Answering: how could a chiropractor add or refer to a somatic, vision-based modality, and what are the honest limits?

Estimated reading time: 10 min read

If you run a chiropractic practice in Melbourne and you are weighing up whether a light-based somatic modality belongs anywhere near your toolkit, this guide is written for you rather than for a patient. Quantum Photo Somatics, often shortened to QPS, is a complementary somatic modality registered with the International Institute for Complementary Therapists (IICT) since 2019, developed by Dr Michael Christian across 33 years of clinical practice and more than 43,680 documented sessions. Dr Christian holds a PhD in integrative medicine and is board certified with the Board of Integrative Medicine in North America. What follows is a practitioner-to-practitioner walk-through of how a chiropractor could introduce or refer to QPS, described through Dr Christian’s own model and framed with the caution the field requires.

Let us be clear about the frame from the outset. This article does not claim that QPS produces clinical outcomes for your patients, and it makes no promise about your results, your throughput or your revenue. It does not offer advice that touches your scope of practice or your AHPRA obligations, which remain entirely yours to interpret. What it offers is a structured way to understand what QPS is, why its point of difference might interest a chiropractor, and how a referral or a shared-care conversation could work in practice, using “may support” language because that is the honest and lawful way to describe a complementary modality.

Key Insights

• QPS is an IICT-registered complementary somatic modality that works through the visual system using calibrated light and prism, not through spinal manipulation, so it sits beside chiropractic rather than overlapping it.
• In Dr Christian’s model, its point of difference is a vision-to-body mechanism he calls phase coherence, and its access point is that touch is always optional and every session is consent-led.
• There are no randomised controlled trials presenting QPS as a proven treatment, and nothing here should be read as a clinical-outcome, revenue or scope-of-practice claim. QPS is complementary and sits alongside the care a patient already receives.

Keep reading for the complete guide.

Table of Contents

• Why a Chiropractor Might Look at QPS
• The Point of Difference: Vision, Not Just Structure
• How a Chiropractor Could Introduce or Refer to QPS
• The Honest Limits, and Your Obligations
• A Referral Readiness Checklist

Why a Chiropractor Might Look at QPS

Most chiropractors will recognise the patient who keeps arriving with something that structural care alone does not seem to resolve. The adjustments hold less well than you would expect. There is a background of visual overwhelm in busy environments, a sense of being subtly off balance, or a nervous system that stays braced no matter how good the biomechanics look on the table. You are working diligently within your scope, and yet a piece of the picture appears to sit outside it. That gap is the territory Dr Christian has spent his career in, and it is the reason some practitioners become curious about a modality that starts somewhere other than the spine.

QPS is somatic, meaning it works with the nervous system through the body, but its entry point is the visual system rather than the musculoskeletal one. That difference is what makes it a genuine complement rather than a competitor. Where your work engages structure and movement directly, QPS engages the stream of information the eyes feed into the systems that govern balance and tension. According to Victoria’s Better Health Channel, the somatic nervous system relays information from the eyes, ears, skin and muscle to the central nervous system, while the autonomic nervous system regulates glands and organs without any conscious effort. The eyes, in other words, are not a separate department from the body you already treat.

None of this is a claim that QPS will improve your clinical outcomes or that it belongs in every practice. It is simply an account of why a chiropractor, encountering the limits of a single-system approach in a particular patient, might want to understand what a vision-based somatic modality offers before deciding whether to learn about it or refer to it.

• QPS starts with the visual system, so it complements rather than duplicates spinal work.
• The eyes feed the same nervous-system architecture chiropractors already work within.
• Interest in QPS is usually driven by the patient a single-system approach does not fully reach.

The Point of Difference: Vision, Not Just Structure

Here is where Dr Christian’s thinking becomes genuinely his own, and he states it boldly. In his model, a good deal of persistent, hard-to-explain experience is not primarily a structural problem or a thinking problem. He proposes that it is a timing problem: the visual, neurological and somatic systems falling out of step with one another, a state he calls a loss of phase coherence. When those systems no longer arrive together, he argues, the body reads the mismatch itself as a low-grade threat and holds a background hum of alarm that structural correction alone does not always settle.

