The Science

Coming originally from an Engineering background, I love the simplicity and the mechanics of the Central Nervous Systems (CNS) foundation. The CNS comprises the Brain, Spinal cord and its protective membranous housing.

Diagnostically, I believe conventional medicine lacks in 2 main areas. Firstly, we often treat the symptom, and not the root cause. Secondly, we can be quite limited to primarily working with what we can see. If nothing shows on X rays, bloods or scans, how can you formulate an evidence based treatment programme if you cannot find anything wrong? New Vision Therapy provides a valuable tool in situations like this to help fill in the blanks.

Body Mechanics

Picture a balloon in the shape of a tadpole. This fluid filled balloon houses and protects the CNS. The fluid is called Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) , and is produced in a rhythmical cycle by the brain roughly every 3 to 4 seconds, followed by another 3 to 4 seconds of reabsorption back into the blood supply.

The head of the balloon – or Dura – moulds to the inside of the skull, and very strongly to the base of the skull, or Occiput, where the spinal cord exits.

The body of the tadpole shaped balloon travels down through the neck and back and mechanically connects to the tailbone, or Sacrum.

This is where the mechanics come in, and provide us with an invaluable diagnostic tool, enabling us to work with conditions that would never show on scans or x rays.

As the CSF is produced, the balloon expands. As it does so, because it is moulded to the inside of the skull plates, they all widen and move apart slightly.

When the correct volume of CSF is achieved, the body senses that and slows production down. Reabsorption takes place, and when the CSF volume drops low again, it kick starts another production cycle and so on.

Expanding Cranium

This is the interesting bit! All of the skull plates mould together like a tight-fitting jigsaw. But the sutures, where they join together, are not fused – they allow for a little movement to facilitate the expansion and contraction of the plates as the balloon on the inside does the same.

We can use this diagnostically, as with very light touch you can assess if a plate has been traumatised, jammed, or is restricted in its range of motion by other factors like tight connective muscles, distortions of the Dura or scar tissue from surgery.

The base of the skull, or occiput, rocks down towards the feet during production of CSF, and back up towards the head in reabsorption phase. Because the body of the tadpole is moulded to this bone, it gets dragged up and down through the neck and the back as the occiput moves. The tailbone then moves because the Dura is moulded to it, so we end up with a swing boat effect where both tail and base of the skull rock forwards and backwards together in conjunction with the production and reabsorption of CSF.

With very light touch through a fully clothed body, we are able to determine if these basic fundamental mechanics of the system are working ok, or compromised in some way. What might cause a problem and impact on the CNS? Life!!!

Throughout life we all suffer injuries and traumas, both physical and emotional. Unresolved trauma – trauma the body cannot heal – we have to learn to live with and work around. This is where the problem begins, and will snowball over time from one compensatory pattern to another.

So how do we go about treating people when they come in to see us?

The Magic of Fascia

Fascia is a very thin layer of connective tissue that goes everywhere in the body like a spiders web. If you tap a spider’s web, you send a ripple through the whole web. If you twist your finger slightly, the web will wrap around it, and again the entire web is distorted. Note the distortion is greater closer to your finger, and less of an influence at the outer edges of the web, but the distortion still takes place!

As our tadpole shaped balloon is expanding and contracting deep inside the body, because of the connectivity of fascia, the whole body expands and contracts! It is called flexion and extension. This is probably our most valuable diagnostic tool.

If I sense that ankles are moving symmetrically, knees are, but one hip is tighter than the other, yet ribs are moving together, I know somewhere between knee and ribs something is impacting on the natural movement of the hip on that one side!

If you squeeze a balloon, you do not just create pressure where you apply the squeeze. Because it is pressurised, you proportionately increase pressure through the whole balloon. In the same way, compromised fascia, distorted bones, organs, structure and scar tissue from surgery will always place a twist in the fascial web. This in turn will always place pressure on the CNS through the protective balloon.

If pressure is applied to the balloon, it can trick the body into thinking the correct volume of CSF is present, and this starts a whole host of problems.

Even as a newborn baby, if the body senses pressure on the CNS it will deliberately tighten certain muscles to distort the structure in order to relieve that pressure. If body can self-heal, over time those protective compensatory patterns melt away, but if the problem is more mechanical in nature, the body cannot self-heal, and compensatory pattern becomes permanent.

We use gentle, safe, non manipulative techniques from our “toolbox” to gently help release these restrictions from top to toe. We are not here to “fix” people, but our goal is to clear the restrictions that are preventing that person’s body from being able to fix and repair itself. That is how we can achieve long lasting benefits for the people we help.

“Why would we try and fix a self-healing mechanism? Makes no sense to me. Instead, we might try and identify where the roadblocks were that are preventing self-healing, clear them, and in doing so restore the capacity for the body to fix and repair itself”