From Ben Eastwood, a final year student at the New Zealand School of Chiropractic.

My Vision for the Future of Chiropractic.

My name is Ben Eastwood, and I am soon to be a graduate of the New Zealand School of Chiropractic.

I'd like to say what an honour it is to be asked to write for you. Each and every chiropractor reading this knows just how hard it is to get through and complete chiropractic school. And along that line, I'd like to speak to you about my vision for the future of chiropractic, but remind myself about the importance of a good follow through.

I would like to add at this stage, that none of the ideas I'll put forward were originally my own. I have spoken with, and listened to a wide range of people, and read a whole bunch of stuff to get where I am, and it is with great respect for my sources that I have taken on beard their ideas to make them an extension of who I am, and what I say.

In the future I would see that there are multidisciplinary practices, not with medical doctors, physiotherapists and chiropractors together, but with collaborating chiropractors who practice with different techniques, offering the only real product we can consistently deliver, that being a better health, wellness and quality of life through an improved flow of mental impulse through the body.

I hope to remove the barriers between techniques by attending all the seminars I can, not so that I can use every technique, but so that I can better serve the people that come to see me, be recognizing where another chiropractor might be of greater service using slightly different methods, to achieve the same goal.

Referrals within practices will improve the quality of care delivered. To ensure that the people who come to see us are best served, we need to team up and embrace our differences of practice.

In saying so I can understand that presenting a unified front is not what has been done for the past fifty or so years. Segmentation, segregation, fragmentation is not the way I see our diverse and wonderfully life-changing profession.

In presenting a unified front we will be able to collaborate on the evidence of what we're doing and why we're doing it. I have not been able to find a great deal of research confirming that a vertebral subluxation is a correctable phenomenon that stops you reaching your optimal potential. My vision for the future of chiropractic holds that there will be a body of evidence supporting each and every action I take as a chiropractor.

I want to share my understanding of how being subluxation free is essential for optimal health, and I want to be able to substantiate that claim with evidence from all angles, in all forms so that it is available to everybody under chiropractic care, not just high-brow academics, but the factory workers, and the kindy kids too.

We need to increase the funds available for chiropractic research, and that is a large part of what we are all doing here today, contributing to the future of chiropractic research.

My vision for the future of chiropractic entails that we build upon the research we have done to refine what we do.

The research we do in our offices, case reports and little success stories will make the difference. The research will help us to determine what an optimal spine feels like, and what sort of potential is available for every-body under chiropractic care.

I see chiropractic as the benchmark for all heath care disciplines to measure up to.

I see chiropractors getting out into the community and beyond. Each practice, on the Internet, with a website with only the best information for people to read. A collaborated effort for education material by each national or state board to facilitate a smooth and efficient way of achieving and maintaining a population free of vertebral subluxation.

I can see people walking into every chiropractic office in the world who know that average is not normal, people who know that health and wellness is normal, that life is meant to be easy!

I want to make it so simple for other people to get the big idea that the truth of what we do is undeniable.

I would hope that what we do in the future will inspire kids to learn what we're doing and to advance it even further. I expect to see such a demand for chiropractic education that we'll need more that three or four schools in Australasia.

In doing so, it is up to us, today, to make the decision to encourage the existing students to continue with their studies and to graduate. To follow through.

Chriopractors, CA's, people under care, it is up to us to make this happen.

For humankind to advance further, society needs to change. Chiropractic has the potential to be the catalyst in that change. People under chiropractic care spend less money on disease care and more money on health. They make healthier lifestyle choices and reap a greater reward from those healthy practices.

We owe it to society to let them in on this amazingly well-kept secret, so that every single individual on the planet at least has the choice of getting under chiropractic care, to enjoy the benefits available.

A properly functioning nerve system, free of interference enables the individual to make efficient and effective adaptations to the environment, to evolve.
I see chiropractic as a future force for the evolution of humankind.

It is in my opinion that each adjustment - regardless of the technique - will soon be seen as the next evolutionary step for that person, at that time. Subluxated people will be selected against!

Not because they are bad people, but simply because they will not be able to compete with those of us with experiencing optimal health.

We will go home from here pumped full of great ideas on what to do and how to do it, let's just not forget the follow through. Let's really do it.

After all:
even if you're on the right track, you'll get run-over if you just sit there.