Practice Article – May 2008

May’s article is the continuation of Dr. Faye being interviewed by Greg Green, a Palmer
College of Chiropractic student.

(Re-printed from The Triune, the Official Student Newspaper of Palmer College of Chiropractic’s Florida
Campus)


GG: Tell me about Motion Palpation. Would you describe it as a technique, like
Gonstead? What makes Motion Palpation different than other techniques?
LF: This question is like putting a red flag in front of a bull. Motion Palpation is not a
technique system. I repeat, not a technique system. It gets classified as one by all the
colleges so that the students think it is just another system, and you need to choose
one, any one it doesn’t matter.
I used to tell my students that “they had to get used to swimming in a sea of
relativity.”
The long lecture on the components of the subluxation complex and the literature
that discussed those topics was the sea of relativity. By learning to examine your
patients as individuals to determine what was occurring with all of these so-called
components and the doctor could make rational therapeutic decisions. There are co-
relations between joint dysfunction and many symptoms. There are co-relations
between joint dysfunction and faulty locomotor coordination. There are co-relations
between joint dysfunction and neural facilitation and there is a co-relation between
spinal pathology and nerve compression symptoms.
My concept of a chiropractic doctor is one who assesses all of these health reducing
factors, along with the nutritional and psychological stressors and does not follow a
system blindly, like a disciple. Needless to say, the “systems” people did not agree with
me releasing doctors and leading them to the literature and some basic science facts.
For example, bones can’t be spun into place by a “specific” adjustment. Joints can
change their function and bones can have a new range of motion. Hence the atlas can’t
be adjusted, but the atlanto-occipital and atlanto-axial joints can be influenced by our
adjustments.
To get doctors and students in touch with all these discussions I had to form MPI in
the late 70s and present seminars in all the college towns. Unfortunately I needed to
piggyback off of Dr. Henry Gillet’s reputation in order to get anyone to attend and listen
to me. He was known for teaching Motion Palpation. I should have renamed the
seminars “The Dynamic Concepts of Chiropractic.” Then it would have been more
difficult to label it a “technique system.”
Since we [The Motion Palpation Institute] have as one of our concepts, that the most
fixated joint in the closed kinematic system requires the most compensatory adaptation;
it is best to adjust this dysfunction first and observe the changes in the whole system.
This can appear to be a technique. Since this “Major” fixation varies so much in its
location, one has to palpate to find it.
The inaccuracy of palpation leads to a lot of trial and error and multiple vis its. The
intra-examiner reliability is quite good, so as individuals we can learn to recognize the
palpation feeling of the significant motion palpation findings. However, motion palpation

is only helpful in attempting to get your adjustments around the correct axes of rotation.
It provides lines of drive needed for freeing up the motion lost in a motion unit. We
demonstrate the chiropractic adjustment as being specifically around one axis or with
multiple axes, which address coupled movements.
We have motion studies that confirm joints can be hypomobile and studies that show
manipulation/adjustments cause an increase in the ranges of motion. Duh! What is the
problem with looking for hypomobility?
Static x-rays can’t show it. So how can we determine what to adjust from a static
picture?
If it is tilted and rotated does that mean it is fixated? NO.
No system can deal with all the complexities of a human patient. A holistic approach
is our strength and I am proposing we need to become de-systematized and more
comfortable examining, diagnosing and treating all the stress factors in our patients.
The core: being able to deliver adjustments that restore function in all the lost ranges of
motion in a motion unit and the locomotor system overall.
On the website www.ChiropracticMentor.com you can see the relationship between
the palpation of lost motion and the choosing of the correct technique to restore that
movement. The adjustment is about changing the biomechanics first, and the
neurological effects change after.
Cracking joints that are already mobile is irrational. Leaving joints partially adjusted
is irrational. We try to avoid irrational behavior; that is our system.
GG: You’ve touched on a major component of the curriculum at many chiropractic
colleges: listings, and x-ray line drawing analysis. At Palmer Homecoming here in
Florida you mentioned you mentioned a personal investigation you conducted
concerning line drawings. Would you care to elaborate for the Triune readers?
LF: To answer this question, imagine my predicament in England in 1963; I was
merrily rolling along in practice seeing about 75 patients a day. Everyone had been x-
rayed and adjusted according to the listing arrived at by the marking system I was
using. Then I was lucky enough to see Dr. Fred Illi’s motion x-ray studies of before and
after manipulation and patient responses. That same weekend, I heard Dr. Henry Gillet
explain a method of palpation to aid in finding joint dysfunction.
When I got back to England, I called the patients that I had discharged as symptom
free and asked them to drop in and let me take one post treatment radiograph for a
research project.
About fifty patients responded. 12% had better listings and 67% had worse listings
and the rest looked the same. Wow! I thought Illi and Gillet had discovered a very
important piece of information.
A Danish student for his thesis for graduating from AECC, did a much bigger sample
of Gonstead’s marking system and patients of Danish chiropractors using the Gonstead
method. His results were very similar. Proving the Gonstead adjustments were the
cause of the results.
I deducted the manipulations I was performing were getting results, but not for the
reason I thought, at the time. I stopped taking x-rays to find the listings that I proved
were not significant. My new method of deciding when, where, how and how often,
became the assessment for the adjustment. I felt the hypomobility and the patient felt a

