One new local chiropractor is employing a new technique that addresses a person’s emotions and past injuries to find the root of a patient’s ailment.

“We’re getting back to the cause of the problem. We’re not just dealing with the effect,” said Dr. John Leegaard, owner of Lake Mills Family Chiropractic.

Leegaard opened Lake Mills Family Chiropractic in 2003, but the business changed about two years ago when he incorporated the Koren Specific Method.

The technique was formed about five years ago by Dr. Tedd Koren of Hatfield, Pa. The method blends four techniques: chiropractics, osteopathy, acupuncture and direction non force technique. Leegaard described it as using binary neurological biofeedback to evaluate a person’s condition.

Since the method is new, Leegaard said there are chiropractors who employ the techniques. He’s been employing the methods for about two years, and is actually paid by Dr. Koren to go to seminars and teach chiropractors to use the method.

Leegaard was introduced to the treatment at a seminar at Iowa State University. He said he’d been skeptical about KST until the treatment was used to correct right shoulder pain he’d experienced for years after an injury.

Unlike more traditional chiropractic work, KST incorporates different postures. For example, Leegaard said he could put a person in the type of posture they’re frequently in at work and then make the corrections in that position because trouble can be specific to a certain posture.

Posture is important because whether a person is sitting or standing can help Leegaard find the source of the discomfort.

For example, he’s had patients mimic their golf swing and pause at moments of their swing to help pinpoint the source of the problem. He’s also had them mimic the motion aspect of the game.

“Basically when we get a new patient in, we evaluate them as a patient. The very first thing I’m doing is I’m getting in and going, ‘OK, is this structural, is it emotional, is it position specific,” he said.

KST treatments aren’t limited to physical treatments, as Leegaard said the technique can also be used to treat emotional issues.

“We can also adjust for a person with specific emotional issues, past emotional events or past emotional traumas. We can adjust for emotions as well as we can for the physical things that have happened to a person,” Leegaard said.

Many of the emotional adjustments focus around the cranial bones. He described the adjustments used in KST as very gentle, yet very powerful. Many people like it because it’s gentle in comparison to more traditional treatments.

“With this chiropractic approach, there’s no twisting, no turning, no cracking, no popping,” he said.

The adjustments typically involve an electronic chiropractic instrument.

Before he can make an adjustment, Leegaard takes a detailed history of the problem and how long it’s been going on. Then he looks at the person’s occupation. He also looks into what’s going on with that person at home and socially to see if other factors play a part in the issue.

“Generally we can clear up a lot of things in a very short amount of time for people and what I’ve found with most individuals is that a good degree of the physical pain that they’ve been in is related to some kind of past emotional or current emotional thing,” Leegaard said.

Often times, those emotional issues can stem from things like stress from work and relationship issues, like a divorce.

Through biofeedback and talking with the patient, he can trace the source of issues and past injuries. Leegaard could tell that one patient experienced a head injury as a child and was causing headaches to this day.

“By targeting those old injuries, and/or old emotional things like that, we get back to original root source of the problem, and then we start dealing with it from that point,” he said.

It’s important to track the issue to specific parts of the body, like a certain muscle, joint or organ. Often times the source of the problem is not at the point of the discomfort.

“For instance, a person can come in with lower back pain, and maybe I don’t even adjust their lower back. Maybe I adjust in their neck and their cranial bones. They’re ready to walk out and run around the block. Their lower back pain is going without even touching the lower back,” he said.

While he said chiropractors currently get great results, he said KST takes chiropractic work to the next level.

Aside from joint and back issues, Leegaard can also use the Koren Specific Method treat things like sinuses, lung capacity, bowel issues, allergies, asthma, migraines, and carpel tunnel syndrome.

While he said chiropractors can treat different things like this, Leegaard said the new method takes the treatments to a new level.

“Not that a regular chiropractor can’t help with that, but this takes it to a whole different level,” Leegaard said.