We continue this month’s newsletter again talking about the human nervous system. More specifically in relation to the sensory and motor output creating the foundational skeletal balance and equilibrium required with every posture and movement you make on a daily basis. If you recall, I ended my last newsletter with my new physical therapy job description as an “input analyst” altering your brain input in order to get a different output.
Based upon the intrinsic “neuroplasticity” of our nervous system, it is my job as your physical therapist to alter your apparent dysfunctional muscle and myofascial patterns that have been established over the years in creating your own, personal skeletal balance and equilibrium that have now become dysfunctional creating inflammation and pain.
For many years, my treatment focused on the output of the nervous at the spinal cord level which at times in our daily activities can act autonomously to any sensory input without having any descending instructions from the higher centers of the brain. These isolated, spinal cord movements start with sensory input from the peripheral nervous system that goes to the spinal cord causing an automatic and subconscious output which is referred to as a muscle reflex. It is a fixed response or motor output to the sensory input which triggers the reflex. An example of this is the “knee jerk” test you may have experienced during a physical examination when the treating physician uses a reflex hammer to tap on your patellar tendon just below the knee cap causing your knee to involuntarily to extend. This is referred to as a “stretch reflex” involving sensory receptors of your muscles called proprioceptors which is part of your body’s proprioception system we will discuss later. More specifically, these muscle proprioceptors are called “muscle spindles” and “golgi tendon organs”that control an isolated muscle’s length and tension. These reflexes involving the isolated muscle’s proprioceptors are very quick and occurr at a segmental level of your spine.
However, our normal everyday repertoire of human posture and movement, the normal activities of daily living, function, are not of fixed or segmental responses to sensory input like seen with the reflex hammer. Many of our movements like with walking, running, and swimming involve a more complex coordination of muscle groups working together in synergy to create neural patterns of posture and movement in reaction to the sensory input of gravity and its effects. But even with these functional postures and movements, the output although not as automatic as the patellar tendon reflex, is in a sense semi-automatic occurring at the subconscious level.
When talking about posture, movement, and balance, the peripheral and central nervous systems are involved starting with the sensory input. As mentioned in the last article, your nervous system is designed to communicate and respond in a loop. Within this loop of communication, there are four stages including sensory input, integration and processing, decision, and output. With sensory input, there are three categories including exteroception, interoception, and proprioception.
Exteroception refers to the sensory input coming from your external environment which usually involves your body’s five basic senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Interoception, on the other hand, is the sensory input from within your body while proprioception is the sense of space or the perception of position and motion of the skeletal structure. Input from all three of these categories initially comes into your spinal cord with the information being relayed up neural pathways to various regions of your brain to be integrated and processed.
Each one of us has our own, personal, individual organization, or memory of the sensory input, the integration and processing, and motor output that has occurred throughout our lives. You have a memory of this entire process stored within your brain. But, it is organized in a specific way. The reason for this is that not all sensory input is treated the same. Your brain has an “organizational hierarchy” for sensory input with certain types of input taking precedent or priority over others. This organizational hierarchy is especially evident when talking about human posture and movement.
Human posture and movement is especially reliant upon neural pattern recognition and prediction. Therefore, the human brain is designed to recognize a pattern of neural activation and knows the right way to respond to the sensory input based upon this memory that becomes the correct, personal output for you. Keep in mind that while all systems of input are important to your survival, there are three primary systems that gather information causing the output of your posture and movement. They are the visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive which I will discuss in more detail later in the article.
But as mentioned with nervous system output, you see many rhythmic and subconscious movements like when walking, running, and swimming. These movements appear to be reflexive and automatic to the sensory input because of the nerve signals that come down from the higher centers in the brain. They start with what is referred to as our “old brain” or the instinctive and automatic part of our brain called the pontomeduallary reticular formation (PMRF).
The PMRF is located in that part of the brain called the “brain stem” that lies at the base of the brain on top of the spinal cord. It functions to create a neural connection between the cerebrum of the brain referred to as the “new brain” to the cerebellum and spinal cord. The brain stem has three broad functions including serving as the conduit or neural connection for the ascending and descending pathways that connect the spinal cord to the different parts of the brain such as the cerebrum and cerebellum; contains important reflex centers for the autonomic nervous system (sympathetic/parasympathetic) that affects respiration, breathing, blood pressure, consciousness, and the autonomic functions of digestion, salivation, perspiration, dilation/contraction of pupils, and urination; contains nuclei for the Occulomotor Nerve or cranial nerve III that affects the extrinsic eye muscles and their movement and the Hypoglossal Nerve or cranial nerve XII affecting the intrinsic and extrinsic muscles of the tongue. Keep in mind then how the eye movements I use during my exercises are involved with the Oculomotor Nerve and its access the brain.
