightway” to Chiropractic Motherlode...but
what does it do for you?
Who hasn’t suffered back pain? Whether it’s the
nagging lower back pain you come to accept as normal, or agony
so excruciating you hardly dare move, we all experience it
to some degree. Hardly surprising really, the spine is the
neurological highway for all 4-footed mammals and what keeps
us humans upright. That’s how it’s been for 7
million years, a twinkling of an eye in evolutionary terms
- is it any wonder then that our spines are vulnerable to
stressing out?
Fortunately most back pain is minor or temporary in nature.
Once back to normal it’s amazing how much better our
quality of life becomes. It really does pay to get your back
working optimally. Trouble is, there are a thousand-and-one
therapists of one discipline or another, all with varying
skills and experience, claiming to have the solution. How
to pick your way through the dross and find what really works
isn’t easy. The problem is that health practitioners
tend to believe their skill will work for more ailments than
it actually does. What works brilliantly for one condition
doesn’t do it for all. Contrary to what some people
may tell you, winkling out your subluxations isn’t the
cure for all known diseases. Considerations of vanity and
finance can and do enter the picture, and for some reason
difficult to fathom you don’t find a lot of inter-practitioner
referral going on.
Low Grade & Typical
My periodic lower back stiffness and back ache must be fairly
typical for someone with no specific problem. Years ago in
Hong Kong having developed nagging lower back pain I went
to an American chiropractor who operated in a newly opened
holistic centre with a suitably ‘wellnessy’ name:
Vibrant Life, I think it was. After a minute or two of adjustments
he’d have me lie down with my back over one of those
circular mini-trampolines. Then, he’d stand astride
me and jog for 5 minutes. It was, I have to say, kinda weird.
Perhaps he was working out some dominance issues (come to
recall, he was a tad vertically challenged), wanted to keep
fit AND get rich. The strange thing was, it worked. At least
it did for 3 days. I saw him weekly but come Day 7 I was right
back to where I was a week ago. Nice regular work, if you
can get it, and well paid for a 15-minute session. Few customer
complaints either, given it half worked. In time the American
chiropractor moved on, to be replaced by an Australian one:
Barry, the Ozzie Chiro, gave you the full hands-on works for
30 minutes for the same price. After 4 weekly treatments I
was much better and after 3 months my back didn’t hurt
at all and I didn’t need to go any more. Not a twinge
for five years. He really fixed me, no question. In time the
stiffness and mild ache returned. An American physiotherapist
had just arrived in town and a mutual friend suggested we
meet so I could put him in touch with some people he could
work with and be legit. Now it turns out this guy had been
the physio for the San Francisco Ballet, so I figured he’d
know a thing or two and owed me. I asked him what I could
do about my back. “Easy,” he said, “do lunges
each side and hold them for a minute. Do that every day and
you’ll be right as rain.” And it’s true.
The only time I ever had any back trouble was when I stopped
exercising and didn’t even do these simple stretches.
Do the lunges for a week, the pain and stiffness disappears.
Something about a circle of muscles most therapists totally
ignore. Probably a Pilates thing, given the dance origin of
the advice.
Pay the money…or lunge for free
A dozen years after I’d first seen Barry the Ozzie Chiro
I got a back problem that seemed serious. It was certainly
more painful than usual. I figured if he’d fixed me
once he could do it again. By this time Barry had himself
set up in his own clinic, but now he did things differently.
After a brief initial consultation what you got were 12-minute
sessions with a lot of clicking from a device that looked
like a cross between a piano tuner and a garlic crusher, known
in the biz as a Pro-Adjuster.
In my original sessions a decade ago Barry the Ozzie Chiro
didn’t bother with the clicker, but now he was a full-fledged
economic convert to ‘straight chiropractic’ and
clicks was all you got. Oh yes, to be treated you had to prepay
for a 3-month package with a nominal discount. After the 3-months
my back hadn’t improved much. I stopped going. It was
expensive and I figured any improvement had more to do with
time than any thing Barry and his clicker were doing. Instead
I got more serious about exercising and stretching. I resumed
my lunges at the gym and started yoga. Sure enough, in three
weeks, no back pain or stiffness.
