z Site Updates
Turning Life Off Is Not Turning Life On
If you suddenly had a painful splinter in your finger there are a number of options available for you. You could do nothing, let it fester, and allow your immune system to gradually decompose it through phagocytosis. You will heal eventually. It may take some time. That’s what our bodies do; they heal one way or another. However, if you decide to do something about your splinter, there are several more options. One, you could take enough pain medicine until you can’t feel the discomfort anymore, or you could sever the nerve going to your finger and this would keep you from feeling the pain any more. You could just cut your finger off and the stump will heal eventually, leaving you with four fingers. Or, you could pull the splinter out and let your immune system quickly heal the tissues now that they are not being interfered with by a foreign object. This option leaves you with all five fingers in working order and is the most rapid route to returning to normal function. I know this sounds a bit silly, but we are confronted with this decision all the time in other areas of health care.
The medicines that are trumpeted every day from all manner of media generally act in a way that is similar to cutting the nerve to the finger. They are suppressive and palliative. Pain is a messenger that something is wrong. ‘Killing’ the messenger will diminish your pain but it doesn’t do anything to solve the actual problem. You just live life in ‘blissful ignorance’. This is actually true for most cardiac medications among many others. The ‘heart’ pills do not just go to the cells of the heart and cardiovascular system where you want them to go. They go to every cell in your body and change functions at that level where ever they go. These changes can and do cause problems and these are known as ‘side effects’.
We are comprised of trillions of cells. They combine together to form tissues and organs. All of these structures work must together in harmony for us to be healthy. At any moment, our bodies are doing the very best they can with what they have to work with. Medications (drugs) generally interfere with metabolic pathways inside cells. They shut down certain functions. They can shut down communications between cells. This is the opposite of removing interference and allowing the vital force of life inside you to function without constraint. Turning life off is not turning life on.
Sometimes, it is the best we can do. Being numb may be preferable to living a life in pain. But what if we listened to the message and understood it? What if we have more power inside us than we have been told? What if you didn’t have to constantly control your symptoms with toxic drugs but could actually free the life that struggles to express itself inside you?
This is the incredible reality of upper cervical chiropractic. If you have been under upper cervical care for a while you already have experienced this truth. The adjustment works not because of what it ‘does’, but because of what it ‘un-does’! Freeing the power of life to communicate freely with all the cells of the body allows the body to work in the optimal and coordinated manner that it was made. Diminishing function, decreasing communication also lessens the ability of life to find a way back to health.
You know what the adjustment has done for you. Many of you say you don’t know what you would do without it now! No one wants to live with life turned down once they have lived life in adjustment! Imagine if the whole world had access to this amazing healthcare. Imagine if everyone felt well and healthy. Imagine the kinds of decisions we would all make if all of our nervous systems were working properly. Keep imagining and spread the word!
Michael Thomas, RN, BS, DC
Happy New Year
“What is to give light must endure burning.”
Viktor Frankl
The winter solstice signals the yearly extreme of the darkness of night as well as the minimum of day. From this point in the calendar, the light of day will now grow with each revolution of the Earth, incrementally shortening the night, gradually increasing the length of solar illumination each day. This occurs because the spin of the earth is not perpendicular to the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. This makes the whole Earth wobble, and it takes a whole year to wobble north to south and back to north.
The celebration of the end of one year and the beginning of another, offers us a moment to consider the rhythms of our own life. Circles within circles. Circles have neither beginning nor end, but we do. The rhythms of our lives begin in the womb and end with our last expiring breath. The cycle of our life is a truncation (shortened version) of the endless cycles around us. For instance, there is a cycle of atoms and molecules that continuously move into and out of us, exchanging themselves with other atoms and molecules in our planet’s air, water and earth. Where we begin and end may be more fluid than we usually consider. The Moon pulls on the liquids within our blood just as it tugs on the water in the oceans producing the tides. We have relationships with others that we see and talk with as we go through our weeks and months and years.
The gravity that binds us to this Earth causes us to wobble too. We always move in rhythmic fashion in little micro-orbits around the line of gravity formed by our mass. The center of our wobbling (our center of gravity), generally resides in our pelvis. When we stand up on our two legs, our center of gravity is several feet off the ground. Our incredible nervous systems continually adapt and compensate in order to optimize our positions to best match up with whatever we are doing at any moment in time. Equipoise, we call it.
