CHIROPRACTIC EXCELLENCE

There have been some fascinating analogous breakthroughs occurring in seemingly unrelated technology fields which help to elucidate chiropractic principles that have been with us for decades, have been neglected and ignored due to a perceived lack of reinforcing and validating evidence, and because as a profession we have suffered from low self-esteem and have displayed an increasing tendency to adopt other health care models when we believe that our models are somehow unacceptable compared to an invisible “best practice”.

One concept that is an absolute must-study for chiropractors is that of Tensegrity:

The word tensegrity (a contraction of tension and structural integrity) was coined by Buckminster Fuller (an American architect, author, designer, inventor, and futurist, born 1895, died 1983) in 1948 to describe a class of structures first invented by the artist Kenneth Snelson (a contemporary sculptor and photographer, born 1927). Snelson’s sculptures, which are often delicate in appearance, depend on the tension between rigid pipes and flexible cables. This is achieved through “a win-win combination of push and pull”.

Fuller’s most famous outcome of this model is the geodesic dome.

Where tensegrity provides a better framework for chiropractic than traditional biomechanics is by explaining why all living forms are structurally stable yet flexibly adaptive, yielding but with a great resistance to damage.

In other words human bodies at both macroscopic and microscopic levels don’t follow normal engineering, mechanical and architectural principles – they follow tensegrity principles.

According to Snelson, weaving is the mother of tensegrity: “Weaving and tensegrity share the same grounding principle of alternating helical directions; of left to right; of bypasses clockwise and counterclockwise.” Similarly living tissues whether talking muscle or connective tissue, or the microscopic structures that form cells, are woven together and not just cemented together at their ends and corners. It is this very principle that makes living tissue flexible while enormously resistant to compression and strain.

In a tensegrity sculpture, individual tension lines (strings, wires or rope) are attached to the ends of struts so that each assembly comprises a closed system of tension and compression parts. Each tension line connects individually to the ends of two separate struts and the lines are made taut so that they bind the struts, connecting them as a continuous tension network. The forces introduced by the tightening are permanently stored in the structure, a state known as prestressing. The solid components resist compression while the elastic components resist tension. Now visualise any joint in the human body and you can start to see that the bony struts don’t actually completely meet at their articulations but are prestressed by the surrounding ligamentous and connective tissues creating a naturally formed tensegrity sculpture.

Because all tension lines (string, wire, cable, ligament, tendon, muscle) have some degree of elastic stretch, tensegrity structures themselves are elastic and springy depending on the tightness of the prestressing and the characteristics of the tension material and the structure’s geometrical form. If you apply a compressive or distractive load the structure will yield and adapt – distort. But as soon as the external forces are removed the structure will spring back to its original state.

Now if we shrink our viewpoint to the microscopic cellular level then we similarly find that “living cells stabilize their internal cytoskeleton, and control their shape and mechanics, using a tensegrity architectural system.” (See Tensegrity in a Cell: Click Here… )

Ingber and colleagues have even approached questions relating to how mechanical distortion of the cell and cytoskeleton influence intracellular biochemistry and pattern formation, by combining the use of techniques from various fields, including molecular cell biology, mechanical engineering, physics, chemistry, and computer science. They have shown that contractile microfilaments in the cell’s molecular skeleton, or cytoskeleton, act like stretched rubber bands as they compress hollow cytoskeletal fibers called microtubules and pull on molecular pegs that anchor the cell to an underlying scaffold – the extracellular matrix. Moreover, they have found that physical distortion of the cell and cytoskeleton can alter cellular biochemistry and even gene expression.

Don’t skip over the last statement because if you read slowly you literally see a parallel for the chiropractic model for how mechanical dysfunction can lead to physiological malfunction and how correction of this might direct towards expression of maximum human potential!

In other words, trying to re-establish a physical view of biology, Ingber has shown that cells, far from being formless blobs, use tension to stabilize their structure. And he has demonstrated, through two decades of experiments, that tensegrity not only gives cells their shape, but helps regulate their biochemistry.

Ingber says that cells have “tone,” just like muscles, because of the constant pull of the cytoskeletal filaments. Much like a stretched violin string produces different sounds when force is applied at different points along its length, the cell processes chemical signals differently depending on how much it is distorted.

One of the most ignored models of vertebral subluxation is the tonal model but if you take the time to investigate this alternative biomechanical and neurological idea you see that the spine resembles a tensegrity model (Artists have recreated spinal columns and pelvic girdles with their sculptures). And that the biomechanics of the spine cannot be isolated to intervertebral movement and its influence on the intervertebral foramen at an isolated intersegmental level; but the spine and all of its surrounding soft tissues, including the meningeal and nervous tissues form a linked closed system where change in tension and distortion influence the entire functional unit and change the degree of tension in the spinal cord, thereby modulating tonal frequency in the central nervous system.

What this literally means is that a subluxation at one level influences the entire system: And from this point of view a subluxation, especially with meningeal attachments to the spinal cord has a global impact on the physiology of the nervous system.

To paraphrase Ingber the spinal cord processes chemical signals differently depending on how much it is distorted.

Torque Release Technique offers a practical application of this model and trains participants in how to detect the site of initiation of mechanical and hence tonal distortion in the spinal column – this is known as the primary subluxation. Contemplate the primary subluxation as the source of distorting force on the spinal tensegrity model which leads to maladjustment of the tonal frequencies of the neurospinal system - abnormal sensory perception and motor output being the outcome. But because distortion at one point creates distortion of the entire system, an advanced methodolgy is required to differentially diagnose the “epicentre” of the problem: This methodology is known as the protocol of Torque Release Technique.

No other chiropractic technique has offered a live, non-linear and non-invasive method to determine exactly where and how the human body wants to be adjusted. Hope to see you at our next training program – check out upcoming dates at http://www.torquerelease.com.au/TRT-Seminar.htm

Sources and Essential Reading:

The Architecture of Life. Donald Ingber. Scientific American. January 1998. Click Here…

The Mechanical Cell. Nancy Fliesler. Dream, The Magazine of Possibilities. Spring 2004. Click Here…

Tensegrity I. Cell structure and hierarchical systems biology. Donald Ingber. Journal of Cell Science. 2003. Click Here…

Tensegrity II. How structural networks influence cellular information processing networks. Donald Ingber. Journal of Cell Science. 2003.  Click Here…

The Geometry of Anatomy. The Bones of Tensegrity. Tom Flemons. Intension Designs. Click Here…

Weaving. Mother of Tensegrity. Kenneth Snelson. Click Here…

Your Philosophy May Be Vitalistic, But Is Your Art Mechanistic?

What is Vitalism?

1) Theory that life originates due to a force distinct from chemical and other physical forces. The classical 18th century vitalist doctrines propose that all life phenomena are animated by immaterial life spirits. These life spirits are unexplainable and undescribable from a physical point of view, but determine the various life phenomena.

2) Where vitalism explicitly invokes a vital principle, that element is often referred to as the “vital spark,” “energy” or “élan vital,” which some equate with the “soul.” Vitalism has a long history in medical philosophies: most traditional healing practices posited that disease was the result of some imbalance in the vital energies which distinguish living from non-living matter.

3) Was once a term of Aristotle pertaining to a cosmic force known as “ether” that was supposedly giving life to dead things.

Chiropractic has a vitalistic philosophy in the sense that we claim we all have an innate intelligence which gives our human bodies their healing potential - the ability to intelligently regenerate. To take this one step further, it was proposed by our pioneers that this information is transmitted through the body via the “Mental Impulse”. This is a separate and distinct concept to that of action potentials and electrical currents…

D.D. Palmer: “Chiropractors do not treat diseases, they adjust the wrong which creates disease; they have discovered the simple fact that the human body is a sensitive piece of machinery, run throughout all its parts by mental impulse.” (1910)

Stephenson: “We might conceive of this mental impulse as being composed of certain kinds of physical energies, in proper proportions, which will balance other such forces in the Tissue Cell; as electricity, valency, magnetism, cohesion, etc., etc.. Perhaps some of these energies are not known to us in physics. What right have we to assume that we have found them all? The writer presents this as a hypothesis or theory in order to get a working basis… It is no discredit to Chiropractic that it must also use theories concerning the transmission of mental forces.” (1927)

So, here’s the challenge - how does this affect the way we adjust each and very patient? Is our application, or the “Art” of doing what we do, a reflection and outpouring of this vitalistic philosophy? Let’s contrast the above definitions of vitalism with those of mechanism…

Mechanism:

1) Machine part: A machine or part of a machine that performs a specific task.

2) Something like machine: Something that resembles a machine in having a structure of interrelated parts that function together the fragile mechanism of the planet’s ecology.

3) Method or means: A method or means of doing something.

4) Philosophy philosophical theory: The philosophical theory that all natural phenomena, including human behavior, can be explained by physical causes and processes.

To be perfectly honest - this sounds more like the practice of chiropractic as it is practised in most chiropractors’ rooms.

Now here’s the challenge: If we have a vitalistic philosophy, but this has no application in what we do - then what’s the point of having this philosophy? After all - isn’t the purpose of a philosophy to provide an internal compass, via which we make decisions about what we think and believe, and hence how we behave?

This leaves us with two options…

1) Jettison our traditional philosophy and replace it with one that sounds more like the mechanistic methods - so that our Art follows on from our philosophy - that is - change our philosophy to match our behaviour.

2) Upgrade our behaviours so that they align with our core vitalistic philosophy.

Torque Release Technique provides chiropractors with a much more vitalistic model of applying their philosophy on each and every patient. And here’s what most practitioners find when they make this upgrade - they see more vitalistic changes in their practice members: Over and above the garden variety mechanistic changes - That is - they see MORE LIFE returning into the faces, minds and bodies of their patients.

Click Here To Find Out More About TRT Training…