You walk into my chiropractic office with trepidation, having never been to a chiropractor. A friend was lifting firewood and something gave in his back. He couldn't stand up straight. He had immediate relief from chiropractic, but your medical doctor told you to go to physical therapy. You are conflicted.

I grew up a Jewish kid in a Catholic neighborhood much like Archie Bunker's on TV. I was an odd kid out. My parents faced the real possibility of hitler storming our shores to hand Jews the same fate as in Germany. They wanted normalcy and decency and did not have a shred of Bilbo Baggins in them. There was a strong directive for Jews to stick together and watch out for us. Nothing could be left to fate. The ax always felt overhead.

My caring parents defined my childhood, but a vibrant street life in front of our corner row house in suburban Philadelphia drew me toward a different world. My hate of Hebrew school pushed me further away while a profound lack of imagination tucked in a spirit I didn't know existed for a long drowsy sleep that I thought was to be my life. Being a kid was fun and then you became a boring adult.

You are nervous. You ask questions. "Will it hurt? Are you sure you can help me?" You regret having made this appointment.

I went to a fire-walk in Oregon in the mid-eighties, just to watch. The organizer asked us to roll up our pant legs. "The worst that can happen is you will burn your feet so badly you may never be able to walk again," he said. 

I watched some others stroll onto shining red coals as hot as a kiln. Unexpectedly a force from my belly propelled me forward and trancelike I walked across them without feeling a thing.

Your history focuses on a motorcycle accident you had a month ago. There was gravel on a curve and you slid out. You've had a stiff neck ever since.

When I was sixteen, my friend Charlie and I rented a small motorcycle. He was driving way too fast, me on the back. We crashed into a parked car and I was thrown across a grassy lawn and twirled about fifteen times before coming to a stop. A woman came out of a house and put a blanket over me and I quickly heard ambulance sirens, afraid to look at myself.

The ambulance attendant looked at my leg and whistled. "Boy, we're gonna need to do some sewing." I went into immediate shock and my whole body started shaking uncontrollably.

I review your history and do an exam. The pieces come together like a puzzle. I palpate your neck and find an area of inflammation. I take some x-rays to clarify details. 

The problem is pretty bad. The worst I've seen in a long time. I usually understate problems because it's important for you to visualize getting better. Your attitude is an important part of healing. You need to feel that you will heal. Twice I had patients that were frustrating to me because they weren't getting better. In both cases I said, "Do you really want to get better?" 

Both of them said, "Yes". They both came back next treatment and said that they thought about it and I was right and they didn't want to get better. Both of them started improving after that realization.

I underestimate your chances of feeling better immediately in case you're in the small group that doesn't. "There's an eighty percent chance you'll feel improved immediately," I say. It's more like ninety-five percent.

I had torn the skin off my Achilles tendon when it hit the curb when I was thrown off the cycle. I spent a week in the hospital. The doctors would told me that I would need a skin transplant taken from my thigh to cover the Achilles. 

I laid in my hospital bed for a week envisioning the skin growing back over the Achilles. It was my mantra before I knew what a mantra was. The doctors were amazed when the skin grew back.

Noting that you're nervous, I tell you about a non-force option where I just use pressure to treat you. We make a deal. If you don't like the normal force treatment, we'll never use force again. You agree. I have made this same deal with countless others and know the normal treatment won't be a problem. I ask where you grew up. You're starting to say "San Diego," when WAM BAM! I adjust your neck with karate like focus. Afterwards you can turn your neck left for the first time in a month.

My next patient has had a perfect day skiing, six inches of fresh powder. She crashed during the infamous one last run and amazingly wasn't hurt too badly but there's a pain between her shoulders that lasted all week. After analyzing her condition I walk over to treat her without the slightest idea what I will do. I know that the analysis I've done will join forces with my instinct and offer a solution. I am telling her a story about my son's kindergarten class when I feel the moment, and mid-sentence WAM BAM!

In 1971 I decided to hitchhike west for a summer vacation. After a seven thousand mile adventure, including an extemporaneous turn north to Fairbanks, I landed in Bellingham, WA. I was hiking in an alpine meadow near Mt. Baker when a wave passed over me in the form of a question. "Why go back?" In that mini-second I decided to stay in the west and never second-guessed it. So many of the significant moments in my life were unplanned and so obvious that it didn't seem to be a big deal. But their gargantuan personal significance is obvious in retrospect.

