Category Archives: Chiropractic Ratioale

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Chiropractic and “The Hero’s Journey” in Health Care

I My Journey in Chiropractic and the Healing Field

My professional journey in life began when I turned twenty-one and left the seminary to pursue a career in Chiropractic. The year was 1961. I graduated from Chiropractic college in 1963 and immediately moved south with my family and opened my first practice in Crowley, Louisiana, in the Winter of 1963-64. The Healing Field was ripe for a new paradigm of health care and I was eager to deliver it. 

Little did I know then that my journey through the field of health care was to be a journey of the profession I had joined that was already engaged in a political battle with its nemesis: the medical profession, the Guardian of the Threshold leading to licensure as a separate, distinct and independent profession with a vitalistic philosophy and a drugless healing science and art.

A Battle for Licensure and Freedom of Choice

 

I joined in the fight for licensure here in Louisiana, my home state — as well as the battle for patients’ “Freedom of Choice” in health care, a separate journey and battle led by a group of passionate Chiropractic patients with whom we shared a common cause and a common nemesis.

After several years of legislative efforts — and court battles to stop the arrest and jailing of chiropractors — we finally defeated our nemesis in 1974 when Louisiana became the last state in the Union to license Chiropractors. It also became the last state to grant patients the freedom and right to go to the doctor of their choice.

The victory was a partial one, however, as licensure was not the ultimate goal of the profession’s quest. The ultimate goal, the Elixir of Immortality, was access to health insurance, the Golden Goose, well guarded by the insurance industry: equality under the law with Medicine in the reimbursement for Chiropractic services. Licensure was only a means to this end — an end that, to this day, Medicine is bent on denying chiropractors by controlling how freely and deeply they are allowed to dip into the Golden Goose’s nesteggs. After all, health insurance was a creation of medical doctors as a way of insuring they got paid for their services. So it’s their game and they don’t want anyone else dipping into their fee-pool. Stiff restrictions and fine-bearing compliance laws have been put in place via HIPPA, making it costly and time-consuming for doctors to file and follow up with reimbursement claims. Documentation has become one of the dreaded aspects of modern day health care, seconded by the escalating cost of malpractice insurance in a litigious society to which healthcare providers dedicate their lives of service. So, the insurance industry has become a nemesis to both professions by determining the amount of the reimbursement for services rendered. 

All this to say the field of healthcare — a misnomer in itself — does not have the same lure of attraction it had when I entered it some fifty-six years ago. Medicine continues to be a nemesis to the Chiropractic profession — but only as long as chiropractors worship at the altar of the insurance industry and hold financial remuneration as their primary goal, their Elixir of Immortality.

There is a trade-off, however, in this pursuit for insurance equality alongside Medicine. That trade-off is the surrender of the very soul of Chiropractic, nourished by its philosophy, which honors the Innate Power of the human body to heal itself naturally and without the toxic and invasive intervention of drugs and surgery. A motto of the chiropractors, once held religiously, was “Chiropractic first—Medicine second—surgery last.”

Sadly, that trade-off was made by the bulk of the members of our beloved profession, along with all but a few of its colleges, who continue in the sacred philosophical tradition of our Beloved Founder and developer, Drs. D.D. and B.J. Palmer, respectively.  

A schism has rocked the profession at its very foundation, sending it down the same lost path Osteopathy took, as many chiropractors began to look and act more and more like medical doctors, prescribing diagnostic tests, and in some states even delivering babies, all the while abandoning “principled chiropractic” and the holistic model of natural health care to embrace the reductionistic medical model of relieving pain and treating symptoms, settling for acceptance by their medical colleagues as musculoskeletal specialists, an area of expertise in which chiropractors excel. I suppose the saying “men must do what men must do”– as well as women — applies here. Change is what it is, neither good or bad, right or wrong. 

