Practice Article - August 2008

Website Assisted teaching aid is going to be the main topic at the joint World Federation
of Chiropractic and Chiropractic Colleges Conference in Beijing 2008. The videos you
are studying will be part of my presentation at the conference. Finally, the benefits of
being able to see adjustments being performed and getting up-close views of the action
is being considered by the powers that be.
Every time I speak at a convention, doctors come up to me and credit the videos for
their achieving a high level of adjusting and successfully treating patients. The
functional model has served them well they say; then usually relate how they get
referrals from the M.D.s in their town and maintain a busy practice. They thank me as if
forgetting how hard they worked under my mentorship.
The following is a summary of what I will present in Beijing in November. The Chinese
Manual Medicine Association will be there as well. I will report back as to what level
they have reached in the field of joint manipulation and drugless health care.

Title: A Case for Learning Chiropractic Technique Assisted by a Web-Based Lecture Series;
Standardizing Technique Principles and Practice Aspects
By: Leonard J. Faye D.C., F.C.C.S.S. (Can.) Hon.
www.ChiropracticMentor.com
United States of America
The case for learning chiropractic technique assisted by a web-based demonstration series is
based on the assumption a common, core manipulation curriculum, would result in the
standardization of the teaching and practice of Chiropractic. One of the major criticisms of
chiropractic practice is the lack of standardization. Practitioners range from the ridiculous to the
sublime, in the level of manipulation skills.
At www.chiropracticmentor.com, core manipulation courses are available in ten, one hour
videos. Instructors can be assigned a section or sections for use in the classroom, while lab
demonstrations would be reinforced by internet access for the students. Instructors come and
go, but the semester content would remain the same for the next instructor. A core minimum
standard would be set.
The basic fundamentals of learning a psycho motor skill will be discussed. Although they are
fundamentals known by various coaches world wide, most chiropractic students are not trained
or psychologically prepared for the large task at hand. The level of “Conscious Competency”
should be the minimum level of achievement for spinal, pelvic and extremity joint manipulation.
(Note: The terms Adjusting and Manipulation are used interchangeably). Learning complex

psychomotor skills is very difficult, frustrating and time consuming. Programs need to be
followed that can be graded and the early skills developed should continue to be practiced, with
each new semester. The present programs that teach systems, don’t allow the students to
develop a basic set of skills, such as the various types of dynamic, high velocity, low amplitude
thrusts that should continue from semester to semester.
A historical perspective will be presented from Dr. Faye’s personal experience, dating from 1956
when he entered CMCC up to the present time. In Canada, in the fifties, chiropractic students
had over 1200 hours of technique labs, over a four year period. Today, the average world wide
is less than half that amount. This deficiency needs to be supplemented, by students being able
to watch demonstrations on the internet, at home or in a study hall. The lack of time spent
learning technique has reduced the average skill level of our practitioners and many can’t
produce the response to the neurobiological mechanisms in their patients. Influencing these
mechanisms is what prevents us from gravitating to the self-limiting sprain/strain symptoms of
injured joints. This ultimately results in a very narrow scope of practice.
Over the years, since Dr. Faye started teaching in 1967, at the Anglo European Chiropractic
College, Dr. Faye has taught seminars at colleges or in college towns, all around the world.
One, Scandinavian college has adopted his web-based program as their Core Manipulation
Program. Each hour of the ten hours of video demonstrations is the content of one semester,
taught by a skilled instructor. For a small college, on a limited budget, it assures continuity of
presentations from semester to semester. The clinicians are very happy, because they know the
skills the student clinicians have mastered, to a conscious, competent level. No gap between
the classroom and the clinic. A student experiences a smooth transition to the clinic and gains
confidence in what was learned in the classroom. “I know this is one of the main reasons we
became skillful” a recent graduate wrote. An instructor said “the program became stabilized
when they went to the web-based, core program. The instructor deficiencies and biases were
eliminated. Everyone knew what everyone else was teaching. The students were not getting
conflicting and confusing information.” The techniques are generic (no cook-book systems)
and cover the classic chiropractic adjustments every Chiropractor should be able to perform in
practice.
The manipulations are related to restoring the biomechanical function of joints. Every
manipulation is a rotation in a negative or positive theta direction, or in translation along the
three orthogonal axes. This approach is consistent with the basic science information students
study in anatomy, physiology of joints and biomechanics. The old model of listing the position of
a vertebra or extremity was contrary to what students learned in the basic science program. The
result was the student needed to “believe” in a technique system and its’ co-relating dogma,
often called “Chiropractic Philosophy”. The more than three hundred systems to pick from, has
made the standardization of chiropractic technique and the clinical application, impossible.
Especially, since many chiropractors graduated with poor skills, they took private post graduate
courses that were some of the three hundred available.
The achievable goal of the web-based assistance to a college technique department is to have
graduating doctors that can provide chiropractic adjustments to the spinal, pelvic and extremity

joints, with the end-result of restoring joint mobility, reversing the inflammatory process and the
neurobiological mechanisms that allow a patient to regain their health.
The web-based video presentations will be demonstrated in real time; just the way an instructor
would learn the content and the students would be able to review the instructors’ lab
presentations.
The method has one, proven successful, college integration, that has been going on for three
years. When I was visiting as a guest lecturer, I saw the clinic students all at a conscious,
competent level. Male and female alike were confident in their skills. I personally had never
seen this before or anywhere else, since.
Psychomotor skills need to be seen repeated and practiced. Students that are notified, as to
what will be demonstrated on any given day, can watch the night before the class and have
some idea, as to what will be demonstrated the next day. The drawback for introducing this core
program into an existing college program is the inabilities of instructors to willingly learn the
content of the tapes. It also requires a very confident instructor, to have a video source that the
students can judge, whether or not, their instructor is highly skilled. Technique departments in
some colleges are like fiefdoms and not easily changed by deans and administrators. For
example, if the technique head is steeped in Gonstead’s, static-listing, oriented adjustments, it is
very difficult to get his or her department teaching manipulation based on restoring inter-
segmental, dysfunctional, ranges of motion around the three axes.
Demo: www.chiropracticmentor.com
Let’s unite our technique core programs, world-wide and achieve standardization of chiropractic,
clinical procedures. De-standardization occurred, when it became necessary to increase the
basic science and diagnostic content of the college programs, without having to increase the
students’ college program to five years.
I leave with this question in your mind. What is a chiropractor who can’t adjust at a professional
level of skill? Is it like graduating dentists that can’t drill out a decayed tooth and then fill it?
Web-based assistance to a technique program is a big part of the solution. However, the college
heads must decide that reversing this decline in the average chiropractors adjusting skill level,
by graduation day, is critical. The development of our profession depends on our mastery of the
clinical application of manipulation.
If Socrates asked 100 different chiropractors “What is an adjustment?” he should not get 100
different answers, as he would today.
College programs should not be isolated and fundamentally different. The advent of web-based
support programs can solve this standardization problem in our profession.

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