While our bodies dance with gravity, we are usually busy finding balance in other ways. We don’t want to be too hungry or too full. We try to get the right amount of sleep so we can be alert in the other parts of the day. We want to be sensitive to others and yet maintain the boundaries necessary for our own emotional and mental health. We must be active enough to be healthy but not work so hard we begin to break down. There is no magic action or thought or feeling that always works in every situation. It is in the balance of all the aspects that life happens. The relationship between the ‘pieces’ turns out to be more important than the pieces themselves.
This idea is called a systems approach and is increasingly being seen in science as the next step after many decades of reductionism. In any structure, it is the way the ‘pieces’ are arranged that produces the utility. Until recently in biology, when we wanted to study cells we would take them and blend them up. We would then put them into a centrifuge and spin the contents around until distinct layers revealed themselves. Each layer was then analyzed chemically and in a microscope and we thought we understood a lot about cells. It turns out that the structure inside cells is essential to their function. Destroying their structure destroyed our ability to understand them. It took several decades to figure this out. It is in the relationship of all the parts that creates the functionality of life. We are more like verbs than we think. Even molecules act from their edges. The push and pull of charge and repulsion, tension and compression, light and dark, playing out over time creates the circles of cycles that comprise our lives and all of Life.
What meaning is there in a circle? In our society we spend a lot of time trying to get somewhere. A circle always ends up where it started. This question is one that each of us must answer for ourselves, but the stories of our lives play out in the rhythm of the cycles we encounter. We can be carried away by the extremes. We can be bored by the moderate times. We can suffer through lack. Our perception, the way we assign value to what comes through our senses, creates the meaning. Perception is a choice. We think it is hard wired, we have even been taught that it is hard wired. It is not. Disciplined intent changes our perceptions all the time. (Oh, and so does undisciplined intent!) Our minds are meant to be our servants not our oppressors.
In this moment of moving from darkness to light, we can acknowledge our own cycles of light and dark. We are not narrowly defined by either our darkness or our light, but rather by how we navigate the between the two in the living of our lives. One doesn’t exist without the other and neither do we. As we understand the polarities within ourselves, so we also heal the rifts between us all. If we can make space in our hearts for our own extremes, perhaps we can find the room to better understand the extremes of others.
Don’t believe all the naysayers. Don’t let the news steal your peace. Changing yourself does change the world. It’s the only way it will change. You are the balanced center of many forces. Acknowledge your center and be that balance in your own life and in your actions out in the world. Make it a happy new year for us all.
Michael Thomas, D.C.
No upcoming events at this time.
PLease call the office if you would like Dr. Thomas to speak to your group. Dr. Thomas has appeared on many radio and tv programs over the years and has spoken to many groups on a diversity of topics related to upper cervical chiropractic and health.
Another Unreasonable Request for Christmas
Michael D. Thomas, D.C.
It is the Holiday time of year. The weather is cooling off, even down here, and there is an air of festivities and perhaps a hint of goodwill in the air. Challenging times demand more of us just to stay where we are. It is perhaps, more important than ever to find the spirit of this time of year and examine the past year in anticipation of the coming one. To begin, we might examine what we are thankful for. If this last year was as tough for you as it was for me, you might think there is little to be grateful for, but you would be wrong.
A bit of perspective goes a long way. There are now seven billion of us on our planet Earth. 80% of us live in poverty. That means most of us can’t take care of our basic needs. 70% are illiterate. That means that the vast databases and the accumulated knowledge that lives in the written word is unavailable to us and our lives. Half of us suffer from hunger and malnutrition every day. 500 million of us are in prison, being tortured or close to dying from starvation. 3 billion of us cannot go to our house of worship without risking assault or death. If you have a full refrigerator, clothes to wear, a roof over your head and a place to sleep you are wealthier than 75% of us on this planet. If you have money in the bank and also some in your wallet, you are among the 8% of people who do. One percent of people on the Earth own a computer. One percent has a college degree. 6% of us own 59% of the wealth and statistically they all come from the USA. Here in Marion county 27% of our children live in poverty. The state average is 18%. If you fall on the fortunate side of these numbers you can certainly be grateful. If not, you don’t need me to tell you about it.