From the brain stem, there are four very important descending neural pathways for output down the spinal cord that create the position and motion of your body during your daily life. One of these neural pathways is actually responsible for the rhythmic and almost automatic movements already discussed while another neural pathway coordinates movement with the visual and other sensory input which is why again I use eye movements with the exercises given to you. Yet another pathway is vital for balance while the fourth mediates the movement of your individual limbs.
But the brain stem is not the only part of the brain that affects your posture and movement. There is also part of the brain designated for the fine movement of your fingers. Unlike the descending pathways from the brain stem, the messages instigating and controlling your finger movement come from the very top of the cerebrum called the “motor cortex.”
The motor cortex not only controls the fine movements of your fingers by sending neural signals directly to each of the digits, but it also influences other movements due to neural hierarchy by sending signals to the aforementioned motor pathways in the brain stem in order to activate the appropriate and coordinated contraction of your muscles. The reason for this is that different parts of the motor cortex have been found to control other parts of the body too. However keep in mind that the more precise the movement generated, a larger part of the motor cortex will be devoted to these movements. Thus, it is the hands and mouth that have the most real estate within the motor cortex.
Although the motor cortex has been found to play a major role in controlling your daily postures and movements, it does not have a monopoly, or last word. The theory that there was one, single command center of the brain for posture and movement has been found to be false causing a paradigm shift in how we view the human nervous system. Any of the postures and movements you use during the day is now known to be split up without your conscious control to different designations within your brain. Two of these other designations involved are the “cerebellum and basal ganglia.”
The cerebellum, also referred to as the “little brain,” is located at the back of the cerebrum. It is important for your automatic, automated, or subconscious movements triggered by outside events rather than the internalized proactive thought and volitional processes. Gravity and its effects surely play a role here. With many of these automatic movements there is also a continuous feedback loop from your senses which in turn trigger or influence your next movement. For example, tracing a complex pattern onto a piece of paper. Your hand is under constant surveillance, adjustment, and control from what you see. People who have damage to the cerebellum would find this tracking movement nearly impossible.
In short, the cerebellum lives up to its title as little brain because it is found to be vital in controlling skilled movements that do not require the conscious control of the cerebrum. These movements can become almost automatic with practice. Think of some of the skills a gymnast is required to do which they practice over and over again. For this reason, the cerebellum is sometimes also referred to as the “autopilot” of the brain. I recall coaches telling me in my sport of ski jumping, “take the conscious mind out of it. Let it happen!” I finally understand what they were they were trying to say even though they did not understand the process involving the cerebellum. That is why athletes practice and practice to hone their skills. Where do you think the saying, “Practice makes perfect!” comes from?
Another designation of the brain involved with posture and movement that doesn’t involve conscious control is the basal ganglia. Unlike the movements influenced by the cerebellum just mentioned, the movements involving the basal ganglia are movements that cannot be altered or changed once they have been initiated. The best way to explain these “ballistic” type movements is like when a cannonball explodes out of a canon. Once it is started, the movement and trajectory cannot be altered or modified. Think of swinging a golf club. Your ball just might stay on the tee because your movement cannot be corrected or altered at the last second allowing you to hit the ball. It is either a hit or miss.
The basal ganglia is not just one isolated region of your brain, but actually a group of various interconnected brain regions. Whenever any of these regions become damaged, there are devastating consequences to movement. According to the part damaged, there can be wild, involuntary movements such as with the diagnosis of Huntington’s Chorea, or just the opposite with Parkinson’s Disease that causes muscle rigidity and tremors.
So as you can see, the generation of posture and movement, the output to the sensory input is the net result of many of your brain regions acting together in integration like the individual instruments within a symphony. The type of posture and movement made, whether conscious or subconscious, is processed and integrated within these various regions of the brain. Anyone who has received treatment at my facility knows my favorite saying, “Everything is connected.” This is just another example of the integration and synergy of the human body.
However, there are also ascending neural signals sent up to the spinal cord into the brain that are related to the sense of touch and pain involving what is referred to as the “somatosensory system.” Triggered by the point of contact such as a pin piercing your skin, local nerves within your skin transmit signals to the spinal cord that are relayed up to a brain region designated as the “somatosensory cortex.” Located near the motor cortex it acts very much like it in that there is no direct matching of an area of your body to an area of the somatosensory cortex. But once again, the hands and mouth have a lot of the somatosensory cortex real estate.
