When Amy’s mother brought her tonic in 1993 she was 13. Extremely self conscious of her curvature, she would not look me in the eye, nor allow me to examine her with clothes off. I was pessimistic about how much help I could be to her after observing her trait and other abberant movement patterns. However, file very first test 1 performed (through her sweatshirt) told me that, indeed, she might he a good candidate for manual therapy.

Typically, the degree of scoliosis demonstrated in Amy’s structure in Figure A would indicate facet tropism (remodeling of the pony endplates, ribs, discs. Etc?) Her structure indicates true structural scoliosis, which is difficult, at best, to significantly improve. But when I ran her through some typical motion tests. I found that it was possible to straighten some of her thoracic curve by passively side bending her to the right and totaling left both in standing and sitting. This alerted me to the possibility of, at least some degree of dysfunction contributing to the curve.

Her mother fold me that she had developed a long-term daily routine of hanging by a bar, in hope of straightening her embarassing curve, and apparently that ritual helped keep the discs hydrated and the ribs mobile.

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FIGURE 1A and 1 B show marked improvement in Amy’s scoliosis after 30 months of therapy. Notice in Fig. 1-A how bowing is created by hypersonic erectors. QL and obliques on her left side while the right psoas, trapezius and posterior deltoid muscle hold the dysfunctional pattern.

Amy had developed settle remodeling of file discs at the thoracolumbar junction, and that was really challenge. I had a chiropractor buddy x-ray her to alert us to any true leg length discrepancy. More I began work on balancing the lower quadrant. As you can see she still needs some work in that area.

I did take Army through a modified Ten Series, while focusing on how changer made to the legs affected the ankylosed T-12/L1 junction. Notice how I had to bring the right tutee into a mild hyper extended position to help improve the lumbopelvic strain.

Given Amy’s description of the onset of her scoliosis, she may have suffered a mild polio-type episode rendering her partially paralyzed on the right side of her body (she had suffered from a severe whole-bodv infection one year prior to the first sighting of the scoliotic curve). Initial assessment revealed increased neuromuscular facilitation, manifesting in the miofascia on the opposite side of her body, which seems to follow Davi´s Law. Hypertonicity was particularly obvious in the quadratus, erectors, and obliques on her left side.

Although the right psoas, rhomboids, trapezius, and posterior deltoid were tight, their hvpertoncity was easy to release, suggesting that their primary function was to hold the dysfunctional pattern rather than being instrumental in creating it (figures 2:13 & C). The resulting muscle unbalance patterns that emerged in Amy’s body represented the beginning of an unusual ,cotiolic case where both functional and structural scoliolic lixations were present at the same time.

Since the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are embedded in the psoas, the poor psoas is the first muscle to be affected by bacterial or viral attack. As the muscles become atrophied on the paralyzed side and tighter on the overstretched convex side the battle begins over which group has dominance in creating the asymmetry. Surprisingly, the psoas often loses this battle because of its susceptibility to facet dysfunction at critical “crossover” junctions, particularly at the T12/L1 lumbosacral plexus.

After the first year of almost three, I brought in a “redneck” 86-year-old assistant to help with Amy’s stuck facets. Doc Atwater had been an original instructor at the second Chiropractic college founded in America right here in Oklahoma City.

He saw her about nine limes and we worked as a team on several occasions. Just a stretching and a poppin. He concentrated on opening and closing facets that were too locked for the Nfyoskeletal method to be effective. We needed high velocity thrusting procedures to help mobilize those fibrotic and calcified joint capsules. Visceral work was done in and around the respiratory diaphragm and plexus of the sympathetic chain ganglia.

Davis’s Law states: “If muscle ends are brought closer together the pull of tonus is increased, which shortens the muscle (and may even cause hypertrophy).

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FIGURE 2
A. Unilateral rhomboid hypertonicity
B. Unilateral trapezius hypertonicity
C. Unilateral hypertonicity in erector and posterior deltoid
D. Unilateral hypertonicity it erectors and quadrates lumborum muscles