Fearless Chiro

My Facebook message box continues to be crowded with the seemingly incessant influx of fear in the form of appeals to our profession to not relinquish our beliefs.  This “CCE URGENT Massive Complaint Campaign” and other similar on-line campaigns appear to be well-intentioned, however give a bit of an overpowering righteous odor .

Must we use fear so blatently in our efforts to remain who we are?  Of course, the main thing we are defending in this issue is the ‘fear’ that all that we are and have will dry up and blow away.

Chris Hedges in his book, I Don’t Believe in Atheists p. 32, states that the opposing sides (in this case science and religion) ”…are little more than carnival barkers.  They are in show business, and those in show business know complexity does not sell.  They trade cliche`s and insults like cartoon characters.  They don masks.  One wears the mask of religion, and the other wears the mask of science”.

Mr. Hedge’s topic is religion vs. atheism, however I see striking parallels here.  Have we degenerated into a religious cult defending our raison d’etre against the evils of the ‘scientific’?

Yes, chiropractic is complex.  It is difficult to definitively explain the subluxation.  The yardstick of science seems to be completely inadequate when it comes to explaining our profession.  A complete and scientifically plausible defense of the subluxation may at the present time be eluding us, however I do not feel that this is sufficient reason to throw it out.

Hedges goes on to say that “…These antagonists each claim to have discovered an absolute truth.  They trade absurdity for absurdity.  They show that the danger is not religion or science.  The danger is fundamentalism itself“.  (emphasis is the author’s, however I happen to agree).

Does the flavor of this verbal conflict gives those on the ‘outside’ the impression that we are more a religion than a profession?  Life is complex.  Any living system, whether a belief or creature, is by definition complex.  There are no absolutes in complexity.  We can do our clumsy best in our attempts to describe who it is we are and what it is we do, however if we fall back to a vicious defense of a fixed belief system, we lose all credibility.

Those in the conflict want the masses to remain with them in the confusion of duality.  One must be right and the other wrong.  Black or white, no shades of gray.  We must accept one version of absurdity or the other.  They equate reason with science, however this is a feeble stretch of the meaning of the term.  Those on the ‘right’…state that the only way is to blindly accept the toddling grasp of understanding that a magnetic healer had… well over a century ago.  This is the fundamentalism I speak of.

We are blessed with an opportunity to move forward in our great profession retaining the beauty of the uniqueness of who we are.  Yet this can be best done effectively if we can lose the ‘Falwell-ishness’ of our behavior.

Are we up to it?  Can we together move forward in the evolving journey of understanding?  Or will we quibble and fight while those we wish to serve move on in exasperation?

May you receive the blessings of the season IN-JOY,

Perry

©2011 Perry Chinn,D.C. All rights reserved.

Dr. Chinn is a 1986 Life graduate (Marietta), has been practicing
in Seattle for 25 years and is a board member of the Gonstead Clinical Studies
Society. He is the co-creator of the nutritional cardiovascular formula Acctrix
(www.Acctrix.com),
co-founder of Unisal Wellness Technologies and is the author of Symphony of
Wellness and Soaring Beyond Fear ( www.PerryChinn.com). His book
Symphony of Wellness focuses on the science and benefits of L-arginine and
nitric oxide for cardiovascular health. He can be reached at DrPChinn@gmail.com,
drchinn@acctrix.com or info@perrychinn.com

I love chiropractic.  I love to read.  And I love music.

Came across a wonderful book a few weeks ago entitled “Why Mahler?  How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World”.   I was delighted to find that this was another rare literary find that I could not put down.  I finished the book the evening prior to attending a chiropractic seminar and student workshop at Southern California University of Health Sciences.  I was in L.A. to participate in a forum of established (dare I say ‘old’) Gonstead practitioners, a research board meeting and student introductory workshop.

You are probably wondering what these two events have in common.

Gustav Mahler was born a hundred years before myself in 1860.  He learned to love music and became a very famous, and to some, infamous conductor and composer.  Some say, including me, that he was far ahead of his time.  His music explored new territory, set established views of music composition and expression, and literally turned the musical scene of his day on its proverbial ear.  He was a driven, in some ways tortured man.  Brilliant, a genius largely unappreciated by his contemporaries.  I have come to love the music of Mahler, singing tenor in the Seattle Symphony Chorale, we have recorded his 2nd and 8th symphonies.

Now the correlation to chiropractic.  In the above book by Norman LeBrecht, he (Mahler) is quoted as expressing the following…. “If after my death something doesn’t sound right, then change it.  You have not only the right but the duty to do so”. (emphasis mine).  This attitude and direction by the great composer has given hundreds of conductors and performers incredible freedom to express his artwork over the past hundred plus years.

I spent several days in southern California amidst the rain, cold and wind (I really thought I was home in Seattle), listening to a discussion of our identity as chiropractors…particularly how it relates to how we define the subluxation.  We were privileged to have as our guest at this Gonstead forum, Dr. Leonard Faye, of motion palpation fame.  His presentation was insightful, painfully direct at times…and poked a little (perhaps intentionally) at the established view of the Gonstead theory of disc subluxation.

My point is this….if something works, let’s keep it and build on it!  If something doesn’t, perhaps it is wise to take a dispassionate view of our belief system and modify it a bit.  To some this is heresy.

We as humans have a tendency to instill a religious fervor into our belief systems.  This tendency may serve us for a while, largely I believe in our intellectual infancy, however there is a time to set the B.S. (belief system in this case) aside and take an objective view of where we stand and where we are headed.

I ‘believe’ in the subluxation.  The disc theory of the subluxation also strongly resonates with me.  However I believe that there is so much we do not know or understand.  As our critics turn up the heat, we can either retreat into stubborn dogma (e.g. Dr. Gonstead said it this way so it must always be this way!) or we can filter out the content of criticism that is valid and use this to our advantage, increasing our scope of knowlege.  Now is the time to really move forward and get a better understanding of just what this belief system entails.

Dr. Gonstead was brilliant.  He was a genius and I am humbled and honored to pursue a work in his footsteps.  I also believe that he gave us a credo to live by.  Not only “…find it, accept it where you find it, fix it, leave it alone”…but also respect our duty to move forward in our understanding and then our ensuing application of our increased wisdom.  I firmly believe that Dr. G shared in the intent and directive of Mahler.  There comes a time to stop following in another’s steps…and break trail.

Now is the time….

IN-JOY and service,

Perry

©2011 Perry Chinn,D.C. All rights reserved.

Dr. Chinn is a 1986 Life graduate (Marietta), has been practicing
in Seattle for 25 years and is a board member of the Gonstead Clinical Studies
Society. He is the co-creator of the nutritional cardiovascular formula Acctrix
(www.Acctrix.com),
co-founder of Unisal Wellness Technologies and is the author of Symphony of
Wellness and Soaring Beyond Fear ( www.PerryChinn.com). His book
Symphony of Wellness focuses on the science and benefits of L-arginine and
nitric oxide for cardiovascular health. He can be reached at DrPChinn@gmail.com,
drchinn@acctrix.com or info@perrychinn.com