Developing My Own Chiropractic Style: My Experiences as a Patient and as a Student
During my first semester as a student in 1986 at the Pasadena College of Chiropractic in Southern California, I fractured the last vertebrae in my spinal column. I was unable to walk for three months. At the school clinic, my instructors and fellow students diagnosed my problem and treated me with Chiropractic care. This was a godsend, as it gave me the true experience of an injured patient in pain. Over the course of a year, I was treated by more than 20 different chiropractors, each with her or his own individual style and technique. As a result, I use a very gentle approach to chiropractic adjustments.
Chiropractic care by nature uses force to manipulate and restore function to injured and/or dysfunctional joints and motor units in the human body. My experience as a patient showed me that force comes in various levels and that I responded and appreciated the doctors who were gentler with their adjustments.
In that year I was treated by several doctors that I would never allow to touch me again. This had nothing to do with my lower back condition. It was how they approached and adjusted my neck. I felt that many of the Chiropractors that adjusted me used an unnecessary level of force to achieve the desired results.
Although I use force, I have developed what most of my patients consider “a very gentle technique.”