Gratitude isn’t about how much you have, it’s about your perspective. Being grateful connects you to something much bigger than yourself. It changes the way you see everything that unfolds in front of you. We are all interconnected. What we do, the choices we make, the things we buy, the food we eat, the people we associate with, all make a difference in the world. Being grateful is a willful act of perspective. We can be irritated that things aren’t going the way we planned or we can be grateful that we simply woke up this morning. Our arms and legs worked (If they did. If not, we are grateful for the ones that do!) Our brains work. We can see and hear. We can move about. We may have others who care about us. We may have family that pulls together every day. We may have a job that allows us to pay our bills and to live the life we choose. We may have love in our life. We certainly have the love that we can give. Love’s origin is inside each of us. And given the reciprocal nature of love, if you give love out daily it returns in spades. This is one time that the more you give the more you receive. This is Love’s secret.
I know from my own journey that living in fear, constantly worrying about survival, struggling to take and hold onto what you want is a lonely and unsatisfying life. Fear and creativity are mutually incompatible. Even if you have others around you, survival consciousness is a lonely prison. Everything that occurs is registered as either more or less for and about you. “What’s in it for me” is the mantra of greed that has made this planet so inequitable. On the other hand, there is another perspective. This perspective comes from an appreciation of the ‘pattern that connects’. You may be religious, you may not. This isn’t about theology but it does have a central spiritual component. We are not just ‘meat machines’. We are not just selfish clots of desires. We are not actually independent at all. We may imagine that we are self-sufficient, but no one is. We are part of an unimaginable pattern bigger than anything our brains can come up with. Our lives are connected to everything around us from the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat to the people we interact with. More than this realization of connection is the realization that we can trust Life. In the chiropractic work I do it is called the ‘non-interference paradigm’. It means that we can trust the life inside of us and that our best medicine is removing any interference to it and trusting that the life that created you, that made what would one day become you grow into a cell and from there into trillions of cells (that you are now!). The life that built and grew your tissues and bones and the nervous system that connects you to all of life will manifest in the optimal way, if it can. There is always enough. There is even abundance.
You won’t read this much in the medical literature. It doesn’t get airplay on the news. There is no profit in self-sustainability. There is nothing to buy. Our health is our greatest treasure. Without it, nothing much matters. With it, everything is possible. Health isn’t achieved by turning life off with drugs. Surgery can give you some time but it doesn’t generally heal you by itself. The surgeon can cut but it is the force of life within you that mends the tissues. The real true and only healer is inside each one of us. We are not here by accident. In fact incredible things had to occur for you to be walking the planet at this time. We have somehow come to see the world as cold and cruel and indifferent but it is us who have those qualities, not life.
Once gratitude has washed its way through our hearts and lives, we find the end of the year to be a moment when we ponder what comes next? We generally move in the direction we are headed. What is our direction? How can we be better people? As we serve our communities, we ourselves are served in a manifold of ways that we could never predict. As we are generous with others, generosity is unleashed in our own lives. As we reject fear and worry, it is replaced by the peace of a kind word, a selfless act, an unlikely courtesy. And with these sweet moments comes the health we have despaired over. The friends we wished we had, perhaps even the money we desperately need to keep afloat. Not because we took it from others who don’t have enough for themselves, but because we allowed it to occur. We can’t see the big picture. This is what faith means.
It is in the present moment that this gift comes, and only in the present moment. If we are lost lamenting the past or agonizing over an imagined future, we miss the possibility that is engendered in the moment. Each moment that we miss is lost forever. But the good news is that a new one occurs in the present that is equally pregnant with possibilities and hope and power and satisfaction. This universe appears to be a well of ever-new creativity. To drink from this well we must be present now. We can’t drink the water of yesterday or tomorrow.
Two thousand years ago, a man named Jesus of Nazareth postulated a doctrine of love. In a most unreasonable fashion, he told those who listened to him that they had no need to fear the future or be tortured by the past. He said that if one is met with violence that one should return love. All these centuries later we still can’t quite get our heads around that one. We come from many millennia of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. Gandhi, who many centuries after Jesus, noted that this idea, carried out to the logical conclusion would leave the world blind and edentulous. He met violence with non-violence as did King and many others who have talked of returning love for hate, but the idea didn’t die with them. It never dies because it springs full formed over and over in each of our hearts. What we do with this gift is up to each one of us. We make this choice every moment of our lives.
