From Sean Eastwood, a 4th year student at MacQuarie University, Sydney. From a speech at Dynamic Growth Congress, Australia, February 2002.

The Role of the Vertebral Subluxation in the Evolution of the Healing Arts

The Music Compact Disc

In 1970, Sony Corporation from Japan developed the technology for music compact discs and not long after dismissed it as not being commercially viable. In 1976, Phillips from the Netherlands called them & acknowledged that Sony were the gurus in the technology and suggested that they meet to establish industry standards so that both companies could benefit from the exciting financial prospects.

Sony couldn't understand what Phillips were excited about but agreed to a meeting. In the meeting Sony allowed Phillips to make their presentation first. Phillips spoke at length about their research and development and there wasn't one aspect of it that Sony didn't already know. In the end, out of frustration Sony basically said "we know all that ... show us a prototype of your disc".

The prototype of the disc was approximately 10 cm across. The reason why Sony had considered compact disc technology not economically viable was because their perception of a music platter was 30cm across, the same size as the old LP. This represented 18 hours of music & presented programming problems of which artists to put on a CD; not to mention what price to charge.

The pertinence of this story lies in the fact that just as the future of Sony Corporation lay in the hands of their technicians 30 years ago ... the future of Chiropractic in Australia lies in the hands of the people gathered in this room.

The Subluxation Paradigm

The role of leaders is to lead and to be expansive & lateral in their thinking.

What if Palmer's conceptual model of the vertebral subluxation has an even greater role to play in the evolution of the healing arts than the one he understood?

Chiropractic - the next 50 years

What if, in the next 50 years, Chiropractors who fervently believe in chiropractic, develop theories that the triad of health and the vertebral subluxation are far more interrelated than Palmer foresaw. What if they were so interrelated that the triad of health could be superimposed on the subluxation model to create what Palmer described as cause & effect.

What if in their quest for the truth about the human body, Chiropractors developed technology that could diagnose whether the cause of a subluxation was structural, nutritional or emotional; or any combination of the three.

The technology of the structural adjustment has already developed since the days of Palmer, hence the wide range of adjusting techniques. It would be because of the integrity of a structural adjustment that nutritional & emotional causes of a subluxation could then be addressed.

Nutritional

What if in the pursuit of the nutritional cause of a subluxation, the technology was developed which could establish that nutritional requirement eg. magnesium.

What if that technique held such integrity that it could be further developed to track aberrant biochemical function. Determining, for example in the conversion of cholesterol to hormone, a pool and neighbouring deficit of substrates and then resolve that problem, eg. by use of a homoeopathic.

And what if that technology could be applied to not only subluxations but trigger points, allergies, aberrant joint function or any aberrant biochemical function in the body.

Emotional

What if in the pursuit of the emotional cause of a subluxation, the technology was developed to not only establish the aberrant emotional response involved in the subluxation but also enabled the clearing of the dysfunction.

And what if that technique held such integrity that it could not only be applied to the subluxation but could be used to eliminate aberrant emotional responses involved in trigger points, aberrant joint function and scars.

And what if that technique proved so successful that it was adopted by psychologist, who by using the diagnostic screening protocol mentioned earlier, could check to see if there was a structural issue with the patient and refer to a chiropractor accordingly.

If that emotional technology were developed in the next 50 years, it would put Chiropractic as the leading profession mind body. Because for mind/ body medicine to occur the mind professionals have to start looking at the body or the body professionals have to start looking at mind.

Chiropractic - today

As some of you are aware the technology or knowledge that I've spoken about relating to the nutritional & emotional aspects of a subluxation will not be discovered in the next 50 years because there are Chiropractors using those various techniques in thriving practices today.

Palmer developed the conceptual construct of the vertebral subluxation. Because of the integrity of the structural adjustment in reducing and or eliminating vertebral subluxations, a platform was laid which enabled a quantum leap forward in the healing of aberrant biochemical function and heralded a quantum leap forward in mind / body medicine. That is how I believe the history of the evolution of the healing arts will read.

In the history of the evolution of the healing arts I truly believe that Chiropractic will inevitably be acknowledged as it has already once been described: Man's greatest gift to Man.