That’s a mouthful. What it means are bad habits. In the 60’s Sally Field was this little nun who wore a bad habit that made her fly, but that’s a different type of bad, more like good, or cool. But we all have bad habits. I once heard that 10% of people chew their toenails. That’s a really bad habit. But your spine too has bad habits that we in the biz refer to a negative neurological habit patterns. Please hang with me while I try to describe this phenomenon. When you cross your arms which arm goes on top? Why? When you stand with your weight on one foot which one do you stand on most often? Why? When you cross your legs which one goes on top most of the time? Why? These are motion habit patterns that have been ingrained or memorized by your muscles, your spinal cord, and your brain for one reason or another. These examples aren’t bad, they just are there.
So let’s say that you manage to escape birth without subluxation, unlikely but let’s pretend. At this point you have only good and balanced motion in your spine. But then you begin to have subluxation events. You fall hundreds or thousands of times learning to walk, to climb, to slide, to skate, etc. You have athletic injuries and car accidents. And after each subluxation event, small or large, your body heals, but it heals with some of the scar tissue left behind slowly altering alignment and motion of the spinal bones. Curves where you shouldn’t have them, straight where it should be curved, reduced motion where there should be more and too much motion where there should be less. These are bad things. They are negative for you. But your body memorizes them as being your normal state now. It’s memorized in the muscles, in the spinal cord, and in your brain, specifically the cerebellum. So we end up with bad habit patterns of motion and alignment that are memorized by the nerve system as being normal: Negative Neurological Habit Patterns (NNHP). Voila.
To go one step further each time you have a new subluxation event, the new NNHP is memorized on top of the one it replaced, stacked up neurologically in the brain. You see the brain never forgets, it just adds a new pattern on top of the old one, like layers of an onion. And this is what we as chiropractors are up against, internal neurological layer upon layer of bad habits. This is why we adjust.
With each adjustment we interrupt the NNHP and peel it away layer by layer, knowing that your spine will be healthier as the onion gets smaller, also knowing that the onion can never be completely erased. So if you have a bigger onion as in phase 2 or 3 or even 4 of subluxation degeneration, it’s going to take longer and be less complete. This is why regular chiropractic is most successful when begun as early as possible when the onion is tiny, and especially in childhood before it even gets started.
So let’s say that you manage to escape birth without subluxation, unlikely but let’s pretend. At this point you have only good and balanced motion in your spine. But then you begin to have subluxation events. You fall hundreds or thousands of times learning to walk, to climb, to slide, to skate, etc. You have athletic injuries and car accidents. And after each subluxation event, small or large, your body heals, but it heals with some of the scar tissue left behind slowly altering alignment and motion of the spinal bones. Curves where you shouldn’t have them, straight where it should be curved, reduced motion where there should be more and too much motion where there should be less. These are bad things. They are negative for you. But your body memorizes them as being your normal state now. It’s memorized in the muscles, in the spinal cord, and in your brain, specifically the cerebellum. So we end up with bad habit patterns of motion and alignment that are memorized by the nerve system as being normal: Negative Neurological Habit Patterns (NNHP). Voila.
To go one step further each time you have a new subluxation event, the new NNHP is memorized on top of the one it replaced, stacked up neurologically in the brain. You see the brain never forgets, it just adds a new pattern on top of the old one, like layers of an onion. And this is what we as chiropractors are up against, internal neurological layer upon layer of bad habits. This is why we adjust.
With each adjustment we interrupt the NNHP and peel it away layer by layer, knowing that your spine will be healthier as the onion gets smaller, also knowing that the onion can never be completely erased. So if you have a bigger onion as in phase 2 or 3 or even 4 of subluxation degeneration, it’s going to take longer and be less complete. This is why regular chiropractic is most successful when begun as early as possible when the onion is tiny, and especially in childhood before it even gets started.