A lot of research doesn't sit well with chiropractic because it isn't a lab. It isn't something you can simply dissect in a laboratory. And many of the results are somewhat subjective. The patient feels better. The pain is less. Though there are x-rays and leg-length checks that can be made.
The Art of Chiropractic
So what is the art of chiropractic?
To the observer, it is a spinal manipulation procedure. Which basically means you are handling someone's joints, mainly in the spine. Although chiropractors look at other joints too.
Because of the practice philosophy of chiropractic, the spine is more important because it houses the brain and spinal cord. All the nerves flow from the spine. And the nerves control the organs and muscles.
In defining the art there is actually a difference between manipulation and adjustment. These two terms get interchanged in some circles but they are not the same thing.
Manipulation
A manipulation is not chiropractic!
This may shock you at first, but it is true.
A manipulation infers that the practitioner is moving a joint without consequence of position or direction. This means that the person is trying to mobilise a joint.
So if a drawer is jammed, and you give it a push and shove, you are actually manipulating the drawer and its fitting!
It's stuck. You unstick it.
Adjustment
Chiropractors have always preferred this term. It means that the direction of alignment is taken into consideration. You are correcting a joint in its relationship with other joints in a certain plane.
Chiropractors call the misalignment of the spine a "listing." By this we mean, one bone in relationship to the other can be posterior to the left, which is how it's rotated. It can be posterior to the left and tilted down (called posterior left inferior), and so on.
It got even more precise than this after the work of Drs John Grostic and Al Wermsing in the 30's and 40's.
They started to list the skull and atlas (the top spinal bone) in terms of degrees of displacement as determined by x-ray. In this you may have for example, a Right 2 degrees over a Left 2 degrees, skull to atlas misalignment.
In the 1980's Dr Don Harrison from Wyoming, working with Dr Harry Wong, wanted to find out more about the Grostic style listings in degrees.
They determined that head-to-shoulder postures were the cause of the degree misalignments.
Patterns such as rotations, tilts, and side and forward head carriage produced the various angles that Grostic practitioners had been observing for 40 years.
A Grostic "against the kink" was a rotation and "into the kink" a side bend. There's also a third type where the head side-tilts on the first vertebra (atlas) only.
Manual
The Art of Chiropractic involves the manual procedures, dexterity and skill learnt out of chiropractic college. In some colleges they use half-tyres to develop the muscle action required.
There is another thing called a speeder board, which helps for recoil movement.
In modern days, instruments (such as blocks and activators) are used. These require an awareness from the practitioner in positioning depth.
All of them require a sensitivity from the chiropractor, and this is why it is an art.
It's okay to have science, but a lot of it is feel. A lot of it is intention, a lot of it is care.
John Kyneur is a chiropractor in the Inner Western suburb of Five Dock, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He has been practicing for thirty years, and is a specialist in Sacro Occipital Technique and Upper Cervical. His clinic is called Haberfield Chiropractic. You may contact him atinfo@haberfieldchiropractic.com.au
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