Integral Wisdom Healing Arts

CHIROPRACTOR TO THE STARS
RUTH ZIEMBA

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Like many people, my back occasionally gets out of alignment. Sometimes badly; other times with just a twinge or a dull ache. I ignore it if I can. If it gets worse, though, I go to a chiropractor, get adjusted, and it’s better. Until the next time.

 

At lunch one day with Dom and Carol DeLuise, the conversation got around to backs and Dom started talking about Dr. Ruth. Not the sex one; this Dr. Ruth is a chiropractor, but she practices a totally different kind of chiropractic. “She’s a genius with backs,” Dom said. I took the card and filed it away.

 

One day soon after, I leaned down to pick up Tashi, my five-pound puppy, and couldn’t get up.

 

Creeping Quasimodo-like across the room to my desk, I rifled through the drawer to find the card. I called. The back gods were smiling on me. Dr. Ruth had a cancellation; she could see me that day.

 

“The other Dr. Ruth” is a petite 44-year-old who looks like a teenager. Her office sits at the top of a hill in the Pacific Palisades, near Santa Monica. The building is rustic and casual, with each office opening onto a deck that overlooks the Santa Monica Mountains. Before we begin, Dr. Ruth and I sit at one of the tables on the deck and talk. Her small dog, a Jack Russell named Angel who comes with her to the office, plays at our feet.

 

Dr. Ruth is soft-spoken and polite. She asks about my medical history and I ask her to explain what she does, but I am in too much pain to hear it all. Something about nerve pathways and fluid flow and mountain streams, which all sound wonderful. Let it begin.

We go inside to her front office where a young assistant sits at a computer scheduling appointments. Just behind the assistant is a room with three leather massage tables. The one by the window is empty. Shoes are left at the door, but I am fully clothed as Dr. Ruth asks me to lie face down on the table, relax and breathe, while she spends a minute or two with the person on the table next to me. I lie there listening to the soft music and watching Angel watch me.

 

Dr. Ruth comes back. First she touches a spot on the back of my neck, quickly, with gentle pressure, then moves to another spot on my tailbone. Both spots are far removed from my pain. Angel, the Jack Russell, rolls onto her back hoping for a tummy rub. “I would if I could,” I whisper.

 

The people occupying the other tables are face up, their hands folded over their forehead or over their abdomen. I wonder what they are doing.

 

A moment later, Dr. Ruth asks me to turn over, lie face up. She places my hands, one on top of the other, on my forehead and tells me to take three breaths. In the nose, out the mouth. She then places my hands on my sternum, then over my navel, breathing in and out three times at each spot.

 

This is part of the Twelve Stages of Healing, Dr. Ruth explains. This practice brings heightened awareness to areas that are disconnected. “This is how we find the leaks.”

Leaks?

 

“Places where energy seeps out. Think of it as the windshield wipers of your life, clearing away the years of accumulated dirt that have been clouding your vision into every area of your life. Once cleared, your ability to focus will increase and so will your energy level.

 

Your coping mechanisms will improve and so will your relationships. Your backaches will ease and so will your headaches. Your future will be more about responding fully to life instead of defending yourself against it.”

 

My eyes are closed.

 

I feel heat on my stomach. I wonder if she is using a heat lamp. I open my eyes. She is not holding anything; the heat is coming from her hands, which she holds at least two feet above me.

 

She asks me to sit up. Centering my head so that it sits erect and straight on my shoulders, Dr. Ruth runs her hands down my spine, puts one finger on my neck again, and says, “That’s better.” I stand up and bend forward, turning slightly right and to the left. Smiling, she asks, “How do you feel?”

 

I tell her the pain is gone, but I wonder to myself if it will come back as soon as I leave the office. It doesn’t. Not that night, not the next morning.

 

I have explained to Dr. Ruth that I am a journalist and that I would like to learn more about this odd brand of chiropractic practice.

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“Anytime,” she says, and gives me a parting hug.

 

Several days later my back is still better. Unlike other chiropractors I had been to, there was no bone cracking. I had to know—what did she do?

 

The following week—still pain-free—I sit with her on her deck sipping tea. I ask her how she came upon this technique.

 

Ruth Ziemba was born and raised in a small town on the outskirts of Springfield, Mass. She earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing at the University of Utah, then began her career as an oncology nurse at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She became a staff member at the Body/Mind Research Group at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital, which was led by Joan Borysenko. It was there that she began to see illness in a new way. She wanted to know more about the mind-body connection.

 

Later that year Ruth had a car accident that left her with severe back pain. She saw a chiropractor and after a few sessions decided she would like to learn more. After careful investigation of various systems of chiropractic—she didn’t like the sound of bones cracking—she found one called Network Spinal Analysis, developed twenty years before by Dr. Donald Epstein in New York. For the next few years, Ruth shared an office in Beverly Hills with Epstein’s main instructor, Dr. Michael Stern. Under his tutelage, Ruth learned to integrate the use of the breath into her practice.