In order to have motor output which are the postures and movements of your everyday life, there has to be sensory input. As already mentioned, there are three primary systems of sensory input that include the visual, vestibular, and proprioception. While all three contribute to your predictive patterns of posture and movement, they do not contribute equally. Here you have another example of how your brain organizes the sensory input by an order of importance, hierarchy. In this case, your visual system has top priority. It is by far the dominant system used for sensory input.
Its importance is extremely apparent due to the mere fact that approximately 60% of your brain is involved with your vision in some way or form. But it can really be seen in a more practical application like with “box therapy.” The dominance of the visual system is why such therapy works with people who have lost a limb. I know you have heard of “phantom limb” pain that people experience after losing a limb. To treat such pain, a therapist can create a box setup utilizing a mirror whereas the client puts their existing limb in the box. As the client begins to move the existing limb and watches its reflection in the mirror, an illusion is created that the client again has two working limbs. This illusionary motion lights the client’s proprioceptive areas of the brain correlated with the missing limb helping to reduce the pain. This is an example of the visual system input overriding or dominating the preceptive system. It was the proprioceptive system sensing the pain of the missing limb, but the visual system tricks the client’s brain by saying, “What pain? Your limb looks fine.”
The visual system can also override, dominate the vestibular system input as seen with this example. In an experiment, researchers created an illusion of a moving room by putting people on a stable platform and had the walls move around them. The subjects of this study were not actually moving, but yet the researchers found postural changes that they typically see when someone is actually moving. In this case, the subjects reacted as though their vestibular system was sensing movement even though there was no actual movement. The brain instead created the sense of movement that was not there because of the visual input.
Again because of neural hierarchy, here is an example of the vestibular system overriding the proprioceptive system that becomes a real problem when flying an airplane. When a pilot flies through a cloud or let’s say fog, they lose their capability of visual feedback and have to rely more on their vestibular system to let them know if they are flying straight or even upright. But keep in mind, the vestibular system is best activated by a change in movement or position. In this scenario, the vestibular system might not notify the pilot that something is wrong. If the pilot cannot see there is something wrong, the vestibular system of the pilot might falsely report that the pilot is flying straight and upright. Such vestibular illusions can cause crashes as we have seen with JFK Jr. and Kolbe Bryant.
Another way to think of our sensory hierarchy as just described is to think of it as an “early warning system.” Remember from my last article when I stated the number one job of your brain is your survival. Well, the brain and nervous system relies on these systems of sensory input in order to keep you safe. Ideally, these three primary sensory systems of input should be working together to create a cohesive message about what is going on in the world around you. They may not give you the exact same type of information, but together they should relay a similar message about what’s happening with your body in regards to gravity and its effects.
If you happen to be turning left, you want your eyes to see that you are turning left, you want your inner ear to sense your are turning left, and you want your body to feel that you are turning left. You want all three of your sensory input systems to come to the same conclusion, be on the same page, about what’s going on in the world around you. But for that to happen, your nervous system must receive and interpret clear information from all three of these sensory input systems. If one of these systems is not giving accurate information, but instead conflicting information, it can create confusion, “chaos” within your nervous system. This is referred to as “sensory mismatch,” and can result in outputs like motion sickness, imbalance, dizziness, pain, and even injury.
All three of these sensory input systems giving accurate and similar readings are vitally important in producing high quality movement. An imbalance or dysfunction in any of these systems can have a tremendous ripple effect throughout your body affecting your function. Therefore understanding how they work separately and together in synergy within your nervous system hierarchy can unlock many of the pain and performance issues you are experiencing at this time.
As I have already established, you can see the visual system’s dominance from just an anatomical standpoint in that 60% of your brain is involved with visual input. The visual part of your brain lives in the “neocortex” or “new brain.” Toward the back of the cerebrum, you’ll find the occipital lobe, which processes the visual input. That is also where the sub occipital muscles attach to the atlas (C1) and axis (C2). So for those of you who also see Dr. Francesca Russo, D.C., an orthogonal chiropractor, you can see why the position and motion of your atlas is so important with regards to your posture and movement. That is why Dr. Russo’s treatments of adjustment to the atlas are so powerful and why again I utilize eye movements with the exercises I give you.
