CHAPTER 1 -- The Beginnings

In 1895, the world had fewer than two billion people. One of them was David Daniel Palmer, who everyone called D.D. Palmer. He started a new type of health care that would change medicine forever. This new field was called chiropractic (a healing method that focuses on the spine and nervous system).

What made chiropractic special? It was the first alternative to regular medicine that actually worked well enough to compete with doctors.

How D.D. Palmer Discovered Chiropractic

D.D. Palmer was honest about how he came up with chiropractic. In his 1910 book "The Chiropractor," he wrote that his ideas came to him through spiritual inspiration (receiving knowledge through prayer or meditation). He said he received knowledge from "intelligence in the spiritual world."

Palmer wasn't limited by what science knew at the time. He believed in a Universal Intelligence (an organizing force that controls everything in nature) that controls everything in nature. He thought this same intelligence worked inside living things as "Innate Intelligence" (the body's inner wisdom that knows how to heal itself).

Here's what Palmer believed:

• Health comes when this Innate Intelligence flows freely through the body

• This intelligence uses energy to control matter (your physical body)

• When this energy gets blocked, you get sick

Before becoming a chiropractor, Palmer was a "magnetic healer" (a practitioner who used magnetic forces to promote healing). He understood how energy and magnetic forces work in our bodies and the world around us. His chiropractic treatments were his special way of working with these energy fields (invisible forces that surround and flow through all living things).

B.J. Palmer Builds on His Father's Work

Palmer's son, Bartlett Joshua Palmer (called B.J.), took over his father's work. B.J. developed chiropractic into such a powerful healing method that regular doctors saw it as a threat.

Both D.D. and B.J. Palmer were smart, forward-thinking men who were determined to help people. The whole world owes them a debt of thanks.

But they weren't perfect. This doesn't make them less great - it just means we need to understand them in the context of their time.

Think about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. They were brilliant leaders who founded America based on freedom and equality. But they also owned slaves, which we now know was wrong. If they lived today, would they own slaves? Of course not. Times and attitudes change.

The same is true for D.D. Palmer. If he were alive today, he would probably update some of his ideas based on what science has learned. He was never afraid to change his mind when he learned new things. He wrote his books on paper, not in stone.

B.J. Palmer's Message to Chiropractors

In his book "The Glory of Going On," B.J. Palmer told fellow chiropractors: "You have a SACRED TRUST. Guard it well." He warned them to keep chiropractic principles (basic beliefs and methods) pure and unmixed with other approaches.

But B.J. was also open-minded. He encouraged students to use their own thinking to solve problems.

B.J. loved new technology. He owned the first car in Davenport, Iowa. In 1922, he bought a radio station to spread the chiropractic message. He built new research tools and equipment. He wasn't afraid to try new things or advance chiropractic science.

Yet he never forgot the main principles his father taught him: chiropractic works by correcting interference (blockages or disruptions) to the vital energy forces controlled by Innate Intelligence.

Moving Forward While Honoring the Past

As we think about chiropractic in the 21st century, we need to:

• Respect the founders: Remember the brave work that D.D. and B.J. Palmer did and the amazing things they accomplished.

• Keep the basic principles: Hold onto the core ideas about Universal and Innate Intelligence and how intelligence works through matter using energy.

• Embrace new science: Thanks to advances in quantum physics (the study of energy and matter at the smallest level), we can now prove scientifically what the Palmers believed. Their original ideas about chiropractic fit perfectly with today's knowledge about energy fields, cell biology (the study of how cells work), and the mind-body connection (how thoughts and emotions affect physical health).

The basic principles they discovered work in all natural healing systems. Now we have the science to prove they were right all along.

CHAPTER 2 -- The Basic Ideas of Natural Healing

Throughout their lives, D.D. and B.J. Palmer kept improving their ideas about chiropractic. They tried new technologies and methods. But the basic foundation of natural healing never changed.

