Why We're Called Principled Chiropractic: The 33 Principles That Guide Everything We Do

By Dr. Andrew Biggs, DC | Principled Chiropractic | Royal Palm Beach, FL

People ask us all the time about our name.

"Principled Chiropractic — what does that mean, exactly?"

It's a fair question. And the honest answer is that the name isn't just a brand choice. It's a declaration of how we practice, what we believe about health, and what kind of chiropractors we have committed to being.

The word principled has a specific meaning in chiropractic. It refers to practitioners who practice according to the foundational philosophy of the profession, a philosophy first systematically organized nearly a hundred years ago by a chiropractor named Dr. Ralph W. Stephenson.

In 1927, Stephenson published a book called The Chiropractic Textbook. In it, he laid out 33 core principles that describe how the body works, how intelligence flows through matter, how life is expressed, and what happens when that expression is interfered with. B.J. Palmer, regarded as the developer of chiropractic, praised it as the finest book ever written on chiropractic philosophy, saying it was the best he had ever read, not excepting his own.

Those 33 principles remain, nearly a century later, the philosophical backbone of principled chiropractic practice. They are what we mean when we say our name. And today, we'd like to share them with you, in plain language and without the textbook formality, so you can understand why they matter and how they connect to the care you receive at our office.

The Big Idea Behind All 33 Principles

Before walking through the principles individually, it helps to understand the single idea they all flow from.

Stephenson's framework begins with one foundational belief: there is an intelligence in all living things that organizes, regulates, and maintains life. He called it Universal Intelligence, and in the context of the human body specifically Innate Intelligence.

Innate Intelligence is not a mystical or religious concept, though it has a quality that inspires wonder. It is simply the observation that your body knows how to do things you have never been taught. Your heart beats without instruction. Your wounds heal without supervision. Your immune system identifies and neutralizes threats you've never encountered before. Your body grew from a single fertilized cell into the extraordinarily complex organism you are today, and it did so without a single conscious decision on your part.

That organizing intelligence, whatever we choose to call it, is real, it is powerful, and it is always working in your favor. The 33 principles describe how it works, what it works through, and what happens when something gets in its way.

That last part, what happens when something gets in its way, is where chiropractic comes in.

The 33 Principles, Explained Simply

The Foundation: Universal Intelligence and Life (Principles 1–16)

The first sixteen principles establish the philosophical framework for understanding what life is and how it works.

Principle 1 — The Major Premise: A Universal Intelligence exists in all matter and gives everything its properties and actions.

In plain language: there is an organizing intelligence at work in the universe. Everything that exists, from galaxies to cells, operates according to this intelligence.

Principle 2 — The Chiropractic Meaning of Life: Life is the expression of that intelligence through matter.

This is the cornerstone of chiropractic philosophy. Life is not simply chemistry or biology, it is the expression of intelligence through a physical body.

Principle 3 — The Union of Intelligence and Matter: Life requires both intelligence and matter together. Neither alone is sufficient.

Principle 4 — The Triune of Life: Life has three components that must work together: Intelligence, Force, and Matter. Think of Intelligence as the plan, Force as the signal that carries it, and Matter as the physical structure that expresses it.

Principle 5 — The Perfection of the Triune: For life to be expressed at 100%, all three components, Intelligence, Force, and Matter, must be working at 100%.

This principle has profound clinical implications. If the Force (the nerve signal) is being interfered with, the full expression of life, health, cannot occur. Even if the Intelligence is perfect and the Matter (the body) is capable, interference in the middle breaks the circuit.

Principle 6 — The Principle of Time: Every process takes time.

Healing is not instant. Structural correction takes time. This is why principled chiropractic care involves a corrective plan rather than a single adjustment, because real change, in biology as in everything else, unfolds over time.

Principle 7 — The Amount of Intelligence in Matter: Every living thing contains exactly the right amount of intelligence it needs, no more, no less. A single cell has precisely the intelligence required to function as a cell. A complex human body has precisely the intelligence required to function as a human body. The intelligence is always perfectly proportioned to the organism it inhabits.

Principle 8 — The Function of Intelligence: The job of intelligence is to create force, i.e. to generate the signals, impulses, and directives that set the body in motion. Intelligence doesn't act on the body directly; it acts by producing the force that then travels through the nervous system to every cell and organ.