As useful as our rational mind is, it cannot conceive of the infinite possibilities that await us each moment. This mind can only compare our memories of what happened in the past and then give us a ‘best guess’. This guess is laden with our neuroses and our feelings and of course our ‘rationalizations’. Our memories are often inaccurate and substantially incomplete. In this way we are blind to our present because of the baggage from the past. Healing is always about changing our consciousness. In upper cervical chiropractic we remove neurological interference at the junction between the head and neck and find that when this Life within us can flow without impediment it sings a much happier song! In the same way that this work can transform our physical lives, gratitude and love can transform our inner and outer lives. We are not made to be victims of our mind. Our minds are instruments we use in this life. We must be present in the moment to use and not be used by our minds. Our choices make our lives, one moment at a time.
I will end this essay with a story that I found a few days ago about a man who made a most unreasonable decision. I give you all a most unreasonable season’s greetings.
A Victim Treats His Mugger Right
March 28, 2008
StoryCorps
Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.
But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.
He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.
“He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you go,’” Diaz says.
As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”
The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’”
Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me … hey, you’re more than welcome.
“You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help,” Diaz says.
Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.
“The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi,” Diaz says. “The kid was like, ‘You know everybody here. Do you own this place?’”
“No, I just eat here a lot,” Diaz says he told the teen. “He says, ‘But you’re even nice to the dishwasher.’”
Diaz replied, “Well, haven’t you been taught you should be nice to everybody?”
“Yea, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way,” the teen said.
Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. “He just had almost a sad face,” Diaz says.
The teen couldn’t answer Diaz — or he didn’t want to.
When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to have to pay for this bill ’cause you have my money and I can’t pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”
The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I gave him $20 … I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.”
Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave it to me.”
Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, “You’re the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch.”
“I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”
Produced for Morning Edition by Michael Garofalo.
The Atlas Subluxation Complex in the Context of the Tensegral Array
This paper is reprinted from the November 2011 Quantum Spinal Mechanics Newsletter published by Dr. Russell Friedman.
Michael D. Thomas, D.C.
Note: Tensegrity is the way nature designs structures. In a tensegral array, the compressive elements are said to be discontinuous. This means they don’t touch each other. Bones are compressive structures. The tensional elements in a tensegrity array are continuous. This means that the muscles and ligaments and the whole myofascial envelope is continuous and forces are dissipated evenly throughout the entire array. Dr. Friedman has discussed tensegrity at some length in the past but this is a short explanation. The reader is already aware of the historical definition for the Atlas Subluxation Complex.
Grostic and Wernsing contemporaneously and yet independently, according to the Orthospinology text, conceived of the possibility that the frontal plane rotation of the atlas under the skull, what we have called atlas side-slip, or atlas laterality, could be measured in degrees (a situation apparently analogous to Liebnitz and Newton who simultaneously but independently discovered the principles of calculus) . This idea was one significant aspect of Grostic’s basic elemental relationship between the condylar and axial circles (C/A).
Grostic believed that atlas laterality was the primary cause of neurological interference. Postural distortion is not measured in the absence of at least ¾ degree of atlas laterality. This confluence of events came to be seen in upper cervical work as cause and effect.
The area is dense with neurology and the dentate (pia) ligaments often attach at the craniovertebral junction. J.D. Grostic hypothesized a dentate ligament tractionization theory to explain the possible effects of upper cervical (atlas) misalignment. It appears that even a small amount of atlas laterality is associated with changes in blood flow into and out of the head as well as associated tractional or torsional changes. It is established that mechanical forces alter function at the cellular level as well as in the nuclei of the upper cord and brainstem.
Current studies in the chiropractic profession as well as medicine are examining the role of upper cervical misalignment and alteration in blood flow (compliance) into and out of the head. CSF flow may also be altered. Restoration of alignment appears to greatly improve compliance. Misalignment is asymmetrical by its nature and therefore affects blood flow differently on each side.
The concept of tensegrity as promulgated by Levin and Ingber (as well as many others) was seen as debatable until fairly recently. It seems now however, that the literature has been able to define the cell as a tensegral structure, although looking at the whole body biomechanically as a tensegral array remains a bit controversial. Work has been done to define the pathways used in the array (Thomas Myers- Anatomy Trains).