The main ideas were (and still are):

• Universal Intelligence exists - There's an organizing force that brings order to all matter (everything physical) and keeps it working

• All living things have Innate Intelligence - This inner wisdom adapts universal forces for use in the body

• Every living thing has ALL the intelligence it needs - Nothing is missing for maintaining life and health

• Health is the expression of Innate Intelligence - When intelligence flows freely through matter via energy, you have health

• Interference causes problems - When energy flow gets blocked, intelligence can't express itself fully, causing "dis-ease" (a state of imbalance, different from medical disease!)

Let's look at each of these ideas more closely.

Universal Intelligence

Our world isn't just random luck. Nothing in nature happens by accident.

Natural Healing starts with one main idea: Universal Intelligence exists in all matter and gives it all its properties (characteristics) and actions. This keeps everything in existence.

This isn't about blind faith or religion. It's based on observing the world around us. Look around you. Does it make sense that everything in the universe happened by chance?

Think about it:

• Is it luck that a bird's wing is perfectly designed for flight?

• Is it an accident that plant roots grow down into soil where they find water, while leaves grow up toward sunlight?

• If everything were random, wouldn't some plants grow their roots up and bury their leaves in dirt?

Intelligence clearly creates the natural "wonders" around us, just like human intelligence creates buildings and machines. But human intelligence didn't create the complex order of the universe - we don't even understand most of it! Something much greater had to do it. That "something" is what we call Universal Intelligence.

We don't know what it is, where it came from, or what its purpose might be. We just know it must exist, or nothing else would.

Is this Universal Intelligence the same as God? No one knows for sure. There's no way to "prove" God exists or describe God's characteristics. There's also no way to prove Universal Intelligence exists or describe its characteristics. So how can anyone say if they mean the same thing?

Some people believe God is the Source of Universal Intelligence. Others can accept Universal Intelligence without believing in God. Either way, through observation and reasoning, we know such intelligence must exist to prevent everything from falling into chaos (complete disorder).

During the age of technology, people criticized these ideas as "unscientific." What they really meant was that you couldn't prove the idea through experiments. Of course, you also can't prove that "all men are created equal" or that black holes (collapsed stars with gravity so strong that light can't escape) exist in space. Yet the first idea doesn't need proof, and the second was true even before we found proof.

The same is true for Universal Intelligence. It's a "truth" so basic that it goes beyond science and can only be reached through logical thinking.

Today, science is more open to these ideas. New areas like quantum physics recognize that logical reasoning is valid. Finally, scientists are accepting that Universal Intelligence must exist.

Natural Healers smile when "science" is only now "discovering" this idea. After all, the entire profession is built on this simple truth. Natural Healers understand there's order and intelligence in the whole universe. They also know this order and intelligence applies to every part of the universe, including the human body.

This leads to another main idea of Natural Healing: Living things have an inborn intelligence called Innate Intelligence.

Innate Intelligence

"Innate Intelligence" exists in every living thing, guiding it toward health.

When we talk about Innate Intelligence, we need to clarify what we mean by intelligence. We're not talking about education or the ability to learn things. People can go to school and learn computer programming or foreign languages. But this isn't what we mean by intelligence.

The intelligence we're talking about is the knowledge every living thing is born with. This knowledge allows it to adapt to its environment and survive.

If you put a plant on a windowsill, in a day or so it will turn its leaves toward the light. Turn the plant around, and in another day, it will again turn its leaves to get the light it needs.

The plant doesn't use logic to figure out it needs light. It doesn't decide to turn its leaves around. It isn't self-aware, and it doesn't "think." But the intelligence it has allows it to:

• Grow from a tiny seed to a full plant

• Send roots into soil to find water and food

• Search out and use light and air

• Transform these things into more leaves, roots, and seeds

• Create seeds that will blow in the wind to start new plants somewhere else

This isn't random action - it's intelligence. Not education, but inborn knowledge. Inner wisdom or Innate Intelligence.

But what is this intelligence? Where does it come from? How does it work? Nobody has definitive answers. Living things aren't just random collections of molecules (tiny particles that make up all matter) and atoms (even smaller subatomic particles that make up molecules). They're all organized into working systems that adapt to their environment. So we accept that there's an order to the body, which we call Innate Intelligence.

Like Universal Intelligence, we can't understand exactly what this intelligence is or how it works. We only know it exists.

