The Foundation is Tone
“The principles of Chiropractic should be known and utilized in the growth of the infant and continue as a safeguard throughout life.”
— D.D. Palmer
At the turn of the last century, D.D. Palmer, the founder of chiropractic, proposed that tension (too much or too little) on the “neuroskeleton” altered the function of every organ and system in the body. He found through decades of hands-on work and study of the the various healing modalities of his time that adjusting the spine had a direct and predictable impact on the function and health of the people he saw.
The principles of Chiropractic outline a vitalistic and salutogenic approach to health and healing. The body is a self-healing organism. The body’s ability to regulate normal function depends on clear communication in and through the nervous system. Interference to this communication is often manifested as subluxations (local areas of stress and restricted movement) in the spine. Adjusting these areas and their associated patterns of tension allows the body to develop, repair, and adapt with greater ease and efficiency.
These principles apply to all humans, including and especially young ones. The “safeguard” referenced above is about the opportunity to allow a developing nervous system to be free from unnecessary physiological stress. It refers to the immeasurable benefit of supporting the innate capacity to adapt. It is a powerful way to help “prepare the child for the road,” recognizing that “uncertainty is chronic…instability is permanent, and disruption is common.”
The reason I am such a strong proponent of these principles is that I see them in practice every day. I learned them by experience as a chiro kid and I witness them now as a papa. It is the tone we set now that becomes the foundation of what is to come.
The Vital Principle
“Life possesses an intelligence which pervades the universe and is expressed with accordance to the environment and the quality of the material in which it manifests itself.”
— D.D. Palmer
At the beginning of the last century, the founder of chiropractic, D.D. Palmer, outlined the foundation of chiropractic philosophy. To this day, chiropractic maintains a vitalistic perspective on health and healing. Vitalism recognizes that life is characterized by an organizing energy or principle. We can use a reductionist approach to break the whole into its parts, which can facilitate understanding. However, just as flipping through the pages of an anatomy book will not reveal the complexity of a moving, feeling, breathing animal, life and health is something more than the sum of parts. When D.D. writes of “an intelligence which pervades the universe” he is acknowledging the presence of an essential organizing energy. He deliberately describes this as intelligence, not simply energy or force. The historic and critical contribution he made to the development of healing arts was precisely this - the animating principle that pervades the universe is also what organizes function in people. Health and dis-ease represent a spectrum on which this energy is able to clearly express in a physical body. And the spine is the interface where this life principle can flow or be obstructed.
His insight includes the direct impact of the environment and the limitations of matter on the expression of life. Far from a materialist or reductionist perspective, his vision and his writing prefigure what we accept as common understanding today. Of course environmental factors influence health and disease. If there are toxic chemicals introduced into the water of the earth or the water of the body, if the air is unfit to breathe, if the quality of food is weakened by devastated soils, if we are constantly immersed in a narrative of fear, then of course this will affect the expression of health.
Finally, let us also acknowledge the idea that “life…manifests itself.” One of the most important distinctions that vitalistic chiropractic makes is that health flows from the inside-out. Adjustments are offered to help clear the spine of interference that reduces communication to and from the brain. The free and robust expression of information along the nervous system is the necessary condition for our ability to coordinate adaptive function (i.e. health) in ourselves. As D.D.’s son B.J. would later go on to say, “Nature needs no help, just no interference.”