In other words I don’t really have a back problem at
all, other than advancing age and the fact that I’m
an indolent bastard when it comes to exercise. If I do my
lunges I can even get by without exercising, but then I’ll
get fat. Who wants to swap back ache for a heart attack? I
guess I really do have to resign myself to regular exercise
for the rest of my days. Ah well, they say if you keep it
up for a full 3 months you become addicted...maybe after 40
years of trying I’ll finally hack the 90-day barrier.
What I do know is, it only takes 3 days to re-acquire any
habit you actually enjoy...and that’s not fair.
Pity about Barry the Ozzie Chiro though. He was really brilliant
at what he did. He soon had a dedicated following. Alas, all
too soon he was confronted with the hard facts of life. He
could continue as he was, doing great work earning a meagre
living and the heartfelt gratitude of his clients, or he could
parlay his healing mission into a successful business. There
are only so many working hours in a day and so much the market
will bear. Question then is, how to leverage your time? This
is where the clicker and the 12-minute session come in, supported
by whiz-bang computer software and the punter required to
pay a tidy front-end load. Throw in 10 minutes of non-therapeutic,
pampering massage to sweeten the pill and pretty soon you’ll
have a thriving business, as opposed to a calling. Where’s
the harm in that? Healers should prosper, shouldn’t
they? Doing good deserves to succeed, right?
What Barry and other talented practitioners like him forget
is that in trading a calling for a living they sacrifice the
chance for both. It’s true there are only so many hours
in the day. Any talented healer is soon going to reach client
saturation. Question for the practitioner then is, does this
give sufficient money to sustain me? If not, am I in fact
in the right calling? Is there a way to leverage my time and
make more money without prostituting my talent? Teaching others
to be really good, if not better, at what you do is certainly
one excellent solution. Short changing clients, on the other
hand, is not good for them nor, in the long run, for the practitioner.
It only works if you mean it…
It’s sad to see someone with a God-given talent debase
their gift in return for mere lucre, or cutting a dash with
the ‘in crowd’. Commercially minded new agers
are encouraged to believe that doing good, other ‘spiritual’
or morally uplifting work will in and of itself bring financial
success, and tend to get pissed off when it doesn’t.
“Virtue is its own reward” is no longer the popular
maxim it once was in a post-Christian world. Conflating ‘doing
good’ with your ‘bliss’ is a common error
of inflation. For a pretty penny, raftloads of personal development
leaders parrot Joseph Campbell and who, but a hopeless sap
doesn’t know what their bliss is, right? So your chosen
bliss really has to be your bliss, whether or not the money
flows. The bad news is, you can’t fake it, you have
to mean it (about the money I mean). Then, and only then,
and just maybe – no guarantees – will the universe
shower you with Chopra-esque blessings.
Perhaps, one day Sting will happen to walk into your practice,
spa or whatever, and, recognising the blazing integrity and
sheer talent of what’s offered, ask you to organise
a string of wellness centres for him around the world, no
expense spared. He wouldn’t have done that if your GM
had just tried to stiff him with a 3-month course of 12-minute
sessions at the end of the clicker, now would he?
Meantime anyone considering or re-evaluating a chiropractor
could do worse than go to <www.home-n-stuff.net/health/chiropractic.html>
where a respected doctor of chiropractic spills the beans
on what to look for and when to head for the hills.
Other than that, what I here impart is a universal law. Take
it from me, I know of what I write. I did a bloke a favour
once: helped get him a job, no expectations. In a single word,
no clicker or packaged front-load deal, he gives me the secret
of life without backache...lunges! If I’d have consulted
him professionally a month later do you think for one second
he’d have told me that?