Heralds of Vibrational Healing

Chiropractic was born on September 18, 1895, through the heart and hands of a magnetic healer by the name of Daniel D. Palmer in What Cheer, Iowa. That places it at the fountainhead of vibrational healing and what today is being called “energy medicine.” Daniel Palmer had a large vision of his new healing art becoming more an energetic than a physical remedy for all of mankind’s diseases — or dis-eases, as his son, BJ, spelled it in order to describe illness as a lack of ease. This vision became the Palmers’ quest, their Elixir of Immortality. Their belief in the innate healing power of the body, along with the discovery of the spinal adjustment, led them to the central principle of natural healing: Remove the interference to the unfettered flow and expression of life energy and let the body heal itself. They took the “whole man” into consideration to determine the cause of dis-ease, along with the solution. That cause was seen as being “quantitative” as well as “qualitative”– physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual — or a combination thereof. In other words, they looked for the cause of dis-ease in higher levels than just the physical and chemical. They sought the cause of the cause of dis-ease. The obvious solution and cure, then, was to correct or remove the cause, the interference, and the manifest symptoms would simply no longer be necessary to signal a need for change — change in lifestyle and/or mental and emotional stress and attitude. The symptoms would then simply abate naturally. 

This was and is the essence of the Holistic model of healthcare, an entirely new and different model from the medical reductionistic model of disease management — both being essential in the healthcare arena; the ideal being for both to work together for the benefit of the patients they serve. 

Evolution of Health Care

As health care itself evolved, our professional journey merged into a collective and global journey of the Human Species in search for the Elixir of Immortality in the field of health-and-wellness care.  Building and maintaining a healthy physique has become the focus of health-and-wellness centers throughout the land. “Functional Medicine” is the latest buzz word among chiropractors who are exploring the benefits of nutrition in restoring function to failing organs, tissues and glands. “Clinical Nutrition” has come into the holistic model here in the West, as the cause of more and more diseases was found to be related to poor dietary habits and an “Empty Harvest,” as Dr. Bernard Jensen describes our commercially grown fruits and vegetables in his book by the same name. Depleted soil can only render foods deficient in vital nutrients, resulting in missing cogs in the nutrient chain, thereby creating an interference to the flow of vital life force in and through the body. This is a modality that I have found to be indispensable in my practice.

Acupuncture and several other techniques, such as BioEnergetic Synchronization (BEST), have also emerged as energy-based healing methodologies to take their places in Western Holistic Medicine.  Eastern healing traditions have long been harbingers of holistic healing and many of their traditions have found their way into our healthcare systems. Practices such as meditation and yoga have become popular, and gyms are popping up everywhere.

This revolution in health-and-wellness care has drawn the attention of the Guardian of the Threshold, the FDA and the AMA, as chiropractic boards began expanding their scope of practice to include procedures that heretofore have been the exclusive domain of Medicine.  With the emergence of Applied Clinical Nutrition, Contact Reflex Analysis (muscle testing) and Functional Endocrinology, such conditions as diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, and even autoimmune disease are being treated and reversed by chiropractors and other alternative practitioners, much to the objection of medical licensing boards. Law suits have been filed and fines levied.

This is not stopping the evolution of health care, however. People have awakened and started to assume responsibility for their health, a responsibility that had been placed with trust in the willing and able hands of Modern Medicine — which unfortunately has cornered the market on the treatment of disease, especially of Diabetes, Coronary Heart Disease, Cancer, and other autoimmune diseases. 

“Keepers of the Flame”

“Alternative healthcare” made its debut in the last half of the twentieth century carrying the torch of holistic healing into the New Age of Aquarius. Holistic practitioners began popping up throughout the healing field. The words Attunement and Sound Healing entered our vocabulary as energy healing modalities. I was introduce to a model of Attunement in the late nineteen-sixties that works with the energy fields around the endocrine glands, as well as with the Chakra energy centers of the Eastern tradition and Reiki. I later incorporated Sound Healing into my attunement service. The consciousness of humanity has begun to shift to a higher frequency of awareness that has awakened a realization that we are spiritual beings having a human experience rather than physical beings having a spiritual experience.

