There are three parts to truly correcting your spine and all it controls:
1. Function—how well your joints move, muscle tone, ability to perform Activities of normal Daily Living (ADL), such as walking, lifting, bending to do dishes, run the vacuum, or bathe your kids.
2. Neurological—how well the signal getting from the brain, through the spinal cord, out the nerves, and finally to all the parts of the body.
3. Structural—the actual shape of the spine as measured on x-rays. (True Plane or Aligned X-rays)
So here is the challenge: adjustments restore function and are profoundly important for proper neurological balance but adjustments alone can’t change the structure of the spine. This is because you have muscles that react, under nerve-controlled reflexes, to applied forces.
Adjusting a vertebra back into alignment is only a temporary improvement if that is all that is done. It takes rehabilitation to change the shape of the spine due to reflex muscle reactions that will automatically attempt to pull the spine back to the previous position.
The rehabilitation we use works with these muscle reflexes instead of against them to give you the results you want. Once the spine is adjusted into position, we teach the muscles how to hold this new position. Used together, your improvement will progress faster.
So what about just doing the rehabilitation but no adjustments? The muscles will be fighting against joint immobility and loss of function that will slow if not stop the effectiveness of the rehabilitation.
One of the main tools we use to strengthening posture muscles is the Pettibon Body Weighting System.