Innate Intelligence controls a newborn baby's heart rate. It "tells" the baby how to eat, digest food, get rid of waste, develop white blood cells (infection-fighting cells) to fight infections, and communicate when it needs help. No one has to teach a baby these things.

But Innate Intelligence can only guide the child's internal functioning. It can't help the child manipulate (control) the environment or do more than the body allows. Just like a plant can't turn on a lamp if it needs more light, a baby can't walk to the refrigerator for a snack when hungry. That action requires training and education, not Innate Intelligence.

Every living thing has 100% of the Innate Intelligence it needs. You'll never see a plant that "knows" its roots need to grow down but doesn't also "know" its leaves need to grow up. Can you imagine a poor plant pushing both roots and leaves downward because it only had 50% of its Innate Intelligence?

By definition, Innate Intelligence is always normal, and it always functions normally. This means our bodies "know" exactly what they need and how to adapt to function best. If our health depended only on Innate Intelligence, we'd all be perfectly healthy. But other factors are at work.

A master carpenter might be an expert at building tables, but with his arm in a cast, he can't swing his hammer properly. Without the right tools, the table won't turn out well.

Your Innate Intelligence runs your body expertly, unless it's limited by lack of force (Energy) or problems with the tools (your physical body). Without these, you get less-than-normal functioning.

Since Innate Intelligence has the "expertise" to properly maintain the human body, Natural Healers don't try to fix that. They also don't focus on the "tools" - the body and organs. Instead, they work with the Innate Energy (or force) that provides the link between Innate Intelligence and your physical body.

Universal Forces and Innate Energy

The universe is filled with natural forms of energy. Scientists say the universe was created by a burst of energy that came before all matter. We can see energy at work all around us:

• Wind rushes through trees

• Water flows down mountains

• Lightning streaks through the sky

• Solar radiation heats our earth

• Gravity keeps planets in orbit and prevents us from flying off Earth as it speeds around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour

Most of the time, these forces coexist peacefully with all life. Sometimes, however, they show their power and can be destructive. Wind increases to hurricane strength and rips roofs off houses. Floods carry buildings away. Lightning starts fires.

This destruction can seem meaningless, so we talk about "Mother Nature going crazy." But scientists now understand that the destruction has its purpose in nature.

For example, a fire started by lightning is an efficient way to thin a forest. When a forest becomes overgrown, thick vegetation cuts off sunlight at ground level, making it impossible for new seedlings to grow. The "destruction" of a fire gives the new generation of trees the light and fertilizer it needs for the forest to survive.

When humans "manage" forests, they often put out naturally started fires. Then these same caretakers deliberately set fires to do the job the natural fire would have done. There's a purpose to fires, hurricanes, and floods. There's order to when they appear and intelligence in how they function.

Universal Intelligence "knows" that forests need thinning and uses available matter to do this. The link that lets intelligence use matter is energy, or Universal Forces.

For most of human history, we could only try to stay out of the way of these forces. In modern times, our educated minds have found ways to adapt them for useful purposes. We build wind-powered generators, hydroelectric plants, solar panels, and dams to harness these energy sources. We've even learned to use the electricity we see in lightning bolts.

Living things are like small versions of the universe. We've seen how they each have a portion of Universal Intelligence, called Innate Intelligence. They also have a "specialized" version of Universal Forces, which natural healers call Life Force or Energy.

Our Innate Intelligence takes the Universal Force of electricity and adapts it for useful purposes, just like our educated minds have adapted natural forces.

It's well known that the human body runs on electricity. Many medical testing machines record and measure the electrical signals generated by the brain for use in the body. There may be other innate forces at work in our bodies that we haven't identified yet, but electricity is the one we've proven exists.

Because Energy is adapted in the body by Innate Intelligence, it can never be destructive like "wild" Universal Forces. And since Energy is created and directed by Innate Intelligence, 100% of what each living thing needs is available.

Energy is required to make cells function according to the intelligence's directions. In nature, matter remains still until energy is applied. Air and water stay stagnant, and the inner structure of a tree stays stable - until energy is applied. Only then do changes occur in matter to cause motion and function.

