EG write: “I have a feeling that this Chiropractor is in the new age but I don’t know how to warn my Catholic Charismatic Covenant Community about him. Some of our members go to him for chiropractic treatment and nutrition counseling for healing. I know that he attends Catholic Church and I think he considers himself a good Catholic.  We have been praying that the Blessed Mother will remove the blinders from his eyes and those in the Community who go to him.  Now he is giving a Healing Workshop at the Community Center and I’m being ask to join. I hope that I am wrong and he is fine. I am attaching his flyer for the work shop.  I did look on his website and he has some connections with Wayne Dryer.”

While I cannot vouch for this doctor’s integrity, and no one but the Lord can know the true state of his soul, the Bio-Energetic Synchronization Technique (B.E.S.T.) featured in his brochure is definitely on the “dubious practice” list. This one is especially concerning to me because it is associated with energy work, but confuses terms such as “bio-energetic” which refers to putative (New Age) and scientifically unsubstantiated energies as well as electro-magnetic energies which are veritable and scientifically verifiable. Which is it? Or are they using both? I have found in my many years of research that practitioners very often refer to both forms of energy either because they’re either confused about what energy they’re working with, or because they want to confuse those of us who know that putative energies are the equivalent of snake oil.

But having said all this, the B.E.S.T. technique was introduced in the 1970’s by a chiropractor named Milton Ted Morter, Jr., of Rogers, Arkansas and claims to be “a holistic program that coordinates and balances the workings of all the systems of the body.”

According to the Morter Health System website, B.E.S.T. is described as a “non-forceful, energy balancing hands-on procedure used to help reestablish the full healing potential of the body.”

It is based on the idea that “stress-induced energy imbalance will cause the body to become divided into areas of North and South energy.” B.E.S.T. doctors supposedly “normalize the body’s energy field so that it can become revitalized . . . . In a healthy body, there is no polarization of north or south energy . . .”

One booklet, published by Morter in 1991, actually claimed that development and repair of the body is controlled by its electromagnetic field and that an imbalance in the patient’s electromagnetic field causes unequal leg length, which a chiropractor can instantly correct by applying his or her own electromagnetic energy to proper points on the body. (There is no scientific evidence to support this claim.)

Some other components of B.E.S.T. involve the mPower march technique which uses contralateral movement and stretching to “neurologically update and re-time your body.” Another component, known as B.E.S.T. Release, expands the mPower stretching movements “by adding conscious thought and emotional memory components.” This is supposedly designed to “kinesiologically test your body for reaction to emotional thought memory patterns.”

Emotional B.E.S.T. uses advanced technology to supposedly “update higher brain interference from expression in the physical body.” This supposedly occurs when emotional thoughts such as worry, guilt, fear, judgment “become the overriding factor in our memory patterns” which interferes with “the divine plan for our perfect health and wellness.” The emotional B.E.S.T. technique allegedly helps a person to identify these emotional patterns and updates the interference to allow the body to function “based on current situations rather than past experiences.” Practitioners refer to this as the “core of B.E.S.T. technology. “This is the pattern for health and wellness. The pattern unlocks the power.”

There are also nutritional aspects to this technique which are based on the belief that a person can maintain life and vitality by consuming four times as much alkaline-forming as acid-forming foods. Practitioners test a patient’s saliva pH to determine the degree of acidity or alkalinity which supposedly determines if their symptoms are nutritionally or emotionally based. They recommend (and sell) a variety of supplements, such as Alka Green which is a 100% barley juice concentrate described as the best “overall body alkalizer.”

The problem with this particular theory is that there’s no need to be concerned about the acidity or alkalinity level in either the diet or the body because, in the absence of serious disease, digestive and metabolic mechanisms maintain the cells of the body at their appropriate pH level regardless of what we eat.

But the over-arching problem with B.E.S.T. is that there does not appear to be anything more than user testimonials to back any of its claims. The website says it has been “researched at major universities” but doesn’t name any or tell us the results of the research.

Definitely keep up the prayer, and I would definitely avoid any chiropractor who practices this (or any other) kind of unsubstantiated medicine on unsuspecting patients.

And I would be even more alarmed if, as EG suggests, the chiropracter is aligned with Dr. Wayne Dyer. Dr. Dyer is about as New Age as it gets. You can read about him here.