Principle 9 — The Amount of Force Created by Intelligence: Just as intelligence is always 100%, the force it creates is always 100%. Innate Intelligence never sends a weak or incomplete signal. When the body fails to respond fully, it is not because the signal was insufficient, it is because something interfered with its delivery.

Principle 10 — The Function of Force: Force serves as the bridge between intelligence and matter. If intelligence is the message and matter is the recipient, force is the messenger. In the human body, that messenger travels through the nervous system, which is precisely why the health of the spine, which houses and protects that system, is so critically important. Principle 11 — The Character of Universal Forces: The forces of the physical universe (gravity, mechanical stress, environmental pressure) operate according to fixed laws. They don't adapt to protect you. They don't care whether they harm or help. Gravity pulls on a healthy spine and a compromised one with equal indifference. This is why the accumulated forces of daily life, such as prolonged sitting, poor posture, physical stress, can cause structural damage over time without ever announcing themselves with pain.

Principle 12 — Interference with Transmission of Universal Forces: The flow of force through matter can be interrupted. This principle opens the door to everything that follows in chiropractic philosophy. If force can be interfered with, then the expression of intelligence through the body can be compromised. That compromise has consequences for health. This is the principle that makes the work of a chiropractor necessary.

Principle 13 — The Function of Matter: Matter's role is to receive and express force. In the context of the human body, this means that the physical structures of the body (bones, muscles, organs, nerves) exist to express the intelligence and force that flow through them. A spine in its proper structural position expresses that force fully. A spine that has shifted out of position cannot.

Principle 14 — Universal Life: Because force is expressed as motion in matter, and all matter has motion, there is a form of life, or life-like expression, in all matter. Stephenson is pointing here to the idea that the organizing intelligence at work in the universe is not limited to biology. It is a property of existence itself. For a chiropractor, this principle reinforces the view that the body is not a machine but a living, dynamic expression of intelligence.

Principle 15 — No Motion Without the Effort of Force: Matter cannot move on its own. Motion requires force, and force requires intelligence to create it. In the body, this means that every heartbeat, every breath, every movement of a single muscle fiber requires an intelligent signal to initiate it. Life is not passive. It is the active, continuous result of intelligence generating force and matter expressing it.

Principle 16 — Intelligence in Both Organic and Inorganic Matter: Universal Intelligence gives force to all matter, not just living organisms, but inorganic matter as well. The same organizing principle that governs the rotation of planets governs the healing of a broken bone. Stephenson is establishing here that chiropractic philosophy is not a narrow clinical framework, instead it is grounded in a view of intelligence as a universal property of all existence, expressed most fully in living things.

The Body's Built-In Intelligence (Principles 17–27)

The next group of principles moves from the universal to the personal — from how intelligence operates in all matter to how it operates specifically in the human body.

Principle 17 — Cause and Effect: Every effect has a cause. Every cause has effects.

This principle is deceptively simple and profoundly important. In health care, it means that symptoms are effects, they are not the problem itself, but the result of a problem. Treating symptoms without identifying their cause is treating effects while ignoring causes.

At Principled Chiropractic, this principle is at the heart of everything we do. We do not ask "how do we eliminate this symptom?" We ask, "what is causing this symptom, and can we address that cause directly?"

Principle 18 — Evidence of Life: The signs of life, breathing, movement, sensation, healing, are evidence of the intelligence of life at work.

Principle 19 — Organic Matter: The body is organized matter, matter which is arranged in an extraordinarily specific and purposeful way.

Principle 20 — Innate Intelligence: Every living thing has an inborn intelligence within its body, what Stephenson called Innate Intelligence.

This is the principle that chiropractors speak of most often. Innate Intelligence is your body's internal wisdom. It regulates your temperature, coordinates your immune response, heals your injuries, manages your digestion, and governs thousands of other processes simultaneously, all without your conscious involvement.

Principle 21 — The Mission of Innate Intelligence: Innate Intelligence's job is to maintain the body in active organization, to keep everything working as it should.

Principle 22 — The Amount of Innate Intelligence: Every living thing has 100% of the Innate Intelligence it requires. The intelligence itself is never the problem.

This is a critically important principle for patients to understand. Your body is not defective. Your Innate Intelligence is not broken or insufficient. It is always working at 100%, always trying to maintain your health. When health problems arise, it is not because your body has failed, it is because something is interfering with the body's ability to express that intelligence fully.

Principle 23 — The Function of Innate Intelligence: Innate Intelligence adapts the body's forces for its own use, so that all parts can work together for mutual benefit.

