Contact Reflex Analysis:
A Technology Whose Time Has Come
By Peter Clecak, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus
Department of Environmental Health, Science, and Policy
University of California, Irvine
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Introduction
This is a most exciting time for those of us interested in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). Only a few short years ago the entire gamut of CAM modalities was dismissed as ineffective by the vast majority of Americans, and by nearly all health care professionals. We now have entered a new era in which the claims of CAM must be taken seriously by all who are interested in promoting better health.
This shift in the culture of healing brings with it new opportunities and new dangers. From the vast range of alternative approaches, how can we determine which ones to investigate seriously? This is a fundamental issue that every doctor should address. CAM modalities can no longer be dismissed wholesale, as a class. But neither is it prudent to endorse this entire class of approaches in an uncritical fashion.
Nor is it wise to make overblown claims about one or another of the many modalities within CAM. Despite massive advances in conventional and alternative medicine, healing remains an elusive art, one that no one fully understands. Those who claim rates of "success" that approach 100% are either con artists, delusional, or both. Forget 100%. If even 90% percent of your patients were attaining optimal health, you'd be spending your weekends walking on water, and during the rest of the week, large crowds would surround your office, waving palms of victory. This sort of carnival salesmanship has no place in the healing arts. Nobody would take such silly claims seriously were it not for the fact that every one of us-practitioners and patients alike-are sensitive about the subject of wellness and illness: parts of us desperately want to be well, and at the same time, we resist, to one degree or another, even the best attempts at healing. There is no faster way to harm the cause of CAM than to traffic in inflated claims, claims that could not withstand the scrutiny of any fair outside evaluation.
If much of CAM was bogus before the recent shift in popular attitudes, much of it remains bogus after this immense positive change in public receptivity. The only difference is that "money back guarantee" practitioners can more easily dupe innocent people. Nor does a shift in attitude from closed-mindedness to open-mindedness with respect to CAM solve the question of which techniques are the most promising--which are the ones we ought to evaluate critically, master in depth, and weave into our health care practices.
In a field such as CAM--a field awash in wishful thinking and nonsense--it is tempting to dismiss this or that particular modality as "voodoo," or as a form of superstitious quackery, with no more than a cursory introduction. This is, after all, the easiest way to stay sane, and to maintain professional dignity in the midst of people making preposterous claims for everything from aromatherapy to bee pollen. It is also an approach that guarantees that you will be right most of the time. But it is intellectually lazy, dishonest, and ultimately unfair to those whom you are trying to help achieve health and wellness. All that glitters is not gold, but in the midst of the shimmering phony rocks of CAM, there is some gold.
Thus, there is a more important goal than being right about CAM most of the time: it is the goal of providing your patients with the most effective analysis and management technology currently available. To do this, we need to know which CAM modality--or modalities--to concentrate on.
II Contact Reflex Analysis® (CRA®)
My own recommendation is Contact Reflex Analysis® (CRA®). CRA® is a comprehensive, pulse testing method of assessing energetic excesses and deficiencies of the organs, glands, systems and structures of the body, using a network of reflexes based on acupuncture points and meridians. This dynamic, evolving work has been pioneered and developed over several decades by Dr. Dick Versendaal and his associates.
If you have not learned CRA®, I urge you to do so. If you have begun to learn it, I urge you to master CRA® before jumping ship, and adopting some new modality with two months (or two years) of "research" behind it, two months of testing, and claims of success that would make an alchemist blush.
Let me begin on a personal note. Having been associated with CRA®--as a patient, as a student, as a professor, as an investigator--for about 20 years, I am convinced that it is the single most promising CAM analytic tool publicly available to health care practitioners. I have come to know its originator and principal investigator--Dr. Dick Versendaal--very well. He is a brilliant innovator with a vast range of knowledge, a tireless dedication to the development of CRA®, and immense generosity with both his time and his resources. He has helped me-and hundreds of other health care professionals-in countless ways as a teacher, as an inspiring role model, and as a valued friend.
