Healing the Nervous System

Americans are in crisis. Chronically high stress levels and lifestyle choices have influenced the function of peoples’ nervous systems in ways that need to be addressed in order to provide healing, improved function, and optimal health. There is a lack of awareness of how the nervous system and spinal health affect overall health. Why is healing the nervous system critical?

The nervous system literally controls every single function within your body: your breathing, your heart beat, your movements—it can even play a large role in your perceptions and behaviors.

• Lack of proper function and movement in the spine leads to Adverse Mechanical Cord Tension (AMCT--tension on the spinal cord and nerves) that impacts the flow of information from the brain to the intended organ systems, leading to health issues and symptoms.
• An unbalanced spine leads to arthritic changes which decrease quality of life and take away from your ability to do the things you enjoy.
• A spine that holds increased levels of tension or doesn’t move appropriately causes biochemical changes in the body that cause someone to be more angry, depressed, anxious, and fearful.
• A dysfunctional nervous system causes the body to have an imbalance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic sides of the nervous system (dysautonomia).
• For most people, this imbalance is demonstrated as an increase towards the sympathetic or fight or flight side of physiology. This causes information from the brain to the reproductive system, digestive system, ­­­­­and immune system to be decreased, leading to long-term health problems.
• While these organ systems have decreased information, the heart, lungs, muscles, and adrenal glands are kept in a state of over-function, leading to tight muscles, increased respiration, increased heart rate/blood pressure, sleep issues, etc.

How do you heal and balance the nervous system?

Step 1:  Your NSA adjustments are an important piece of the puzzle. NSA adjustments use a specific analysis system that allows us to identify how the nervous system is storing AMCT. The high-level of specificity used in NSA allows the release of excess tension on nerves and the spinal cord, allowing brain-body communication to be restored and enhanced. This can allow organ systems to receive proper information for healing, recovery, and proper immune function.

• As AMCT is released, biochemical changes occur that allow increased feelings of peace, love, joy, sense of wellbeing, and health.
• NSA allows the spine to move into increased balance while also increasing proper mobility in the spine. This decreases arthritic changes while enhancing healing of bones, ligaments, tendons, and muscles.
• NSA actually teaches your nervous system strategies for decreasing physiological stress when you are on and OFF the adjustment table. NSA care advances neurological strategies that create increased adaptability and resiliency. 
• NSA decreases sympathetic tone in the body. When we decrease sympathetic physiology, one can move into a healing state, decrease the stress on the heart, lungs, and muscles while helping to restore information from the brain to the reproductive system, digestive system, and immune system.

Step 2: Identify How You Handle Stress. As clients move through advancing nervous system strategies with NSA care, they increase their mind-body awareness. This allows them to notice when they are becoming stressed as well as what behaviors may have been used as unconscious patterns of how they deal with stress.

During times of high stress, we often make choices that do not serve our health, wellbeing, and quality of life. In order to change this, we must first become aware of how our brain and body are responding to stress, as well as the unconscious choices we are making in regards to stress. This allows us to create a “pause” in which we have the opportunity to make a health-promoting choice versus falling into an unconscious, automatic behavior.

Step 3: Staying Ahead of Stress Makes all of the Difference. There are many healthy ways to handle stress that keep you thriving and moving towards your goals. Realize, the higher your stress level, the more important it is to keep up with your adjustments for both the healing process as well as moving beyond stress physiology. For example, if you are experiencing a stressful time period and receive NSA adjustments less due to “busyness,” you are letting your body move into an unhealthy state of stress physiology.  Instead, know that stressful times call for increased NSA care and self-care.

Creating a plan for staying ahead of and handling stress is LITERALLY one of the most important action steps you can take for improving your short-term and long-term health.