This realization was actually dawning as early as the turn of the twentieth century when BJ Palmer published The Bigness of the Fellow Within in which he tells stories about the “Giant and the pigmy”– the inner spiritual Self and the outer mental self, or the “Innate Intelligence” and the “educated intelligence.” This realization lit up his mind and put a fire in his heart that burned passionately for several decades and was carried forward by those who came to the light of his shining and became inspired to bring forth a new paradigm of vibrational healing.

As the fire began to cool in their hearts and the light began to dim in their minds, the torch was set aside in lieu or a “more scientific” approach to Chiropractic. Now the torch has been given to others to carry forward, along with a new paradigm of health care which honors once again the innate healing powers of the body. We’ve come full cycle back, or forward, to our humble beginnings as magnetic healers, only now calling ourselves “Holistic Healers” and “Energy Workers.” A few colleges still teach principled chiropractic and a small but passionate number of chiropractors still carry the flame in their hearts and in their clinics. The Torch has not been entirely dropped.

The table has been turned

Alternative health care has now become Medicine’s nemesis as more and more doctors are returning to school and abandoning the reductionistic model in lieu of the holistic model of true health care. Physicians of all disciplines are attending seminars to educate and certify themselves in clinical nutrition, herbal medicine and other modalities emerging with the holistic paradigm. It’s what the people want and are asking for, and the people have the final say in such personal matters as their health. And the irony of it all is that health insurance doesn’t generally cover alternative health care, a forty-plus-billion-dollar industry. 

The wave has been set in motion and it will dissolve the monopolistic stronghold Medicine has assumed over health care.  It will ultimately be defeated by its nemesis and be forced to vacate its self-appointed role as the Guardian of the Threshold to the health care arena.  Licensing boards will not be able to stem the tide of this revolution as doctors and non-medical practitioners in the field of healthcare dare to take on the reversal and cure of diseases only Medicine has held the legal right to treat symptomatically. 

It’s a new day . . . thank God! And I am glad to have lived long enough to see it and be a part of its dawning. God bless our doctors, especially our surgeons, whose hearts are in the right place of compassion for the sick and suffering and have only a prescription pad and a scalpel between them and their patients.  The vast world of Mother Nature’s Cornucopia of natural medicines lies open and ready to heal all our ills. 

Thank you for sharing my thoughts. Do feel free to share yours. 

Here’s to your health and healing,

Anthony Palombo, DC

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The Cause of Disease and Death

My Chorale PicThe underlying cause of disease and death is living on earth instead of in heaven. And now that I have your attention, let me share with you a true story.

When I was a young man in Catholic seminary, about 15 years of age, I had a most peculiar and profound quest for a young man aspiring for a meaningful life purpose. I wanted to know what we had to do in order to stop dying. I had read the story of Creation in the Bible and was well aware of what brought death into human experience, although I didn’t understand it. Eating the “fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Really? Just eating a “forbidden fruit” has brought disease and death to the entire human species?! And an apple, at that! One of our most nutritious foods! Something wasn’t right about this story in Genesis. If it was true, however, then there must be a way to undo what our first parents did to merit such a stiff punishment.

In my simple and naïve way of thinking, it seemed to me that if eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil causes death, then it seemed to follow that we could simply stop eating this fruit and we would stop dying. I brought this curious thought to my spiritual director and he didn’t show as much interest in my mental musings as I was having at a rather deep level. He simply told me to stop thinking about such nonsense and study my Latin instead. That was that.

But that wasn’t that for me. The question did not go away but rather became a burning quest for an answer, for someone to come along and say “That’s right, and we can do just that!” I had to put my quest on the back burner for more practical and necessary endeavors, like studying for exams.

If you ask the right question, I was later to discover, you will receive the right answer. On May 20, 1967 I was attending a seminar in Applied Ontology in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when my quest came off the back burner. Ontology is the metaphysical study of the nature of being and of reality. Applied Ontology is the art and science of living the true nature of being and of reality. In other words, being who and what you really are—and not just in theory. The facilitator and dynamic speaker was Dr. William H. Bahan of the Universal Institute of Applied Ontology in Loveland, Colorado—a man who would become my professional mentor and most beloved friend. He was a doctor of Chiropractic, which I had become—but that’s another story.

