“To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.” – Jerry Seinfeld
Movement is essential to our well-being, to our ability to function in our daily lives, and to be able to live at all really. But movement is not always painless.
When injuries occur either from sports activities or unfortunate accidents, our bodies can and often do compensate for the initial pain by altering our normal movements. Left to themselves, these injury-generated movement dysfunctions can cause pain themselves
How Does NeuroKinetic Therapy™ Work?
David Weinstock is the author of Neurokinetic Therapy, an Innovative Approach to Manual Muscle Testing and he co-developed the technique in the mid-1980s. His NeuroKinetic Therapy combines motor control theory and manual muscle testing. Motor control theory is based on the concept that the motor control center, or MCC, in the cerebellum stores all the coordination patterns of the body.
In addition, the MCC also “learns” to compensate for injured muscles. For example, if a muscle is inhibited due to injury or some other reason, the MCC will find a substitute muscle to perform the function. If this pattern is allowed to remain in the MCC, movement dysfunction and pain will result.
The NeuroKinetic Therapy™ website notes,
“A good example is a baby learning to stand. Through many attempts and failures the baby finally achieves success. But how? The MCC chooses the most successful attempts until standing happens without “thinking” about it. Conversely, after an injury, the MCC adapts to a compensation pattern and holds that in its memory forever unless it is convinced to change. A good example is a whiplash accident in which the posterior neck muscles brace for the anterior neck muscles. This pattern can endure forever unless there is some intervention.”
Essentially, the NeuroKinetic Therapy® system is predicated on the fact that, as a result of an injury, some muscles will either “shut down” or become otherwise inhibited. This, in turn, forces other muscles to become overworked by compensating for them and this compensation pattern can create pain or tightness.
A therapist will execute a series of muscle tests specially designed to uncover and resolve compensation patterns in the body. With these tests, the therapist can evaluate the strength or weakness of each muscle by applying light pressure that the client then resists. This can reveal the sources of injury and also retrain the client’s body to remove the compensation patterns. In other words, reprogramming the body at the neural level of the MCC.
NeuroKinetic Therapy® therapy is, at its core, a complex bodywork modality that can be used as an assessment technique as well as rehabilitative therapy for a variety of injuries and their resultant pain including low back pain, neck pain, carpal tunnel pain.
Dysfunctional Movement and NeuroKinetic Therapy™
NeuroKinetic Therapy™ is an excellent approach for rehabilitation and manual therapy since it can be used not only to identify the cause of pain and dysfunction, but can also correct it very quickly and quite painlessly.
We firmly believe that it is essential to treat the cause of movement dysfunction, not the symptoms such as pain. By using the NeuroKinetic Therapy® corrective movement system we can effectively address the cause of pain, which are the dysfunctional movement patterns programmed in the motor control center of the brain.
Using NeuroKinetic Therapy® allows us to assess, treat and rehabilitate acute and chronic injuries and conditions. Once this is accomplished the client can be sent home with an individualized exercise program.
Correcting Dysfunctional Movement at Pain and Performance Solutions
Treating and relieving the pain caused by dysfunctional movement begins after we understand where and how your pain started.
A full examination will help us determine which form of treatment is best suited to get you on your road to recovery. Your trust in us is key, as is your honesty.
Our goal is to work through the sequence of pain and dysfunction in order to get your body healthy and working properly and to achieve total recovery. Don’t hesitate to reach out. We are here to help and will answer any questions that you may have. You can reach us at (707) 636-4404 or by filling out our online contact form.