Principle 24 — The Limits of Adaptation: Innate Intelligence can only work within the limitations of matter. If the physical body is compromised by injury, structural shifts, toxicity, or other stressors, Innate Intelligence can only do so much.

Principle 25 — The Character of Innate Forces: The forces of Innate Intelligence never harm the structures they work through. Your body is always working for you, never against you.

Principle 26 — Universal vs. Innate Forces: Universal forces (like gravity, physical stress, and environmental forces) can be destructive to the body's structures. Innate forces are constructive. They build, repair, and maintain. The goal of chiropractic care is to support Innate Intelligence in doing its constructive work.

Principle 27 — The Normality of Innate Intelligence: Innate Intelligence is always normal. It never makes mistakes. If the body is not functioning well, the issue is not the intelligence, it is that the intelligence cannot be fully expressed.

The Nervous System as the Pathway (Principles 28–31)

These four principles are the clinical heart of chiropractic philosophy and the most directly relevant to the care we provide at Principled Chiropractic.

Principle 28 — The Conductors of Innate Forces: Innate Intelligence communicates with the body through the nervous system.

This is the anatomical foundation of chiropractic. The brain, the physical seat of Innate Intelligence, sends its signals through the spinal cord and out through the nerve roots to every organ, tissue, and cell in the body. The spine is not just a structural column; it is the protective housing for the body's most vital communication network.

Principle 29 — Interference with Transmission of Innate Forces: That communication can be interfered with.

If the spine shifts out of its normal structural position, due to injury, accumulated stress, poor posture, or birth trauma, it can place pressure or tension on the nervous system, disrupting the signals that Innate Intelligence depends on to maintain health.

Principle 30 — The Causes of Dis-ease: When the transmission of Innate forces is interfered with, the result is incoordination, what Stephenson called "dis-ease." This is not disease in the conventional sense, but a state of the body being unable to coordinate itself properly.

Notice the hyphen in "dis-ease." Stephenson was deliberate about this. Dis-ease, the loss of ease in the body's function, precedes disease. It is the underlying state of dysfunction that, if left unaddressed, can eventually express itself as diagnosable illness.

Principle 31 — Subluxations: Interference with the transmission of Innate forces in the body is always directly or indirectly due to subluxations in the spinal column.

This is perhaps the most famous and defining principle in all of chiropractic philosophy. A subluxation, or what we at Principled Chiropractic call a NeuroStructural Shift, is a misalignment or structural deviation in the spine that creates neurological interference. It is the primary problem that principled chiropractors are trained to identify and correct.

Everything we do in our office flows from this principle. We examine the spine not to find where it hurts, but to find where structural shifts are creating interference with the nervous system, and then to correct those shifts so that Innate Intelligence can be fully expressed.

Harmony and Wholeness (Principles 32–33)

The final two principles bring the framework together.

Principle 32 — The Principle of Coordination: Health is the harmonious action of all parts of the body working together for mutual benefit.

When Innate Intelligence can communicate freely through a structurally sound spine, the result is coordination with every system of the body working in concert. This is what we mean when we talk about optimal health. Not simply the absence of pain or disease, but the full, coordinated expression of life.

Principle 33 — The Law of Demand and Supply: The body's systems work in a state of constant communication, the brain as the coordinating center, the nerves as the messengers, and every organ as both a sender and receiver of signals. When demand and supply are in balance, the body thrives.

What This Means for You

Reading through these 33 principles, a clear picture emerges. Health is not something that comes from outside the body, i.e. from a pill, a treatment, or a procedure. Health is the natural expression of a body whose intelligence can flow freely through a structurally sound nervous system.

When that flow is interrupted by the subluxations that Stephenson described in Principle 31, or what we call NeuroStructural Shifts, the body's ability to regulate, heal, and thrive is compromised. The symptoms that follow are not the problem. They are the signal that interference exists and needs to be addressed.

This is why we are called Principled Chiropractic. Not because we follow a rigid set of rules, but because we practice according to a principled understanding of how the body works, what causes it to break down, and what restoring it actually requires.

Every adjustment we deliver, every corrective plan we design, and every conversation we have with a patient is guided by these principles. We believe your body is intelligent. We believe it is always working in your favor. And we believe that our job — our mission — is simply to remove the structural interference that keeps it from doing so fully.

If that philosophy resonates with you, we'd love to have a conversation.