The Neck’s Hierarchy of Priorities.


The neck is probably the most used organ of the body. Its worth saying because mostly we forget its there, which is also a good indication of its refinement. It has the responsibility of ensuring we can breathe, we can swallow, and that blood flow to and from the brain is uninterrupted. All vital functions. It is also designed to protect the routes which the nervous system uses to both gather and disperse vital information about threats to the body general. All these functions must be protected so that they operate successfully, otherwise, in theory, we die. On top of all this, the neck also has the responsibility to allow movement of the head, and thus the senses of seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting etc are fully utilised to aid our survival in a threatening world.

When an actual structural problem occurs in the neck, as with cervical spondylosis, the neck must then refer to its default protective system to decide which functions take priority, and which functions must be maintained, even if its at the expense of applying a direct reaction to that structural problem. These are pre-set inherent instructions which must be enacted regardless of any external interference. If this is true, then its not too difficult to see that how the neck deals with its own structural problem is demoted down the list of absolute priorities, simply because how it reacts cannot be allowed to endanger the other vital functions. In this way, its reactions differ from reactions to similar structural problems in other parts of the body ( perhaps with the exception of sciatica ). And it also helps to explain why the nervous system should choose to use referred pain, rather than direct pain, as a warning method. The use of direct pain in the neck area could easily cause a conscious reaction by us, which might endanger other functions. The nervous system inherently doesn’t trust these possible conscious reactions by us, and so, its methods are designed to counteract them, before they might occur. This is how refined the nervous system actually is.

So, we’ve established that how the neck reacts to structural problems might be well down the list of its priorities. Also, within those ‘delayed’ reactions there exists yet another sub-list of reactive priorities. Without these reactive priorities the neck would probably just stiffen up, painfully, until some sort of natural healing was achieved. It can’t do this because of the possible resulting dangers. And so, what it does instead, is to employ a whole range of ‘safe’ alternative muscular adjustments, which don’t threaten other functions, but which cause all sorts of ‘associated’ symptoms which we are familiar with as C/S ‘associated’ symptoms. It should be stressed here that these are not ‘actual’ trapped nerve symptoms, which in themselves don’t have such an effect on the neck. The ‘associated’ symptoms occur mostly because of threats to a nerve, rather than actual compression.

Basically, what I’m saying is this. The way in which the neck prioritises it reactions is always one step ahead of any possible conscious reaction on our part, and as such, any external manipulations should take this into account before being applied. If it doesn’t suit what’s already happening, its wrong. We might like to believe that we can outwit the nervous system, when in fact, we are always, by default, one step behind. Its inherent in the design !

G