It's the same process in the body. Innate Intelligence can't control matter without energy. Muscles can't expand or contract according to Innate Intelligence's instructions unless energy is present. Without Energy, the body stops functioning - stops living.

Innate Energy serves as the vital link that lets intelligence express itself through matter. Together, these three elements - Innate Intelligence, Energy, and Matter - make up the "Triune of Life," one of the most important concepts in natural healing.

The "energy" part of natural healing is the key concept. Today, we use more scientific terms like neurological functioning, bioelectrical currents, Life Force, the Source and energy "medicine." This field is growing in acceptance even among the most scientific researchers.

The importance of the neurological part of interference can't be underestimated. Natural healers speak about this concept often, and it is absolutely essential.

As natural healers we work with the subtle substance of the soul. We release the imprisoned impulse, the tiny flow of force that comes from the mind and flows over the nerves to the cells and brings them to life.

The Triune of Life

The Triune of Life = Innate Intelligence + Energy + Matter

According to natural healing philosophy, every living thing has:

• 100% of the Innate Intelligence it needs

• 100% of the Innate Force it needs

• A physical form (the third element of the Triune

To have perfect health, there must be 100% intelligence, 100% force, and 100% matter. All three elements must be present in the best quantity and quality. We've already seen that this is always true of the first two elements. However, our physical bodies are sometimes less than 100%. There may be flaws in them or problems with their ability to let intelligence express itself.

This means "perfect health" is relative for human beings. Each of us can only be as healthy as our physical bodies allow. Those born with a heart defect (a problem with the heart present from birth), for instance, can only be as healthy as their structure permits. We can maximize our potential.

People who have lost an arm can't regrow the limb, even when there's 100% intelligence and 100% energy. There are limitations built into the human body that can't be overcome by Innate Intelligence.

However, within the limits of our physical structure, our Innate Intelligence and Energy will work to maintain the highest level of health possible. Sometimes, that effort is blocked by interferences (disruptions) to normal energy transmission (sending of energy signals).

To see what kind of interference a body may experience, we need to understand how Innate Intelligence directs body parts through Energy.

Before we move on I want all my students to understand that there are other electrical energy systems which regulate the brain and nervous system. The oldest form of healing was discovered over 6,000 years ago in India. A thousand years before the Chinese discovered their system of acupuncture. 

Understanding Chakras and the brain. 

Chakras are energy centers in your body that have been recognized for thousands of years in Eastern medicine. The word "chakra" means "wheel" in Sanskrit (an ancient Indian language), representing spinning wheels of life force energy that run along your spine. This same energy is known by many names: chi (Chinese), ki (Japanese), prana (Hindu), or simply life force energy. These energy centers are invisible energy pathways or wireless energy fields (electromagnetic energy that surrounds us). Many natural healers believe the wireless energy fields affect the function of the brain and that interference in these fields are the underlying cause of all brain function and interference in the body, mind and spirit.

The brain generates electrical impulses (nerve signals) that activate individual cells and tell them what to do to adapt to the body's needs. Those impulses travel along a complex system of nerves connecting the brain to organs, tissues, glands, and cells.

Think of the nerve system as a thick rope made of many individual strands bundled together. When this nerve "rope" leaves the brain, it travels down the spine, protected by flexible bones. As it goes downward, sections of the rope separate and pass through small openings between spinal bones (vertebrae - the individual bones that make up your spine). Later, they separate further until each individual strand connects with its target.

Sometimes, vertebrae become subluxated This can interfere with the nerve and decrease or distort the normal flow of Energy through the body. The result is like putting a kink in a garden hose - water still flows through, but not at full strength.

When there are subluxations, they interfere with 100% expression of intelligence  and100% energy, and the body is said to be in "dis-ease." This shouldn't be confused with disease, which refers to specific conditions that medical doctors name, diagnose (identify), and treat.

In natural healing the term dis-ease refers to a situation where there's less than 100% expression of Innate Intelligence. Since everyone's body is different and every change can have many different effects, natural healers don't get involved in labeling conditions or trying to give drugs or therapy to treat symptoms (the warning signs of illness that patients feel or see).