Our perspective as orthogonally based upper cervical doctors predisposes us to see relationships that are not apparent to others who do not consistently look at the aspects we focus on. The concept of tensegrity has been empirically accepted by Dr. Friedman who has expanded the concept of bone out of place, segmental misalignments, and other partial examinations of the soft tissue/skeletal system to include the whole organism. His biomechanical conceptualization regarding the principle of tensegrity in the upper cervical area as well as the rest of the body has begun to make the longstanding understanding that the upper cervical adjustment is a full spine approach an integrated reality.
In a tensegral array there are no actual lever systems because there are no fulcrums. When in proper apposition, the skeletal elements do not touch each other. A lever arm must have a fulcrum with which to do its work. It is the tensional elements (the muscles, ligaments and tendons and the whole myofascial envelope that are under continuous tension. The skeletal (compressive) elements are discontinuous (separate) in the system. When a tensegral array comes under axial tension, the compressive elements (the bones) line up with the tensional elements, stiffening the whole system in order to resist these deleterious torsional forces.
Bones do not lock out of place. They don’t even touch each other unless there is local collapse of the tensegral array. The tensional elements may, under deleterious forces, buckle or compress. When this occurs in the low back, there is progressive degeneration of the spinal elements as they attempt to adapt to deleterious forces. When this occurs at the craniovertebral junction it appears to cause a change in the symmetry of the paraspinal musculature with resulting reset of the individual elements. This includes the position of the atlas.
We have long realized in orthogonally based upper cervical chiropractic that although the pelvis is the greatest mass in the kinetic chain of the spine, it is not necessary to address it’s misalignment by directly adjusting the pelvis. We have long found that upper cervical adjustments can affect the whole system and restore alignment to ALL of the spinal elements (with respect to gravity) because the tensegral array that we ‘are’ is neurologically modulated. A small amount of misalignment in this area is magnified due to its neurologically central location.
Embryologically, the nervous system arises out of the neural tube. The anterior aspect goes on to form the brain. The caudal aspect becomes the spinal cord and connects to the rest of the body. The craniovertebral junction is the origin. The nervous system begins right where we go to adjust.
Ghysen commented on the three dimensional nature of the nervous system:
“The central nervous system of all triploblasts is essentially a three-dimensional structure derived from a two-dimensional epithelium. It is built along three axes, antero-posterior, dorso-ventral, and apico-basal. Development along each axis relies on its own development mechanisms, and generates its own range of cell specificities. The central nervous system is, therefore, basically an orthogonal structure.”(my emphasis).
[p. 556. Ghysen A. The origin and evolution of the nervous system. Int. J. Dev. Biol. 47:555-562 (2003).]
[Note: triploblasts are bilaterally symmetrical animals with three germ layers.]
So if bones do not lock out of place, what causes the atlas laterality and rotation that we can consistently measure on x-rays?
In the tensegral model the spinal elements (bones) are passive, they are utilized to maintain shape, but it is the soft tissue elements that are active. Force is distributed throughout the whole system as evenly and as immediately as possible. If the neurology has become imbalanced causing the tensegral array to have to deal with asymmetric non-anatomical forces, the whole body distorts. When the center of mass in the pelvis moves away from the gravity line, the body immediately adapts, usually by leaning back toward the gravity line. The atlas, in its function as a coupling between the head and the C2-pelvis kinetic chain will move to equilibrate the forces of the kinetic chain and the head. This is an effect not a cause. (Small mass doesn’t rule big mass in terms of mechanics). Again, measurement of ¾ of a degree or more of atlas laterality is certainly coincident with postural distortion.
Dr. Friedman is now showing, in an ever growing number of successive cases, that the misalignment we have recognized for the last 70 years is comprised not just of the upper and lower angles and rotation of C1 and 2, but also of a compressive component existing throughout the entire tensegral array that can impede and sometimes preclude correction of the linear elements. If compression remains in the spine, the attempt to restore the skeletal elements to the vertical axis will only jam the structures into line. This may and does reduce the neurological component regarding blood flow to the head as well as diminution of the tensional forces affecting the upper cervical spine and brainstem but the entire array can remain under adverse mechanical tension. This can lead to chronic mechanical issues in other aspects of the array.
