Biography - Neil B. Kirschen, M.D.

Dr. Kirschen was born and raised in New York City in 1955. His formal education and continuing education in medicine and concentration in anesthesiology and interventional pain management has led him to a path of combining traditional medicine and alternative medicine to give relief to chronic pain sufferers. Dr. Kirschen is the Medical Director of the Pain Management Center of Long Island, in Rockville Centre, N.Y. With his practice emphasizing conventional and complementary medical techniques. He uses acupuncture, spinal manipulation, medical massage, prolo therapy, natural medicines, and interventional anesthetic nerve blocks. Dr. Kirschen is also a professional musician which adds an artistic approach to his therapeutic techniques that enhances and transcends his life work.

What is to follow is an interview with Dr. Kirschen on his feelings and experiences using the pulsatory rhythm of the energy field in Cranial Sacral Manipulation. However, lets first listen to the answers that Dr. Kirschen gives his patients when they ask him Why doesn’t my doctor understand my aches and pains?

Many people don’t realize the intensive training their doctors undergo in order to enable them to make their patients well. Many years are spent studying, then applying that knowledge in the hospital setting on the most seriously ill patients one could ever imagine. Years of practical experience allow accumulation of knowledge to treat acute illnesses with powerful medicines and surgery. The problem is that the illnesses which are not life threatening are given less attention and few treatment options.

Page 2.

The explosive growth of alternative medicine is a reaction to the average person’s frustration with conventional treatments and thoughts. Nowadays we are no longer satisfied with not being sick. We want to feel well. Modern medicine is more geared towards established illnesses, with preventive care governed by laboratory values and x-ray results. The art of touch has fallen by the wayside and patients are not receiving the tactile reassurance implying we know and acknowledge their problems. So, enter the health professionals who are slowly edging their way into primary care practice using massage, natural remedies, ancient needling techniques and traditional healing practices to fight the scourge of not feeling well - our aches and pains.

Conventional medicine uses its well established "big guns", learned on the world’s most unhealthy population, of medicines and surgery to treat our daily aches and pains. However, we are only treating the effect, not the cause of the problem. This is symptomatic treatment at best, not well sustained and not teaching the patient how to stay out of trouble or how to be healthy. The true role of the doctor is as teacher, not as an active participant in a passive cover-up of another’s unhealthy lifestyle. Our role is to serve each individual as a support system in life, not to be part of a dependency system. Our goal should be to make one become physician independent, but knowledgeable enough to know when to seek treatment.

The way to treat our daily aches and pains is through a comprehensive approach of treating structure, function and pathology. Only if the problem remains, after thoroughly treating structure and function via manipulation, massage, acupuncture, natural remedies and spiritual healing, should the "big guns" be considered as a next step. Unfortunately, this last step is often chosen first and the entire system becomes chaotic, with specialists dividing the human body into separate regions, unintentionally forgetting the wholistic nature of our being. Every action taken has a reaction at a later time, sometimes with nonproductive results.

In short, entrust your mind-body connection to someone who is understanding of this important relationship. Allow yourself to feel better more frequently and let us pay more attention to helping ourselves naturally at first, with sophisticated support as a back-up.

Page 3.

Q. Dr. Kirschen, what is Cranial Sacral Manipulation and what is your

experience of pulsatory rhythm in C.R.M.?

A. The art of touch in medicine is an essential technique that is needed to obtain information that will help in diagnosing and treating illnesses because the body, is our sound board of motions of where it has been in the past, where it is in the present, and where it will be in the future.

Myofascial release, acupuncture, and cranial sacral manipulation are all manual medicine techniques that I use to obtain input and information from the body. What words don’t tell us, the body will. Myofascial release is a massage technique that smoothes out the layers of facial connective tissue. It is a covering (like saranwrap) interpenetrating every muscle, bone, nerve, artery, and vein as well as all of our internal organs. We know now that this tissue continues into the cranium as well; and the motion of membranes and different tensions going on in the cranium that are reflected from the body, or are reflected to the body, have to be smoothed out. This is where cranial sacral manipulation comes from. The movement of the brain and spinal cord, Cerebral Spinal Fluid, meninges and bones are all syncronous with each other forming one large integrated unit of function.

Intuitiveness, the experience of touch, and feeling the pulsatory rhythm of the body’s energy field as well as the body part, will supply me with information as to what is needed for this patient. The clarity of my own process when I’m engaged in feeling my patients pain and the process this pain has put the body in, is very important in diagnosing. The pulsatory rhythm or primary respiratory mechanism is the cranial rhythm that is used for evaluation and treatment. It is the expansion and contraction of all the tissues of the body which occurs 8-18 times a minute and is distinct from all other known rhythm (i.e. heartbeat, breathing rate) that can be felt in all parts of the body. The movement is of very small amplitude and therefore it takes practitioners with a finely developed sense of touch to feel it. The bones in the cranium are all in slight rhythmic motion along with the CNS, CSF, membranes and sacrum. They all fit together like the gears of a watch and influence each other. The joints in the head or sutures are comprised of connective tissue, nerves and blood vessels. This is like any joint in the body and therefore is designed for motion which is a basic property of life. The primitive Central Nervous System in a developing child in utero has been in motion since before the bones were ever formed. So as they were developing, they were in motion, and this motion continues until death.

Page 4.

Q. How do you treat your patients with C.S.M. and what do you treat?

A. When I atune myself with my patients pulsatory rhythm I also can then tune into the motion or wave of the cerebral spinal fluid that flows from the sacrum and that reflects up to the cranium. By using my hands, I can implement a technique called motion testing that will help to determine what the key lesion is. The key lesion is the fascia or connective tissue that is wrapped the tightest and which prevents movement of other areas. The pulsatory rhythm feels dull and slower in the areas of key lesion. When treating headaches there is always a diminished amplitude and restriction of the pulsatory rhythm in the Cerebral Spinal Fluid. By using the hands, and fingers I can gently touch and palpate the rhythm to increase or decrease the restrictions of the cerebral spinal fluid in the sutures of the temporal, paretial region of the cranium. The intention to feel and have the image of movement will enhance the treatment. I have used cranial sacral manipulation along with myofacial release and acupuncture to treat back and neck pain as well as headaches, stress, sinusitis and sleeping difficulties.

Q. What are the problems in giving manual medicine?

A. The primary care physician today does not have the time to treat and administer manual medicine due to the HMO’s Insurance Structure. HMO’s have curtailed the services that are needed to be rendered. It becomes impractical for the Primary Care Physician, and a prescription takes much less tine to write. With manual medicine techniques it takes times to check and recheck what you are accomplishing and more time to repeat or try a different technique which could be indirect or direct.

Q. What are your goals and desires for your patients?

A. My desire and goals for my patients are to teach them to listen and feel the subtle messages their bodies give them. To treat my patients with the most natural treatments, with combinations of different types of body work, using small amount of herbs, is the preferred method for chronic pain. However, we also must acknowledge the successes of western medical technologies in treating infectious disease and acute trauma to the body which I believe will always be essential.