 

“What was his system? Did he do adjustments?” I ask.

 

“Yes, but his adjustments were subtle and precise. Just a touch and release at a point on the sacrum, and slight, quick pressure on the neck and along the spine. What these adjustments do is to connect the body’s rhythms through breath, touch, and movement. When the tension melts, the shoulders give way, and one has a sense of fluidity, clarity.”

 

“But how can such slight pressure release tension?” I ask.

 

“Because it directly affects the nervous system—the brain and the spinal cord. The barest touch to the upper neck…” She reaches over and touches the base of my skull, “may be all it takes to release tension in the lower spine. When tension is released from the nervous system, it’s released from your entire body.”

 

I press her to be more specific. “Is the whole nervous system located in the spine?”

“Your spine shows where you are holding on to psychological and physical trauma in your life. The musculature takes on a character of thickness that’s associated with the length of time since the trauma occurred. So your spine develops a barrier, a protective wall.”

 

Dr. Ruth stands behind me and demonstrates. “I can feel along the backbone and see exactly where the trauma lives, how long ago it happened, and at what age.”

 

That sounded quite amazing. “You can? Really?” I ask. “And can a person feel when trauma is settling into the backbone?”

 

“How many times have you found yourself in a stressful situation and said, ‘I’ll just push it to the back of my mind. I’ll deal with the tension later’?”

 

“Many times. Probably more than I know.”

 

“Well, what is the back of your mind? It’s your spine, your nervous system. It’s where tension is stored. The body remembers.”

 

“And that tension creates back pain?”

 

“That tension creates all kinds of pain. When we are under any kind of stress—emotional, physical, or mental—our brain is going to make a decision: Do I need to amplify this impulse to feel? Or do I need to annihilate it? For instance, when a person goes into shock, it’s because the information is too much for the body, so the body shuts itself down.”

 

“And what does that look like to you?” I ask.

 

“Have you ever seen someone walking with their shoulders all rounded looking like they’re in a lot of pain? If you ask them, they may say they feel fine. Well, actually that is because they are not feeling that area of their body at all. It’s not safe to. That’s how our system protects us.”

 

“So do you then have to break through that protective shield?”

 

“There is a connective tissue that covers our brain and spinal cord, and that tissue, along with the muscle tissue, stores memories. When this tissue tightens, our spine, which has the ability to stretch, is restricted.”

 

“And just those quick, light touches are all it takes to break through?” My session with her had lasted all of about fifteen minutes.

 

“There are some highly responsive people who just by holding their hand can trigger a release. What we’re talking about is creating a global effect in the body. There are areas that store tension in the body and other areas that are freer. Areas that are freer can actually assist the areas that aren’t as free.

 

“But, in order to fix something we must first be able to find it. As our brain is better able to inventory the body, it can better orchestrate healing. This occurs naturally as we become more aware of our spinal tension patterns. Those who have had the greatest wounds and traumas and have stored tension or blocked energy can develop new strategies to access healing. This is part of the ‘stress busting’ effect demonstrated in Spinal Network Care. Actually, the greater the wound, the greater the potential gift.”

 

She tells me about a woman who came to her with such bad TMJ (temporo-mandibular joint syndrome, a clenching of the jaw) that she couldn’t even eat a sandwich. After one session her face physically changed.

 

“And did it stay changed?” I ask.

 

“What I have observed is that when tension is released it stays released. New stresses come into our lives, of course; it’s how we handle them that changes.”

 

Just then, a couple I recognize from a TV sitcom comes walking onto the deck holding an infant that looks to be fresh out of the oven. Jokingly, I ask if the baby has come for an adjustment. “Yes,” Dr. Ruth answers, “It was a traumatic birth and the baby is colicky.”

“She wakes up every hour,” the mother says. “We’re exhausted.”

 

I ask Dr. Ruth what she can do with a newborn and she invites me to come into the office to watch.

 

The woman lies on the table with the infant face down on her stomach. Dr. Ruth performs the same quick light touches on the baby she did on me. Then she holds her hands a foot or so above mother and child for a moment. The baby gurgles.

 

The system Dr. Ruth uses seems to work. But the secret ingredient, the one she hadn’t explained, is Dr. Ruth herself and those heat-lamp hands of hers. I have not had any back problems for many months, and I’ve noticed when I walk Tashi, my stride seems a bit freer, my back a little straighter. And when I become stressed, I try to remember not to let tension settle in my spine. But if it ever does and I feel the familiar tightening of the neck and shoulders, I think about Dr. Ruth and those quick, light touches, and I breathe.

I did not know that I would be putting it all to the test so quickly. A call soon came from my mother’s caregiver in Palm Beach at 5:00 A.M. Sometime during the night, my mother had passed away. I call Bill, the only one of my sons who lives in L.A. and who volunteered to be the one to go with me, and he picks me up on the way to the airport later that morning.