Dr. Mark Filippi addchiro@mindspring.com Associate Editor – Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research http://www.jvsr.com
In the wake of my visit to the Life University campus in mid-January, I thought I’d share my impressions of the “state of the union” vis-a-vis, the so-called subluxation-based community. I’ve spent the last 12 years in search of this tribe of nomads. Yet despite my visits to Sherman College, and now the Life University campus, and my intermingling with the WCA and JVSR inner and outer circles, my exploration has been as disappointing as it’s been extensive. I still find vitalism being applied though. Just not in chiropractic.
Live & Learn I run in circles far from the shoreline of chiropractic in both my practice community and my interactions with other professionals. That’s chiropractic in general folks! The subset of subluxation-based practitioners are supposedly positioned smack dab in the middle of the chiropractic universe. My experience is the exact opposite. The people in and around the profession interested in the etiology, dynamics and developmental aspects of the process of subluxation hang out at the perimeter, almost totally off the radar. The most ironic aspect of this is that 80% aren’t even chiropractors!
The brain-based learning community EXISTS. It houses an interdisciplinary array of educators, practitioners and obscure researchers that have compiled a mostly underutilized pile of information, modalities and evidence that exercise all 33 of the principles of Stephenson’s text by using something chiropractic has avoided: the damn brain itself. Unlike the traditional people in their fields, this community focuses on the immaterial aspect of the human experience and the brain’s role in it.
Here’s three concepts this community is interested in. Can chiropractic use them?
Epigenetics
"Epigenetics comprises the study of the mechanisms that impart temporal and spatial control on the activity of all those genes required for the development of a complex organism from the zygote to the adult." (1)
Roughly translated, that means that gene activation is mediated by the metabolic constraints (biochemical stress?) on the organism. More to the point, the way proteins are assembled effects the way we form our physical being, AKA phenotypic expression. It makes you wonder what a “spinal manipulation” does?
Memetics I was very shocked that the subluxation-based chiropractors had not stumbled across this emerging science. The whole notion of BJ Palmer’s “Big Idea” was ostensibly based on memetics. Almost all the marketing slogans used in practice management come from a core of ideas that loosely fit the scientific definition of meme. As much as chiropractic has tried, subluxation is an example of bad meme.
Meme: an element of culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation.(2)
The role of memes in brain development has been linked to cortical processing and the impact of language on behavior. So now we have physical and mental covered.
Phylogenetics This subject deals with the social connections a human being designs from the biological (er, innate) resources each individual possesses. Here’s some new data:
“…the neurobiology of trust tells us something important about human nature: that we are so highly social that we pick up social signals of trust and act on them even when we are not consciously aware of these signals. Our brain acts as an internal compass that guides us towards the "right" thing to do.” (3)
The raw materials are there for subluxation-based chiropractors to graduate from the vagueness of physical, mental and social aspects of human potential to the more specific, and more elucidated realms of epigenetics, memetics and phylogenetics that the brain-based learning community is using to apply vitalism.
"Although the brain research information is interesting and perhaps pertinent, it falls short of actually describing Innate. The basis of chiropractic is dualism. Spirit or intelligence controls matter. The referenced articles still go the opposite direction (with one possible exception). Changes in the brain are not responsible for our thoughts. Our thoughts are responsible for changes in the brain. To say that changes in the brain give us a certain experience, is to revert to Newtonian mechanics and complete determinism. Although I will admit to that possibility, I choose to believe that I can direct my life."
Robert Clyde Affolter, D.C.
Mark R. Filippi, DC This is a great opportunity to distinguish the various layers of these immaterial aspects. I'll even touch on your aside to free will in a sec...
It was never intended in my update to position a brain-based focus as a locus of innate intelligence. Actually, I'd prefer if we altered that slightly and termed that a congenital intelligence to help us make the distinction of a "born into" and an acquired , experiential"educated" intelligence, which refines the innate potential to meet the demands of life.
If you go deeper, we can state that innate intelligence also encompasses the living environment the individual is born into as well. We function as singular organisms living in multiple environments. So if we want to end the speculation, innate intelligence has a nonlocal aspect that we congenitally bond with and sustain a relationship with using the various submodalties of educated intelligence we activate through our local interactions.
Why focus on the brain? Chiropractic posits to be able to link man the physical with man the spiritual, correct? What better place to begin to substantiate that premise than the brain's development. Whether we re-construct its chronological assembly or it's holistic design, we have an arena in which we can both contextualize chiropractic's clinical terrain and also point to clear examples of how the lifestyle we advocate promotes both longevity and tonality.