They go to the root of the problem and work to restore the body's ability to reach 100% expression of its Innate Intelligence. They do this by finding and correcting blocks in energy flow. Once that flow is restored, the body will return to its natural drive for the best health possible.

The working of the Triune of Life - Innate Intelligence, Energy, and Matter - is the greatest accomplishment of Universal Intelligence. It would be ignorant and arrogant to think we could improve on its design.

Natural healers don't try to do that. Instead, they focus on letting that design function as it was meant to - with reduced interference.

Key Points:

• Universal Intelligence organizes all matter in the universe

• Innate Intelligence is the body's inner wisdom

• Innate Energy is the force that lets intelligence control matter

• When energy flow is blocked, health problems result

• Natural healers work to reduce and correct interference.

The Legal Battle

Until 1983, the American Medical Association (AMA) labeled chiropractic "an unscientific cult" (a group with strange beliefs) and banned its members from even associating with chiropractors. Finally, in 1976, a group of chiropractors took the AMA and other medical groups to court. They accused them of violating antitrust laws (laws that prevent monopolies) and conspiring (working together secretly) to destroy chiropractic.

The chiropractors showed evidence that the anti-chiropractic actions were mainly based on money. The AMA was afraid of losing income when millions of people switched from medical to chiropractic care.

In 1987, a federal judge ruled against the AMA. The judge found the AMA and several other organizations guilty of an unlawful conspiracy to "contain and eliminate the chiropractic profession." The judge noted that the "AMA had entered a long history of illegal behavior."

While the AMA could no longer openly forbid members to work with chiropractors, the ruling didn't stop them from using more subtle forms of anti-chiropractic practices. It reinforced the idea of chiropractic as a limited treatment approach, pushing it into smaller and smaller boxes until it was seen as only a possible alternative for treating low back pain in adults.

The Problems with Modern Medicine

While the AMA worked to "expose" chiropractic, scientists and the press became more open about exposing the risks and problems of medical treatments. Despite efforts to control the news media, reports surfaced about:

• Dangerous drugs

• Unnecessary surgeries

• Conflicts of interest (when researchers have financial reasons to promote certain treatments) in research

• Government cooperation with drug manufacturers

As these stories became more frequent, the drug industry increased its advertising and marketing campaigns. Billions of dollars were spent on print and broadcast media that were reluctant to risk losing money by "offending" their advertisers with negative news. Instead, news stories increasingly featured the latest so-called medical "miracles."

Still, it was impossible to hide the growing problems of medical errors and risks. Many negative statistics, reports, and articles made it into the news. These problems increased in frequency and severity as health care moved into the 21st century.

The Dangers of Modern Medicine

• 350,000 Americans die from medical errors annually

• 40 deaths per hour = 0.67 deaths per minute

• About 2 deaths every 3 minutes

• Medical errors are the 3rd leading cause of death in America

Beyond the Nervous System

It's now known that the nervous system is not the only communication system used by living things. Dr. Candace Pert has shown for decades that the nervous system is not the only communication system in the body. She detailed how the biochemical system functions as a circulating communication system outside the central nervous system.

Researchers have described the heart as another brain, and people at the HeartMath Institute have created many ways of enhancing it and, by doing so, the whole body-mind.

European researchers have demonstrated how the entire connective tissue system functions as a "connective tissue nervous system," which through its electrical properties helps the central nervous system heal itself - something the central nervous system is too slow to do on its own.

We have sufficient information on the body's basic rhythms and interconnectivity to understand and work from knowledge of how the linked systems of the body act together. This would be a vastly different use of the hands than is done in any other type of manual or medical care.

The ways in which sensory impressions come to our hands could, if we were settled enough within ourselves and took time to develop the skills, which is what this course will teach you to do, can tell us what might have been healthy for that person or what might become healthy someday.

As healers, if we can sense what a state of health would feel like in a particular client, we could work with them without interfering in their ongoing health process.

We need to work not only with the relationship between structure and function, body and mind, but individual to environment, personal to transpersonal. Our goal might be to carefully yet effectively encourage the body, via its own physics, into a remembrance and reinvention of its health. This is the reason we want as many people as possible to learn our system. We will train you to become a powerful natural healer so you can help as many people as possible obtain and sustain their maximum health potential.