Quantum Photo Somatics is the method he built from that idea. Using calibrated light and prism, he works to bring the visual system back into closer timing with the rest of the body, which he describes as redirecting the body’s process rather than treating a symptom. He has developed this across frameworks he defines in plain terms before any specialist language, including phase coherence, the SEE Framework and the AIM Framework, and set the thinking out across two books, including the 2025 From Seeing to Being. For a chiropractor, the useful takeaway is not that this replaces anything you do. It is that QPS is addressing a different leg of the same stool, the visual-neurological timing that sits upstream of a lot of what presents on your table.

The other point of difference matters just as much for referral. Because QPS works through light and prism rather than manipulation, touch is always optional and every session is governed by a clear consent framework. For a patient who finds hands-on work difficult, whether through trauma, sensory sensitivity or simple preference, that consent-led, touch-optional structure is a deliberate feature of the modality, not an afterthought. It gives you a considered option to point toward for the person for whom more hands-on referral would not feel right.

• Dr Christian frames the mechanism as phase coherence, a timing relationship between vision, nervous system and body.
• QPS uses calibrated light and prism, which he describes as redirecting process rather than treating a symptom.
• Touch is always optional and consent-led, giving you a referral option for touch-sensitive patients.

How a Chiropractor Could Introduce or Refer to QPS

If you decide QPS is worth exploring, the sensible path is gradual and evidence-honest. The numbered steps below describe how a chiropractor could introduce the idea into their practice or refer a patient, without making any promise about outcomes and without stepping outside your own professional judgement. Treat them as a sequence you can start and stop at any point.

1. 1Understand the model for yourself first.
   Before you mention QPS to anyone, read Dr Christian’s account of phase coherence and the vision-to-body mechanism in his own words, so you can describe it accurately as his framework rather than as established fact. The full QPS guide and the explainer on how the eyes connect to the nervous system are the place to start. Your goal at this step is comprehension, not endorsement.
2. 2Confirm where it sits relative to your scope.
   Satisfy yourself that QPS is complementary and does not ask you to do anything outside chiropractic. It is a separate modality delivered by a separate registered practitioner, so referring to it is closer to signposting a patient toward a complementary option than to expanding your own practice. How that interacts with your AHPRA obligations is your call to make, and this article does not make it for you.
3. 3Identify the patient it might suit.
   QPS tends to speak to people whose experience persists after single-system care, and especially to those for whom visual overwhelm, balance and posture seem entangled. The relationship between vision, posture and balance is a useful lens for spotting that patient. Notice you are matching a situation, not diagnosing a condition or predicting a result.
4. 4Introduce it in honest, complementary language.
   When you raise QPS with a patient, describe it as a complementary modality that may support the nervous system, developed by a registered practitioner, that some people explore alongside their existing care. Avoid any wording that implies it will treat their complaint or improve your results. The touch-optional, consent-led structure is often the most useful thing to mention, because it tells the patient they stay in control.
5. 5Point them to a low-pressure first step.
   The entry point to QPS is a one-hour, in-person Quansultation in Melbourne CBD. It is an exploration rather than a treatment, with no referral required and no commitment beyond the single session, so the patient can judge for themselves whether the approach fits. Directing someone to that conversation keeps the decision firmly with them.
6. 6Keep the two forms of care clearly separate.
   If a patient does explore QPS, continue your own care on its own terms and let theirs run in parallel. QPS is designed to sit alongside conventional and complementary care, never to replace it, and keeping the lanes distinct protects both the patient and your professional footing. Review the fit with the patient in their own words, treating what they report as lived experience rather than as a measured clinical outcome.

The Honest Limits, and Your Obligations

Because this is practitioner-facing, the caveats deserve more room than they would in a patient article, not less. QPS is a complementary modality, not a medical treatment, and there are no randomised controlled trials presenting it as a proven therapy. Dr Christian does not pretend otherwise, and neither should any referral conversation. When we say a session “may support” the nervous system, that is the honest and lawful description of what a complementary modality can offer, and it is deliberately not a promise of a clinical result for your patient.

It follows that nothing in this guide should be read as a claim about your practice. QPS will not, and this article does not suggest it will, improve your treatment outcomes, your patient retention or your revenue. Those are yours to earn through your own work. Equally, the decision about how a complementary referral interacts with your scope of practice and your AHPRA advertising and conduct obligations rests entirely with you. We have deliberately not offered guidance that touches that territory, because it would be inappropriate for a modality provider to do so.

