I’ve seen a Tasmanian Tiger! Well if I’m completely honest it was a hologram of a Tassie Tiger – but boy did it look pretty damn real: I kept trying to reach out to touch it – probably not something you would have done had you met one in the wild? Now I could make the claim that if there had been more Chiropractors and less poachers in Tasmania – the Tassie Tiger may still be alive today: But that’s not what this article is about – we’ll get back to chiropractic later…
Holograms are quantum physics photographs – a different paradigm in recording and then projecting an image of a three dimensional object. Have you ever bought one while strolling around a Sunday morning community market? You look at it from any angle and you still see the 3D image. And here is another fact about holograms – if you were to break it in half you would still see the whole image on each of the broken fragments: This is because each fragment of the whole records enough information about the whole to be able to reproduce an image of it. Another way of considering this is that the whole is in the part – and the part can reproduce the whole.
Let’s take a closer look: A traditional photograph is stored dots with spatial relationship to each other – it is a linear analogue recording of the object being photographed. When you photograph the object the information is converted to dots which copy the colour and shade of each part of the object. The higher the resolution, the more the dots in a concentrated area, and hence the more detail the image will record. Now think of how your computer printer works – it sprays coloured dots onto a piece of paper based on this image recording to give you a reproduction of the object in 2-D. Now take pair of scissors and cut the paper in half – you’ll now be left with a top half and a bottom half of the image. Keep cutting into halves and you’ll end up with a jigsaw puzzle – small parts of a photo that make no sense until they are all pieced back together again.
A holographic recording is very different – instead of recording dots, it records relationships. The reason you see an amazingly accurate copy of the object when looking at a holographic image is because the relationships of all the components of the object are three dimensional so the image looks 3-D. And if you break the holographic image into half – what’s left will still record those relationships, so that you will see what looks like the whole object. Each time you break the image into a smaller part you lose clarity because the amount of information that is stored about the relationships of the object diminishes, but you’ll still see the whole object in the image.
Now what has this got to do with Chiropractic? The “whole in every part” concept suggested by the holographic model should not be a difficult concept for the average Chiropractor. But next we need to look at what holographic modelling has to do with the brain – then we can make the jump to what we do in our offices all day every day.
As neuroscientists were studying how the brain functions they were repeatedly confronted by major problems: Where does a memory live was one of those big questions. In undergraduate studies we are taught about anatomical regions of the brain and we try to memorise the primary function of each one of these components. Problem is that it is actually not that simple even though it is a great way of writing really difficult exam papers.
As brain imaging advanced and researchers started to be able to observe which parts of the brain switch on when particular mental and physical functions are being performed it had to be concluded that memories are stored based on the relationships between different brain cells and centres that are activated when perceiving the experience – that is, memories are dispersed throughout the brain. Prior to this it was thought that the brain stored information in an analogue form – they just couldn’t find the part of the brain where the dots were stored.
In a series of landmark experiments in the 1920s, brain scientist Karl Lashley found that no matter what portion of a rat’s brain he removed he was unable to eradicate its memory of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to surgery. The only problem was that no one was able to come up with a mechanism that might explain this curious “whole in every part” nature of memory.
Then in the 1960s Karl Pribram encountered the concept of holography and realized he had found the explanation brain scientists had been looking for. Pribram believes memories are encoded not in neurons, or small groupings of neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that criss-cross the entire brain in the same way that patterns of laser light interference criss-cross the entire area of a piece of film containing a holographic image. In other words, Pribram believes the brain is itself a hologram.
And based on this breakthrough, it was recognised that the anatomical centres that had been suspected to be storage facilities, were actually processors that help to convert the perceptions of images into stored relational information and then back into being 3-D images that can be retrieved.
Pribram’s theory also explained how the brain can memorize something in the order of 10 billion bits of information during the average human lifetime (or roughly the same amount of information contained in five sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica): Similarly, holograms possess an astounding capacity for information storage – simply by changing the angle at which the two lasers strike a piece of photographic film, it’s possible to record many different images on the same surface. It has been demonstrated that 1cm3 of film can hold as many as 10 billion bits of information.
This shift in understanding has even been taken to new heights with attempts to explain creative, intuitive, spiritual and even paranormal insight based on the idea that we as an individual are not as isolated as we might think and may be part of a bigger holographic picture – the universe: I’ll leave that for you to ponder with friends and a glass of good red in your hand, sitting on the side of a hill watching an awesome sunrise, or while meditating or worshipping however you do.
