THE SPINE AND THE SOUL

Your feelings are managed by a conglomerate of structures in the area of your brain called the limbic system. These feelings are then expressed through neurochemicals that are the ambassadors of emotional wellbeing.

When investigating violence, the question that comes to the forefront is explaining how in most aggravated interactions among people, there are no incidents of excessive force or murders. Yet, in other similar scenarios, violence escalates out of control.1

Neuroscientists have studied what has been called the “Rage circuit”2 made up of the Limbic System, which controls emotions like drive, anger, kindness, fear, and hostility. Part of the Limbic System and at the heart of this rage circuit is an almond-shaped organ called your amygdala. It is a hyper-vigilant organ in charge of primal emotions like hate, fear, and rage. The amygdala acts as your internal warning mechanism, responding to anything threatening your survival. Once the amygdala is activated, it speeds up your heart rate, makes your nerves more sensitive, your pupils dilate for improved vision, and circulation increases towards the muscles required to run or fight.

The amygdala has a direct reflex connection with your spine (Pert and Dienstrey,1988). As a matter of fact, there is a direct, intimate relationship with the entire Limbic System at every spinal level. (Holder and Blum, 1995, Burnstein and Potrebic (1993), Giesler, et al. (1994). It’s an interesting concept to grasp. The soul is the mind, the will, and the emotions. How you see life, your emotional state, your patience, peace, joy, and kindness can all be influenced by the condition of your spine. On some level, t's possible to have a subluxation of the soul.

With God, all things are possible,

Dr. Ben Lerner
#cccmovement

Pert, Candace and H. Dienstrey. 1988. The neuropeptide network. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 521:189-194. Giesler Jr., G. J., J. T. Katter & R. J. Dado. 1994. Direct spinal pathways to the limbic system for nociceptive information. Trends in Neurosciences. 17(6):244-250. Holder, Jay M., R. C. Duncan, M. Gissen, M. Miller, and K. Blum. 2001. Increasing retention rates among the chemically dependent in residential treatment: auriculotherapy and subluxation-based chiropractic care. Molecular Psychiatry. 6 (Supplement 1). Burnstein, R. and S. Potrebic. 1993. Retrograde labeling of neurons in the spinal cord that project directly to the amygdala or the orbital cortex in the rat. Journal of Comparative Neurology. 335(4):469-485.1. Shermer, M. (2015, June). Why do cops kill? Scientific American Volume 313, Issue 1 2. Panksepp J., Zellner M. Towards a neurobiologically based unified theory of aggression. . Rev Int Psychol Sociale/Int Rev Soc Psychol. 2004;17:37–61.