What we can say with confidence is what QPS is: a registered, insured, consent-led complementary modality, governed by the IICT professional code of conduct, built on more than three decades of clinical practice and tens of thousands of documented sessions. For a chiropractor, that combination of a clear vision-to-body point of difference and a careful, accountable posture is precisely what makes it a reasonable option to understand, and, if it fits a particular patient, to refer to with honest language.

• QPS “may support” the nervous system; it does not treat conditions and has no RCT evidence base.
• Nothing here claims QPS improves your outcomes, retention or revenue.
• Scope-of-practice and AHPRA judgement calls remain entirely yours.

A Referral Readiness Checklist

If you have worked through the steps above and are considering whether to refer, the checklist below is a quick way to confirm you are on honest ground before you say anything to a patient. Every item should be a comfortable yes.

• I can describe QPS as Dr Christian’s model, using attributed language, rather than as established fact.
• I am framing it as complementary and “may support”, with no claim that it treats a condition.
• I have made no promise about my own clinical outcomes, retention or revenue.
• I am confident the referral sits comfortably within my own reading of my scope and AHPRA obligations.
• I have flagged that touch is optional and every session is consent-led.
• I am pointing the patient to a low-pressure Quansultation, with the decision left entirely to them.
• I will continue my own care in parallel and keep the two forms of care clearly separate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is QPS a somatic modality a chiropractor can add or refer to in Melbourne?

A: Yes, in the sense that it is a distinct, IICT-registered complementary somatic modality delivered in Melbourne CBD by Dr Michael Christian, which a chiropractor can refer a patient to or learn about. It works through the visual system using light and prism rather than through spinal manipulation, so it complements chiropractic rather than overlapping it. Whether a referral suits your practice and your scope is your own professional judgement.

Q: Will adding or referring to QPS improve my patients’ results or my practice’s revenue?

A: We make no such claim, and you should be wary of anyone who does. QPS is a complementary modality with no randomised controlled trials establishing it as a proven treatment, so it cannot honestly be sold as a way to improve your clinical outcomes, and nothing about it should be presented as a revenue strategy. It “may support” a patient’s nervous system alongside their existing care, and that is the limit of what can responsibly be said.

Q: How is QPS different from what I already do as a chiropractor?

A: Your work engages structure and movement directly. In Dr Christian’s model, QPS engages the timing between the visual, neurological and somatic systems, a relationship he calls phase coherence, using calibrated light and prism. He describes it as addressing a different leg of the same stool, the vision-to-body timing that can sit upstream of what presents structurally. It is designed to sit alongside your care, never to replace it.

Q: Does QPS involve touch, and why does that matter for referral?

A: Touch is always optional in QPS and every session is governed by a clear consent framework, so the patient stays in control throughout. That makes it a considered option to point toward for people who find hands-on work difficult. The work centres on light and prism and on how the visual system interacts with the body, rather than on physical manipulation.

Want to Learn More?

Quantum Photo Somatics is the work of more than three decades of clinical practice, a doctorate in integrative medicine, board certification with the Board of Integrative Medicine in North America, and two published books, including From Seeing to Being. If you would like to understand Dr Christian’s model before you decide anything, the guide and methodology pages set out the frameworks in plain language, written for people who want to understand before they refer.

Citations

• “Nervous system, Better Health Channel”: Victoria’s state health information service explains that the somatic nervous system relays information from the eyes, ears, skin and muscle to the central nervous system, and the autonomic nervous system regulates glands and organs without conscious effort, the physiological basis for working through the visual system. https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/nervous-system
• “IICT Approved Modalities”: The International Institute for Complementary Therapists confirms that an approved modality has been assessed and approved by its insurance partners and is eligible for professional membership and insurance cover, from a list of more than 1,400 therapies. This is the body with which QPS has been registered since 2019. https://www.myiict.com/approved-modalities/

As a registered modality, QPS operates within the IICT professional code of conduct and the general standards that apply to complementary therapy advertising in Australia, which require that no therapeutic claims of cure or treatment be made.