pain at the end range that was relieved as soon as I released the end-feel pressure. I
called this the pain response of the manipulable lesion. (If it is a lesion).
On corresponding with Dr. Adrian Grice at the time, he started to do x-ray studies
with the patient leaning to the left and then to the right. He demonstrated the
hypomobilities and typed the patterns that were visualized as type one, two, etc. His
papers were published in the Canadian Chiropractic Journal in the 70’s.
The listings actually limited me from attending to the faults in the patients’ complete,
closed kinematic, locomotor system. Personally, I felt literally released from following a
system and instead could start thinking my way though a patient’s problems. I became
a much smoother adjuster, with less force and very few, sore reactions to a
manipulation.
GG: So the paradigm shift for you took place in England after that serendipitous
weekend with Illi and Gillet, but when did you endeavor to bring the message to
chiropractic at large? What kind of resistance did you meet when you did?
LF: In the late 60’s I was sitting on the banks of the Seine River in Paris with another
young chiropractor who practiced the Dynamic Principles type of practice. We
fantasized; what Chiropractic could really be if all the colleges in the USA made the
paradigm shift and the American public actually got information that was rational and
not the “Spine in line feel fine.” That was advertising the concept? That chiropractors
re-aligned, mis-aligned spines?
My Belgian colleague said to me, “Unless you go back, who is going to let them
know?” I was already teaching part time at the AECC in Bournemouth, England. He
was aware of the Subluxation Complex Model I was teaching that reflected the Dynamic
Principles.
That incidence planted the seed and when we decided to leave England in 1975, I
got a job at CMCC as a clinician. I was supposed to get a class of third year students,
but that didn’t happen. I started to teach in the intern’s room in the evening. The result
was a student petition asking for my course to be put into the next semester. SOT was
dropped and I was inserted.
I was warmly received by the students that wanted to aspire to a high level of
competency and hated by those that wanted to follow a system and believed the
“Subluxation” theory of disease. That was in 1976 and nothing much has changed.
Lots have tackled the job of becoming comfortable in the sea of relativity and others
take the traditional route.
I used to get upset and angry at the situation, but on reflection I realized that I had
helped many very successful doctors stay in Chiropractic when they realized that it had
subsidence. Many of our researchers today got fired up by my MPI Seminar, Saturday
morning introduction lecture.
The lecture I presented at your college was boycotted by the traditionalists. The
students that wanted to read references and comprehend how we can provide health
care in a rational model stayed and listened and I hope asked important questions of
themselves and what they believe.
Before the dinner on the Saturday night, one student told me “It’s just a matter of
learning to sell adjustments and the philosophy.” I accept he is not my type of
chiropractor and I like to deal with the other end of the learning scale.

The sad thing is that medicine and physiotherapy is recognizing the relationship
between biomechanical function, manipulation, inflammation, stress, and the
neurobiological mechanisms involved. We are losing our position as the forefathers of
C.A.M. and we are letting others catch up. In the meantime, we stay divided, instead of
recognizing the Palmers were the best there was in 1895 to 1940. They are our history,
but because of science, we need to ask “Who Moved My Cheese?”


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