A while back a question was put to me by a young student on the internet. Actually, the question was two-fold. First, he wanted to know about office lending libraries, were they straight and were they worth the expense. The second aspect of the question related to educating patients about vaccinations so they could have a balanced perspective.
Both answers are related to our objective. The first part of the question, regarding lending libraries being straight, of course depends upon what type of books, tapes and periodicals you have in your lending library. The number of books that could make up a straight chiropractic lending library are limited. In fact, besides Chiropractic Philosophy and Enhance Your Life Experience, there is not much else that explains straight chiropractic. The Green Books would probably confuse more people than educate. If you add other books on “health” issues to your lending library, you really are mixing those things with chiropractic even though they may contain valuable information. Remember, other things are not necessarily bad, they just are not chiropractic. Because they are good, some chiropractors may choose to mix other things that are not inconsistent with our philosophy. It is still mixing. A natural food cookbook in your lending library would be an example. In defining chiropractic by our objective we have excluded some things that are good. We do not necessarily choose to do everything that is good, just one good thing, correct vertebral subluxation.
Of course, there are numerous ramifications relative to this question. Part of the straight chiropractic goal is to educate patients. That is not considered to be part of the actual practice of straight chiropractic, but it should be the desire of the straight chiropractor. Remember, our objective is to correct vertebral subluxations to allow the innate intelligence of the body to be expressed more fully. With that definition, we would conclude that we do not need to educate our patients and, in fact, educating patients to the chiropractic philosophy or to the greater philosophy of above-down, inside-out is practicing something other than the pure chiropractic objective. Now, very few straight chiropractors would agree that all we should do is bring a patient in, lay them on the table, check and adjust them and never share the philosophy. Yet our definition, by objective, does not take into consideration educating patients. So we must admit that either we all “mix” patient education with the chiropractic objective, or patient education is not mixing. Since I do a considerable amount of patient education in my office, I obviously believe it is consistent with our chiropractic objective.
It seems to me, anything that better explains the ADIO philosophy and gives people a better understanding of why they should live their lives enabling the innate intelligence to better run the body and hence, have subluxations corrected, while not our objective, would be consistent with it and acceptable to the straight chiropractor. In other words, practicing chiropractic means doing one thing. Explaining the importance of having that done may involve a number of things and that creates a problem. There are some things that are definitely straight chiropractic, some that are definitely not, and others that are questionable. I obviously cannot present a complete list of these but perhaps some guidelines would be helpful.
1. If it involves a medical procedure, it is not chiropractic. It may also involve a health issue. Chiropractors need to be careful in touching upon health issues that involve medicine, both from a legal (malpractice) and a philosophical standpoint. An example of this relates to the second aspect of the student’s question of vaccination. If we are doing our job in educating people, they can make their own decisions regarding vaccination. If we are not doing our job, shame on us. There is no alternative. Our desire is to teach people the ADIO world and life viewpoint so they are able to make their own decisions in all aspects of life, not tell them how to live their lives.
2. Does the information take the person in a direction of living a more autonomous, innately-directed life or will they become dependent upon the chiropractor or some other authority for their life, health or well-being? for example, teaching patients to listen to their body’s needs in the area of exercise makes them autonomous. Giving people a list of exercises to do makes them dependent on you, their trainer/chiropractor.
3. Is the information being shared consistent with an ADIO world and life viewpoint? There are procedures and practices in this world that, while helpful to some people on some occasions, are not consistent with an ADIO viewpoint. Certain meditation and relaxation techniques, for example, may help some people with stress but they are therapeutic and not consistent with our chiropractic philosophy.
4. Does it move the individual toward a greater understanding and appreciation of the chiropractic objective, does it move them away, or is it totally neutral? If it gives them a greater understanding it can be acceptable even though it is not straight chiropractic. For example, I have produced a few audio tapes that discuss the ADIO viewpoint of life. They are not about correcting vertebral subluxation to enable the innate intelligence to be better expressed, but people who understand these tapes would be more receptive to straight chiropractic. The first nine or so chapters of my book, Enhance Your Life Experience do not even mention the word “chiropractic,” but they do lay the groundwork for an understanding of why having your spine checked on a regular basis is important. This type of information is acceptable, albeit quite rare.
Information that moves people away from the chiropractic objective should be avoided. Prescribed exercise programs, diets and most nutritional information, while supposedly “health-oriented,” would fall into this category. Here is the irony. Anti-medical information, like anti-vaccination or anti-drug literature, can move people away from an understanding of chiropractic. By taking a position against medicine or medical procedures we may be positioning chiropractic as an alternative or substitute for the practice of medicine, which in the long run can defeat the goal of chiropractic as a non-duplicating, non-alternative approach to increased well being and improved potential.
The last category, neutral information, is not easily described. I am not sure that anything is totally neutral but I create this category because I do not want to presume that there is not something that is neutral. The chiropractor would be wary of anything in this category. If we desire to take every opportunity to educate people, then why would we want anything neutral in the office? A newspaper in the waiting room may be neutral and the World Series on the office television may be as well, but the question here involved lending libraries. A library is for the purpose of educating people and all education is either ADIO or outside-in.
We all do things, say things, and have things in our office that do not directly related to correcting vertebral subluxations to enable the innate intelligence of the body to better express itself. We must be wary of those things and seriously consider their value in achieving our practice objective and our personal mission (educating people). Any chiropractic information in a lending library is valuable. As time goes on, those involved in straight chiropractic should produce sufficient educational material that points people in the direction of our philosophy. Then our offices’ lending libraries can be full of straight chiropractic material to truly educate the recipients of chiropractic care and the general public. v14n2