We live in what is often called “the age of information”. In recent decades the United States has been making the transition from a major producer of manufactured goods to a major provider of information as the primary national product.
The healing arts with all of its specialties and sub-specialties has also been experiencing a transformation. Every profession is using what is called “energy medicine” in day to day practice. Each uses some form of energy producing device in one way or another.
Lasers and light therapy are being used for everything from eye surgery to killing toe nail fungus. Likewise ultrasound is used in imaging as well as blasting away kidney and gall stones. Other energy producing devices are used to facilitate a healing response, stimulate the immune system and relieve pain. These are only a few applications of energy in health care. New ones are being discovered and implemented every day.
Information is energy directed by human attention and intention. We experience it in our numerous levels of consciousness.
Dr. Leslie Feinberg is a pioneer in what he calls “Informational Medicine.” His quest has taken him into realms of science and human experience that make most people’s head spin: Quantum Physics and Quantum Mechanics, the time space continuum, the nature of matter and energy, thought and consciousness.
What in the world has this got to do with Chiropractic?
Perhaps everything — if you subscribe to the idea that the primary role of Chiropractic is to correct the cause of DIS-EASE.
Interestingly, our profession’s founders D.D and B.J. Palmer had a great awareness of what we are now calling “energy and informational medicine.”
D.D. wrote of the importance of the existence of “quality interference” over and above that of ”quantity interference” in the cause and effect relationship between health and disease. “Quality Interference” is in the realm of consciousness, while “quantity interference” is in the realm of the physical, as in the vertebral subluxation complex.
B.J. said that “we often must adjust the mind, before we adjust the spine.” I believe that If D.D. and B.J. were alive today, geniuses that they were, they would be very interested in Dr. Leslie Feinberg’s NEURO MODULATION TECHNIQUE. I think that they might see Dr. Feinberg’s work as dealing with the ultimate cause of DIS-EASE.
KOCH: Les, NMT is the most unusual Chiropractic methodology I have ever experienced. It is different on every level in that it is non mechanistic. Its language is different, but, in the final analysis, your ultimate objective in your application of NMT is the same as that of any other Chiropractic procedure. The same to a point, but you go beyond the usual objectives of conventional Chiropractic. Please give us your explanation of what NMT is about.
FEINBERG: Let me give you a brief personal background. I graduated From Western States College of Chiropractic in 1979. While there I studied traditional Chiropractic technique. I was president of the Gonstead Club and I studied AK extensively. They were my primary techniques in practice and I still use them when the traditional approach is called for. So let me be clear, I recognize and understand the importance of the Vertebral subluxation Complex, but I found a way to identify, and treat a level of interference that supersedes it. It is interference on an informational level, the “quality interference” you mentioned earlier and that which D.D. and B.J. understood and spoke of in their writing.
KOCH: Energy and information have to be at the top of the hierarchy in terms of importance. They are truly elemental. It is easy to imagine how any aberration of them can only lead to an unhealthy state.
FEINBERG: That’s correct, Bill. D.D. spoke of significant contributing factors of dis-ease such as trauma, toxins and autosuggestion. A contemporary definition of ‘autosuggestion’ would include things such as invalid thoughts, emotions, and memories that are stuck in the deepest recesses of our conscious and sub-conscious mind. NMT (generically) refers to these as “Informational faults.” These faults misdirect the mind-body and cause confusion that is the informational basis of disease.
NMT evaluates the impact of physical, chemical and mental/emotional factors or belief systems that are stressing the human organism.
NMT procedures create heightened awareness of informational fault programming errors that sabotage health. The mind-body is innately self-correcting. Once more accurate self-awareness exists in the system, the mind-body naturally releases illness behavior and makes physiological choices that lead to healing.
KOCH: Is it correct then to say that the objective of NMT is to transform the individual energetic and informational environment from one that fosters pain and ill health to one that is conducive to healing and wellness? The question is how do you do it? It isn’t psychotherapy or psychiatry, so what is it really?
FEINBERG: NMT began when I discovered that I could create condition specific sets of questions to reveal illness producing informational confusion and related corrective statements to retrain the mind-body to more efficient function. The first one I identified was the sensory motor pathway. The patient was my office manager who was having a persistent and very painful rotator cuff condition of her shoulder. I decided to ask specific questions of the body, informed by my understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the neuromusculoskeletal system. I was able to identify sensory end organ signaling, CNS processing error, unbalanced motor innervations that were responsible for the condition. I then re-directed the mind-body to be aware of these errors and to reset its sensory perceptions and motor responses. The result was instantaneous relief of pain and restoration of balanced strength. I recognized then that the same kind of self-survey and retraining of function could be applied to any health issue.
KOCH: I understand that. We all have cases that do not respond, ones which in spite of our best efforts constantly re-subluxate for no apparent reason. The answer in these cases does not lie in more and adjustments. The solution is in uncovering a deeper underlying cause. It seems that you have developed a system to do that which has eluded the rest of us. So what is it that you do?
FEINBERG: Yes, if the problem is one of what DD and BJ called quality interference at the brain level, focusing on only the spinal level can’t get to the root problem. Through a series of questions organized into what we call NMT pathways, and answered directly by the body, not verbally but through muscle testing, we can uncover incorrect mind-body perceptions that cause it to choose illness producing behavior. One example is allergy or autoimmune inflammation, clearly illnesses the body inflicts on itself through bad physiological choices.
I have now established 90 different pathways attached to a vast array of diseases and conditions. There are also many crossovers from one pathway to another. You have to follow where it takes you.
KOCH: That makes sense. It is a system of analysis and re-training, not a cook book.
FEINBERG: That’s right. The NMT practitioner has this broad set of tools, our system of NMT pathways and forms that serve as a template for the NMT session and each session unfolds according to the particular body responses to our questions, guiding each session to address the issues the body recognizes as highest priority in the context of the presenting complaint. I have collaborated with a talented NMT practitioner who is also a computer programmer and we have recently released a computerized system, the NMT-Treeview software that makes this whole process very fast and efficient.
KOCH: It sounds like a very sophisticated flow chart:
FEINBERG: Yes, Bill that’s just what it is.
KOCH: Les, I know that you have experienced consistent success with a variety of cases and conditions that defy conventional wisdom. Things like anaphylactic reactions, dental cavitations, and other degenerative conditions. You have proof in the form of hard evidence of your results. I would suggest that anyone interested in knowing more about what NMT has to offer, that they visit your website and then perhaps talk to you. All they need to do is put aside their preconceived ideas of how health and healing works and open their mind.