Embryologists in Germany have, since the 1940s, been able to detect a rhythm that pulses through the embryo and fetus every 100 seconds - a pulse which they believe is a manifestation of what we would call innate intelligence.

Through clinical experience, I have noted reliably positive changes, some of which have seemed miraculous, when I allow that rhythm within myself to synchronize with that of patients. Even if, as natural healers, we simply learn how to sit each morning consciously engaging this rhythm through meditation would go a long way toward being able to find health both within ourselves and the patients we seek to serve.

The Major Premise and the Triune

At the foundation of the natural healing philosophy are the major premise and the Triune of Life. The major premise states: "Universal intelligence is in all matter and continually gives to it all its properties and actions." This is a beautiful statement and one which can be consciously perceived.

This isn't unique to chiropractic. D.D. Palmer studied the metaphysics of his day both with and apart from Dr. A.T. Still, the founder of osteopathy. For decades, chiropractors have been reluctant to admit the connection between the two men, especially reluctant to acknowledge that Palmer was a student of Still's. To do so doesn't diminish chiropractic one bit. Instead, it reconnects us with an important piece of our history.

Dr. Robert Fulford was an osteopathic physician considered by many in his profession, as well as among medical doctors, as their mentor. After a long career - he practiced up to the last week of his life, passing away at age 93 - he gave a keynote speech to the American Cranial Academy. The subject of his talk was "The Future of Osteopathy," which concluded with the warning that "energy healing is the future of medicine." Two days later, the good doctor passed away.

When someone visited Dr. Fulford's office, they would be greeted by a handmade sign on which he had written what he felt to be the key principle of health: "The human body is composed of complex streams of moving energy. When these energy streams become blocked or constricted, we lose the physical, emotional, and mental fluidity potentially available to us. If the blockage lasts long enough, the result is pain, discomfort, illness, and distress."

I value the sometimes overtly spiritual quality of D.D.'s writings and feel that we have impoverished ourselves as a profession by hiding from them. I draw great inspiration daily from his saying that "The purpose of chiropractic is to reunite God the spiritual with man the physical."

The Missing Piece

In recent years, we saw the explosive success of the book and film "The Secret." Many people's lives were impacted in a positive way by such books and movies. But often the results don't last long. There's a piece missing that short-circuits the process unless it's incorporated into "changing one's mind." I believe that the missing piece is natural health care.

Most of us were raised in families, churches, and other social communities where we were taught what - and even how - to think. Rather than exposing us to their values, people imposed them on us. No one's to blame here. This is how things are done in this world.

In the first seven years of life, we are all like little spiritual beings, effortlessly slipping into altered states, seeing "energy," talking with imaginary friends, and soaking up our world and sensory experiences like thirsty sponges. But not every belief we were exposed to was healthy for our nervous systems.

Dr. Andrew Newberg at the University of Pennsylvania has conducted studies showing that dogmatic, separatist thinking, especially when accompanied by anger, damages the brain. If this is not a form of interference, I don't know what is.

As we move further into the 21st century, we recognize that blockages or restrictions are not spinal but much deeper and exist in our Chakras, which become neurological. Many of the beliefs stirring up the most trouble in the world today date back to the Iron Age. While some claim "believing never hurt anyone," we see many beliefs played out that are not the least bit benign.

Dr. Bruce Lipton has demonstrated that when we repeat the same beliefs over and over, we become a closed system functioning on autopilot. He noted that taking a living system as divinely profound as the human organism and rendering it into a sophisticated sort of robot causes the brain to shrink in size and atrophy.

Functional MRI studies are now revealing that strong, inflexible beliefs, especially negative ones, do not make "neurological sense" to the brain. In response, it builds up tension in its emotional centers - which include the spinal cord - and causes the production of pain-producing chemicals, keeping a person in a sustained "fight or flight" neurological state.

We may read one self-help book after another, listen to one positive thinking motivator after another, and we change for a few days, weeks, even months. This doesn't make for long-term happiness.

