Palisadian Post Interview by CHERI CARLSON

Ziemba Opens Integral Wisdom Healing Arts

“People said I was crazy to move up here.” said chiropractor Ruth Ziemba as she looked out on the Santa Monica Mountains from her Palisades Highlands office, “but for me there is something very healing here. It’s very peaceful, and my clients have said they love the drive.”

Ziemba, who is also a registered nurse and certified massage therapist, moved her Integral Wisdom Healing Arts practice from Beverly Hills to 1515 Palisades Drive in June. She uses a chiropractic technique called Network Spinal Analysis (NSA) “to enhance a client’s physical, mental and emotional well being and assist them in expressing their full potential.”

“When I look at a person, I’m looking at how comfortable is their body, do they have full breath, what is this person’s potential, are they adapting to the stress in their life?” said Ziemba, a Palisadian who has been studying NSA for more than a decade.

Ziemba is a member of Network Chiropractic, a group of independent chiropractic offices that use NSA techniques. She also incorporates somato-respiralory integration (breathing and body movements), metabolic therapies (nutrition) and outdoor Hatha yoga classes in her practice. This combination of healing methods provides the best care available, said Ziemba, and she updates her techniques through international workshops.

Donald Epstein, the chiropractor who founded NSA describes his application of chiropractic methods in his book, Network Spinal Analysis: A Chiropractor’s Perspective on the Body/Mind Connection.

He writes that the ability of the spinal system to remain flexible, adaptable and free from mechanical tension and interference is essential to the healing process. The intent of NSA is to locate and correct the misalignments and resulting muscular tension of the spine to empower the nervous system to express a fuller range of its healing potential. NSA is not designed to cure emotional or physical conditions but to help the body's own self-regulatory and self-healing capacities through spinal adjustment.

According to Epstein, the nervous system reveals its misalignments and tension through restricted movement, tense musculature, restricted breath and pain. Clinicians, like Ziemba, are trained to spot these symptoms and use appropriate contacts along the spine to help release the tension.

Ziemba explained that people's bodies shut down to stress or pain and they won’t necessarily feel it happen. For instance, before someone gets a cold there is something negative present, in the body but when a person is unable to recognize or ignores the body's signals, a cold will materialize as the body's way of getting attention. With NSA, the body's stress is revealed and she can help the brain recognize it and heal.

“I'll take a contact and it gives that signal to the brain so it can release that tension. It unwinds the tension in the nerves,” said Ziemba, who uses light contact “comparable to the pressure used to press on a person's eyelid before it becomes uncomfortable.

After receiving a degree in nursing from the University of Utah in 1982, Ziemba joined the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She worked in the bone marrow transplant unit for five years, and through her patients she learned the importance of touch in the healing process. One patients even encouraged her to find a way to use her hands to heal, which inspired her to begin studying therapeutic massage and to open her own private massage practice in Boston.

Another life-changing incident came through a car accident. “After the accident, I woke up with back pain,” Ziemba said. “A few weeks later I went to my first chiropractor and my pain was completely relieved.”

After this experience, Ziemba decided to enroll in the Los Angeles Chiropractic College in Whittier in 1991. But she discovered that this wasn't what she was looking for and she left for New York and Donald Epstein's Network Spinal Analysis. Through Epstein's teachings, Ziemba said she learned how the nervous system, not a person's bones, is the key to chiropractic techniques.

Going into this form of healing was a natural progression from nursing, according to Ziemba, who has integrated what she learned from nursing and NSA's techniques.

“I feel very blessed,” she said. “I felt through the patient’s mes­sage at the Farber Institute, the car accident and the chiropractic college, I was guided from one thing to the other.” She continued learning about NSA when she shared an office with one of Epstein's top instructors, Michael Stem, in Beverly Hills. He left two years ago, and now she has settled in the Highlands, two miles up Santa Ynez Canyon from Sunset.

In her new office, Ziemba can see up to three clients at one time. She explained that she finds that having more than one client at a time helps relaxation. This involves the “entrainment” process, capitalizing on how one person's mood can affect the people around him; when one person is relieving stress it can help the others do the same.

Ziemba welcomes clients from infants to the elderly and from the Palisades to Switzerland. Word of mouth helps people find her locally while her international clientele are usually referred through the Chiropractic Network.

Contact: Integral Wisdom Healing Arts 310.459.4488.

The Chiropractic Network can be accessed at www.associationfornetworkcare.com

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