Worked in a Woo-woo clinic

Just want to share my experience working in a "alternative" healing clinic.

The clinic is located in Hawaii and that's all I want to say about it due to still having friends there and not wanting to hurt any feelings. (Which I think is remote since I don't think anyone from the clinic read these forums.)

I started working at my karate school in 1990 which is part of said clinic. I was only a karate instructor till a family crisis ,invloving money, would have forced me to leave the school. The heads of the school and clinic decided to have me help in the clinic and teach karate. Doing this would increase my pay and ,since I was into the woo-woo concepts of alternative healing, would be a great learn experience.

The routine for the clinic was that liitle before 8am people would start arriving for a four session of excerise and healing. At excatly 8, everyone would start there excerises together and then staff would start calling out people for specific treatments. My job was the first treatment which was to do a hip alignment procedure. I would tie the persons legs above the knees and with the legs bent would bring the person's legs to his/hers chest. This was to align the hip since, according to the woo, all ailments were due to our hips being mis-aligned and causing our spine to be stressed and such and such. Once they saw me, the person would continue onto the other treatments and excerises. These were excerises to help promote the hip alignment I did, a form of Qi-Gong, a moment to recieve Ki energy, and a treatment called Trianglar Healing. At the end of the fours, we would break for the afternoon then around 4pm the evening sessions would start. I didn't have to do the evening sessions since this is when I taught karate.

I worked in the clinic for about two years when I finally quit due to being over worked. Even after leaving, I still believed in all the woo-woo healing claims and supported the school/clinic but not has much has before. It wasn't till I moved from Hawaii to Arizona did I start to have misgivings about what I was believing. It was in great part to this site did I start to question or rather allow the part of me that doubted to finally be heard. When I was at the clinic, I supressed any doubts about whether or not the treatments were really helping or doing anything for that matter. I believed cause I really wanted to see some of the more stricken people get better. I didn't want to doubt cause that might "jinx" the treatments. But doubt was always there and with it came questions. "Why isn't it working?" "Did it work?" "What? Ki energy atoms are smaller than normal atoms?" (That last one was in response to an explaintion has to why Ki energy hasn't been seen by scientist yet.)

So, like I said earlier, thanks to this site I took a hard look at my beliefs and found that there was nothing to prove any of the claims of healing beyond the placebo effect. I learned that the excuses that were being used at the clinic were being used by all practitioners of alternative healing/medicines. I place more trust in "western" medicine now than treatments with results that are word of mouth. And its always western medicine to the rescue when the other "treatments" don't work. Go figure.

Sorry for the long post. Just wanted to share.
There's more but I think this is long enough and I don't want to bore everyone. Till later...

The routine for the clinic was that liitle before 8am people would start arriving for a four session of excerise and healing. At excatly 8, everyone would start there excerises together and then staff would start calling out people for specific treatments. My job was the first treatment which was to do a hip alignment procedure. I would tie the persons legs above the knees and with the legs bent would bring the person's legs to his/hers chest. This was to align the hip since, according to the woo, all ailments were due to our hips being mis-aligned and causing our spine to be stressed and such and such. Once they saw me, the person would continue onto the other treatments and excerises. These were excerises to help promote the hip alignment I did, a form of Qi-Gong, a moment to recieve Ki energy, and a treatment called Trianglar Healing. At the end of the fours, we would break for the afternoon then around 4pm the evening sessions would start. I didn't have to do the evening sessions since this is when I taught karate.

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Thanks for sharing your experiences with us. It just goes to show the dangers of these types of clinics. By carrying out this procedure they would not realign the hips, all they would do is stretch the muscles of the lower back and hip flexor muscles. Hip misalignment is much more complex than this, but common causes are accidents, natrual leg length discrepancy, an apparent leg length discrepancy due to a muscle imbalance around the hip (usually caused by a weak glutues medius muscle, which is the main hip abbductor), this then throws out the whole muscular skeletal chain. With weak hip muscles, there are also usually weak abdominal and spinal muscle weakness, this can cause what is known as lordosis, forward tilt of the pelvis, and the knees and ankles can also be affected. The only way to sort this out is to see a good consultant who deals with muscular skeletal conditions, and a phsysiotherapist who can train you to strengthen the weak muscles and stretch the tight ones.

It is true that a hip imbalance can cause problems with the spine, but this usually happens because the person adapts an abnormal walking pattern (gait), there are many names for this, but a common one is known as the Trendelenburg gait. I am sure if you mentioned this to any of them, they would not have a clue what you were talking about.

Hope you are happier in your next job.

Andrea said:

Hope you are happier in your next job.

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I am happier, thank you.

That's what bothers me about the clinic I worked at. There was no certification of any kind that would be consindered legitimate. No training in first aid or CPR and ,though one of the heads of the school and clinic was a registered nurse, no real medical personel. Looking back, I'm sadden by the fact that I use to believe in all that hogwash. Guess its better to become skeptical latter in life than to hold onto beliefs that may cause harm to myself or, more importantly, to others.