By 1975 I had taught school for a few years and knew I was supposed to do something else. But I had no idea what that was. The only thing I knew was that I would make a bad decision if the answer came from my mind. There needed to be an organic element. For two years I had taught Native American kids, and in many ways their culture taught me. I also taught at a small private school run by a psychic as well as subbing in inner city public schools.  

I decided to see if a suburban white kid from Philly could use a Native American technique and incorporate my variety of other life experiences into a Vision Quest. I pitched a tipi on Orcas Island and made a deal with myself to stay until I knew what to do. Out for a walk, I chanced upon a chiropractic office. I went inside and asked, "What is this place?" The chiropractor explained the basics and gave me a free treatment. It resonated with me. I asked, "How do you learn to do that?" Six months later I was in chiropractic school. Having a BS in Natural Science met all prerequisites.

Sometimes I wonder how much of life is fate. Was I born with my own manifest destiny? Or has it been a progression of random events that has altered my life course? My story has taken me to places I could not have imagined in my youth. An idealized version of me might feature a jazz player improvising in a hazy cloud of creativity, scoffing at normalcy. But in truth much of it has been routine. Then something came out of nowhere to change everything either subtly or dramatically. Did I choose such a life or did it choose me? It has been unlike anyone else’s that I know from my childhood.

Chiropractic is both an art and science. If ten people have the same condition they get ten different treatments. During a first treatment, the exam findings would float through me like some sort of ether. The patient would be on their side on the treatment table and I'd pull their lower arm toward me, often without knowing the specifics of what I was about to do. Just before I applied the force an unmistakable knowing came from my belly. This was a consolidation of the scientific findings from the exams and an instinct based on experience. I could count on it. A force similar to what propelled me in the fire-walk consolidated with a trust that the answer will come, like finding a life direction in the tipi, coalesced into WAM BAM!

In sixth grade I agonized over jumping off a high dive. I was afraid. I spent a preparatory day visualizing myself on the end of the board and jumping. The next day I stood on the high dive for a long time. The distance between water and me shrunk. Instead of jumping, much to my surprise, I dove in. I spent the rest of the day climbing the stairs and diving in

I was scared to death starting my first practice in North Idaho. What if people had problems I couldn't fix? I soon found that patients who came to me where supposed to. I could trust I had what I needed, even if I'd never seen anyone with a certain specific condition. My practice took off like a rocket, including needing a large staff.  One of my employees asked, "Don't you ever get worried that things will slow down and you'll be stuck with all this overhead?" I answered, "I can always go back to the tipi, that wasn't so bad."

I look back to my career and feel good that I can say that I tried my best with every one of the many thousands of patients I treated. I wasn't perfect. Not everyone got better. But they all got my best effort. I learned how important intent is. But I also learned that some greater source than me was doing the healing. I was a conduit. In the first year of practice I really wanted a guy with sciatica to get better. I used a lot of psychic energy to try to help him. I started getting sciatica myself. This taught me to try my best but leave the outcome to powers bigger than me.

Your low back pain has been constant for five years. You've tried many different practitioners with minimal success. Your medical doctor has said you need to live with the pain and nothing can be done. I bristle when I hear this. 

At Woodstock I stood up smoking a joint and saw kids along an impromptu aisle nearby on the muddy hill put their hands out to keep strangers from slipping. In that moment the wide schism between hippydom and the straight world disappeared. I decided to join the alternate reality of wild hair, bright colors and not having all the answers. My straight-thinking self shrunk to an alter ego that would make sure I didn't get too far out.

I feel competent in giving you a treatment and have given you daily exercises to make you a partner in the solution. I know that I may not make you pain free but it feels like failure if I can't. I realize that in a Star Trek like future everything I've done, as well as what traditional medicine does, may be antiquated. 

I do know how important attitude is. One patient had all but one vertebra in his spine fused from stress. He'd survived a nazi concentration camp by being a boxer to entertain the ss troops. I was able to help him and his attitude was terrific.

On my hitching odyssey I came eye to eye with a pack of wolves near Banff, maybe thirty feet away. I stared at them. They stared back and then casually walked away, as if to welcome me to a world beyond cement streets and a life of expectations.

What have I learned? 

1. Big lessons may come from that next hitching ride or my waitress. 

2. It's not always best to walk away from fire-walks. 

3. Just when I think I have answers, I'll find out I was wrong. 

4. Always try to keep learning and growing. 

5. Luck is better friends with those who want something for the right reasons.

 6. When the student is ready the teacher appears. 

7. Appreciation never hurts.