Talk the ‘TIC unveils Video Contest

Nearly five years from its inception, Talk the ’TIC has released a major initiative that signals expansion to the broader chiropractic community: a video contest for D.C.’s. This contest, titled “Amplify Your Voice”, is part of a large vision pioneered by Dr. Erik Van Slooten, Founder of Talk the ’TIC. “Chiropractors tell me they wish Talk the ’TIC existed when they were in school,” Van Slooten remarks, “With this contest, the power of Talk the ’TIC is now available to every professional D.C. It’s your turn, doc!”

Amplify Your Voice is a video contest, allowing chiropractors everywhere to upload a five minute video of their health-talk. Once it’s uploaded, the video immediately becomes eligible for voting, rating, commentary, and sharing.  Anyone, including patients, students and other chiropractors can create an account, and view and vote on these videos.  “This initiative blends chiropractic and social media with a video contest,” explains Van Slooten. “Add to that the passion of communicating chiropractors and this contest goes viral.”

The contest commences on Chiropractic’s birthday, September 18,2011, and runs all the way through December 10, 2011. The top 5 videos, decided by the public vote, will then be reviewed by a distinguished panel of judges to determine a Grand Prize winner. This panel of judges includes Drs. Jeannie Ohm, Sharon Gorman, Liam Schubel, Brad Glowaki, David Jackson, Martin Harvey, Ross McDonald, Jim Dubel, David Jackson, Erik Van Slooten and 2011 Student champion Darrell Pratt-Blackburn. On December 15^th, 2011, Dr. Van Slooten will announce the grand prize winner on the contest site.

This contest will inspire the profession but more importantly it will spread chiropractic to the world in new ways. “This reason alone will cause chiropractors to participate, but a contest is not a contest without a prize,” Van Slooten notes. “So, I’m awarding the Grand Prize winner $5,000.00 in cash.”

One of the key features of this contest is the “Challenge a Doctor” button located on the home page of the contest site.  With this tool, anyone can challenge a D.C. to enter the contest.  The more D.C.’s that step up and take advantage of this opportunity the more powerful this contest will be in transforming the community at large.

To enter the contest, challenge a doctor, or vote on your favorite health talk videos please visit http://contest.talkthetic.com.

Talk the TIC 2011: ELEVATE

Elevate (el-e-vate) v.: to raise; to lift up; to move someone to a higher place or position from a lower one.

Since its inception, Talk the TIC has challenged students to create an asset that will repay them for a lifetime: their chiropractic health-talk. The premise of the challenge is quite simple, really. Students who master their chiropractic health-talk in school are better positioned to succeed in the real world.

Educating your future clientele concerning what chiropractic is and does is of paramount importance. Indeed, it can make or break you as a chiropractor. If you fail to effectively communicate the central concepts of chiropractic to your patients, you may be perceived as little more than a pain pil with hands! Conversely, if you clearly articulate the philosophical tenets of chiropractic (what BJ Palmer referred to as ’TIC) you will open up a whole new experience for your clientele. In essence, you will elevate their thinking. You will raise them up. You will lift them. You will move them to a place of higher understanding concerning the body’s internal capacity to regulate health and healing efforts.

Is it any wonder why ELEVATE is the chosen theme of Talk the TIC 2011? This is a campaign to elevate the preparedness and performance of students as they head in to practice. It’s a campaign to elevate the chiropractic profession’s awareness of Talk the TIC. Furthermore, it’s a campaign to elevate the public’s awareness of what chiropractic is.

Coaches often tell their teams, “You need to ELEVATE your level of play if you are to win the game.” Where is your level of play right now? If you keep playing the way you are, are you going to win in your practice? Or do you need to elevate your level of play? Do you need to practice more, rehearse more, and get in the game more?

Come ELEVATE with Talk the TIC 2011. Plug in at your local campus if you are a student. Get in the competition. All you doc’s in the field – get behind a student that you’ve mentored. Inspire them and let them inspire you.

The Right of the Sick to Get Well

The passion to get sick people well, to release the body’s internal capacity to heal itself, is what led to the discovery of chiropractic in 1895. Political philosopher and thinker Plato first uttered the words which have so oft been repeated by our profession – “Necessity… is the mother of invention.” DD Palmer, a forward thinking individual of his time, observed the necessity for a better means of getting sick people well. His studies of magnetism elicited many questions about how the body restored health. One such question was asked in the case of Harvey Lillard, a deaf janitor and close friend of the Palmer family. Lillard had a displaced axis vertebrae which DD reasoned might be the cause of deafness. Could a subluxated vertebra interfere with the brain’s transmission of normal function and hearing to the ear? Reasoning culminated to invention when he delivered an adjustment to that vertebra. Lillard’s hearing returned and as you know, the rest was history. DD Palmer had sought to meet a need in the life of one sick person. Yet this single need produced an invention which gave hope to the sick masses.