From the first day I watched Dr. Versendaal teach-in 1986-I have worked to increase my knowledge of CRA®. I knew immediately that this was a technique I had to master, even though I didn't understand much during that first seminar. My own path from ignorance of CRA® to mastery of it was sparked by an intuition, an inner knowing that CRA® had more to offer than any other CAM technique I was familiar with. In the course of doing so, I also learned a number of other CAM techniques, spent several years reading blood chemistries (about 5,000 in all), and took a variety of interesting CAM courses. Before that, as a person searching for wellness, I had been the patient/victim of two dozen or more practitioners of known-and obscure--healing arts, from biomedical doctors to crystal gazers. So by the time I was introduced to CRA® I was sufficiently world weary to be wary of yet another CAM modality. Despite a number of detours in the early years, I always returned to CRA®.
III The Endless Possibilities of CRA®
I recognize that personal testimonies and reports of hunches that pay off are of limited persuasive value. You either have a positive initial impression of CRA®, or you don't. If your early impressions of CRA® led you in the direction of rejecting it prejudicially or prematurely, you might consider taking a second look. If, on the other hand, you experienced an initial burst of enthusiasm and have become frustrated with the results you are getting from using CRA®, conduct an honest assessment of the reasons behind your frustration. There are several clear possibilities.
CRA® has clinical limits. Of course it does. So does every other CAM and conventional medical modality. Theoretically, everything in a finite world has outer boundaries. But why focus on these since they have not even been approached? CRA® is not a fixed entity; its ultimate limits have not yet been envisioned, let alone reached. CRA® is a dynamic work of endless possibilities whose effectiveness increases with each passing year.
The important-and immediate--question here is whether other comparable approaches produce better results over reasonable periods of time, and hold greater promise for the future. I know of none.
Healing Arts Professionals have clinical limits. It is a fact that there is a hierarchy of excellence among doctors: some are more able practitioners than others. So what? This hierarchy is not fixed, like a caste system, nor is anyone's ranking within it. Few doctors have even imagined the range of their own potential, let alone reached it.
The more interesting question, then, is whether you have even begun to approach your own limits-which is to say, manifested all of your possibilities-as a CRA® doctor.
To what extent have you maximized your understanding of the current analytic technology and case management resources of CRA®? To what extent have you maximized your ability to apply these resources to specific cases? You can't know the ever expanding outer limits of this method until you have exhausted its rich current range, and reached your own full potential as a practitioner of CRA®. This series of exercises-which is in fact a long process that traces out a long learning curve--requires patience and perseverance. But the process promises rich rewards.
Clinical patients have healing limits. Not every person has the vital force, or even the will, necessary to achieve full recovery. Not every person has the capacity and willingness to comply with all of your initial recommendations. The best method, practiced at its best, is useless unless the compliance steps are tailored to the needs, capacity, and willingness of each patient.
More than any other modality I know of, CRA® allows the practitioner to pinpoint a doable program for each client. Because of this distinctive strength--this capacity to customize programs to individual needs and capacities--CRA® often transforms unwilling patients into willing patients, and as a consequence, those seemingly beyond help begin to recover their health.
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It is not easy to sort out these factors, since they carry different weights in each doctor's personal assessment. But it is vitally important to conduct this exercise in self-evaluation periodically. If we don't have a clear sense of where we are at any given juncture, it is not possible to set goals for clinical success that are at once ambitious and achievable. Acknowledging the limits of any endeavor is necessary to a balanced understanding of it. Dwelling on them, however, becomes a rationalization for less than excellent performance.
Patients are by nature impatient. Good professionals cannot afford this luxury. Healing often is a slow art-and genuine healing nearly always is gradual. In CAM at its best, healing also involves the simplest possible interventions that trigger the innate intelligence of the individual to perform the complex wonders of healing. The beginning of clinical wisdom in healing is to remain faithful to this old-and seminal--idea, rather than merely paying lip service to it, and then confusing the body with ever more complex micromanagement. The race for wellness, like so many others, usually belongs to the tortoise, not to the hare.