Friedman is finding that the bow (of the spinouses) we often see in the frontal plane, the loss of curve (or even reversal of curve in the sagittal plane) as well was the rotation in the transverse plane all constitute radiographic evidence of this progressive, compressive force. Another indicator is the presence of more weight on the side opposite the short leg. The last blog by Dr. Friedman discussed the primary importance of decompressing the misalignment before attempting to restore it to the vertical axis. We have long done with this type II’s (Into-the-Kink) when we drop the head so that we close the facets on the side opposite laterality and allow the circular forces to restore the lower angle to the vertical, taking the bow out. Using the weight of the head to decompress the misalignment and restore the lower angle to the vertical axis has long been seen as a successful process. Type II’s are also known for their emotional aspects which may have become obvious when the decompression opened up the system, literally taking tension off the brainstem and relieving the chronic compression. However, believing that the atlas laterality is the CAUSE of the problem, we have had a more difficult time with opposite angle misalignments because to decompress the spine one would have to adjust the patient on the side opposite laterality. If atlas laterality is the cause and not a critically significant effect (with the attendant neurological sequelae), then we would expect atlas laterality to increase and we would have no choice but to stay on the side of atlas laterality. Indeed, many people have had to accept the continued presence of lower angles that won’t reduce when the head is supported in a neutral plane for this very reason.
Dr. Friedman reasoned that atlas laterality may be an effect of distortion in the whole tensegral array and that decompression of the array could facilitate not just improved reductions but improved stability and truly unencumber the whole system. Up and open he calls it. Over the last few months he has been working with many dozens of patients and this in fact is the bottom line. He is restoring people to the vertical axis and unwinding previously intractable lower angles and rotations. Properly used, this new system of biomechanics proportionately reduces all aspects of the misalignment including atlas laterality- even if the adjustment is on the side opposite atlas laterality. Dr. Friedman showed several of these cases pre and post in his last webinar.
The cardinal rule in orthogonally based upper cervical work has always been that we must adjust on the side of atlas laterality. This rule has been predicated on the assumption that atlas laterality is the cause of the postural distortion as well as other attendant effects of the ASC. This harkens back to the HIO days when the adjustment consisted of a brief but significant thrust designed to direct and encourage the atlas on its journey back to its normal position. Long ago we set the thrust aside and began to use the triceps ‘pull’. Conceptually, we have continued to see the adjustment as directly moving the atlas back under the skull into a normal (midline) position.
The body is however an integrated system. If you affect one part of the array, you affect the entire array. The neurological and biomechanical consequences of atlas laterality are not in dispute. This conceptual shift occurs in understanding of the rest of the system. Restoration of the head and lower angle to the vertical accompanied by orthogonal positioning of the atlas is only part of the resolution of subluxation. This can be seen in posts which resolve the relationships of head and neck without return to the vertical axis (gravity line). The elements cranial to the pelvis must coordinate with the position of the pelvis in order to create stability and agility for movement. Since the pelvis constitutes the largest mass in the kinetic chain of the spinal elements (as well as being the center of mass for the whole body) the spine and head cannot return to the vertical axis if they are not positioned over the orthogonal pelvis. Instead they will adapt and compensate. Indeed, the excursion of the upper cervical misalignment is a direct function of pelvic misalignment. It is a circular relationship since the pelvic obliquity occurs due to altered neurological modulation of the nuclei in the brainstem, which in turn occurs due to adverse mechanical tension from misalignment of the upper cervical spine.
Dr. Cockwill published a paper entitled, “Angular Measurement of the Upper Cervical Spine in the Neutral and Laterally Flexed Positions”, in The Upper Cervical Monograph 5(7):10-12, May 1996. Cockwill was examining a critical point: “This study is simply an attempt to detect any angular change while the upper-cervical spine is in a state of motion.” (p.10) The study took three patients and filmed them using the normal NUCCA procedures for nasiums. After the nasium was taken, the patients were then placed in a (cervically) laterally flexed position (“Requiring the test subject to actively laterally flex the skull until the end range of motion is perceived is important in accurately determining if normal motion is present in this area.”) and the film retaken. The patient’s heads remained vertical in the head-clamps and care was taken not to change head position. The atlas laterality was calculated individually by three different experienced upper cervical practitioners. Change in measured atlas laterality between the first and second nasium was measured to be between one and ½ degrees and four and ½ degrees. Also noted was that average change in axis spinous was contralateral to the side of lateral flexion by seven millimeters. The largest change seen was 14 millimeters. On a 3 inch condylar circle, this equates to a change of 21 degrees. These results follow the published results of others who have examined normal motion in the upper cervical spine. Dr. Cockwill listed 15 different peer reviewed, indexed references for this point. In 1997, Dr. Dickholtz, Sr. replied to these findings in The Upper Cervical Monograph. He strongly rejected these findings and NUCCA has never examined this idea again. However, in light of the principle of tensegrity, these findings only make sense. There are no ‘locking’ joints in the upper cervical spine. Bones do not touch each other. Distribution of forces in a tensegral array always equalize throughout the entire system. This new viewpoint allows a greatly expanded understanding of the biomechanics.