The occipital lobe’s, which makes up around 27% of the neocortex, only job is processing information about light. It has nothing to do with the eye movements or other image processing. Those controls exist in different parts of your brain from the temporal lobe to the supplementary eye fields found in the frontal lobe. But again, all the sensory and motor components of vision involve nearly a staggering 60% of your brain. That should be enough to tell the story about how important and vital your vision is. It is the king of human brain real estate.
Besides the real estate of the brain used for processing visual input, there is a very strong correlation between this input and the output of your posture and movement from the other designated areas of your brain. However, it could be said that all human posture and movement is visually driven. That is unless someone is blind in which a blind person would rely on the other systems of sensory input. But again, that is why I utilize eye movements in the exercises I give you. An article I recently read sums it up best: “Consider for a moment the relationship between vision and the motor output it controls. Although it might be convenient to talk about the visual cortex on the one hand and the motor cortex on the other, there is no particular point along the many routes between the retina and the muscles, where signals stop being sensory and suddenly become motor. From the moment signals from the photoreceptors enter the central nervous system, the information they convey is on its way to being transformed into motor output. This is not mere semantics. The artificial division of the brain into visual and motor areas, and the mutual isolation of the intellectual traditions that study them, have led to theories of brain function that are quite misleading.”
To put the dominance of visual sensory input in perspective, it is as simple as this statement, “You can’t separate vision and movement. You have to consider them both, study them both, and address them both together.” Do you get it? Or better yet, “Do you see it.?” Keep in mind that vision is much more than the 20/20 that everybody shoots for. The term 20/20 simply refers to that you see at 20 feet what the average person sees at 20 feet. But, there are actually two different aspects to your visual system that includes the “neuro-biomechanical” and the “neural processing.” Neural processing refers to how your brain integrates and interprets visual input which is not the emphasis of my newsletter. It is the neuro-biomechanics which more specifically refers to the extraocular muscles that move the eye around and the command centers and nerves in your brain that tells these muscles what to do. I know you have heard the expression, “The eyes are the windows to the soul.” But more accurately, it could be said, “Eye movements are the windows that unlock your nervous system.” Unlock your nervous system to change your dysfunctional predictions and patterns of posture and movement acquired overtime.
In the your body, the gross and fine motor movements, outputs, are determined by motor units. A motor unit consists of one nerve fiber that goes to a certain number of muscle fibers. When that one nerve fiber fires, all the muscle fibers attached to it contract at the same time. In your calf muscle, the soleus, you have gross motor movements because you have one nerve fiber plugging into 2,000 muscle fibers. It is defined as gross motor movement because large patches of a muscle are contracting simultaneously. The upside to this is you can generate a lot of muscle power at the expense of losing fine motor control. However when using your hands in fine motor movements, the ratio of nerve fiber to muscle fibers drop significantly to one nerve fiber to 150 muscle fibers where you get smaller patches of muscle that you control individually for the finer movements of the fingers and hands. In your eye, the ratio of nerve fiber to muscle fibers can get as low as one to one where a muscle fiber may have its own dedicated nerve fiber creating the precision of our visual system.
When combined with the numerous anatomical paths of visual circuits in the brain, these eye movements can be used to alter the neuromuscular neural paths and patterning that create your posture and movement. If you recall what was said in the last article, the output control of the brain has two primary components that include “voluntary motor activity” and “reflexive stability.” The voluntary movement is controlled by reflexes on the opposite side of the brain meaning that the left side of your body is controlled by the right cortical hemisphere of the brain and vice versa. Only 10% of the total output of your cortical hemisphere is dedicated to your voluntary or volitional movements. The other 90% of cortical output is dedicated to creating the reflexive stability on the ipsilateral or same side of the brain by activating the PMRF in the brain stem. From these percentages alone, you can see the importance of stability to allow mobility of the human skeletal structure.
As already mentioned, the PMRF neurons within the brain stem also form neural circuits with the motor nuclei of cranial nerve III, the Oculomotor Nerve that is responsible for movements of the eyes. In addition, the PMRF of the brain stem contains long ascending and descending nerve pathways, tracts, projections with the ascending tracts ascending to designated regions of the brain and descending from the brain to various parts of the body. These descending projections are primarily involved with the modulation of sensory and motor pathways, but can also act to inhibit pain sensations. This is the theory by which TNS (transcutaneous nerve stimulation) works. It is also thought to be a major component of the descending pain control systems that allows someone to suppress their pain in certain traumatic situations.