IV The Scope of CRA®
There are solid, rational reasons for selecting CRA® as a primary CAM modality to investigate, master, and use in your practice. Let me cite a few of them.
CRA® is not the creation of a single innovator, though it has been largely shaped and enhanced by a brilliant one. It is the product of more than 40 years of research inspired and directed by Dr. Versendaal, in collaboration with scientists and practitioners from the entire spectrum of the healing arts: MDs, DCs, RNs, DDSs, DMVs, and others. CRA®, then, is not a fly-by-night operation. It has a rich history.
This history of CRA®'s demonstrated performance is on public record. An interdisciplinary team including, among others, a physician, a hematologist, a clinical nutritionist, a dentist, and Dr. Versendaal originated CRA®. Over the years, many others have contributed to this dynamic work. Currently, a number of individuals are conducting research on the efficacy of CRA® around the country. And there is now a CRA® Foundation that engages in research, CRA® education, outreach, and service to patients.
Moreover, hundreds and hundreds of hours of videotapes of CRA® seminars are available, as well as three major texts (along with large packets of educational materials) giving the rationale of CRA® and outlining, step-by-step, the procedures involved in using this method in a professional manner. Finally, hundreds of health care professionals have used, and are using, CRA® as an adjunctive therapy with positive clinical results, and high degrees of patient satisfaction.
CRA® is a dynamic work. It has grown, developed, and improved over the years, as Dr. Versendaal and others have refined (and greatly simplified) the analytic techniques that comprise CRA®. I know of no other mode of analysis in CAM that matches CRA®.
V The Rich Case Management Resources of CRA®
The ultimate trick, of course, lies in the technology of case management. It is one thing to analyze a patient's problems, and quite another to know what to do with the analysis-to calibrate what inputs the body needs, and what obstacles to health and well being need to be removed.
The case management repertoire of CRA® was impressive when I first enrolled in Dr. Versendaal's seminars in the middle 1980s. Since then, the number and quality of management possibilities has improved dramatically, and currently includes the following biochemical, energetic, educational and natural resources:
Pharmaceutical grade nutritional from Biotics Research Corporation.
The energy balancing technology of Foot Levelers Orthotics.
The impressive Clarus Sympathetic Resonance Technology that offers a set of cutting edge possibilities for helping the innate intelligence of the self maximize its healing potential.
A powerful partnership with The Masters' Circle Consulting and Management Firm that provides personalized coaching for doctors and their staff seeking excellence in practice management.
Chiropractic adjustments calibrated to individual needs through CRA® pulse testing technology.
All of these powerful technologies are now available, along with the precise CRA® method of calibrating the range of natural healing modalities--from diet, rest, sleep and exercise to optimum amounts of air, sunshine, and fluids-to the precise needs of each individual client.
This marvelous array of biochemical, energetic, and educational case management tools to help people attain their optimal degree of health and wellness matches CRA®'s powerful analytic technology. With its individualized subtle energy testing capacity, CRA® is the most finely tuned method of individuating analysis and recommendations available anywhere.
Thus, CRA® can now fill in the blanks of D. D. and B. J. Palmer's original-and powerful-roadmap to the recovery and maintenance of optimal health and well-being: rehydration, rest, rehabilitation (diet and supplements), and realignment (expert precision chiropractic adjustments).
VI Conclusion
Here, then, is a dynamic body of demonstrated work that deserves your full critical attention. If you are interested in CAM, there is no better place to begin, no method of analysis that will repay more for your investment of time and mental effort, than CRA®. If you already practice CRA®, explore its full and growing potential. I am confident that in the next decades, every serious health care practitioner will need a working knowledge of CRA®.
No other CAM technology provides the range of advantages offered by CRA®. CRA® is the most comprehensive, simple, non-invasive, accurate, and cost-effective technique of analyzing the human body in existence. CRA® works with every major approach to healing, from conventional medicine and chiropractic, to dentistry, veterinary medicine, and clinical nutrition. It is not a substitute for any one of these, but it enhances them all.
For decades, CRA® was ahead of its time. Now its time has come. |
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