Half way through the seminar, Dr. Bahan started talking about our responsibility as healers and teachers—which is what the title of doctor means—which was to bring about an increase of life in those who came to us for the healing of their ills. His chief reference turned out to be the Book of Genesis and the Story of Creation, including more specifically the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden where the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil were planted.  You can only imagine how this got my attention.

He then began to speak from a certain place of authenticity and uncanny authority about what had transpired in the Garden of Eden that led to “The Fall” of Adam and Eve from grace—the so-called “Original Sin.” I had never heard the story told from such a clear and meaningful perspective. Bill simply revealed the truth of what had happened—and, more to the point, continues to happen—to bring diseases and death into the experience of human beings.  The Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he allowed, is the “design tree” of the “Creative Process,” and it wasn’t external to Man in some fruit orchard. It is part of our very make up as stewards of the cycles of creation, which was the very reason and purpose for God creating Man in His own image and likeness. As long as we were true stewards and ate only of the fruit of the Tree of Life, we would fare well in Eden. But if we ate of the fruit of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we would “surely die.”

Then he said what I had been waiting for someone to say for a decade or more. In order to stop dying, he went on to say, we needed to stop eating this “forbidden fruit,” which he defined simply as “judgment.”  Judging the evolving forms that are being brought forth by Life through the Creative Process and then interfering with that process by imposing our own self-interested ideas as to how things could evolve if we just made this or that alteration in life’s natural and perfect design. It made such profound sense. The word “evil,” Bill explained, is more like “evol.” Evol is an unfolding of life’s design through the Creative Process. Evil is produced when we interfere with life’s design in order to produce something other than what the Creative Process had in Mind and in store for us.

It was primarily an act of disobedience and self-active determination that derailed Man’s stewardship of Creation and his enjoyment of life in the Garden of Eden. As a consequence, our creative powers were greatly diminished and we soon found ourselves out of Eden and laboring for our survival on Earth. Eden was a Heavenly abode, and we had much different forms than the animal forms we have now. These forms are subject to the evolutionary cycles of birth and death. But we are still immortal beings incarnate in these mortal bodies, which we have to shed in order to return to Paradise. In Paradise there is no death, no disease, and no suffering. One may rightly wonder why it is that we spend so much effort trying to stave off death.

This blew my mind. I was ecstatic. Could it be that simple? I didn’t sleep for three days. My quest was complete. Well, almost complete. All that remained was for me to prove it out in my living. That entailed, first of all, seeing how this applied to daily living and how I was continuing to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evol; how we human beings were still manipulating the natural creative processes and thwarting them to please our own self-centered purposes.  Then, upon seeing how I was eating this death-dealing fruit, to change my behavior.

It’s easy to see how we disobey the Creator and thwart the natural design in the way we grow our food by genetic engineering and manipulation of the soil with chemicals to produce plenty of food. Stewardship has been almost entirely abandoned for the sake of producing product. We’ve become very product oriented, the ultimate product being money and material wealth—the end made to justify the means in our irrational thinking. We’ve got to feed the masses. Yet, surely we continue to die.

But how does this apply to the way we care for our bodies. Even in our health care we are oriented in results rather than process, in relieving the symptoms of disease rather than engaging and stewarding a healing process. We have settled, it seems, for relief from our pain and suffering in lieu of healing our bodies and our lives.

THE GARDEN IS WITH US

In the Biblical story of the Fall, Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent, who alone got the curse of God upon its head. The serpent represents the brain and spinal chord, and the tree of life, along with the design tree of the knowledge of how life evolves and grows Creation, are both within our body temples. The tree of life is the endocrine system, which delivers creative energy and life’s messages to the cells by way of hormones, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evol is the brain and central nervous system which administers the design and control of life in the body. The Garden is our hearts, in which we are to keep a sweet and heavenly atmosphere for the gifts of spirit to be born through us. Our minds and bodies are the capacities for rendering stewardship in the natural world. But our consciousness is the most important aspect of our being because it can change levels. It’s our capacity to know who we are as divine beings. It can move down a level to create hell and up a level to create heaven. Heaven, then, is nothing more than a state of consciousness, as is hell.