The primary finding here is that resolution of the atlas to orthogonal position does not constitute the entire answer to postural distortion and the other pathological consequences of upper cervical misalignment. It is a critical component but incomplete by itself. As historically utilized, the lines of misalignment on the films do not capture the entire process. The bowing of the cervical spine, in the frontal plane is not adequately expressed by the marking of a line between the top and bottom of the cervical spine. We have long made this line and that is what we tend to see when we look. The frequently attendant bowing of the spinouses on the nasium is underappreciated as a significant indicator of distress in the system. This bowing can still be seen on films where the head and lower angle line have returned to the vertical. We have been looking at the lines we draw for a long time. Perhaps it is time to re-examine what we are seeing.
It is also critical to acknowledge the importance of the pelvis in calculations regarding the biomechanics. Upper cervical work has long noted its effects to be body-wide. This has never been seen as a segmental adjustment at just one level. However, the greatest potential resistance in the system (kinetic chain) is the pelvis. It has the greatest mass and the center of gravity is centered within it. This is an objective reality of the body. If the pelvis is not centered on the vertical axis, the cranial components of the skeleton are unable to center on it. They must adapt and compensate for the mis-position of the pelvis away from the vertical axis (gravity line). In addition, the pelvis must be taken into consideration when the listing for spinal correction is calculated. There are times when the upper cervical spine and the pelvis are counter-rotated to each other and a force that corrects one aspect has a much different effect at the other end of the chain. Dr. Friedman’s biomechanics addresses this issue in a thorough and systematic manner. This is not a simplistic plea to just ‘turn people over’.
Part of this misreading of the situation occurs because the nasium film as taken by NUCCA (and the other orthogonally based upper cervical techniques) only allows a relative position of the head, atlas and lower angle. When the head is clamped in the center of the film by the self-centering head clamps any actual relationship to the true vertical axis arising from the center of mass of the pelvis is altered. Therefore any return to the ‘vertical axis’ on the post nasium is without reference to the actual center of mass of the pelvis and may constitute local correction of the upper cervical elements (as defined by the line drawings) but not restoration and integration with the primary mass of the pelvis. This why Dr. Friedman has altered the positioning protocol for x-ray placement to ‘build’ the film from the base (center of mass on the vertical axis) and not requiring that the atlas be centered on the pre film. This represents the actual excursion of the atlas from the true vertical axis (arising from the center of mass). If a proper corrective adjustment has been delivered, the post film should find the atlas in midline on the vertical axis arising from the center of mass. Dr. Gregory stated more than once that he didn’t care if you adjusted the big toe -if the post film showed proportional correction.
This work has always been driven by empirical results. Dr. Friedman uses his practice as a laboratory to search for ways to improve the adjustment. Long ago, it was common knowledge that the world was flat and if you sailed west from Europe that you would fall off the world. It was once common knowledge that it wasn’t necessary to wash your hands between patients. The spread of puerperal fever (childbed fever) was epidemic and loss of life was rampant. Semmelweiz suggested washing hands between patients. He had the audacity to suggest that doctors themselves might be transmitting the contagion. The medical profession destroyed him and he eventually went insane and committed suicide. It took more than 200 years for England to begin feeding their sailors citrus to prevent scurvy after it was recognized as a deficiency. Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” All of us are blinded by what we think we know. We tend to see what we believe and not the other way around.
The profundity of upper cervical correction has been shown in hundreds if not thousands of offices over many decades. This new insight does not lessen the importance of the atlas. It does help to integrate understanding of the atlas with the rest of the body and provide a more efficient way to reduce interference to the nervous system and restore the power of life in people. The clinician who reads this has two choices: one, ignore this idea which is different than the way the work has been conceptualized for the past 70 years, or learn the biomechanics and see if it’s true. Maybe we can do better. Isn’t that why we came to upper cervical work in the first place?
Twain said something else that might be of pertinence here: