I hope everyone has gotten into the swing of things with classes
picking up speed and a brand new trimester fully underway! Part of
me is extremely excited and part of me is extremely anxious because
I'm back on the full track (26 credits) again.
What is AK? (Applied Kinesiology)
This weekend,
I attended the first seminar of the trimester. Dr. Timothy Francis
came into town and taught the first of seven AK seminars we will be
attending until August to sit for the certification test. I've only
met one genius in my life thus far. This doc was the second. From
9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m straight (Sat. and Sun.) we covered so
much information! We learned to fix:
- adrenal disorders
- thyroid
- sprain strain injuries (whiplash, etc.)
- nutritional deficiencies
- fixations
- gait imbalances
- dietary imbalances
- emotional imbalances
- postural faults
- acupuncture meridians
- etc., etc., etc.
It was enlightening to see how it all tied in. In my opinion, at
school, we are given a lot of tools--some useful, others not.
However, one glaring 'deficiency' is putting it all together for a
patient in an efficient and REPEATABLE system. This comes with
experience and a lot of practice. I believe this is why the Motion
Palpation Institute has had a lot of success and popularity. It is
a wonderful system for chiros.
The draw for me to AK has not only been that it works better
than anything I've ever tried (and I've tried A LOT of things), but
it is also a logical system of finding the ROOT cause of the
patient's problems and treating them on a 'WHOLE'-istic basis. This
includes 3 parts--structural, chemical, emotional--often depicted
in an equilateral triangle with structural being the base.
As chiropractors we LOVE and are very competent at the
structural part of our patients. Some more enlightened docs will
dabble into nutrition (anti-inflammatory diet, herbs,
supplements, etc.) realizing that it is crucial to the success of
their patients' long-term health and disease prevention. The one
glaring problem is how we don't address the emotional component of
human health or the energetic (acupuncture and homeopathy).
Normally, we are just told to 'avoid stress' and 'deal with
emotions'. Huh? We live in a GO, GO, GO society. If you live out in
the woods by yourself, you may be able to 'avoid stress' but almost
everywhere and everything has stress in our modern lifestyles.
Don't think emotions play a role in our lives? How about the bunny
study? Two groups of identical bunnies were given the same diet,
same living conditions. One group was petted every day and the
other group was ignored. The ignored group developed heart disease
and died MUCH earlier. The petted group died old, with no
diseases.
So, should we just pet each other every day? NO! Ha ha. We do
have to address all three aspects of human health though!
With Applied Kinesiology, you use manual muscle testing as
a window into figuring out where to adjust, when to adjust, what is
primary, what nutrition they need and how much, as well as deal
with emotions that make certain conditions unfixable when not
addressed.
Ask yourself this: If you've needed the 'same' adjustment for
weeks, months, years, are you really treating the root cause of the
patient's problems? The answer is no. Motion palpating and
restoring joint motion is important. MUSCLES MOVE BONES. Period. So
you need to treat the muscle imbalances, too. If you can't fix the
muscular imbalances, you will never stabilize the spine. Also
consider Viscerosomatic reflexes have influences on certain muscles
as well.
This area of functional neurology has been around for 50 years
and the pioneering work was actually started by the allopathic
profession, but was eventually adopted into Applied Kinesiology and
chiropractic by George Goodheart, DC, in the 1960s. Therefore, if
you're not treating the patient internally (proper diet, nutrition,
supplements), then the correlated muscles may never function the
way you want them to, therefore leading to imbalances and chronic
fixations in the spine that we as chiropractors palpate and adjust
continually year after year.
Dr. Goodheart used to say, "I know the answer, but I don't know
the right question." How true is that? AK helps you ask the right
question.
Applied Kinesiology isn't perfect, as nothing in life ever is,
but it's pretty darn close. If you've ever met me, you know I want
as many TOOLS in my treatment toolbox as possible so every patient
that walks in my door I can fix as fast as possible.
Peace out cub scouts,
CC