Advanced NeuroFascial Release: Visceral Manipulation

Neurofascial Release series with Stephen Myles Davidson, D.O. — Video Three

When the somatic dysfunction keeps coming back, look deeper.

You corrected it. It held for two days. The patient is back on your table with the same complaint, and nothing in your structural exam explains why.

Dr. Davidson’s answer is that the viscera were driving it the whole time.

This third video takes the release paradigm you already know and turns it inward. The organizing idea is what Dr. Davidson calls the Tool Theory of Osteopathic Manipulation, borrowed from a week spent watching mechanics work. A skilled mechanic feels a spark plug three feet away through a wrench extension. You can feel a heart through the carotids, a stomach through the esophagus, a lung through the trachea. The body comes with handles already attached.

What you will work through:

• Palpating the heart through the carotids, including the distinct feel of a post-surgical mediastinum, with clear cautions around the carotid sinus
• Following a peristaltic wave from the throat through the esophageal hiatus into the stomach, and assessing the Schatzki ring for competence
• The trachea as an eight to ten inch handle into the lungs, isolating individual bronchi and pleural restriction
• The spleen worked like a tetherball around its hilum
• The liver in its socket beneath the diaphragm, and why a liver pulled too far cephalad becomes a co-factor in restricted respiration
• The screw principle for drawing a dropped cecum out of the pelvis, and Dr. Still’s writing on why that angle matters in constipation and women’s complaints
• The root of the mesentery, from supple to dried parchment
• The greater omentum as a drape that migrates, adheres, and can be freed on the breath
• Kidney, bladder, ureters, and prostate, including the reflex trick that isolates a kidney in seconds
• The uterus treated as a puppet on the uterosacral ligaments
• Nerve dysfunction, CSF vortices at the foramen, and why flow gets restored first

Who this is for: practitioners who have completed the NeuroFascial Release course and are comfortable recruiting strains and finding release points. This video assumes your diagnostic workup is done and underlying causes are cleared. It is not an anatomy review. It is a set of handholds, and a way of thinking about what is on the other end of them.

Every technique here is gentle. None of it should cause the patient discomfort.

$149.95. Purchase gives you access to the member’s area, where the full 44 minute video streams on demand, as often as you need it.

Read on to learn more in the sections that follow:

• Recommendations from students who took the class upon which the DVD is based
• A list of organs for which visceral manipulations are included
• A page from the student manual on the esophagus and stomach
• A page from the student manual with a specific description of the manual approach to hiatal hernia

What Our Students Say . . .

“Clear, concise approach to the viscera. Very good analogies.”

Eric Dolgin, D.O.
President, The Cranial Academy
Santa Monica, California

“Concepts of viscera were very helpful. [Dr. Davidson’s] mastery of visceral identification from movement of distal aspects was impressive.”

Robert Jaffe, M.D.
Sedona, Arizona

“[This course gave me] permission to apply various manipulative techniques to the viscera.”

Jim Asher, D.O.
Phoenix, Arizona

“An excellent correlation of anatomy to organ dynamics.”

Lloyd Horton, D.C.
Mesa, Arizona

“I highly recommend it for anyone who does manipulation as an additional approach to the patient’s well being.”

Phillip Wong, D.O.
Albuquerque, New Mexico

“Before my first visit to Dr. Davidson, I knew very little about his treatments. The only thing my referring physician said was that it was a very gentle and, essentially, painless therapy. Have had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis most of my life, this sounded refreshing. Other past therapy treatment, including massage therapy, were at times excruciating and would leave me feeling “wired” on my trips back home. Although some of the troubled spots were looser, the rest of my body would feel “out of whack.”

I still have a lot to lean and understand about cranial/osteopathic manipulation, but what I have experienced is that the areas of my body Dr. Davidson focuses on become relieved of tightness and constriction, and, much of the time, I leave the appointment feeling relaxed and optimistic. There are sessions where I may not feel a difference for two days, when my body is readjusting and allowing itself time to heal that particular problem.

Today, I’m on very little medication and, with each visit, feel my body is straighter and stronger and that my mind and spirit are moe hopeful and happier.”

Cheryl Stephens
Sun City, Arizona

Here are the topics we cover with anatomical and physiological discussions and live patient demonstration:

• Brain
• Heart
• Lungs
• Esophagus and Stomach
• The Hiatal Hernia
• Dyspepsia
• Duodenum
• Liver
• Small Intestine
• Spleen
• Greater Omentum
• Cecum
• Transverse and Descending Colon
• Sigmoid and Rectum
• Bladder and Kidneys
• Uterus
• Cause of Uterine Disturbances
• Spinal

The following example demonstrates treatment of the esophagus and stomach with a step-by-step approach for the hiatal hernia. The video has live action and the pictures are in the student manual as well.

Esophagus and Stomach

The Hiatal Hernia

After mechanically aligning the entire musculoskeletal system, evaluate and treat the esophagus and stomach. First, evaluate general esophageal and gastric mobility. Then, consider the gastro-esophageal junctional relationship and how the stomach fits under the diaphragm. Finally, make your correction using whatever manipulative paradigm works for you.

Proper Doctor-Patient Alignment

1. The patient is supine.
2. The doctor stands alongside the patient.
3. With the cephalad hand, the doctor contacts the esophagus posterior to the larynx.
4. The lower hand rests upon the epigastrium.

Motion Testing

5. The doctor instructs the patient to swallow. He follows the peristaltic wave to the stomach. With the lower hand, he then isolates the stomach.
6. The doctor considers the esophagus and the stomach as one functional unit. He considers his hands, arms and torso to be one long lever. The treating movement originates from a fulcrum, imagined to be in the doctor’s pelvis.
7. By the doctor moving his hips towards the patient’s head slightly and then towards the patient’s feet, he translocates the esophagus-stomach unit in its fascial surroundings. He tests for ease of motion. He may also rotate either hand, considering the esophagus and stomach to be the ends of a flexible hose. He checks for freedom of movement all along the “hose”.

General Organ Release

8. The doctor then performs a general fascial release technique with the strain direction or against the strain, waiting for the patient’s respiration to release the strain.

Hiatal Hernia Release

9. He then locates the esophageal hiatus and evaluates the tension or ease of glide the esophagus-stomach unit makes there.
10. Again, using the translocation method, he pulls or twists the stomach inferiorly as necessary to release that area and repositions the herniated portion of the stomach to below the diaphragm.

But wait. There’s more to learn. Find out now!