But it is the other projections from the PMRF called the reticulospinal tract that we are interested in when talking about human posture and movement. It is the nerve fibers from this tract that help to maintain your posture, facilitate the semiautomatic movements of walking, running, and swimming as well as other functional movements, and modulate muscle tone to either aide or inhibit movement. So as you can see, I am utilizing eye movements in the exercises given to facilitate reflexes on the same side of your brain to improve stability, on the opposite side of the brain to improve mobility, and overall to modulate the muscle tone to aide movement.
Because of the integration of the human nervous system and its organizational hierarchy, the vestibular system comes after the visual system of input. The vestibular system is involved with maintaining your balance and is located in your inner ear and the temporal region on both sides of your cranium. Inside each ear, you have a spiral, snail-like structure called the cochlea for hearing and the five vestibular organs for balance including the utricle, saccule, and the three semi-circular canals for sensing self motion and gravity. The utricle and saccule tells your brain which way is up as well as linear accelerations like running forward or jumping up and down. The circular shape of the semi-circular canals allows you to sense circular motion and accelerations like when your body is spinning or doing cartwheels.
When your vestibular system is functioning like it should, it allows you to see clearly while moving involving the vestibular-ocular reflex (VOR), identify your body’s orientation with respect to gravity, determine the direction and speed of movement, make automatic adjustments to maintain your posture and stability, adjust your respiration and blood pressure, and most importantly to create balance. As far as the VOR, it refers to the idea that every time you move your head in a certain direction, your eyes make a countermove. In fact, this is the fastest reflex in your entire nervous system which attempts to keep your eyes still why you are moving.
Because the human nervous system is hard wired to perceive and react to gravity, your brain has to consider gravity with every posture and movement decision it makes. Even when you are standing still, your brain considers which way gravity is pushing so that your muscles can resist it and keep you upright. However, things get more complicated when you start moving. Understanding how your own body positions and moves itself through space requires both an accurate sense of gravity and an accumulation of prior experiences or memory to teach you how to interact with gravity in a skilled way.
Remember what happened at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo with Simone Biles? She was apparently experiencing an episode of sensory mismatch from her visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive systems in reaction to gravity and its effects that created chaos within her nervous system. Just imagine attempting these complex skills of gymnastics she is used to doing, skills only a few human beings can do or ever has done, while experiencing this chaos of her nervous system. It was no wonder she decided not to compete. She was not fabricating this situation, it was real and dangerous for her to attempt these skills when her nervous system was in chaos. She did not literally know what was up nor what direction was down. I had a similar experience while competing in nordic ski jumping. Believe me, it was not a fun time during my competitive career. I became afraid to do what I had trained to do, the sport I loved. It took me about a year of training, getting back to basics to overcome this fear. I give her kudos for her decision especially when the Olympics happen every four years and is the pinnacle event of her sport.
Back to the vestibular system, there are other sensors in your inner ear that detect if you are moving forward, backward, up, down, or spinning. The anatomy of these receptors also give information about your speed and movement. In addition, it can make automatic adjustments to maintain your posture and stability, something that I try to do in the clinic. In fact, your vestibular system is sensitive enough to tell you when your head is 0.5 degrees off of vertical, immediately triggering self correcting reflexes to adjust your posture and muscle tone so you stay upright. In addition, there are vestibular-respiratory reflexes and vestibular-sympathetic reflexes. I have treated many clients who get dizzy when going from lying down to sitting up. A simple explanation then would be because their blood pressure failed to rise quick enough going from sitting to standing. It is a function of the inner ear that senses changes in orientation like this and adjusts your blood pressure to keep a sufficient flow of blood going to the part that needs it most. While your vestibular system is responsible for lot of things during your daily life concerning posture and movement, its function can be simplified to answering two basic questions: “Where are you going and which way is up?”
Remember, I can’t stress enough that your nervous system’s number one job is your survival. Therefore, you need to know where you are going and which way is up so that you don’t hurt yourself especially by falling. Falling is an extremely common mechanism of injury for people of all ages, but especially the elderly and as such is considered a very serious, high-priority threat by your brain. Finally along with keeping you upright and vertical and your balance, the vestibular system is the primary source of descending control of your paraspinal muscles, spinal erectors, and extensors that are vital for your postural correction and stability.
