Here is a fun one. 17 year gymnast who has chronic lower back pain. The trainer for her team was also a physical therapist and was focusing on using exercises to strengthen and stretch the sacroiliac joint (where the pain was located).
You can see me pointing on my model to where this joint is….
There are very tough ligaments that attach the sacrum (triangle bone in the middle) to the ilium (2 bones on the outsides).
This is all fine and good, but WHY was there dysfunction in the sacroiliac joint in the first place??
Was there an injury that traumatized it? Certainly possible, but she had no history of one. Her pain merely came on over time.
More than likely there was a NeuroCentric Dysfunction prior to her pain.
And this is exactly what I found. I did NeuroCentric Testing to determine what wasn’t functioning in her body. In her case it was her adductors and her gluteus maximus (butt muscles).
With these muscles being in a neurologically inhibited state she couldn’t stabilize her pelvis or her pubic joint (called a pubic symphysis). And with an unstable pubic symphysis, her adductors wouldn’t work correctly (muscles on the insides of your legs….the groin muscles).
You can see me pointing on my model again where this pubic symphysis is.
Here is where it gets interesting….
The CAUSE of the dysfunction was actually both of her nasal bones. One year prior she had a gymnastics accident in which she dislocated both elbows (she is going great now).
Well, in this accident she also hit her face on the floor. Her nose bled and she had some scrapes, but it was no big deal….or so she thought.
Through my NeuroCentric Analysis I discovered that her neurological weaknesses in the pubic symphysis, adductors, gluteus maximus, and sacroiliac joints were actually coming from these two nasal bones being jammed into the big frontal bone.
You can see them in the following picture. The Nasal Bones are the 2 purple bones. The Frontal Bone is the big blue one.
Now imagine the purples ones being jammed into the blue one. That is exactly what happened.
And when this occurred, it caused the pelvis to destabilize and the neurological weaknesses to occur.
One adjustment to the nasal bones and this was taken care of. The next day she practiced with ZERO pain.
I could have adjusted her pelvis to try to correct the dysfunction, but we never would have gotten to the REAL source of the issue.
Always ask WHY…..
Do You Do CranioSacral Therapy?
No. CranioSacral Therapy is taught mainly to massage therapists. It is extremely light touch. It involves holding a contact on the sacrum and occiput often for up to 45 minutes. It can be of benefit, but I do something different.
I was taught and have continued to refine a technique that utilizes more energy in the adjustments. It is applied in a specific and concise direction to correct the position of the misaligned cranial bones. These cranial adjustments are the fan favorite of my patients and is what most of them look forward to each visit.