Which "menon" is ours? Chiropractic skips a step when it says it studies phenomenon "x" (say subluxation!). If we follow a Kantian mode of processing this dualistic (read: dynamic) worldview we get:
noumenon [ 1 ] The of itself unknown and unknowable rational object, or thing in itself, which is distinguished from the phenomenon through which it is apprehended by the senses, and by which it is interpreted and understood; -- so used in the philosophy of Kant and his followers.
phenomenon [ 2 ] An appearance; anything visible; whatever, in matter or spirit, is apparent to, or is apprehended by, observation; as, the phenomena of heat, light, or electricity; phenomena of imagination or memory. In the philosophy of Kant, an object as it is perceived by the senses, as opposed to a noumenon.
That said, chiropractic actually works in the overlapping realm of epiphenomenon...
3 epiphenomenon a secondary phenomenon that results from and accompanies another
So we have a very distinct role to determine how the magnitude of the forces within and around a living system (singular organism, multiple environments) work together. My agenda in putting the brain at the center of this discussion was to use a reference point that was both individualized and communal in it's design and expression. We could make a case for the heart or the soul here but they're more noumenonal. We can talk about them as purely spiritual OR in objective terms, but stumble to combine them.
The brain has all that, plus a more familiar epiphenomenal nature that chiropractors can work with directly. Let me bounce from here to a example of what I mean when I say that local interactions are what shape the relationship of a singular organism in multiple environments.
Take this self-reflective argument about orthodox care from "The User Illusion" [ 4 ]
“Disease often involves crises in which we lose faith in our abilities; overwork, disappointments and unhappiness make the body say Stop, and send us to bed with a cold, say. This crisis-imbued starting point means that we no longer believe that we can cope with the situation and recover. The I does not want to let the Me have its way by giving into the urge to go to bed and eat candy while we watch soap operas and read magazines. The I does not believe in the self-healing powers of the Me. So the relationship between treater and treated is really also and maybe mostly --- a relationship between the patient's I and Me."
If we translated that into chiropractic terms, the "I" would equate to the "educated" and the "Me" would be the "innate" realm of that person. Given all that up front, you can now see that any “healing ritual” between two people intensifies this unity, which essentially invites innate to express itself fully. Iatroplacebogenesis, which "involves 'physician-patient' as well as environmental factors" [5] is what our care embodies.
I agree that much of the brain research is aligned with a deterministic outlook that has permeated even the nonlinear dynamic community. The introduction of emergence into that lexicon is where the self-organizing theme music picks up again. Emergence is the popular term for the local interactions that produce the epiphenomenal aspects of living systems. Chiropractic has no bridge to the land of emergence through the subluxation.
Remaining Questions Chiropractic has many unresolved contradictions to resolve that confront this issue as it evolves. If we to speak of a spiritual/immaterial realm we need to delve into such areas as the "proprioception of thought" (Bohm) [6] , the "nonlocal mind" [7] and my favorite -- "the half-second delay" [8]. These examples, and many others, help explain how we experience our local interactions. This is where the concept of free will comes in to the picture. In the book, "The Volitional Brain", [9] several studies tackle this issue, but the best treatise was the one I'll share here in abstract form for your perusal...
The folk psychology view of the faculty of freewill is that it is innate, unitary, structureless and, of course, free. A bifold approach to the mind, as taken by Vygotsky, Mead, Luria and others, argues that, like all the other higher mental abilities of humans, freewill is in fact largely a socially-constructed and language-enabled habit of thought. There is a neurology for this habit to latch on to -- after all, the 'raw' animal brain is built for acting rather than contemplating. But it is the social superstructure -- the habit of monitoring and even directing our planning behaviour - which creates much of the traditional mystery. Indeed, ironically, it is actually central to the socially-constructed Western 'script' of freewill that we deny the social origins of this ability to take charge of our own brains.
It's one thing to espouse RCA's words - "Changes in the brain are not responsible for our thoughts. Our thoughts are responsible for changes in the brain." It's quite another to then determine what IS responsible for thought at the epiphenomenal level we work on. We can always funnel thought into a cognitive process (as a phenonemon) or discuss intent and all it's mystery (as part of a grand scenerio of noumenom). If we want to study a living system, we need a setting to allow "things" to take shape within this hidden order. That is why I propose that chiropractic embrace a brain-based approach to this process.
"Spirituality merely involves taking your own life seriously by getting to know yourself and your potential. This is no trivial matter, for there are quite a few unpleasant surprises in most of us. The dominant psychological problem of modern culture is that its members do not want to accept that there is a Me beyond the I. The Me is everything the I cannot accept: It is unpredictable, disorderly, willful, quick, and powerful." [8]
Yours in the spirit of chiropractic,
Mark R. Filippi, DC JVSR Associate Editor www.jvsr.com