GONSTEAD
METHOD
WHAT IS
GONSTEAD?
Who is Gonstead?
Where Gonstead comes from
Chiropractic was founded by D.D. Palmer in 1895. Writing in 1910, he described the profession he had started this way:
"Chiropractic is the most scientific and practical system of locating and adjusting by hand the cause of diseases, or re-establishing and maintaining perfect health of mind and body of patient…"
— D.D. Palmer, The Science, Art and Philosophy of Chiropractic, 1910, p.976
That is how the founder of the profession described it more than a century ago, in the language of his time. Chiropractic has changed a great deal since: the scope is narrower and better defined, and the evidence base is real and still developing. What follows is what we actually do today.
Dr Clarence Gonstead:
The Gonstead system was founded and developed by Dr Clarence Gonstead, who qualified as a chiropractor in 1923 after a career in mechanical engineering. That engineering background shaped the whole method. His interest was in finding the one specific problem rather than treating the spine generally, and then correcting it precisely.​
Chadstone Chiropractic strictly practices the Gonstead method.
How the spine and the nervous system fit together
The spinal cord runs from the base of the brain down through a canal formed by the vertebrae, which protect it. At each level, from the base of the skull to the tailbone, a pair of spinal nerves exits through a gap between two adjacent vertebrae.
Those nerves carry signals in both directions — sensation travelling up to the brain, instructions travelling out to muscles. Some of them form part of the autonomic nervous system, which supplies the heart, lungs, digestive system and other organs. The spine is, quite literally, the structural housing for the pathway that connects the brain to the rest of the body.
That anatomy is not in dispute. What it does not mean is that adjusting a spine treats organ disease — and we do not claim that it does.
What is well established is narrower and more practical. Mechanical problems in the spine — joints not moving as they should, discs, the soft tissue around them — can produce pain, stiffness and restricted movement. Where a nerve root is genuinely irritated or compressed, the result can be pain, altered sensation or weakness along the path that nerve supplies. And headache arising from structures in the neck is a recognised diagnosis in its own right: cervicogenic headache, classified as such by the International Headache Society.
That is the territory we work in, and it is what the Gonstead assessment is built to investigate.
Finding it - The seven steps of a Gonstead assessment
What separates Gonstead from most chiropractic is the assessment. Before anyone is adjusted, we work through seven steps:
1. Case history — what happened, when, and what makes it better or worse
2. Visualisation — what your posture and movement show us
3. Instrumentation — a Nervoscope reading taken along the spine, comparing skin temperature on each side at every level to find where the readings differ
4. Static palpation — feeling the spine at rest for tenderness, tissue tone and swelling
5. Motion palpation — feeling how each segment moves
6. Neurological and orthopaedic testing
7. Radiographic analysis — weight-bearing X-rays, taken onsite with digital equipment, usually during your initial consultation and if clinically appropriate
The point of seven steps is to narrow things down to a specific segment rather than adjust broadly and hope. A Gonstead adjustment is applied by hand to one specific level, and the rest of the spine is left alone.
​"Find it, fix it, leave it alone"
​​The goal of a Gonstead practitioner is to get you back to what you were doing as quickly as possible, and then to leave you alone.
That is what "find it, fix it, leave it alone" means in practice. We are not going to book you in every few days indefinitely. When the problem has been addressed, care should stop. We would rather you came back in two years because something new happened than keep you on a schedule you do not need.
​​Why we have stayed with it
​​There are many techniques in chiropractic, and Gonstead is one of the more demanding to learn and to keep sharp. It takes longer to assess someone this way, and it takes ongoing work to stay good at it.
Beyond the five years of university training it takes to become a chiropractor in Australia, our chiropractors keep their Gonstead training current:
Dr Joshua Free — B.H.Sc., B.Chiro.Sc., M.Chiro., and a Diplomate of the Gonstead Chiropractic Society (Australia)
Dr Nadia Hamdan — B.H.Sc., B.Chiro.Sc. (RMIT), certified in Gonstead Extremities, and a member of the Gonstead Chiropractic Society (Australia)
Dr Pieter Hart — D.C., Cleveland Chiropractic College (USA), 1976. Diplomate and Life Member of the Gonstead Chiropractic Society (Australia).
We attend Gonstead seminars regularly. Case studies are discussed, technique is refined, and new research and evidence are reviewed.
If you would like to see who else practises this way, the Gonstead Chiropractic Society (Australia) keeps a public register at gonstead.com.au. All Australian chiropractors are also registered with Ahpra, and you can check any practitioner at ahpra.gov.au.