So this point came for me believe it or not, 3 years into my chiropractor degree. I was in a gym doing a seated row with heavy weights; I remember looking to the side and I felt a major ‘twang’ in the top of my back and severe pain in the trapezius muscle. The pain from a nerve injury is felt not in the inflamed and injured nerve itself, but perceived to be in the superficial tissue of the muscle. A common misconception. Muscle is where internal pain is often felt, like a heart attack causing pain in the muscles on the arm. Anyway I was moving like a robot for a while, unable to turn my head.
10 days or so later I was booked to go on a Gonstead seminar with a friend of mine from university. Gonstead is a chiropractic system or technique from the USA for moving a carefully selected bone in a certain specific direction (which is found on the X-rays) so that it is in a correct position with the bones above and below. It is the most advanced and impressive practice that I have seen so far as a chiropractor and it blew my mind. It’s a bit like how dancing is the same thing, but different. For example you have ball room, ballet, Michael Jackson’s moon walk, salsa and so on; all dances but different principles. Chiropractic techniques are like this, all different; but all chiropractic.
So I was moving better at the seminar but still felt pain. I had seen a completely new way of adjusting the neck demonstrated called the Gonstead cervical chair adjustment. I asked a man who knew the adjustment to help us learn it.
He put his hands on me and said “ohhhh this neck isn’t very happy is it? Just here” he had his hand on the exact spot of my pain. He put me in position for the Gonstead cervical chair adjustment and ‘CLICK’.
I was in awe. The pain on my neck was instantly completely gone. Like it was vacuumed off my shoulder. I couldn’t believe it, I felt my face go hot as the sudden nerve release opened up the blood vessels and blood rushed into my face. The diameter of blood vessels like everything else in the body is controlled by the nerves. I just couldn’t believe what just happened or how it felt.
That man then said to me to make Gonstead my life’s practice and study it hard and master it and in doing so you will have so much fun and make a profound impact on your patient’s lives. And after how that adjustment had effected me I believed him.
I followed his advice and committed myself to the study of the most phenomenal chiropractic system that I have ever seen so far, Gonstead. I still learnt the other techniques that I have been exposed to as I believe the more skills that you have the better; but Gonstead became and still is my true passion.
Daniel O’Sullivan
Peterborough Chiropractor (Peterborough Chiropractic Health and Wellness Group)