When asked what makes people think what they believe is true, many respond that they "just feel it." Of course they do. The beliefs have become embedded into the emotional neurological centers, causing adverse nervous system changes and increasing the likelihood that they will continue fighting with anyone who doesn't agree with them.

The Molecules of Emotion

Many of us are familiar with neurobiologist Candace Pert, Ph.D., author of "Molecules of Emotion." She should have won the Nobel Prize in medicine in the early 1970s for her work in identifying the chemical cause of the "runner's high" - endorphins. Her later work demonstrated that these types of chemicals, called neuropeptides, were produced not only by the brain but in other parts of the body. She named these chemicals "molecules of emotion."

Suppose you were to win the lottery tonight. If that were to happen, a group of chemicals would be produced that would enable you to experience the elation worthy of a person who had just won a considerable sum of money. If you fell madly in love, your body would produce a different array of chemicals, and you would experience the intoxicating feeling we associate with romance. If you had a religious conversion experience, you might experience divine ecstasy if the right chemicals got triggered.

The molecules of emotion are like chemical "keys" that need to find the right shaped "locks" to produce a specific feeling. These "locks" are called receptor sites. The "keys" or emotional molecules must locate, as they circulate through the body, receptor sites on cells that are structurally suited to receive them.

If the receptor site has had its shape altered through mechanical or emotional stress, the molecules cannot bind with them. You can win the lottery, fall in love, and find God all on the same day, and what should be a profound experience will be minimized by the inability of these chemicals to find a "home."

Pert writes: "Memories and beliefs are stored not only in the brain, but in the network extending into the body, particularly in the receptors between nerves and bundles of cell bodies called ganglia, which are distributed not just in and near the spinal cord, but all the way out along nerve pathways to internal organs and the very surface of our skin.

"An element we are skipping in our discussion of practical applications for mind-body health is bodywork: the touch therapies of energy work, chiropractic, massage, acupuncture, acupressure and other modalities that include the body as a means of healing the mind and emotions. It is true that we do store some memory in the brain, but by far, the deeper, older messages are stored in the body and must be accessed through the body. Your body is your subconscious mind, and you cannot heal it by talking alone!"

At a research conference, Dr. Pert once said, "How we experience our world is in large part governed by the structure and function of our spine." The region with the largest population of receptor sites is the posterior portion of the spinal cord. Dr. Pert feels that this is the anatomical location of the subconscious mind.

Interference alters the function of the spine. Dysfunction of the spine causes lack of blood flow to the associated spinal cord and spinal nerve root tissues, inhibiting their function. This includes the receptor sites we are talking about. Interference alters their function in a negative manner, making it difficult for high-quality molecules of emotion to bind there, thus limiting one's experience of health, happiness, and wholeness.

This distorts our emotional experience of ourselves and our world, making it more stressful. Molehills become mountains. We shift our body function from safety and trust to defensiveness, misperceiving signs of threat where there are none. That is why interference represents a disease of perception.

Pert continues: "The body becomes the battlefield for the war games of the mind. All the unresolved thoughts and emotions, the negativity we hold onto, shows up in the body and makes us sick."

Joseph Campbell once said, "We must be willing to get rid of the life we have planned, to have the life that is awaiting us. The old skin must be shed before the new one can come." This is what happens every day in the greatest natural healing offices - hopefully, yours. Growth and transformation require a sacrifice, a shedding of old skin. Practice members commit to energy medicine as part of their lifestyle. They dive further into the life they have planned. We correct interference to their nervous systems and allow their bodies to work together as a dynamic whole. And our practice members meet - for the first time - the life that awaits them.

Energy medicine is a holistic science. Today we know that the three classically separated areas of neuroscience, endocrinology, and immunology, with their various organs - the brain, the glands, and the spleen, bone marrow, and lymph nodes - are joined to each other in a multidirectional network of communication, linked by information carriers known as neuropeptides.

I would like to speculate that "mental force" is the flow of information as it moves among the cells, organs, and systems of the body. The original source is the energy centers we call chakras. The health and integrity of our core, the central nervous system, permits this holistic information network to flourish. We can then see, right in front of our eyes, that there truly is an intelligence running things, what we as natural healers are privileged to intimately know as "innate intelligence."