The final sensory input system in your body’s neural hierarchy is the proprioceptive system. This refers to our body’s three-dimensional map of itself in space and time. It is responsible for your neuromuscular sensation, also known as somatosensation, and is comprised of special sensory receptors located in your fascia, joints, and muscles. These receptors are facilitated or activated by touch, movement, vibration, pressure, temperature, joint positioning, and potential harm to joints and tissues. They send the information they collect through peripheral nerves to the spinal cord that travel up to distinct areas of the brain for integration and processing. It is with these sensory inputs you build an accurate understanding of where your body is in space and what it is doing, an essential to creating high-quality and safe movement outputs.
It is responsible for the sense of your own body which can be broken down into isolated joint position sense, kinesthesia, and sense of force. The most basic body sense is your isolated joint position sense which means how your joints are angled and where your limbs are positioned in space. This sense of self allows you to understand your body’s placement in relation to the rest of your body, to the external space around you, and more importantly to the ground with each step you take. Kinesthesia, however, is the sense of how your body is moving. Are you running, jumping, stepping? It also can also measure the speed, direction, duration, and timing of your body movement. In my practice of physical therapy over forty years, I find that timing is crucial not only with athletic skills performed, but with functional, daily activities. Finally it is with the sense of force that encompasses your ability to sense the force and tension created by your body. It also helps to sense heaviness of objects like when picking up something. This sense allows you to comprehend how heavy the object is so you can respond with the appropriate force to lift it.
In using the terms of today’s technology, your body’s proprioceptive system is like the body’s GPS. It tells you where your body is now and where you want it to go next. I have seen clients that had movement problems because their brain is not receiving good information about where there body is right now. They may want to do a movement like a squat or lunge, but their brain can’t make it happen without compensation because it is confused about what there joints and limbs are in relation to one another and to the ground.
It is as simple as this, if you can’t figure out where you are, then you can’t get to where you want to go. You need to give your brain a clear picture of where it is supposed to go so it can make accurate and good decisions about how to get there. It is helpful to know that different types of proprioceptive signals follow different pathways to get this information to the brain. The receptors that sense stretch and tension of your muscles and tendons, for example transmit information to the spinal cord by way of thick, well insulated nerves. Because of their large diameter and high conductivity, these nerves carry signals traveling as fast as 270 mph. However, there are other receptors that send signals through much smaller nerves to the spinal cord and brain. Nociceptors, which sense potential harm or damage to tissues, pass their information to the brain mostly through nerves that carry information traveling at 2 mph. But again, nociception can also occur more quickly like when touching a hot stove. However, even the speed of speed of these reflexes is much slower than the inputs from mechanoreceptors or the receptors that sense the mechanical forces for posture and movement.
Again going back to my competitive days, I have been recently incorporating something that we started to use in our training back in the seventies called “visualization.” It is actually one of the best tools for working through your proprioceptive system. When you imagine moving or working a certain muscle like I now suggest in my exercises, it activates the same parts of the brain as if you were actually doing it. High level athletes today use this skill a lot in their training. They visualize the athletic skill they are attempting to do over and over again in their brain. What they are doing is connecting with the neural pathways they need in order to do the skill successfully. With each exercise I now give my clients, I will include a picture of the muscle or muscles involved with the movement in order to direct their mental focus and concentration and thereby decrease the resistance of the neural pathway to that muscle(s).
I hope you understand what I have been talking about in these last two articles because it is the foundation to your posture and movement that I am trying to change. There is so much to learn about the brain, spinal cord, posture, and movement that even I don’t know after all my years of education, experience in the clinic, and experience in sports. Even with this foundational knowledge, I continue to discover and learn new revelations about the brain-body connection and how it affects human performance against the forces of gravity and ground everyday. No matter what you do, whether it is a complex athletic skill or just walking, everyone’s nervous system is competing against these forces every minute of every day. I guess we are all athletes competing against these never ending forces.
If there is one thing I hope you get out of these past two articles, it’s that the human nervous system is the foundation and vital to understanding your posture and movement. A body output-centered approach to posture and movement which I utilized for many years while useful, is self-limiting. I know that by experience. Until I approached posture and movement with a brain-based ideology, the root problems and obstacles holding my clients back seemed to go unresolved. Now that I have incorporated the brain, I have been able to create more advanced learning, training, and therapeutic techniques to help my clients manage their musculoskeletal pain and inflammation.
In my next newsletter, I will begin to discuss the neural patterning that I have developed over the years involving the body’s neuromuscular system and myofascial meridians created by Thomas Myers, a structure integrator (rolfer). Until then, “Be Well!”
Terry