As BJ Palmer set out to make chiropractic a publicly valued and accepted science, he became very aware of the social and political realities at hand. No matter the successes of chiropractic in getting the sick well, he and the profession received intense criticism on multiple fronts. As an original, right-about face thinker himself, BJ was equally aggressive in defending chiropractic on a reasonable basis. He argued that chiropractic brought to the world a new principle, a principle that worked with, and not against, the body’s internal healing efforts. Obviously, the end cause of his defense was to provide this chiropractic solution to the masses of sick people who had reached a dead end in their hope for true healing.

“What a frustration,” thought BJ. “I have a new method, a needed method, of getting the sick well, and the only part of the equation missing is the public’s awareness and access to it.” BJ’s language progressively adopted a political character – sick people have a right to get well. Intimate with the law of life internal to man, BJ’s position was that health was an internal phenomenon maintained by internal intelligence, which inherently possessed a right to fully express itself. However, this right was being suppressed by erroneous thinking which principally asserted that man is more capable of artificially maintaining the health of the body through external means. Drugs, pills, therapies, potions, and lotions – such external solutions were proposed by materia medica as the best medium to get the sick well. Chiropractic and the internal cure it proposed? It was denied. It was rejected as quackery. The masses of sick people were taught to think nothing of this causal approach which they should have had right to. They trusted what their real “doctors” told them.

If you know anything about BJ, you know that he stopped at nothing. To amplify chiropractic’s voice, he became one of the first to invest in radio broadcast technology. Broadcasting at 400 watts, the radio waves from Davenport, Iowa were heard in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Russia. What you might struggle to grasp is the financial risk BJ took to do this – $420,000. I wouldn’t even know how to add up the modern financial equivalent, but were talking multiples of millions of dollars. No financial risk was too great where the right of sick people to get well was at stake. What kind of risk would you take?

In 1958, BJ wrote “the right of the sick to get well still stands unchallenged and it has been and is our obligation to protect them in that right.” Notice he used the word obligation. Obligation. Fifty years later you and I are looking at the same obligation. What are you doing today to stand for the right of the sick?

Let me prompt your thoughts here. Simple actions matter. What do you do on a daily basis that may augment public awareness of chiropractic? Do not for a moment think your actions are inconsequential. Movements of consequence are simply the cumulative resolve of individuals such as you.

You are the Future

What is the future of chiropractic? Ten, twenty, thirty years down the road, where might we expect chiropractic to be? Will we establish a clear professional identity and image? Will we gain the trust and respect of the public? Will we become the leaders of the wellness industry?

These questions speak of a real curiosity that many of us have, particularly those of us who have are about to graduate in to the profession. And while our imagination may offer us some interesting answers, the truth is that we don’t know what the future holds for chiropractic. So then, what’s the point? What’s the point of talking about the future if we don’t know what it holds?

Be reassured – this conversation is not pointless. In fact, as you read, you will see it is actually quite practical. And yes, that is to say you may translate thought into practice following this discussion.

First, allow me to share with you a story about one whom meddled with this question. One of our profession’s great leaders, Dr. Guy Reikmann, had oft been asked this question. In the course of time he had offered several answers. He drew his insights from a large reservoir of professional experience, and chances are, he provided some credible answers. Yet the story goes that he remained vexed by the idea of responding in abstract terms. To paraphrase, he thought to himself, “Engaged lay practitioners want an answer from me because I’m a leader. And yet, the truth of the matter is, I don’t really know. No matter how solid my insights are, I remain uncertain about the future.”

In short, he wanted to answer with straight talk. He wanted to answer questions of the uncertain with a sense of certainty. Eventually, he gained a moment of clarity. He resolved upon one word which was both truthful and certain: You. You are the future. What you make of chiropractic today and tomorrow is the profession’s future.

Wow. Wisdom is often found in few words, and in this case one. You – a penetrating answer, isn’t it? In fact, it is so penetrating that it seems to bring an immediate hush to curiosity. Like a boomerang that swiftly returns to the hands of the one who threw it, so comes the truth of this response. All of the sudden, wonderment is substituted with a definite knowledge of self. Loose ideas of what could be chiropractic’s future are filled with the substance of who you are and what you are capable of. You.

So, my friend and colleague, who are you? What composes you? What makes you tick? How do you make use of your gifts, knowledge and skill to advance chiropractic? These are the real questions worth thinking through. For if you allow yourself to look within, to take personal inventory, to determine what you have to give, then you needn’t speculate about the future. After all, it is you.

When discussing professional trends and developments, Dr. Clum often challenges his audience saying, “Consider your role at the conference table before your consider your role at the adjusting table.” Personally, I feel compelled to action every time he says this. Not that I suddenly aspire to be a political representative of his pedigree, but the idea behind his words captures me. What do I do beyond the adjusting table to secure chiropractic’s future? Do I join the organizations that are the voice of chiropractic in my state and nation? Do I go to meetings, lyceum, alumni gatherings, and the like? Do I represent chiropractic with excellence in my community?

If your journey in chiropractic has left you feeling impotent, let me remind you that today is a new day. You matter. Your contribution matters greatly. And the future is what you make of it. John C. Maxwell states, “When there is no hope in the future, there is no power in the present.” Get your power, get your voice, and start being the future of chiropractic.