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Greetings, this Dr. Michael Cohen. Welcome to my office.
The work that I offer in my office is a no-crack approach to chiropractic care that actually works.
This is a non-invasive, non-manipulative chiropractic technique that produces profound, lasting results. It is the only chiropractic technique that I use with my practice members and the only chiropractic technique which I receive for my personal care.
NetworkSpinal, sometimes referred to as “Network Chiropractic”, is a chiropractic technique that regards your body as a whole integrated system and not just a bunch of parts. It taps into your unique energetic fields which shape your life and enhance your body’s potential to heal.
My work employs a very specific and gentle touch along areas of your spine where the protective covering of the spinal cord connects to the spine. Each touch works to clear up interference throughout your nervous system. With the pathways clearer, your body and brain can communicate more effectively with each other which promotes better healing.
How it works
Your spinal cord is your body’s communication hub. It is where the body passes messages between the body and brain. Physical trauma, mental stress, and environmental toxins can throw your whole system into an overwhelmed state of tension. The tension produces neural traffic jams that disrupt communications, alters the normal functioning of your body, and inhibits healing.
Because your spinal cord is your body’s communication hub, it is also your body’s tension hub. So your spinal cord is the place to look for opportunities to dissipate these neural traffic jams.
Research suggests that it doesn’t take much to dissipate those traffic jams – just a slight touch to the precise spots, called spinal gateways, where the nerves underneath the skin and connected to the spinal cord trigger a connection with the brain. This touch is called entrainment because its purpose is to synchronize your perception of tension to the actual tension stored in a particular area of your spinal cord and to teach your body new strategies to train itself to respond to tension in healthier ways.
Principles behind NetworkSpinal Care
You’re not an inanimate object that needs to be repaired part by part. Connective tissue, ligaments, discs, segments of the spine are loaded with receptors that have to report back to your brain how much tension each of them is experiencing. The brain then needs to figure out how to respond about what goes where with everything coordinating with everything else.
When your body holds on to tension, it causes your body’s communication network to become overwhelmed, sidetracked, or derailed. When the interference is cleared, your brain can pay better attention to the whole system, not just the one that’s yelling the loudest.
Somatic awareness
The body-mind connection
Athletes, musicians, and yoga practitioners devote themselves to developing a keen awareness of what is going on in their bodies, of how their bodies react to stress and trauma, of what works and doesn’t work, of what strengthens them and what weakens them. They know that the body and mind work together as a team.
The more mentally tuned-in you are to your physical feelings and senses, the greater your capacity to tap into your body’s healing resources. One of the aims of this work is to strengthen your ability to pay attention to your body, it's needs, and to develop a heightened sence of self awareness.
Spinal and neural integrity
Clear communications
Whenever there’s a change in your environment, your nerves send signals to your spinal cord, and your spinal cord coordinates the appropriate response with the rest of the body. Three subsystems all need to work in harmony:
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Passive subsystem – Vertebrae, ligaments, and spinal discs
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Active subsystem – Spinal muscles and tendons
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Neural control subsystem – Spinal cord, nerve roots, and peripheral nerves
This work aims to strengthen the ability of the nerves and the spinal cord to develop clearer and more rapid communications with each other, so that the body can respond and adapt to its changing environment.
The emotional motor system
The gut-brain connection
Also known as the 'emotional brain', the limbic system is located in your forebrain and is important in the formation of memories and in controlling emotions, decisions, motivation, and learning. It includes the amygdala hippocampus, the most primitive part of the brain, where the body’s “fight or flight” reaction originates.
Whenever you make an “intuitive decision” or have a “gut reaction,” that’s your limbic system at work. When depression, anxiety, annoyance, or emergencies stress upset your stomach, that’s a signal of a breakdown in gut-brain crosstalk.
Another important aim of this work is to strengthen your awareness of your emotions and their impact on your body. The more tuned-in you are to your emotional responses, the greater your capacity to tap into your body’s healing resources.
Wellness
That you feel well, inside and out, is my goal. Wellness is not a physical or emotional condition, but how you feel – in your body, in your situation, in your relationships, in your heart, in your head. It is your sense of your self and what you believe about what it means to be healthy.
This work is a technique that works to help you become fully aware of your body and the ways everything works together for complete, integrated well-being.
Vertebral subluxation
A vertebral subluxation is what most people think of when they refer to a spine being misaligned. It’s a structural shift caused by spinal tension. It can be caused by physical trauma, such as car collisions, bad office chairs, or even pregnancy. It can be a stiff neck or sore back caused by emotional, mental, or chemical stress.
Unlike conventional chiropractic techniques, this work approaches vertebral subluxation as a symptom of body-mind disconnection, not as its cause. When the communications between the brain and nervous systems are strengthened, the tension causing the subluxation releases and the spine realigns itself.
Spinal gateway
The spinal gateways are the access points on the spine that I use to cue your brain and nervous system to connect with each other.
These access points are not simply tense spots where communication has gone haywire. The haywire spots are where the neurotransmitters are too busy being distressed to respond to requests from the outside world with anything other than more distress, which would just result in more tension.
Instead, the spinal gateway is what I call the “peaceful” areas along the spinal cord, the places where nerves will be receptive to contact. The spinal gateway serves as a nexus or hub for interaction among the subsystems that need to work in harmony to establish and maintain spinal and neural stability and integrity. Precise and gentle touch contacts at these spinal gateways assist the brain to connect more effectively with the spine and body.
Research behind NetworkSpinal Care
In a retrospective study conducted at the University of California Irvine’s School of Medicine of almost 3,000 people, NetworkSpinal was found to have a direct effect on client self-reported wellness – twice that expected from healthy lifestyle practices (exercise, risk avoidance, optimal food choices). The study concluded that “effects of NetworkSpinal Care are cumulative and global, affecting all areas of life .… a strong connection exists between NetworkSpinal Care and self-reported positive changes in overall health and well-being.”
This work was also found to have a major indirect effect on wellness by promoting healthy lifestyle choices as a natural result of receiving this care and experiencing greater health.
If you have any questions, please feel free to use the contact form. Thank you
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