NeuroKinetic Therapy® (NKT) and Neuro Muscular Reprogramming® (NMR) are fast and effective, hands-on protocols for identifying and correcting dysfunctional movement patterns that are often the cause of symptomatic pain or weakness. This technique combines manual muscle testing, soft tissue release techniques, and then retesting, in a sequence that opens communication with the Motor Control Center of the brain (MCC) where movement patterns are stored.
Muscle testing assesses dysfunctional patterns and opens the MCC to prepare for the re-education of healthy, balanced movement across the joint. Soft tissue release work breaks up scar tissue, unbinds the muscle, and promotes healing of the injury. Finally, retesting and challenging solidifies the re-education process of training muscles to return to working in a balanced (non-compensating) fashion. Problem gets healed and stays healed.
This may sound miraculous, but it is merely a well-executed boost to help your body return to coordinating your physical activity the way you subconsciously have been doing all your life.
Our bodies learn to move and perform through the MCC’s collective monitoring of successes and failures. The NBA basketball player who can shoot a high percentage of free throw shots has a brain that has collected and ruled out tens of thousands of missed shots and retained the coordinated movement of thousands of successful tries. When the NBA player’s shoulder is injured, his body adapts for success (and reduced risk of further injury) by compensating and the MCC retains this new pattern. Compensation patterns are important for protection sake in the short term, but they create damage in the long term, as they cause muscles and joints to work in ways they are not designed to work.
NKT® uses muscle testing to differentiate between facilitating muscles (over working) and inhibited muscles (under working). It is so important to differentiate between the two, because often an "inhibited" or hurt muscle cannot be massaged, stretched, or exercised back to health without also releasing the tension in the muscle that has been compensating ("facilitating") for it. Conversely, the compensating muscle won’t be “coaxed” out of protection mode until the brain senses that the hurt muscle is now better.
This is the Catch 22 factor at work that explains two issues: why rehabilitation often takes so long and often never reaches 100% and why we often feel better during and just after rehabilitation therapy or massage but don’t get lasting or complete results for an acute or chronic injury. Even treating both muscles in the right order doesn’t necessarily do the trick, but by muscle testing to open up the MCC to re-educate the muscles, the NKT® protocol resolves this hurt-muscle versus compensating-muscle stalemate.
Who can benefit from NKT®? Just about anyone with joint or muscle pain. Human beings use the MCC to help them move optimally: one-year-olds learning to walk, the elderly dealing with stairs, eleven year-olds in swim club, our NBA free throw star, and every age and level of athleticism in between. The one-year-old body is designed to handle the bumps of falling down, but just about everyone else is an NKT® candidate. Broken bones and badly torn ligaments or tendons can’t be massaged back together, but after a surgeon does the job, NKT® can repair the compensations that arise from scar tissue, casts, crutches, atrophy, etc.
NKT® may also be used on a preventative maintenance basis or for improving athleticism and muscular-skeletal health. Because muscle testing and other assessment methods can reveal compensation patterns before they even become painful, NKT® can reverse soft tissue dysfunctions before they become symptomatic. This leads to improved health, better athletic performance, and less injuries.