Wow! All of this and more was packed into that weekend seminar, so you can see why I was blown away. It was way more answer to my quest than I had ever expected to receive. And I had to scramble in order to make some drastic and fundamental changes in how I practiced my healing profession. I had to switch from being the fixer, a masculine approach, to being a healer, a more feminine approach.  The fixer imposes change by manipulation. The healer coaches the client in how to nurture the healing process so that the body is allowed to make its own appropriate changes.  The former is oriented in product and results. The latter is oriented in process and growth. The one is reactive; the other proactive.

GETTING BACK INTO THE GARDEN

An interesting aspect of the story of Eden is the placing of a cherubim with a flaming sword that turned every way in the Garden guarding the way to the Tree of Life. No one could get back into the Garden and eat of the Tree of Life without encountering the angel with the flaming sword. The angel is who we are in reality. The flaming sword is the truth of love. It is the truth of love that gives birth to life. Without love and truth life is not possible, in the same way that a child cannot be born without a father and a mother. The qualities of the father and mother are reflected in the child. Life is characterized by Love and Truth. In order to know life, in other words, one must be true to the truth of love in the expression of one’s living. It is life that generates health in our bodies. It is a lack of life that produces disease and death. It is that simple.

Therefore, the only way back into the Garden of Paradise, is to let it be born through us from within. The “kingdom of heaven” is within us, the Teacher instructed us. As we are consistent in expressing the qualities of heaven in our living, heaven begins to appear around us.  Our world is a reflection of what’s in our consciousness, our heaven in other words. As above, so below. I will leave you with a sampling of what Dr. Bill Bahan offered us that weekend:

 Bill BahanWe are responsible to allow life to be born. And life is born in the parenthood of love and truth. There’s the flaming sword. That’s a great symbol. You can’t come to the Tree of Life, you can’t know life, and you can’t know yourself—because you are life. That’s who you are. You can’t know yourself except you come through that flaming sword.

 If there is anything in your expression that is not true to the truth of love, outside! You can’t get in. You can’t get by that sword if you’re identified with complaint or unhappiness or resentment or fear or jealousy. Outside! You can’t get in. The moment you’re true to the truth of love, you walk right through.

If you’re a true servant of love, of the Lord, you’re going to win. You’re going to win! I know that in relation to my service. I’m going to win. Win all the time. Love never faileth. Those who are true to the truth of love, they never fail. No such thing as failure in the Kingdom. Failures are for those who don’t want to live in the Kingdom on Earth. Those who live in it, they move and have their being with an absolute spirit of victory.

Such was the victorious spirit of Dr. William Bahan. His words were a flaming sword that turned every way, and only by being genuinely true to the truth of love could one stand comfortably in the shadow of his presence. He was love and truth in action. He was Life itself. And so are you. Come into the Garden and enjoy the gifts of Love, one of which is health; another is happiness; yet another is unconditional acceptance of who you are. Love does not judge. Love never faileth. Let love radiate without concern for results.

Here’s to  your health and healing,

Anthony Palombo, D.C.

Visit my HealingTones.org blog for more inspiring articles on the Golden Age we are entering.

 

 

 

 

 

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“Founded On TONE”

DD_Palmer1-father-pof-chiropracticsDaniel David Palmer founded Chiropractic in 1895 when he realigned the cervical spine on his janitor, Harvey Lillard, and restored his hearing.  Dr. Palmer, a magnetic healer, wrote these words on the title page of his first book: “Founded On TONE.” I published my booklet Rediscovering The Soul of Chiropractic in 2007.  In it I wrote these words:

In D.D.’s first book these words appear on the title page: “Founded On Tone.” In the pages that follow he proclaims, almost charismatically, that life is tone in human beings and that tone is health. In his second book, Daniel confides how initially he leaned toward the theory that nerves conveyed the vibrational “Tone” of life, and that spinal aberrations stretched and otherwise stressed the nerve fibers thereby distorting the frequency of that vibrational tone.

