I’ve enjoyed western movies since I was a child. I was especially enamored by watching the cowboys break a horse. A chiropractic book that I was reading recently mentioned “bucking” and it piqued my interest in the “bucking bronco.” In a few movies I saw, someone put a burr under the horse’s saddle as a joke. Even a broken horse, who knew its rider, would respond to the pain when the weight of the rider would dig the burr into its flesh. It was an old cowboy prank, a lot more dangerous than letting the air out of someone’s tires.
Bucking, in chiropractic, is the technical term describing the action of a person tensing up when a chiropractor is pressing on the spine to intoduce an adjustic thrust, particularly in the lumbar region. It is a natural, inborn reaction for the horse. But why do practice members do it? They know the chiropractor is not trying to hurt them. Sometimes practice members will actually become frustrated with themselves for “tensing up” for the adjustment.
The fact is that the practice member does it for the same reason that the horse does. It’s a natural, innate reaction. So why does it happen? More important, how can we stop it? We can prevent it by being as gentle as possible in the introduction of our force. It happens because the innate intelligence of the body really does not know that the chiropractor is trying to help, by adjusting vertebral subluxations. All it knows is that a force is being introduced into the spine and it is trying to protect you from that “invasive” force. Once that invasive force is introduced, the innate intelligence of the body will use it to correct the vertebral subluxation. Your educated brain knows that it is not going to do harm but it cannot communicate with your innate intelligence, and for a very good reason. Under most circumstances, the innate intelligence of your body knows better what to do than your educated brain. There is no need for communication from your educated brain to your innate intelligence. That’s why chiropractors correct vertebral subluxations only, remove interference to the expression of the innate intelligence and let it take over, to normalize function and do the healing. You see in this situation your innate intelligence does not know that the chiropractor is trying to help you and so it tenses up the muscles to prevent further injury to the body. That’s the reason why muscles tense up or go into spasm to start with. It’s an innate protective mechanism…the innate intelligence of the body trying to prevent further harm.
So what can be done about it? Under most circumstances we would say it’s not good to try to fool the innate intelligence of the body and we would be correct in that decision. But there are rare occasions when you need to overcome the expression of the innate intelligence of the body (the innate intelligence itself cannot be overcome). You need to overcome the innate breathing mechanism when you jump into a swimming pool. In the case of bucking, your body’s innate intellegence communicates to your educated brain the need to resist an external force (the chiropractor pushing on the spine.) The recipient of the adjustive thrust must fool the educated brain so it does not tense up the muscles. It may be done by letting out a deep breath or causing some other action to occur that overcomes the natural inclination to resist the chiropractor’s adjustive thrust. What are some of the ways in which you overcome that resistance by the practice member?
hey joe the problem with most chiropractors, especially most gonstead chiropractors (i am one), is that they adjust too damn forcefully. and many chiros don’t take to tension, they just thrust into slack. most thrusts i see are very jabby without proper reduction of slack. the way to stop the body’s defenses is to take out the slack all the way, not to a point of pain, but to the point where the bone won’t move any more. then instead of coming off the segment and thrusting thru, you just fall thru the segment with minimal force. my mentor richard a gohl in glendale, ca is 85 and still works 5 days a week, full spine, still going strong. taking out the slack, and using less force and letting your body weight do the job will usually allow the client to relax enuf to execute a thrust.
btw, the reason i mentioned dr. gohl is that by using less force it’s easier on the chiro’s body so you can practice longer with less injuries. dr. gohl who graduated in 1949 tells stories of bj’s group whiplashing the hell out of themselves with the old hio toggle recoil, not to mention their patients!
What works for me – and this is not the best for patient education – is to have the person deep in conversation about something that is important to them. And while I attempt to keep the conversation to items that pertain to better health & function for them, if it strays to something that they are interested in, vertebra just seem to “go with the flow.” They are more concerned about what they are talking about than tensing up.
A DC that I go to occasionally will tap the opposite side of my neck that is getting adjusted, which makes me focus on the tap and he gets the adjustment in on the opposite side.
Have them wiggle their toes or curl their little finger for distraction. Learned this at Life when trying in vain to get a patellar reflex. DD’s book mentions laying arms to the sides to prevent dorsal bucking. They at one time had a table they nicknamed the nose breaker because of severe bucking but I think it was a bifid table