Measuring Energy, Health and Wellness

One of the major hurdles that had to be overcome by wellness providers influencing the body's neurologic and wireless energy fields was the lack of instruments capable of detecting and measuring those fields. Although some sophisticated devices can detect electromagnetic energy in tiny quantities generated by the human body, quantifying subtle energy has been more difficult, particularly in offices.

Instead of measuring the energy emanations themselves, we normally rely on measuring the clinical outcomes of interventions. Using standard outcome measurement protocols such as Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) studies, it's possible to quantify the impact of corrections on the body's neurological systems.

This has already been done frequently - although primarily within the medical paradigm of disease treatment. Influencing energy fields through interventions such as chiropractic, qigong, acupuncture and acupressure, energy medicine, magnetic and light therapy, and therapeutic touch have been shown to have measurable impact on several specific health conditions, as well as general health-related quality of life.

HRQOL as Measurement of Wellness

The move toward measuring overall wellness and quality of life, as opposed to simply diagnosing diseases, is a fundamental shift in health care culture and one that's essential to understanding energy work as a means of energy healing.

On April 7, 1948, the World Health Organization established its definition of health as: "...a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."

The definition, which was considered radical in its time because it took a more holistic view of the term, is still in use today.

A more recent and expanded definition, from the Quality-of-Life Research Unit at the University of Toronto states that quality of life encompasses "the goodness and meaning in life, as well as people's happiness and well-being. From our perspective, the goal of quality-of-life study and its subsequent applications is to enable people to live quality lives - lives that are both meaningful and enjoyed."

In its ground-breaking report, "Measuring Healthy Days," the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that, despite the WHO definition, "...health in the U.S. has traditionally been measured narrowly and in the negative. What is measured is ill health in its severe manifestations, those which are verifiable through physical examination and other objective procedures or tests... Such traditional measures of morbidity and mortality provide information about the lowest levels of health, but they reveal little about other important aspects of an individual's or a community's level of health."

That's why, in recent years, health and wellness professionals have sought new ways to get a more complete measurement of an individual's total state of well-being, or quality of life.

The Full Circle

Key Points:

• Modern science supports ancient energy healing principles

• The body has multiple communication systems beyond just nerves

• Manipulation may be more about perception and energy than just bones and muscles

• Beliefs and emotions are stored throughout the body, not just the brain

• Energy medicine addresses the root cause of health problems

• Quality of life measurements show the effectiveness of natural healing

• Natural Healing and has returned to its original energy-based roots

CONCLUSION

The evolution of natural healing has been a remarkable journey. From energy medicine over 6,000 years ago to quantum physics-based wireless energy fields, have proven that its original principles were correct all along.

What We've Learned

Natural healing methods represent the future of health care. As more people become aware of the dangers of drugs and surgery, they're turning to safer, more effective alternatives.

Energy medicine, in particular, offers hope for addressing health problems at their deepest level - not just treating symptoms, but correcting the underlying energy imbalances that cause dis-ease.

The convergence of science and spirituality is opening new possibilities for healing that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. We're learning that consciousness, emotions, beliefs, and physical health are all connected through wireless energy fields that can be influenced by skilled practitioners.

Your Choice

You have a choice in your health care. You can continue to rely on a medical system that treats symptoms with dangerous drugs and invasive procedures, or you can choose natural healing approaches that work with your body's innate wisdom.

The evidence is clear: natural healing is safer, more effective, and addresses the root causes of health problems rather than just masking symptoms.

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Your body has amazing healing abilities. All it needs is the correction of interference and the restoration of proper energy flow. This is what natural healing provides.

The evolution of natural healing continues. As our understanding of energy, consciousness, and healing grows, so does our ability to help people achieve optimal health and wellness naturally.

The future of health care is energy medicine. The future is now.

Final Key Points:

• Natural healing is the safest and most effective approach to health

• Your body has incredible built-in healing abilities

• Energy medicine addresses root causes, not just symptoms

• The integration of science and spirituality is advancing healing

• You have the power to choose natural healing over medical intervention

• The evolution of natural healing continues to benefit humanity