“An impulse travels over a nerve by waves known as vibration, similar as a pulse-wave, only more rapid . . . . Nerves, like material substances, are composed of particles, atoms or molecules, which vibrate, oscillate. When nerves are in a normal condition, known as tone—normal tension, normal elasticity and normal renitency [tonicity]—impulses are transmitted by vibration in a normal manner with the usual force . . . . Motor and sensory impulses are transmitted over the nervous system by molecular vibration.” (The Chiropractor 1914)

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

Magnetic healing has come around again. I’ve been practicing it since the 1970’s.  We call it “attunement,” a term that has come to be used by Reiki and other energy work healing methodologies.  Basically, we are working with the energetic body and through the energetic body with the physical body.  It is the energetic body that holds the patterns of health and disease that manifest in the physical body.  The principle at work is simple: change the vibration in the energy body and you change the manifestation in the physical body. The ultimate goal is to lift the energetic vibration of the physical body to a level where dissonant patterns of disease cannot manifest but only harmonious patterns of health. 

SOUND HEALING COMES OF AGE

Such words as “TONE” and “dissonant” and “harmonious” imply music and sound.  Sound healing has come of age and has even entered into main-stream medicine.  Of course the majority of sound healers are in the “Alternative” and “New Age” milieu.  I received my certification in sound healing in 2009 at Jonathan Goldman’s Healing Sounds Intensive out of Boulder, Colorado. This is a nine-day workshop intensive that is held every year and draws up to a hundred sound healers from all over the world to participate in a transformative journey into the vibrational world of Sacred Sound. This is only one such sound healing school offering training in this vibrational healing methodology.

THE TONE IS LOVE 

I just returned from an “Energetics of Healing” attunement intensive at Oakwood Retreat Center in Selma, Indiana  and will be flying up to Portland, Oregon this weekend to participate in another attunement intensive entitled “RESONANCE –THE HEART OF ATTUNEMENT.”  There’s another word that relates to music and sound.  Resonance is a principle at work throughout creation.  All of creation resonates to the TONE of Life sounding and resounding throughout the Cosmos. It’s the TONE of LOVE. 

THE PINEAL GATEWAY

Over the years that I’ve been exploring the frequencies of the sacred anatomy of our seven endocrine glands, I’ve noticed that a shift has taken place in the tonal frequency of the energy radiating from the pineal gland located in the center of the brain. That shift has gone a half step up from an F to an F#.  In his wonderful book SACRED SOUND, Ted Andrews writes in his historical account of Sacred Sound’s ancient past . . .

The Chinese healers used “singing stones”–thin flat pieces of jade which would emit various musical tones when struck. One of these tones was designated the kung or great tone of Nature. It corresponds in our own musical scale to the tone of F or F-sharp. The Sufis considered Hu to be the ultimate creative sound. The Tibetans considered the tones F-sharp, A and G to be the three powerful and sacred tones of the world. 

The corresponding color of F# is Violet.  I see a violet light pulsing and contracting to a fine focus in the dark space of my closed eyes when attuning the pineal gland with the Spirit of Love. This light is particularly strong when someone is sharing attunement with me and focusing the current in the area of my pineal gland.

There is an energetic gateway here in this gland that opens up to let in sacred energy from the divine spirit that is incarnate in each and every one.  This is the portal of light through which the angel enters his or her body temple after the temple is complete at the end of the third month of embryonic development.  Incarnation takes place in the womb when the house of being is complete and ready to receive the lord or lady of the house.  It is as well the portal for excarnation and ascension at the end of our earthly journey.  It is where the “silver cord” attaches that leads back to the realms of light.  If you wish to own a quartz crystal bowl, let it be an F-sharp bowl. I highly recommend it. 

Our bodies are founded on TONE. They resonate to the frequency of Love. The frequency of Love is F-sharp in my experience. The harmonic chord of F-sharp is F# A# C#.  If you want a little magic in your life, your health, your spiritual practice, then obtain three quartz crystal bowls that “sing” these three sacred tones. Set them in your meditation space and place them in the morning when you arise and just before bedtime. You will be amazed at how these sacred tones calm and bring focus to your mind as your pineal gland resonates with them.  

