Essex Physical Therapy near Burlington provided a warm welcome to students and PRI faculty that matched the fall colors of a Vermont fall season. This facility is a dream location for learning PRI principles and provided a perfect learning environment for all of the students in attendance.
Cervical Revolution is the secondary course that introduces "top-down" and autonomic function guiding movement that is reciprocal and alternating. The heart and soul of this course is the atlas and occipital articulation which is autonomic in nature given the location to the brainstem anatomically. From that articulation the course builds into normal cervical spine coupling, compensatory coupling, occipital influences on a sphenoid, sphenoid to temporal bone, temporal bone influences on the entire system including mandibular/occlusal position and finally to right torsion as a pathologic compensation of the cranium that originates at the O/A joint. This course integrates sense from top down and ground up including pressure sense generated by respiration, autonomic nervous system regulation of balance, sight, occlusion and especially alignment, position and dynamic tone and tension of the cervical spine.
In addition to PT’s in attendance, there were athletic trainers, strength professionals, massage therapists and two doctors of chiropractic in attendance with one of them also being a PT. Our discussion on Saturday morning included speaking of the atlas and that chiropractors have always held this articulation with high reverence observing it’s role in overall wellbeing and neurologic function. Ron Hruska also has seen this relationship for years, and as a chiropractic physician, I appreciate Cervical Revolution so much as it brings our knowledge of the cervical spine, and how it specifically relates to overall function of every system in the human body, to a practical clinical application combining objective testing with powerful and effective treatment.
Fellow PRI faculty member Louise Kelly, DPT, who is training to teach this course, was our lab assistant and my sidekick during the weekend and courses always are easier to teach with her energetic input, insights as a masterful clinician and ability to break down PRI Non-manual techniques. Many thanks to her and many, many thanks to Estelle La Clair and the entire Essex Physical Therapy staff for their support, organization, food, set-up, clean-up and overall spirit of learning this past weekend!
