Chiropractor Bends Over Backward for His Cause : A year after graduating, Howard Cohn is championing his unique blend of Oriental medicine, nutrition and emotional counseling to treat ailments.

Nancy Sharkey of Buena Park lay on her back in front of a roomful of people, her right arm straight up with her fingers reaching toward the ceiling.

“My name is Nancy,” she said, and as she did, chiropractor Howard Cohn tried to push her arm down. It didn’t budge.

“OK, now say something that isn’t true, like: ‘My name is Joe.’ ”

“My name is Joe,” Sharkey repeated, and Cohn pushed again on her arm. This time, it moved.

“See, you can’t lie to me,” he said. “I’ll always know.”

The body can’t lie, either, Cohn told the audience Wednesday night at a meeting of the environmental/vegetarian group, EarthSave Orange County.

After about 20 minutes of similar testing, this time with Sharkey pressing against certain spots on her spine or with small amounts of certain foods in her mouth, he said her body had confessed to a possible thyroid problem and a definite deficiency in the nutrients found in sesame seeds.

With the seeds in her mouth, Sharkey was able to resist Cohn’s pressure and keep her arm upright. Without them, she couldn’t.

“Go ahead and eat them,” he told her after the demonstration. “Your body obviously needs them.”

There are no traditional controlled scientific studies behind his methods.

When Cohn, 26, received his chiropractic license a little more than a year ago, he didn’t just hang out a shingle and wait for patients to come. Instead, he set up the Health Dynamics Center, with offices in Orange and Westwood, and began an aggressive campaign to spread the word about his own unique brand of health care that blends chiropractic with Oriental medicine, nutrition and emotional counseling.

The approach won him recognition from his peers from the International College of Applied Kinesiology for outstanding achievement by a first-year doctor, as well as a jampacked appointment book.

A graduate of the Tony Robbins “Ultimate Power” course frequently advertised on television infomercials, Cohn performs a combination demonstration/sales pitch that could easily be converted to the same format.

Cohn calls his program “Ultimate Health,” represented by a triangle of well-being with sides for chemical, structural and emotional/mental aspects. He recommends four “super foods”--sesame seeds, alfalfa sprouts, apples and green leafy vegetables--along with mineral and vitamin supplements to solve chemical imbalances, traditional chiropractic bone manipulation for structural problems and counseling combined with muscle-testing for emotional problems.

Cohn promises his patients “a life where the word sickness isn’t even in your conversation, your vocabulary.”

Cohn and his patients offer numerous testimonials to their success, often at “sharing” sessions, which are part of Cohn’s lectures. They give Cohn credit not only for healing physical problems, but also for making dramatic changes in their lives.

Cohn said he doesn’t see the absence of research backing as a problem.

If some see his methods as being a bit odd, Cohn isn’t worried.

“Anything that’s new is going to look weird,” he said.

Sometimes it’s confusing as well.

The human body, Cohn told the group, “is basically a lot of cells vibrating together. People who have reached the level of ultimate health don’t get sick because their body is vibrating at such a high rate that they aren’t affected.

“There are measurable vibrations that you can look at through an electron microscope,” he said.

“Are those actual vibrations?” asked a man in the audience.

“Well, it’s more figurative,” Cohn explained. “Does that help?”

“Yeah . . . uh, no,” the man said.

One of Cohn’s patients, Shari Goodman, 27, of Santa Ana, was so overwhelmed by the changes Cohn helped her make in her own life that she set up last week’s lecture at a meeting of EarthSave Orange County of which she is president. And she invited Sharkey, a co-worker, to attend also.

Since she attended a Cohn lecture and made her first appointment with him, Goodman has lost 40 pounds, down from a peak of 245 pounds. At her initial visit, he asked her to hold up her arm and say that she wanted to lose weight. She did, and “as I answered, he took the arm that was up in the air and pushed it down to my side with no resistance from me,” she said.

“You’re lying,” Cohn told her. Since then, Cohn has repeated the technique with other questions about Goodman’s past, following the questions by tapping on certain areas of Goodman’s spine. The taps allow the patient to release the emotion involved, Cohn said.

“It doesn’t replace psychology, but we can get rid of the blocks and open things up,” Cohn said.

Sharkey’s family physician, a medical doctor who is treating her for high blood pressure and other problems, had already mentioned the possibility of a thyroid problem. Still, she was a bit surprised to hear the same thing from Cohn.

“I was skeptical,” Sharkey, 45, said later.

Still, she attended the demonstration and agreed to be Cohn’s audience volunteer, because she hoped to find natural methods of improving her health. “And I’ve seen such a dramatic change in Shari. It was so wonderful, it motivated me. Now I’m going to make an appointment for a more in-depth study.”

Goodman said she, too, was skeptical at first. “I was at a point that I didn’t think anything could help me. I had tried everything.”

For the first time in her life, Goodman is now exercising regularly and eating more normally.

“What’s really great is that I can leave some food on my plate when I’m full,” she said.

Cohn said he’d like to expand his base beyond Southern California.

“Eventually,” he said, “I’d like to reach the whole world with it.”