So let’s get closer to a Chiropractor in his or her practice, trying to help his or her practice members to enjoy a better quality of life. There in is the keyword – QUALITY. The quality of a holographic image is dependent on the quality of the information recorded – you have to have some pretty high-tech lasers and electronics to make a holographic image.
(A hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser. To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams co-mingle) is captured on film. When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.)
In the human context the quality of your perceptions and hence all your choices that follow is dependent on your senses and the quality of the neurological connections that record and then access the stored relationships to result in pro-life choices much like a hologram.
According to Pribram, if you divide neural activity, you can divide it into propagative nerve impulses on the one hand, and then these slow potentials – hyperpolarizations, steep polarizations – that don’t go anywhere. And they form this holographic-like pattern, and it’s those that he feels are what we experience as images. DD Palmer described these polarizations as the “Mental Impulse” and this pattern as “TONE”.
The term which is most apt to connect the concept of holographic brain modelling and the chiropractic concept of subluxation is dysafferentation. Increasing numbers of research papers and intellectual commentaries are discussing how a subluxation interferes with the body’s proprioceptive awareness: And if you mess with the input, you mess with the output – “junk in – junk out”.
Another way of looking at this is that a Subluxation is like a missing piece of the hologram – the whole body picture remains, BUT, the quality of the image will be diminished – reduced quality of life!
Let’s consider this in the light of what we look at every day – posture. When you look at someone’s posture you are seeing so much more than head, shoulder and pelvis levels, forward head posture, forward pelvic tilt, and abnormal spinal curves – you are seeing a holographic projection of that person’s image of themselves. Let me say that in another way – when you observe posture you are reading that person’s language of how they see themselves – their body language – and what you see is a holographic projection from their nervous system.
I like to stretch Chiropractors perception of what they see and do and one concept that I often discuss is that posture is not body part alignment – it is the representation of a person’s ability to perceive and position their body parts in space. This depends on excellent kinaesthetic awareness and accurate somatic coordination – these are neurological phenomena, not mechanical functions.
The way I describe this to my practice members is I show them a digital photos of themselves standing, along with objective measurements of their body alignment and ask them what they see. People are not silly, and they nearly always notice their head and neck alignment and the belly that results from their pelvic distortion. I then ask them why they think they are carrying their head around like that! While some will come up with lame excuses like, “I wasn’t ready to have my picture taken, take it again and I’m sure I’ll look better” (they never do – I’ve done it), or “I wasn’t feeling too good that day, I’m feeling better today so I’m sure it will be fine now” (it never is), most on the other hand shrug their shoulders and ask me to explain: I then ask them that if they could feel that their head and pelvis were that far out of alignment do they think that they could attempt to self-correct and they all agree that they could. And that is the answer – the reason their head and pelvis and whatever else is so far away from gravitational efficiency is because they don’t know! Their holographic image of themselves is so distorted the image that they present to the world around them is distorted.
Similarly when your practice member is lying prone on your adjusting bench and you attempt to centre their torso and legs on the bench, how often do they say to you; “now I feel crooked”. But you know and can see that they are now centred – their original position was the crooked one. Again the relationship between their perception of their body alignment and the expression of their body alignment is disconnected – dysafferentation due to Subluxation has led them to express a distorted self-image – a dysfunctional holographic image.
When teaching Torque Release Technique we discuss the fourteen indicators of Subluxation, one of these being postural assessment. We break postural assessment into three types: standing, sitting and prone – each being a separate and distinct neurological projection from within. And we translate this language to assist the Chiropractor to interpret what Subluxation patterns may be underlying. A better understanding of posture acts as a great objective outcome tool, helps to make the Chiropractor’s clinical decision more intuitive and precise, and impresses practice members enormously when they see how differently they look with improved posture.
AND, if you understand and communicate the deeper neurological dimensions of posture and all the other indicators that you observe, you can shift your practice members away from pain and suffering, towards a more vitalistic and wellness focussed outlook and behaviours.
But from an even bigger picture – if you improve the holographic photo that someone is taking of themselves every second of their life, you can enormously alter and improve the holographic image that they present to the world and based on the holographic model this will impact the self image and behaviour of every cell in the human body – and perhaps even the universe around them – now that sounds like a truly BIG IDEA!
To find out more about Torque Release Technique Training and to take advantage of great online savings go to this link: www.torquerelease.com.au/Torque-Release-Discount.htm
© 2010, Dr Nick Hodgson, 2005 Victorian Chiropractor of the Year