History of the Spine Tuner
The following is an excerpt from the book Secrets of
the Spine: the True Mind/Body Connection telling about the discovery of what was to become the
Spine Tuner.
Saturdays were usually rather special days. First of all, there were no patients to be seen. Secondly, all the stuff a house requires to maintain its appearance was banned from this day. Some great, wise individual once told me never work on Saturdays unless you absolutely have to. This was a day set aside for play. I had taken that saying to heart! After all I was the one who coined it.
Of all the rules I set down as I did my best to raise the children in my life, I think the only one they all appreciated was the Saturday-was-for-play one. Only in the last few years has that rule seemed to have been lost. Now that I am no longer spending two thirds of my life helping others, I have no office to run. I now have more time for everything in my life. Unfortunately, I don’t use it quite as efficiently as I did in the past. For some unexplained reason, Saturdays have now become the day to do all the running around. Why I’m doing this is beyond me. Oh for the good old days.
Twenty five years ago my daughter was only two. Every day for her was a play day. But on this particular Saturday I had cancelled the play and replaced it with “Seminar Saturday”... just another way of saying I was going to work all day teaching others how to be healthy and, of course, how to play. My daughter didn’t mind though, she was going to be busy playing with her mother.
So everybody was going to be playing but me. Perhaps this was the dominant thought as I woke up that day. That or something of a similar vibration must have been bouncing around in my head for, as I got out of bed, my mid-back decide to torque completely out of alignment. Pain shot everywhere. After a few minutes of doing everything I could to keep from crying, I slowly made my way into a standing position. In a somewhat crooked and hunched forward position, I managed to move without excruciating pain. The bathroom was my first destination for the night had been long. This posed a whole new set of problems which, with slow and deliberate moves, I managed to survive with only a few episodes of severe stabbing pain.
About this time I was beginning to realize that in less than two hours I was due to be on stage bouncing around giving others the motivation to change their lives. Their voices chorused through my head. I could hear them thinking, “So this is what you are offering us? No Thanks!” Fortunately my brain didn’t linger on that subject for long. Being somewhat practiced in problem solving, it began leaping to all the alternatives.
“I could cancel. No that won’t work. Too much has gone into preparing for today. Well I certainly can’t go like this. So what should I do?”
About this time I found my mind searching for someone or something to blame. “Why me? Why now?” and other similar questions began to take center stage. Problem was I couldn’t really find anyone to blame but myself. So once again that line of thinking ended rather quickly. Finding myself back in the problem solving mode and still as crooked as can be, I began to experiment with movement. Then I came up with the idea that perhaps if I could just move around a little, this would all go away.
I literally felt like throwing up and could hardly raise my head. All this from one little old vertebra in the middle of my back.I knew better, but I tried it anyway. My sixth or seventh thoracic vertebrae had jammed. The adjoining ribs were more than likely involved as well. The muscles, in order to protect the nerves from any further damage, had gone into spasm. My stomach which receives its nerve supply from that area was already tight and queasy. And the muscles in my neck which relate to the functioning of the stomach had gone all weak and spasmodic. I literally felt like throwing up and could hardly raise my head. All this from one little old vertebra in the middle of my back.
Knowing what was wrong didn’t help much. Here I was a young and healthy spinal expert, unable to move or help myself. I had called a couple of chiropractors that I had a close relationship with but they were not answering their phones. “Think!” I yelled at myself. There had to be something I was overlooking. What was it? I was running out of time.
I think I was on the verge of panic when my Golden Retriever came bounding into the room. Chelsea had a knack of looking as if she was smiling whenever she had her old chewed up tennis ball in her mouth. This day was no different. She looked at me with those amazing brown eyes of hers and smiled. A muted woof seeped out between teeth and ball. I looked down at her and said, “So you think this is funny do you? Actually you are probably right.”
With that thought, I too began to smile. From a broader perspective, this was rather humorous. As I finally began to mentally relax, I looked to Chelsea to thank her. Looking down at this dog, all of a sudden all I could focus on was the ball between her teeth.
Somewhere in that relaxing brain of mine an idea was taking shape, blossoming as if it had been sprinkled with Miracle Grow. Suddenly I knew what to do. Foraging through Chelsea’s corner I found two tennis balls. I elected not to use the one she had in her mouth. It was just a little too slimy for me. I then stuffed both of them into a sock I found lying near by. Socks were Chelsea’s next favorite thing to carry around.
As a chiropractor I knew that when a segment of the thoracic spine deviates, most of the time it goes in one specific direction. I had learned several manipulative approaches for this condition. The one that I had found to work the best was when I placed my hand on the involved area of my patient’s back and had them wrap their arms around their chests as I pushed on their arms and chest, forcing their back against my hand. This effectively placed the right degree of pressure on the affected thoracic vertebra causing it to return to a more normal positioning. My goal then was to simulate my hand with the two balls and hope that gravity and the push from my legs would be enough to move the vertebra as I lay on the balls.
It was awkward and because of the severe tightening of all the surrounding musculature, it was also fairly painful. But it worked! As soon as the vertebrae moved, my neck strengthened, my stomach relaxed, and the pain diminished.
This tool holds the potential of giving people the ability to care for themselves.All through the seminar I kept thinking about what I had accomplished. Over the following days, weeks, months and years, those thoughts turned to research and I suspect I could say development as well. Most of the patients I saw became part of the R&D team. We quickly realized that we had a tiger by the tail. This tool held the potential of giving people the ability of caring for themselves. As I learned more, this tool was modified and refined until I was finally satisfied that it was perfect. The folks on my research team began taking care of themselves.