Jonathan Howat

About the AuthorBorn to parents of a Scottish lineage, Jonathan Howat's father David arrived in Rhodesia with his family in 1911. His mother, Elspeth, arrived in South Africa with her family in the 1820s. She was a classics teacher. Jonathan was born in 1947 in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia. His father spent five years in the Western Desert during the Second World War as Adjutant of 237 Rhodesia Squadron. He returned to Southern Rhodesia to practise chiropractic.Jonathan's primary education was...See more

About the AuthorBorn to parents of a Scottish lineage, Jonathan Howat's father David arrived in Rhodesia with his family in 1911. His mother, Elspeth, arrived in South Africa with her family in the 1820s. She was a classics teacher. Jonathan was born in 1947 in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia. His father spent five years in the Western Desert during the Second World War as Adjutant of 237 Rhodesia Squadron. He returned to Southern Rhodesia to practise chiropractic.Jonathan's primary education was at Milton Junior School in Bulawayo. His secondary education took place at Falcon College, a boarding school in an abandoned gold mine near Essexvale, in the Matabeleland bush.His chiropractic career started in 1970 after he graduated from the Palmer College of Chiropractic Medicine. Jonathan returned to Rhodesia to join his father, who had graduated in 1938 from what was then the Palmer School of Chiropractic. He spent a very happy 15 years under David's guidance and tutelage. Jonathan aquired skills using the Gonstead technique and HIO (hole-in-one, upper cervical specific, created by Dr BJ Palmer in the 1930s) and soon built a busy practice, seeing several hundred patients a week.The Rhodesian Terrorist War started in 1974 and, like all Rhodesian men, Jonathan was conscripted into the Rhodesian Army. He served as a paratrooper medic with the Selous Scouts until the war ended with Zimbabwean Independence in 1980. Matabeleland then became the focus of Mugabe's Korean-trained 5th Brigade who terrorised and killed over 50,000 Matabele. With his wonderful wife, Arline, and his three children, Josh, Kate and Juliet, Jonathan decided to leave their homeland and parents to emigrate to the United Kingdom in 1984 to start a new life. They arrived at Heathrow in London with several suitcases and £70.While still in Bulawayo, Jonathan had been investigating other forms of chiropractic treatment and one day his father passed him a letter inviting him to a SOT (sacro-occipital technique) seminar with David Denton, in Bexhill, in England. Jonathan flew the next day to London and participated in what was to be a life changer.Dr Major Bertram DeJarnette was the founder and developer of SOT, which introduced Jonathan to a chiropractic method of assessing symptoms and problems before correcting them. DeJarnette's engineering insight into the biology of the body was original and groundbreaking, and his logical appreciation of how to address these complexities resulted in SOT. Jonathan returned home and turned his practice around 180 degrees. He spent every night for the next year going through Gray's Anatomy and Guyton's Physiology until he had completely mastered SOT.After the move to the UK, Jonathan became involved in teaching SOT, along with Drs Nelson and Cameron DeCamp, and having taken all the relevant exams and received his Diplomate in Craniopathy in 1985, Jonathan formed SOTO Europe, a sister organisation to SORSI (USA), PAAC (Japan), SOTO Australia/Asia. SOTO Europe now teaches over 400 chiropractors.Jonathan wrote his first book, The Anatomy and Physiology of Sacro Occipital Technique, in 1999, accompanied by charts, brochures and videos. He continued to teach this magnificent work around the world - Japan, Australia, USA, South Africa, South America and Europe.His Oxford Chiropractic Clinic in Headington, Oxford, became a showcase for SOT. Over the next 28 years, young men and women who practised with Jonathan went on to teach and lecture in SOTO Europe, in France, Italy, Holland, Germany, Scandinavia and the UK. They are still a constant force within SOT and he is eternally grateful for their continued support. Their enthusiasm and dedication are what made SOTO Europe such a powerful... See less