Here’s to your health and healing,

Tony's picture 2 from PeggyAnthony Palombo, DC

Visit my HealingTones.org blog for more inspiring articles about sacred energy.

 

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Chiropractic Rationale: A Turn in the Right Direction

Anthony J. Palombo, DC August 15, 1963

Anthony J. Palombo, DC.”
August 15, 1963

THE PRECIOUS FEW

A colleague and very close friend up in New Jersey called me a few days ago in response to my last post, “Expression Allows Release,” in which I candidly allowed that my well had dried up; that what has needed saying has all been said, by me over two decades of publishing my HealthLight Newsletter and by so many other clarion voices with much larger audiences than I’ve ever had. He is Dr. Ken Harris, one of the “precious few” I referred to in that post who have maintained, lived and practiced the original truth that Chiropractic’s founder and developer, Daniel David Palmer and Bartlett Joshua Palmer respectively, brought to the healthcare arena. You can visit Dr. Harris’ Facebook page and read his posts on Chiropractic. He’s a man who walks his talk, and in so doing shines a bright and unwavering light on the path toward health and vibrant living. He and I shared a passionate mentor along the way in our careers in Dr. William H. Bahan, “Bill” as he was endearingly known and called by the hundreds of chiropractors who came to the light of his shining in deep heartfelt response to his clarion call.

“Keep writing,” my friend said, and with that encouragement I dip down once again into my reservoir of topics. The one topic I could never run out of words to write about is Chiropractic, particularly the philosophy and rationale for its science and art of adjusting the spine to correct misaligned vertebrae that encroach on nerve roots choking off the flow of vital nerve energy, life itself, from “Above, down, inside, out” to the body’s organs and tissue cells. There, that just about says it all in one sentence, and I want to say more. But first listen—and listen deeply—to these succinct words of wisdom from one of the precious few “principled chiropractors” who carried the torch for so many years, Dr. James Sigafoose, explaining in simple words the rationale of the Chiropractic Adjustment:

I just love his opening words because they articulate an eternal truth; a truth that awakened my heart and mind fifty years ago and turned me completely around in my thinking about health and healing and answered so many core questions. Questions like: “What is healing and how does it work in the body? What power and force drives it? How does the spirit of God touch and imbue the flesh of man with the Breath of Life? How can we stop dying if dying was indeed introduced to human experience as a result of ‘original sin’? What would the alternative reality be?”

“DEATH IS COMPLETELY UNNATURAL!”

I remember during one of Dr. Bahan’s symposiums hearing him drop this bombshell into our eager ears: “Death,” he said with deep conviction and absolute authority, “is completely unnatural! If it were natural, then why do we strive so hard to avoid it?” Why, indeed?  My God, we spend our entire lives struggling to stay alive. We’ve even developed an entire industry to this end: to fight disease and stave off the inevitable for as long as possible. That’s because deep down inside our subconscious minds we know that death is not natural. Death IS completely unnatural . . . and we remember a time when death was not a part of life. Life is what’s natural. We were not made to experience the death and decay of our bodies, the very temples of the Living God!  Oh, I’ve written passionately and poetically about that, too, in my first publication Sacred Anatomy. My second publication, Rediscovering the Soul of Chiropractic, was my meager contribution to the revival of the spirit of my beloved profession, which was undergoing an identity crises at the time.

Bill’s bombshell was surprisingly met with strong resistance from another clarion voice in our profession, Dr. Reggie Gold, a devout and almost fanatic “straight” chiropractor. Reggie Gold was one of Bill’s disciples up until Bill dropped this golden nugget of truth into our consciousness. He vehemently opposed this declaration to the point of leaving Bill to start his own following. So, there were points along the cutting edge of the sword of truth some of our leaders were wielding that caused division and separation. But that’s the nature of truth. It’s a fine and uncompromising light, and some of us simply could not handle the truth back then. Today we are more open to all possibilities, including the possibility that death is not eternal for us on Earth. Life is what’s eternal.   

