The Body Linguist

11/08/2025

SPINAL MANIPULATION – WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING

There’s this ridiculous idea floating around that a simple thrust can “realign” your bones. Let’s be clear — that’s not what’s happening. You cannot push vertebrae back into place with your hands. The spine isn’t dislocating and relocating every time someone cracks your back. If it were actually misaligned the way some claim, you’d be in hospital, not on a treatment table.

When a practitioner performs a spinal manipulation, the movement is extremely small — a few millimetres at most. The joint surfaces briefly separate, creating a rapid change in pressure within the synovial joint. That change causes gas (mostly CO₂ and nitrogen) to form and collapse inside the joint fluid — the audible “pop.” That’s all the noise is. It’s not bones moving back into place. It’s cavitation — a pressure change in the joint capsule.

Physiological Effects

Manipulation affects the body mainly through neurophysiological responses, not through physical repositioning of bones. The quick stretch activates mechanoreceptors within the joint capsule and surrounding tissues. These receptors send a flood of sensory input to the spinal cord and brain. This temporary barrage can reduce the sensitivity of nociceptive pathways (pain signalling) and alter muscle tone via reflex mechanisms. That’s why after a manipulation, patients often feel “looser,” “lighter,” or notice an improved range of motion — it’s not because their bones were realigned; it’s because their nervous system has momentarily adjusted how it’s interpreting movement and pain.

The effect can also increase local blood flow and help restore normal joint motion if it’s been restricted by protective muscle guarding. Again — that’s a functional change, not a structural one.

Why the Realignment Myth Persists

The “realignment” myth continues because it sounds dramatic and easy to sell. It gives people the impression something was out of place and the practitioner fixed it. It’s a neat story — but it’s nonsense. The vertebrae are held in place by strong ligaments, discs, and deep stabilising muscles. A single thrust cannot overcome that structure and magically shift things back.

10/13/2025

Pain is caused by a combination of physical, emotional, and environmental factors, which makes treatment and diagnosis difficult.

10/10/2025

✋ Manual therapy is a controversial topic in the rehab world, with many contrasting claims about what it does.

🤔 Want to learn once and for all what manual therapy CAN and CANNOT do?

In this well-balanced blog we clarify exactly that for you.

Not based on opinion or anecdotes, but based on what the EVIDENCE has to say.

👉 Read it now: https://www.physio-network.com/blog/what-manual-therapy-can-do/

09/02/2024

“Analogous to letters of the alphabet, which can offer no clue by themselves as to how they should be assembled to make a poem, self-esteem, wellness, and positivity are scraps of feelings that cannot be addressed in isolation and assembled in a way that can restore a person’s mind to wholeness or happiness.”

The caring industry’s wellness and positivity products cannot provide self-esteem to those who do not already have it.

02/17/2019

Changing the pain paradigm. Encouraging and educating clients to observe and modify is a giant step towards moving them back into an activity routine that serves them. Lots of folks are convinced that if they aren't following a pre-set structure in their activity designed by the "experts", that somehow they are not benefiting from the effort....this is just not so. One body, one pursuit....and there are no two alike!

Many people with ongoing pain fear that exercise will make their pain worse. But when done right, exercise plays a vital role in recovering from pain and living well again.

12/21/2018

Important work, no fear.

We’ve all heard them and we’ve probably repeated quite a few but research doesn’t support any of them. Is it time we changed the dialogue around Pregnancy Massage and tossed these…

11/24/2018

11/08/2018

Cumulative knowledge and experience is indeed so important to being a resource for our clients. Not just what we are doing, but when and how to do it are critical skills!

Take a look through any of the popular trade publications in our field and you’ll find a wealth of advertising for courses that are teaching you new techniques. The extravagant claims for methods that provide “permanent pain relief” or “immediate results in one or two treatments” can certa...

02/04/2017

URGENT HELP NEEDED! Aloha friends! MAHA needs your voice on proposed legislation that would effectively shut down most of the massage therapy education for licensure in Hawaii, along with all other small vocational and technical programs that serve the community. Bill SB1286 is set for hearing this coming Wednesday the 8th, so we need your voice in opposition by TUESDAY at 3PM.

The Hawaii DOE no longer wishes to administer to vocational and technical schools for our state, and in exchange is demanding that our fee be raised from 50$ to 10,000$ every two years (on top of a 10K application fee), that we maintain accreditation through a third party agency that can run several thousand dollars a year and is also a 10K application fee, and that we provide a bond to the DOE in the amount of 50,000$ in order to secure any "financial" harm that may result to a student from our school.

Secondly, no DOE licensing nullifies a students ability to transfer their education to other state agencies in the country, and also bars us access from working with many organizations within our field nationwide.

There are so many things wrong with this proposal, and although the DOE does need our support to help with administration, this is extortionist. There is only ONE massage program in Hawaii that would survive this change, and thats the program at UH on Oahu, even the timeline they propose is mere months to attempt compliance.

The hearing is in 5 DAYS. Please see these instructions just to oppose this bill, if you are a former student or instructor, PLEASE elaborate on your testimony Mahalo!!!

1- Go to the link
2-Quickly register
3- Search for SB1286 in the "bill status" bar
4 - Click on the blue "submit testimony" bar
5 - Select "oppose" and "submit".

Again, if you have additional testimony on why you did not need to apply for Federal Aid to attend MAHA or another vocational school and how your experience was with the school, whether or not you still practice and how this career has effected your life. ALL these things are super helpful to voice!!!

http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=SB&billnumber=1286&year=2017

Please be advised that these pages may contain links to external Internet sites established by other entities. The Hawaii State Legislature does not maintain, review, or endorse these sites and is not responsible for their content.