A New Experience

Reverse Engineering
As I launch my new protocols this spring, it helps to get an idea of how this will play out. Chiropractic has prided itself on two main themes: the skill of the practitioner and the self-healing ability of the body. That combination gives both the doctor and the client a lot of room to experiment with different methods of triggering a healing response - kind of like picking a lock. This trial and error approach has actually been a positive feature of the profession as individual clients and individual doctors paired up based on HOW the process met their needs…Behavioral chiropractic removes much of the sampling process and creates an environment where both the doctor and client can become students of that individual's healing patterns. Since we already know people have a capacity to self-heal, all we need to do is retrace our steps…

Less Visits, More Value
Another traditional drawback to long-term chiropractic care is what I call the "patient's patience". While the lock picking experiment is going on, the client goes through many fits and starts as their nervous system attempts to digest the last adjustment. Like being in stop and go traffic, it's only so long until the client wants to get off the sidestreets and get some lasting changes….

Behavioral chiropractic offers a brief, 6-visit protocol that offers both doctor and client a clear structure to work within that builds in it's depth and complexity at a pace that is easily taken in experientially. Since everybody has survival-based behaviors, it seemed natural to begin by profiling aspects of vitality like breathing rhythms, movement patterns and the like. By making the client more aware and in charge of these subtle aspects of well-being, they'd be in a better position to handle the more complex issues that impact their healing process between sessions.

Lifelong Process
The short protocols offer a "bite size" learning rate that introduces one of the six socially-conditioned aspects of well-being (AKA: Living Lessons - see below) to the clients' awareness at a time. This cycle snowballs as the complexity of the underlying patterns of adapting are slowly revealed in everyday interaction.

This shifts the focus from "getting adjusted" on the table to "being adjusted" in your daily life. This sets the stage to help the client "learn how they heal".

Behavioral chiropractic addresses how people have become biologically uprooted, cultivating lifestyles that undermine and in some cases, damage their well-being. The protocols offer the client a systematic process of self-discovery that can become the foundation of their lifestyle. This reframes the "got go forever" argument often cited by chiropractic's critics. That mis-perception may indeed be the reason that only ~15% of the population uses chiropractic on a regular basis. By experiencing their own recuperative power in the face of everyday stress, a behavioral chiropractic client empowers the other 85% of the population to adjust to their coherent rhythm.

How do we create a virtual adjustment?

First of all, why would we want to? After practicing chiropractic a few years I noticed that my clients' health challenges migrated around their bodies and lives in a signature pattern that mirrored their attitude and attention. I openly wondered if the physical act of getting on an adjusting table was any more beneficial than a meal in a good restaurant is for someone trying to eat healthier. My studies took me into the world of the other-than-conscious aspects of healing. I learned many systems of care that addressed these deeply symbolic, and often, primitive levels of being. In a nutshell, my answers were not locked up in an individual's mind-body connection. In fact, as I discovered, separating the two was only viable when someone died!

So my focus shifted to the common ground we share - our social well-being. This led me to realign my care toward the influence of lifestyle, language (both verbal and nonverbal) and the role of interaction in healing. The result is Living Lessons. Now I'm proud to share what I've learned in a 6-visit cycle that will allow us to decode an individual's healing rhythm. We track subtle cues in six basic areas…

1. Energy
2. Movement
3. Emotion
4. Habits
5. Attitude
6. Attention

At the beginning of each session, clients are asked to shift their awareness from what is causing them stress or concern to what allows them to get the best from the next moment. That attitude adjustment will reveal a subtle cue to notice in daily interactions between sessions that will refine perception. By learning this nonverbal alphabet their nervous system will become more self-aware of it's own patterns of expression. After we conclude the sixth session, I'll feedback to the client what we learned about how they heal. This will become their virtual adjustment - connecting them to an inner wisdom which drives their evolution.

In summary, behavioral chiropractic's big idea isn't about avoiding or labeling the pathological side of life. In fact, it's not about assessing physiology, neurology and biomechanics against some ideal norm. It's more focused on the ecological connection between self and surroundings, the long bumpy road we're all on...

together.

Dr. Mark Filippi addchiro@mindspring.com
Associate Editor - Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research
http://www.jvsr.com/