When I finished my graduate diploma in animal chiropractic about 20 years ago, many of us went home and bought a tuning fork. Yep, we had an idea that a tuning fork could set up a frequency in the body to help us look for bone problems. Long story short, it didn’t live up to our expectations and it got relegated to my odds and ends drawer indefinitely.
Myofascial Kinetic lines
Fast forward 2019, at our recent Annual Veterinary Conference, we were most fortunate to have had Dr Rikke Schultz, a Danish veterinarian present a series of lectures and a workshop about myofascial kinetic lines. In a nutshell, Dr Schultz and her Scandinavian colleagues have tried to map the fascial pathways of the horse’s and dog’s body. Fascia, the glad wrap of the body that wraps all our organs and tissues, has gained interest recently. https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-28/scientists-discover-new-human-organ-interstitium/9598140
It’s importance has been overlooked by western medicine practitioners. It has often been regarded as something to get through to get to the interesting stuff underneath. Chinese medicine however, has mapped a lot of these fascial pathways hundreds of years ago as acupuncture meridians or channels.
Fascia and Acupuncture meridians
Dr Rikke, who is also trained in veterinary acupuncture, looked at the similarities between the chinese acupuncture meridians and fascial pathways. There were lots! Acupuncture meridians or channels were not something just made up by the Chinese, but is based on accurate anatomy and science. It just took westerners a long time to understand this.
The Tuning Fork
Meanwhile back at the workshop, we stuck masking tape over ourselves to mimic the tension lines created by our fascia. We could feel why knee pain could result in shoulder strain on the opposite side…But what to do about it all? That’s where acupuncture treatment points suddenly made sense. They released the tension along these lines. Some of these points are even called opening and closing points. There was numerous correlations. Then to our surprise, Dr Rikke pulled out a number of tuning forks and showed us how the various resonance could release tension in different tissues of the body.
The new/old toy
On my return to Geelong, I dug through my odds and sods drawer, found my old tuning fork, dusted it off and away I went. It has certainly generated a lot of discussions with my clients; most didnt know what a tuning fork was, everyone wanted to know how it worked. The really cool thing was that if you put it on the sweet spot, the vibration increased. One puppy even thought he would help me by wagging his tail against the tuning fork. That really got the buzz happening.
Who said I didn’t have a musical ‘bone’ in my body? Oh yes, that was my teacher in grade one.