In truth, death was not a part of life for human beings in the Beginning when the Creator walked among us in a garden state in Eden. We brought death upon ourselves, along with the disease process that is Life’s way of unwinding forms it creates in the three-dimensional world of material existence that no longer serve a purpose. Our forms age and fail to give us freedom of movement at some point; and life is movement in chiropractic’s way of thinking. Death, then, is natural at this level. We fell from a much higher level where life in Eden was an experience of birth, life and ascension. That’s the alternative reality.

RESTORATION . . . THE TRUTH OF HEALING

The truth of healing, then, includes at its essential core purpose the restoration of man to an Edenic state of consciousness, a state of radiant life and health, and that was Bill’s point in making that declaration. There is even a Biblical reference to this restoration in the Book of Revelation, which I love reading from time to time just to remind myself of my mission and purpose as a physician.

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God our of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athrist of the fountain of the water of life freely. (Rev. 21: 2-6) 

We were all thirsty for truth back then. I was very thirsty for some truth, coming away as I was then from seven years in Catholic Seminary utterly disillusioned in my father’s and his father’s religion, where I had once asked my “spiritual adviser” the burning question in my heart: “If eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil brought death upon us, then why can’t we simply stop eating that fruit and live?” His answer was a real put-down: “Go study your Latin.”  Latin, of course, is a dead language, which was ironically appropriate for a fear-based and death-centered belief system. That was 1960. My answer came seven years later through Bill’s mouth: “We can stop eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and live!”  And he went on to describe how that was possible . . . and, more importantly, what eating of the fruit of that tree entails. Basically, judgement, which Bill called the only addiction there is. Think about it: how addicted we all have been to judgement of good and evil! “Alcohol is good. But alcoholism is bad. Sugar is good, but diabetes is bad. You won the lottery! That’s good. You spent all the money and are now broke. That’s bad.” Etc. But, then, that’s another subject matter. 

Bill’s most memorable declaration, however, is embodied in those words from John’s book: “Behold, I make all things new.” And that’s the promise Chiropractic re-focused for the healing field and for the world. That was Bill’s passionate mission in his life of service. “Behold, I make all things new.”  And he did just that, in his service and in his living. He brought his profession to the Fountain of Life and extended an irresistible invitation to drink from it by letting it pour out through each and every one of us who were willing to BE a fountain of living water ourselves for our patients and for our worlds.   

But first he had to wake people up so they could drink without drowning. He used to say shocking things so as to wake up his sleeping patients who would say to him that their suffering was, of course, God’s will. “Then get out of my office,” he would exclaim. “I wouldn’t want to change God’s will!” Bill wouldn’t let a single opportunity slip by to wake people up and turn them in the right direction. He once told me, when I felt my Catholic beliefs being challenged to the point where I had to let either them or him go, and I cried out “But, Bill, I am a Catholic!”—to which he replied without hesitation, “No you’re not! YOU are a Human Being made in the image and likeness of God!” How can one deny that truth? His words turned my world upside down . . . or rather me right side up. 

That’s what Chiropractic brought: a turn in the right direction. People don’t want to change. That’s what I’ve learned in my fifty years of service. The same passive state of consciousness prevails: “I broke it. You fix it. But don’t ask me to change the way I live my life.” And, if you wanted to stay in practice, you complied with this demand—and it is a demand, and we make this demand on every self-serving service we’ve put into place in our social, economic, religious, and governmental structures of governance by fear of consequences. As a people, we live our lives out of a consciousness of entitlement . . . and we get out of life exactly what we ask for and are entitled to: no more nor less than what we give into it. 

And—as the old Indian chief in the movie “Dances With Wolves” so eloquently ended his brief inputs into the tribe’s powwows—“That is all I have to say about that. We will talk again.” Until then, 

Here’s to your health and longevity,

Anthony Palombo, D.C.

Visit my HealingTones.org blog for inspired articles. This post is “The Body Electric, part 4: Ascension Harmonics. Enjoy!

 P.S. That picture of me is my” graduation picture from Chiropractic college. I was so serious about my new-found purpose and career in life.  

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