Nearly 10,000 people came to the free chiropractic clinic for treatment during the five-day Sant Nirankari Mission in Mumbai in January. “When they go on that table, the expectation is healing. ‘I will get better from that adjustment.’ There’s the big difference.” Canadian-born chiropractor Dr. Jimmy Nanda views the Samagam as an opportunity to bring chiropractic care to people who may otherwise not have access to it. The chiropractic clinic at the Sant Nirankari Mission is a brainchild of Nanda, initially organizing a few volunteer doctors and students from Canada and the U.S. to participate in their first Nirankari mission trip in November 2013. Since then, Nanda has been leading a steady stream of chiropractic volunteers to Mumbai and Delhi each year. And, even helping some of them transi-tion into fulltime – or part-time – practice in India. “Life-changing” is typically the phrase Nanda hears from volunteers after serving on the Nirankari mis-sion trip. He shares many of the volunteer doctors’ www.canadianchiropractor.ca view that chiropractic principles conform with the beliefs and spirituality of the Indian culture. “We as Canadians and Americans, we doubt. We have limitations or perceptions of what the expectations are. Here (in India) these people are coming in with complete total surrender. They feel that there is a reason the universe sent the doctors here. So when they go on that table, the expectation is healing. ‘I will get better from that adjustment.’ There’s the big difference,” Nanda explains. Up to 10,000 people flock to the chiropractic tent during the Nirankari missions to seek chiro-practic relief for their conditions – many of which involve knee and back pains. For student volunteers, the mission is as much an opportunity to serve as it is to learn. Twenty fourth-year students from Life West Chiropractic College in Hayward, Calif., travelled to Mumbai to volunteer for the Nirankari mission in January. “There are over 500 students that have gone on mission trips like this, and the reason why is the experience they get,” says Dr. Ron Oberstein, president of Life West. “There are thousands of people coming in, with different cases coming in and conditions that they might not see in Hay-ward, California.” One of those students is Canadian Arielle Ru-binoff from North York, Ont., who is currently in her last year at Life West. She calls the Mumbai mission trip an “absolutely amazing experience.” “When you’re in school it’s hard to remember the philosophy of chiropractic and the oneness and connection, so that is the biggest thing I’m going to bring back – just a re-energized connec-tion with everybody that comes into my office and comes into my life, and I’m just going to take that as a humbling experience,” Rubinoff says. Taking care of business Witnessing the tens of thousands of people lining up for chiropractic treatment during the five days of the Nirankari mission – many of whom suffer from knee, back and neck pains – it’s easy to see how chiropractors would see a need for the pro-fession to take on India. The musculoskeletal conditions brought on by the labour-intensive nature of people’s occupations and regular activ-ities are ripe for chiropractic picking. Dr. Alison Bale closed her clinic in the U.K. 10 years ago to move to Goa, India, and start a chi-ropractic practice. She shares the practice with her husband, Martin Bale, a soft-tissue therapist. Bale is now at the point where she wants her practice to be, but she admits it has not always been easy starting a chiropractic clinic in that country. “If you look at just purely the chiropractic side, it’s trying to explain chiropractic to an audience April 2018 Canadian Chiropractor 21
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